By David Deming

When I testified before the US Senate on Dec. 6, 2006, I stated that the public was "vastly misinformed" on global warming, and that "there is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty." Looks like I was right. Since the Climategate scandal broke, the global warming hoax has collapsed like a house of rotten cards.

The Earth has not warmed appreciably for the last decade. There is no significant evidence that our climate has changed, or that the mild warming of the last 150 years can be attributed to anything other than natural variation. The Poles aren't melting, polar bears are thriving, and last year's Atlantic hurricane season was below average in activity. And this bitter winter has brought home to Oklahomans the undeniable truth that cold weather is inherently more inclement than warm. The Christmas eve blizzard of 2009 was directly responsible for the deaths of at least nine people, and seven more died as a result of the storm that peaked on January 29.

I received little thanks for telling the truth as I saw it. I was called a "professwhore," and a "denier" who didn't care about the environment or the future. I was accosted by angry students. The Provost at the University of Oklahoma removed my freshman geology course from the list of approved general education courses. And contrary to popular belief, I have received no money from any energy company.

In October of 2006, a group of senior meteorologists at OU publicly claimed that I was attempting to deliberately misinform people. But the Climategate emails demonstrate that it's not skeptics like myself who have been misleading and misinforming the public. Climate researchers conspired to suppress the publication of dissenting views. Data were distorted and hidden for political purposes. The IPCC, that supposed bastion of objective and reliable science, has been revealed to be a political body that tendentiously manipulates data for ideological reasons. And we are just now learning that some of the IPCC's wild predictions were not based upon scientific study, but upon speculative and self-serving claims invented by environmental advocacy groups.

The Oklahoma Climatological Survey is charged with providing the Legislature and people of Oklahoma with accurate information and forecasts on climatic trends. In October of 2007, the Climatological Survey released a statement on climate change. Modestly described as "a definitive statement on global climate change," this report asserted "the climate will continue to warm through the 21st century." Contemplate that while you're cherishing memories of shoveling snow off your driveway or chipping ice from your windshield.

We're not supposed to confuse weather with climate. But the 2007 proclamation by the Climatological Survey explicitly predicted "warmer winters" and "fewer cold-air outbreaks and extremes." The authors of the Survey report were wrong. The second half of 2009 was "exceptionally cool," and last October was the coldest October in Oklahoma since record keeping began in the year 1895.

While the Oklahoma Climatological Survey was wrong, guess what? Last September, the Farmer's Almanac accurately predicted that we would have a "bitterly cold" winter season in 2009-2010 with lots of snowfall. And that's exactly what happened.

As a result of the misinformation provided by the Climatological Survey, Oklahoma was ill-prepared for the severe winter weather. Ironically, Ken Crawford (then State Climatologist) was one of the people who publicly accused me of deliberately misinforming people.

Why was professor Deming, a geologist, able to get it right, while the professional climatologists got it wrong? The Climatological Survey report relied upon junk science produced by the IPCC. Political ideology was substituted for science. And intolerance produces bad science. If the meteorologists had listened to me, they might have learned something. Instead, they closed their minds and asserted their pedantic authority. The Climatological Survey has been left with a shameful and embarrassing debacle. The people and State of Oklahoma would have been better served by constructive engagement and collaboration.

David Deming is a geologist, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, and adjunct scholar at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. His books, Science and Technology in World History: The Ancient World and Classical Civilization, and Science and Technology in World History: Early Christianity, the Rise of Islam and the Middle Ages, are scheduled to be published this summer.