Chicken Littles Running Scared Survey Says: Only 13 Percent Of Scientists Greenpeace Polled In 1992 Expect Runaway Warming.

The Chicken Little crowd that fretted several years ago about global cooling and nuclear winter is back again.

Now, it’s hyperventilating about global warming and the possible damage a few extra degrees may cause decades from now - melted, ice caps, rising seas, swamped coastal cities, floods, storms, diseases, devastated wildlife.

Unfortunately, the alarmists have Vice President Al Gore’s ear. And the United States is dangerously close to signing an international climate treaty that will trash our economy and compromise our sovereignty.

Before the White House sells our birthright, Congress should hold hearings on the scientific uncertainty associated with the global warming theory. Also, it should demand that the U.S. not sign a treaty that causes serious damage to our economy, invites United Nations bureaucrats to oversee compliance or treats nations unequally.

Only a fringe minority of the scientific community supports the Chicken Littles.

Just 13 percent of climate scientists polled in a 1992 Greenpeace survey believed that runaway global warming will occur as a result of continuing climate changes. Scientists in a May 1997 article in Science estimated that it will be a decade or longer before they know whether human activity is, in fact, causing climate changes.

For some reason, Gore & Co. never mentions that humankind contributes only 5 percent of the 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide released annually into the atmosphere. Nor do the environmentalists reveal that the average temperature of Mother Earth has risen only one-half of 1 degree Celsius in the last 120 years - and most of that was before World War II. In the past 18 years, the average temperature actually has dropped nine-hundredths of 1 degree Celsius.

The facts don’t support the hysteria, nor do they support a treaty that experts say will cost the U.S. economy $3 trillion over the next quarter century - $30,000 per family. New emission standards, predict Heritage Foundation analysts, will hike electricity prices by 50 percent and gas prices by 70 cents per gallon. As a result, we’ll pay more for food, clothing, shelter, medical needs, appliances and household goods.

All in the name of junk science.

, DataTimes MEMO: For opposing view, see “Scoffers can’t see beyond bottom line”

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