A fun bit of libel - Doctor Don Easterbrook

This has the potential to backfire wonderfully. Don Easterbrook is a widely published retired Professor of Geology at Western Washington University. He is a cherished resource in the fight against the politicized climate science and power grabbing known as Global Warming and has done wonderful things to spike the arguments of its proponents. He recently gave testimony to one of our Senators and because of that, some of his colleagues at Western wrote this little hit-piece that was published in the Opinion column at our local Bellingham Herald:

WWU faculty find overwhelming scientific evidence to support global warming
On March 26, 2013, a long-retired faculty member of our department, Don Easterbrook, presented his opinions on human-caused global climate change to the Washington State Senate Energy, Environment and Telecommunications Committee at the invitation of the committee chair Sen. Doug Ericksen, R.-Ferndale. We, the active faculty of the Geology Department at Western Washington University, express our unanimous and significant concerns regarding the views espoused by Easterbrook, who holds a doctorate in geology; they are neither scientifically valid nor supported by the overwhelming preponderance of evidence on the topic. We also decry the injection of such poor quality science into the public discourse regarding important policy decisions for our state's future; the chair of the committee was presented with numerous options and opportunities to invite current experts to present the best-available science on this subject, and chose instead to, apparently, appeal to a narrow partisan element with his choice of speaker.

Ooooo -- Doctor Easterbrook is "a long-retired faculty member of our department" Now that is going to leave a mark! Talk about a classic case of argumentum ad hominem (more here). "We, the active faculty" -- see above "express our unanimous and significant concerns regarding the views espoused by Easterbrook, who holds a doctorate in geology" -- of the twelve people signing this vituperative little missive, ten are Doctorate in Geology, Two are in Geophysics and one has a second Doctorate in Engineering. So, Easterbrook's holding a Doctorate in Geology renders him unable to make a statement while the twelve people who seek to discredit him are all geologists or geophysicists. What are they afraid of -- losing their grant money? Their Tenure? These are scientists -- there is never 'consensus' in science. There is a lot more at the site and the comments are a great mix of echo-chamber and skeptic. If the Herald's stupid paywall gets in the way, they administrate this through cookies on your system. Piriform's wonderful and free CCleaner will bust those out with no muss, no fuss...