the al gore movie

The Supreme Court, which incidentally ruled earlier today that the Bush administration has no authourity to try suspects of terrorism by military tribunal, will hear the case of Massachusetts v. the EPA. The state of Massachusetts (along with several other US states, cities, and environmental groups) is arguing that the EPA is required by federal law to regulate carbon dioxide admissions as harmful pollutants. The administration counters as follows (from ABC News):

The administration maintains that unlike other chemicals that must be controlled to ensure healthy air, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is not a dangerous pollutant under the federal law. And, officials argue, even if it is, the EPA has discretion over whether to regulate it, considering the economic costs involved.

The agency should not be required to "embark on the extraordinarily complex and scientifically uncertain task of addressing the global issue of greenhouse gas emissions" when voluntary ways to address climate change are available, the administration argued in its filing with the high court

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Scientifically uncertain? The most interesting point, to me at least, made by Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth was that a study which sampled over 900 scientific studies found ZERO disagreement on the fact that human activity like increased co2 emissions is the significant factor in global climate change. At the same time, another study of hundreds of news reports on the subject found that 53 percent described this issue as unsettled. Even more telling is a leaked memo from within the Republican National Committee that stated that their aim is to present this settled issue as unsettled--just as Big Tobacco did after the Surgeon General stated publically that there is a significant link between smoking and lung cancer. One has to wonder what good the EPA is if it fails to act just becausethe Court says it is not compelled by law to do so. If reducing the effects of co2 on the environment doesn't fall under their charter, what does?

Another claim you'll hear from skeptics of global warming is that these scientists need the public to believe in global warming in order to secure continued government funding in the form of grants. This is, of course, ridiculous. Lobbyists funded by the oil industry paid to sow the seeds of doubt so that large corporations can continue reap to huge profits have no allegience to the truth. Publically funded Research Scientists on the other hand, well the truth is their business, if they were driven by profits, they'd go work for Big Oil or GM.