Consensus?

I found this piece today in a news source I shall refrain from identifying. Let's just say that the source definitely would be guilty of ideology. The Cato Institute (cited in the source) is of course a Libertarian group. The same group that hailed Lawrence v. Texas as a return to the fundamental freedoms envisioned by the Founders. You just can't be sure where the ideology of Libertarians will take them. If you're seeing the world as either conservative or liberal, I mean. (Funny what has happened to words deriving from liber, isn't it?)

(Adam P: If you're reading this, why don't you weigh in on freedom and liberty and privacy and stuff.)

Anyway, can anybody verify the contents of this? I'm embarrassed to say that I don't follow this issue except through the opinions of others. I mean, I don't even read climatologists let alone evaluate them. From where I've been sitting this winter and spring, the world is definitely getting cooler. I've always been a stewardship/recycling/conserving/nature-loving kind of person. I was really glad when Geneva Steel shut down and stopped polluting the valley air. The carbon credits idea seems kind of stupid, or at least unworkable, to me. That's about it for me.

(Another aside: Interesting that when we read "with all due respect" we can be certain that disrespect is about to follow.)

Here it is:

Over 100 prominent scientists from more than a dozen countries — including a Nobel Prize winner — have signed a letter to President Barack Obama charging that his views on climate change are “simply incorrect.” The letter — sponsored by the Cato Institute — cites a statement Obama made in November: “Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear.”

Under the headline, “With all due respect, Mr. President, that is not true,” the scientists state: “We, the undersigned scientists, maintain that the case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated. Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now…

“The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior. Mr. President, your characterization of the scientific facts regarding climate change and the degree of certainty informing the scientific debate is simply incorrect.”

The 115 signatories include Ivar Giaever, Ph.D., who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for his work with superconductors at General Electric; John Blaylock, formerly with the Los Alamos National Laboratory; Richard Lindzen, Ph.D., at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and William Gray, Ph.D., the respected hurricane expert at Colorado State University.

The signers include scientists at Princeton University, U.S. Naval Academy, University of Kansas, University of Oklahoma, University of Colorado, and University of Missouri. Among the countries represented by the signers are Britain, Canada, Italy, Norway, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Argentina and South Africa.

A number of the scientists are current or former reviewers with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with climate change crusader Al Gore — and have since reversed their views on man-made global warming.