Rep. Dana Rohrabacher knows a thing or two about media bias when it comes to the debate over global warming because he was a victim of the arrogant “settled science” argument recently on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews. Rohrabacher, R-Calif., appeared on the show with fellow Rep. James Moran, D-Va., and was immediately attacked by both the host and his House colleague.

“I’m inclined to ask him how he feels about the Earth revolving around the sun or whether, you know, smoking causes cancer,” Moran needled Rohrabacher at the end of his introductory comments. “These things have been resolved, Dana, by the best experts.”

Matthews took the condescension cue from Moran and posed his first question to Rohrabacher this way: “Congressman Rohrabacher, are you a Luddite, a Troglodyte? Are you a part of the “Planet Of The Apes” that doesn’t want science?”

That’s just the way I remember them teaching us to ask questions in journalism school. And it only got worse after that, with Matthews desperately trying to turn the discussion into a debate about Rohrabacher’s religious views on evolution.

Rohrabacher reflected on that experience yesterday at the Heartland Institute’s Third International Conference on Climate Change. “I brought very serious scientific issues, and they called me names,” he said of their “dishonest approach.”

That’s par for the “faulty science” course in the global warming debate, Rohrabacher said. Former Vice President Al Gore and others who warn that humans are causing the globe to get dangerously warm won’t entertain questions from critics and won’t give research money to scientists who disagree.

In an earlier presentation at the conference, University of Alabama at Huntsville research scientist Roy Spencer suggested that the media is complicit in pushing one perspective on global warming. He said he gets regular media calls for reaction to scientists espousing one view or another about global warming, but when his groundbreaking theory about cloud cover as a natural, cyclical cause of global warming was published in the Journal of Climate, no journalists called. No one covered the story.

He said colleagues have reported similar media silence when they find the rare outlet that will publish their work

“We have had a one-sided presentation being given to the American public” for 15 years, Rohrabacher said, and the result may be “draconian laws” that kill the American and global economies.

He called the push for costly regulations to cap carbon-dioxide emissions “the biggest power grab in the history of mankind” and the start to “an agenda that is just frightening.” Rohrabacher warned that the next logical step would be global regulation, including the possibility of international rules against frequent-flier miles because of the global-warming alarmists’ hostility toward air travel.

The last thing the world needs is for the United Nations to be given the power to regulate the climate, he said. “Half of their members are lunatics and crooks.”

Rohrabacher lauded the scientific experts at the conference for challenging the climate hysteria in recent years. He said “the tide has turned” in terms of public opinion because of vocal skeptics offering sound and convincing scientific evidence that contradicts the prevailing views about global warming.

He cited the alarmists’ intentional change in lingo from “global warming” to “climate change” as proof of success. “That is an admission that they were absolutely wrong.”

Rohrabacher lamented that many of his colleagues on Capitol Hill who oppose “cap and trade” legislation won’t fight it based on science and instead have opted to argue that the rules would be too costly. If global warming is a real threat, he said, then the country and the world should spend whatever money is necessary to combat it. But he said the science is wrong, and lawmakers need to make the case against cap and trade on those grounds.

He urged the experts who understand the science to continue speaking the truth loudly, “and eventually humankind will recognize it.”

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