Report challenges global warming claims

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 (UPI) -- A report released by the ranking Republican member of a U.S. Senate environment committee refutes claims by Nobel laureate Al Gore on man-made climate change.

In the report, more than 400 scientists expressed doubt over the claims made by Gore, a former U.S. vice president, and the United Nations that man-made climate change endangers the planet, The Washington Times reported Friday.

The report is available on the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Web site, whose ranking minority member is U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. The panel involved in the report includes members of the U.N. panel on climate change that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Gore and issued its report on the heels of a U.N. conference on climate change in Indonesia.

David W. Schnare with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in the report he was wary of Gore's claims because "conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models."

The report challenges the contention that the climate change debate is settled as more and more scientists emerge countering the claims of many of the popular global-warming theories.

"The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The (greenhouse-gas) hypothesis does not do this," said atmospheric scientist Hendrick Tennekes.