AMERICAN FREEDOM ALLIANCE
Conferences of the Air 2012

AFA Conferences of the Air are offered as a means of addressing subjects central to the survival of Western values and ideals without the expense and difficulty of bringing all the speakers together in the same room. . These conferences, which at times have been known to host over 25 participating speakers, can range in lenght from 90 minutes to four hours. They can be accessed free of charge in real time or else in real time or reviewed at a listener's leisure on this archived site. Biographies of all speakers are made available, often with links to their individual websites.

Recent Events

Has Science Become Politicized?

Featuring:

James Enstrom, Matthew Malkan, Steve Milloy, Benny Peiser, Paul Taylor,
Ed Berry, Peter Wood, Jay Richards, David Klinghoffer and Stanley W. Trimble

Sunday, April 15, 2012
10:30 am - 1:30 pm PST ( 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm EST)

Streamed live on the Internet and then archived. Log in from anywhere in the world and listen at any time at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/westernwordradio

On November 19, 2009, a whistle-blower in the U.K. leaked thousands of emails and documents central to a Freedom of Information request placed with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. This institution had played a central role in the “climate change” debate: its scientists, together with their international colleagues, quite literally put the “warming” into Global Warming: they were responsible for analyzing and collating the various measurements of temperature from around the globe and going back into the depths of time, that collectively underpinned the entire scientific argument that mankind’s liberation of “greenhouse” gases—such as carbon dioxide—was leading to a relentless, unprecedented, and ultimately catastrophic warming of the entire planet.

The released email threads exposed the work of the scientists investigating possibly the most important issue ever to confront mankind. Yet instead of uncovering the deliberations of meticulous, careful and critical scientists employing a disciplined scientific method, we instead witnessed scientists deliberately manipulating data, hiding un-corroborative research, squelching dissent and seeking to blackball individuals whose own studies and opinions conflicted with any of their own findings of anthropogenic global warming.

These series of emails, which became widely known in the media as "Climategate" raised serious issues, not just about the climate change research, but about the nature of scientific research itself. Ben Stein's film Expelled, released the year before, had already exposed administrative malfeasance and academic stone-walling regarding any challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution, with tenured professors being forced out of their positions or having their reputations ruined. But in many other fields such as molecular biology, astrophysics and neuroscience, there have been questions raised about how scientists conduct their studies, particularly when they are confronted with new studies which do not corroborate prevailing opinion.

These series of emails, which became widely known in the media as "Climategate" raised serious issues, not just about the climate change research, but about the nature of scientific research itself. Ben Stein's film Expelled, released the year before, had already exposed administrative malfeasance and academic stone-walling regarding any challenge to Darwin's theory of evolution, with tenured professors being forced out of their positions or having their reputations ruined. But in many other fields such as molecular biology, astrophysics and neuroscience, there have been questions raised about how scientists conduct their studies, particularly when they are confronted with new studies which do not corroborate prevailing opinion.

Matthew Malkan is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. He has published over 200 refereed articles in peer-reviewed journals and regularly chairs advisory committees for NASA, the National Optical Astronomical Observatory and the National Science Foundation on the allocation of funding and valuable observing time on the largest telescopes on the planet and in space.

Steve Milloy is the founder and publisher of JunkScience.com, a long-time columnist for FoxNews.com and a consultant on environment and public health policy issues. Mr. Milloy frequently appears on radio and television and is author of the best-selling book, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Regnery 2009).

Benny Peiser is the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, an all-party think tank based in London. He is the founder and editor (since 1997) of CCNet, the world’s leading climate policy network. Mr. Peiser is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Buckingham and was one of the founders of the German Green Party.

Paul Taylor is an environmental scientist, journalist, author and public policy analyst/commentator. He is the author of Climate of Ecopolitics: A Citizen’s Guide (IUniverse, 2008) and Green Gone Wrong: Ecopolitics Exposed (IUniverse, 2001). As a journalist, Mr.Taylor’s opinion pieces and reporting have been published in numerous periodicals throughout the United States.

Ed Berry is a meteorologist, atmospheric physicist and inventor based in Montana. Since 2001, Dr. Berry has focused on the global warming problem. He has found it to be intimately tied to his areas of expertise in cloud physics, numerical modeling and government research management. After much study, he realized that the hypothesis that human-produced carbon dioxide will produce global warming is false.

Pter Wood is executive director of the National Association of Scholars. His writings include Diversity: The Invention of a Concept (2003, Encounter Books) and A Bee in the Mouth: Anger in America Now (Encounter Books, 2007). His organization has paid particular attention to the growth of the sustainability movement on campus and its unwillingness to countenance dissent.

David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is the author of five books including Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History (Doubleday, 2005), Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore the Ten Commandments at Our Peril (Doubleday, 2007), and the spiritual memoir The Lord Will Gather Me In: My Journey to Jewish Orthodoxy (Free Press, 1999), a National Jewish Book Award finalist. A former senior editor of National Review magazine, he has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and many other publications.

James Enstrom. In 1970 Dr. Enstrom obtained a Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University. Since December 1973, he has been conducting epidemiologic research at the UCLA School of Public Health, where he obtained an M.P.H. and postdoctoral certificate in epidemiology. Since 1976 he has held research faculty positions in the School of Public Health and the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. Since 1981 he has been a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology. His epidemiologic research has focused on the relationship of mortality to healthy lifestyles, vitamin C, active and passive smoking, smoking cessation, and air pollution. Since 2005 he has been President of the Scientific Integrity Institute, which he established in order to promote scientific integrity in epidemiology. This institute addresses specific epidemiologic controversies, such as, the one in which he is currently involved: the relationship between fine particulate matter and total mortality and its regulatory implications in California and the United States.

Stanley W. Trimble is a professor in the Department of Geography at UCLA. His interests include historical geography of the environment and especially human impact on hydrology. Professor Trimble served on the National Research Council Committee on Watershed Management (1996-1999) and the Committee on the Mississippi River and the Clean Water Act (2005-2007).

Jay Richards, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute where he directs the Center on Wealth, Poverty and Morality, and is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Faith, Work & Economics. Most recently he is the co-author with James Robison of the best-selling Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late”. In addition to writing many academic articles, books, and popular essays on a wide variety of subjects, he recently edited the new award winning anthology, God & Evolution: Protestants, Catholics and Jews Explore Darwin’s Challenge to Faith . His previous book was Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem (HarperOne, May 2009), for which he received a Templeton Enterprise Award in 2010.