Frustrated at wrangling over the science and exhausted from swimming against the media tide, Jim Manzi and others in conservative circles (Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine is another) are eager to move on to more familiar ground of crafting policy solutions for climate change. But while I admire Jim’s global warming cost-benefit analysis, I profoundly disagree with his misplaced evolution analogy and ultimate surrender on science.

My basis for this is two-fold.

First, as a newspaperman, the evidence against Al Gore’s orchestrated global warming “science” campaign grows stronger every day, even as my fellow newsmen — journalism’s gatekeepers – try to scrub it from the front pages. Never mind the failure of previous green “science” to hold up to long-term scrutiny — Rachel Carson’s predictions of species pesticide homicide, the Club of Rome’s crop science, global freezing science, etc.

Satellite data of the last ten years as well as statistician Ed Wegman’s exhaustive work for the U.S. Senate have shot huge holes in conventional greenhouse theory. And then there’s Lawrence Solomon’s important book, The Deniers, which lays out how the world’s major climate experts – names like Lindzen, Michaels, and Landsea — do not accept the prevailing climate science. It’s not unlike 1970s academic economics when Keynesian, state-interventionist economics was the “accepted wisdom” — never mind those classical-theorist cranks like Milton Friedman and Arthur Laffer.

Secondly, a similar surrender on acid rain science in the1980s has direct bearing on the current environmental debate.

In 1980, Congress commissioned the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program (NAPAP), a definitive, ten-year, $500-million scientific study to determine whether midwest utilities were the main culprit behind the acidification of northeast lakes. But while the scientists went about their work, a relentless green group and media campaign – eerily similar to global warming today — declared acid-rain science settled. Industry executives — careful not to be on the wrong side of the public mood – conceded the debate and urged Congress to craft sensible legislation. Conservative policy wonks, then as today, threw in the towel – eager to try out new, pet policies such as cap-and-trade. The 1990 Clean Air Act – with a Republican president’s support, natch! – was put on greased skids and set to sail through Congress, complete with the “conservative victory” of cap and trade acid rain legislation.

Then, the definitive NAPAP science study was published.

The “deniers” (one of which was Warren Brookes, a superb journalist for my newspaper, The Detroit News) had been right all along: man-made sulfur was not a major factor in Northeast acidification. In fact, lake acidification was much more complicated than popular perception (e.g., similar acidification occurred in remote Florida and Australia – far from industrial pollution) involving large natural variations in forestry and soil. Sound familiar?

The report concluded that the Clean Air Act would be an expensive waste of time (as born out by the continued acidification of NE lakes to this day). The report’s conclusions were buried by Congress, and the media ignored its inconvenient truths as well (a scandal that the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz exposed at the time).

Ironically, that miscarriage of science is being used today as a justification for action on global warming, further compounding the mistake conservatives made in surrendering on principle then. It is a cautionary tale that all conservatives should know (read more here.)

Better they stand their ground this time.