Osama bin Laden made headlines recently when he reportedly circulated a tape linking the catastrophic floods that devastated Pakistan last fall to manmade global warming.

It was a curious topic for the mass murderer to expound on, but he’s probably a better pitchman for the green movement than folks like former vice-president Al Gore or England’s Prince Charles. After all, as powerlineblog.com points out, the high-living Gore and the Prince of Wales own multiple mansions and yachts, and travel in private jets and caravans of SUVs, while preaching austerity to the rest of us. Meanwhile, the cave-dwelling bin Laden must have a carbon footprint the size of a snail’s.

But the fact that a forced hermit like bin Laden would issue forth on catastrophic climate change perhaps speaks to how successful these folks have been in their 24-7 scare campaigns. In fact, Gore refuses to even debate the topic (which in the past 25 years or so has morphed from the cause of global cooling to global warming to climate change) because he says the science is already settled.

I guess that’s one way to bark down the competition, and it’s largely been successful. But the science isn’t settled, and more and more scientists are breaking away from the forced scientific orthodoxy to say so. For instance, earlier this year, 35 scientists signed a letter to Congress speaking out against “climate alarmists.”

The letter was in response to that of the 18 scientists who had earlier declared to Congress that the science was settled. They argued that policy decisions were immediately needed to “prepare for massive flooding from the extreme storms of the sort being experienced with increasing frequency,” the “direct health impacts from heat waves and severe storms” and “climate-sensitive infectious diseases.”

In their rebuttal, the 35 scientists pointed to peer-reviewed scientific information refuting all the claims of the “group of 18.” You can read the letter at beefmagazine.com by searching “Scientists Counter Climate Alarmists.”

Another leading scientist who recently discovered his voice on the topic is Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, the author of the book “Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.” He recently delivered a very interesting critique on the suspicious science quoted as the core of catastrophic climate change.

You can view his 40-minute lecture on climate change and energy at youtube.com by searching “Global Warming – The Current Status: The Science, the Scandal, the Prospects for a Treaty.” In addition, you can view an insightful five-minute excerpt of that address at www.powerlineblog.com (search “climate high-sticking”), in which Muller shreds the famous climate “hockey stick” argument.

Powerful stuff.