Sound the alarm! Again...

The lead story on the Washington Post website this morning is a call to arms for global warmists.  The survival of the planet is at stake.  Well, maybe this rock of a planet would survive, but apparently life on it could change in ways contrary to warmists' preferences.  The earth has been warming up and cooling down for as long as it's been in existence, but this natural phenomenon has become a political movement over the last few decades.  In the 70s we were advised we shouldn't keep driving our cars because that contributed to global cooling.  Today we're advised we shouldn't keep driving our cars because it causes global warming.

Greenland's glaciers are melting into the sea twice as fast as previously believed, the result of a warming trend that renders obsolete predictions of how quickly Earth's oceans will rise over the next century, scientists said yesterday.

The new data come from satellite imagery and give fresh urgency to worries about the role of human activity in global warming. The Greenland data are mirrored by findings from Bolivia to the Himalayas, scientists said, noting that rising sea levels threaten widespread flooding and severe storm damage in low-lying areas worldwide.

On the other hand, conditions in Antarctica don't fully support the conclusions reported in the post.  From the BBC News.

Dr Ian Joughin, of the American space agency's (Nasa) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Slawed Tulaczyk, of the University of California at Santa Cruz, say they have found "strong evidence" that the ice sheet in the Ross Sea area is growing, by 26.8 gigatons per year.

Most of the growth is on an ice sheet called ice Stream C.

"The ice sheet has been retreating for the last few thousand years, but we think the end of this retreat has come," says Dr Joughin. But he said it would be a mistake to assume any threat of the ice sheet collapsing was completely removed.

You'd think 26.8 gigatons of ice per year wouldn't be that easy to miss, but this is Antarctica we're talking about where ice might be successfully camouflaged.  So, who can be believed?  According to the Washington Post story:

Most climate scientists believe a major cause for Earth's warming climate is increased emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of burning fossil fuels, largely in the United States and other wealthy, industrialized nations such as those of western Europe but increasingly in rapidly developing nations such as China and India as well. Carbon dioxide and several other gases trap the sun's heat and raise atmospheric temperature.

Quite confidently, the Post states as fact that carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun and raises atmospheric temperatures.  This is contradicted by a BBC News report from last year that Russia was poised to ratify the Kyoto Treaty.  Russian scientists advised against ratification.

This week, top Russian scientists advised against ratification, claiming there was no evidence linking greenhouse gas emissions to climate change.

How much heat could CO2 trap anyway?  And why the big push for Russia to ratify Kyoto? 

But the deciding factor appears to be not the economic cost, but the political benefits for Russia, correspondents say.

In particular, there has been talk of stronger European Union support for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization, in response to its ratification of the treaty.

For Russia it was not about the science.  And other reporting would suggest this is true in a lot of places.  Who could forget the immortal words of Robert F. Kennedy Jr?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is blaming Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, along with President Bush, for causing Hurricane Katrina.

"As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2," Kennedy blogged Tuesday on HuffingtonPost.com.

Dipping once again into the Washington Post article, we come up with a quote from Vicki Arroyo of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change who seems to support the views of Mr. Kennedy.

"This study underscores the need to take swift, meaningful actions at home and abroad to address climate change," said Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

The data highlight the lack of meaningful U.S. policy, she added: "This is the kind of study that should make people stay awake at night wondering what we're doing to the climate, how we're shaping the planet for future generations and, especially, what we can do about it."

So once again, who should we believe, the BBC and the Russian scientists or the Washington Post and Pew?  To the issue of Pew's credibility we look to Sean Treglia, former former program officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts.  In March 2005 Ryan Sager reported on Mr Treglia's confessed role with Pew Charitable Trusts in bringing about McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Bill.  Sager's New York Post article has been archived but Opinion Journal commented on it.

In a tape obtained by Ryan Sager of the New York Post--who broke the story--Mr. Treglia was heard to admit that his foundation's lavish support of such groups as Common Cause and the Center for Public Integrity was designed to convince Congress that there was widespread public demand for campaign-finance reform when, in fact, there wasn't. Campaign-finance partisans, according to Mr. Treglia, had lost legitimacy in Washington, lacking "a constituency that would punish Congress if they didn't vote for reform." So, "to convey the impression that this was something coming naturally from outside the Beltway, I felt it best that Pew stay in the background."

What is striking about this confession has less to do with campaign-finance reform--a bust anyway--than with the stealth politics of Pew and foundations like it.

Stealth politics?  Could the Washington Post be accused of "stealth politics" just for putting up an article on global warming?  Well, maybe.  But someone would have to point out the stealth.