In light of what happened yesterday with The Independent apparently disappearing a famous climate prediction blunder article while leaving an article critical of its use intact, this opinion piece by Joe Wallach seemed pertinent -Anthony

Guest opinion by Joe Wallach

Warming alarmists use a curious method to promote their view of “climate change”, censorship. If 97% of the scientific community (read IPCC) are so certain that humans are responsible for global warming, they should present irrefutable, supporting scientific evidence. Instead panic and censorship are used to advance their cause. In a society where freedom of speech is a treasured attribute, and is sought for all sorts of causes, beneficial and farcical censorship is an anathema. According to one alarmist earlier in 2015, who refused to allow me to recommend the work of a group of French scientists and engineers to his readership, he stated that:

“Climate Change denial is one of the subjects we don’t allow on UnpublishedOttawa.com because it’s not based on real facts. Anyone can grab facts and make an argument out of it, but when the vast majority of scientists, who have little to gain, agree that we have a problem, a problem that is already manifesting itself all around the world, then allowing posts that deny this reality, is in our opinion akin to intentional deception.”

More recently, I submitted a post to another human climate change site in the Ottawa, Canada area, in which I asked if anyone could provide a single piece of irrefutable, undeniable evidence that humans are responsible for global warming. That, too, was blocked by the purveyor of the site http://www.boomerwarrior.org/.

In October, 2015 the cégep (a cégep is the community college equivalent in Québec, Canada) at Trois Rivières, Quebec cancelled a scheduled talk, in which retired Professor Reynald Duberger was invited by a faculty member to speak on global warming. Professor Duberger’s opposition to the idea of anthropogenic global warming is well known among francophones on both sides of the Atlantic, a position that is not acceptable to many institutions of higher education.

That is not the first time that Professor Duberger was so rebuffed, but it is noteworthy because it made headlines in the nearly 50,000-circulation newspaper, Le Nouvelliste, in Trois Rivières (population 130,000). Translated, the bold headline declares: Climate change: The Cégep cancels Reynald Duberger’s talk (http://www.lapresse.ca/le-nouvelliste/actualites/environnement/201510/13/01-4909558-changements-climatiques-le-cegep-annule-la-conference-de-reynald-duberger.php)

Educational institutions are supposed to provide a thorough education. At the high school, community college and university levels that includes the presentation of contrary points of view that may emerge over a critical, current events issue, such as global warming. Censoring legitimate, contradictory viewpoints on human-induced global warming is a gross disservice to the students, and to society. Advocating human-induced global warming without also providing information on contradictory, scientifically supported opinions is brainwashing.

Professor Duberger is an earth scientist (seismology and geology) who understands the behavior of the planet. He is a frequent guest on talk radio in Quebec City and speaks very eloquently so that one need not be a specialist to understand him. It is unfortunate for the students that Professor Duberger’s scheduled talk to them was cancelled by the Director of Studies, Denis Rousseau.

According to the reporter for Le Nouvelliste the following explanation, in italicized text, was advanced by Denis Rousseau as justification for the cancellation: Knowing how the courses in exact sciences offered here are taught we were reluctant to hear the ideas espoused by the author (he meant speaker)…we teach exact sciences here and our professors believe that global warming is a fact, which contradicts the opinion of the speaker. Then to “punctuate” his discourse Rousseau added: The majority of scientists believe that global warming is a fact. Duberger offers a natural retort to that last statement by referring to the derision endured by Alfred Wegener until his death because the majority of geoscientists ridiculed his now widely accepted and understood theory of Plate Tectonics.

It is fascinating that Rousseau referred to exact sciences, but he should have explained, with evidence, what an exact science is, particularly with respect to terrestrial, environmental or climatological processes. I’m sure that even Mother Nature would love to hear that. In the context of supporting a position with evidence one of Professor Duberger’s notable concerns is that no one seems to have furnished incontrovertible evidence that global warming is caused by human activity. As a geoscientist Professor Duberger is fully aware of temperature variations that have occurred throughout geological time including the global warming that wiped out most of the continental ice sheets, except for Greenland and the polar regions, that covered the northern hemisphere approximately 9,000 – 12,000 years ago. During none of those previous events were there factories or hydrocarbon-fueled machines of any kind.

Rousseau’s arguments scream for knowledgeable scientists to speak at the cégep to, at the very least, give the students good, concrete reasons to think critically about natural vs. anthropogenic global warming. This is not merely an academic distinction, but has definite economic consequences as well, as illustrated in the following link (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/how-canada-s-provinces-are-tackling-greenhouse-gas-emissions-1.3030535). The subject of global warming, or the more recently minted “climate change”, must be dealt with rationally, not by censorship.

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