The truth continues to come out.

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http://news.bostonherald.com/news/national/general/view/2009_02_15_Former_astro
naut_speaks_out_on_global_warming/srvc=home&position=recent

Former astronaut speaks out on global warming
By Associated Press
Sunday, February 15, 2009 - Added 11h ago


SANTA FE, N.M. - Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and
once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesnt believe that humans are
causing global warming.

"I dont think the human effect is significant compared to the natural
effect,"
said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the
International Conference on Climate Change in New York.

Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they
disagree with
the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels,
temperatures and sea levels.

"Theyve seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they havent
gone along with the so-called political consensus that were in a human-caused
global warming," Schmitt said.

Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is
hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading
about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to
space exploration.

Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In
his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global
warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control
over American lives, incomes and decision making."

Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are
proclaiming in global warming.

"Not that the planet hasn't warmed. We know it has or wed all still be in the
Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion
and, even among
us skeptics, there's disagreement about how much man has been responsible for
that warming."

Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1
degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is
because of the temperature rise.

Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been
going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes
in the elevation of land masses  for example, the Great Lakes are rising
because the earths crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.

Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science
degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at
the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard
University in 1964.

In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo
17 mission.

Schmitt said hes heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of
scientists who haven't been manipulated by politics.

Of the global warming debate, he said: "It's one of the few times you've seen a
sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political
position and its coloring their objectivity."

___

Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com

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