Althouse: The bad science of Obama's use of the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms" to scare us about climate change.

January 24, 2013

The bad science of Obama's use of the "devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms" to scare us about climate change.

How absurd to use obviously bad science to hit us over the head about our failure to react to what you claim is good science!

Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

83 comments:

caplight45 said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?
Because Liberal Progressives believe the end justify the means. A lie for a good cause is not a lie.; 1/24/13, 9:24 AM
Jeffrey Meyer said...: Because politics is about lying.; 1/24/13, 9:24 AM
Brian Brown said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

Well, because politics is inherently an art - that of getting people to like you enough to vote for you - which increasingly has no depth to which politicans won't sink.

Otherwise, as has been noted elsewhere, we have the worst political class probably ever.; 1/24/13, 9:24 AM
Jeffrey Meyer said...: Because politics is about lying.; 1/24/13, 9:24 AM
Scott said...: Community organizing is about making people unhappy with their current situation by influencing their perception of it, and then stepping in as their savior.

What Obama did is completely understandable. The President is a one-trick pony.; 1/24/13, 9:24 AM
Tank said...: The all purpose response:

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

Con man gonna con. Gotta lie to do it.; 1/24/13, 9:27 AM
Anonymous said...: when you're mal-educated and ignorant things that sound good get the job done. no one checks facts. if The Leader said it, it must be true.he wouldn't lie to us.; 1/24/13, 9:27 AM
Eric said...: The distinction isn't between good and bad science. It is between useful and unuseful science.; 1/24/13, 9:28 AM
m stone said...: I suspect Obama buys into any emotionally-charged case that speechwriter Favreau creates, so smitten is he in his words. Favreau has never shown any propensity for research or fact-checking.; 1/24/13, 9:28 AM
Nonapod said...: Science is based on empiricism, politics is based on emotion.; 1/24/13, 9:29 AM
Icepick said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

Science is about determining how the universe works. Politics is about getting what you want.; 1/24/13, 9:30 AM
Anonymous said...: Jon Stewart was on about this just yesterday, stating "Global warming is a hoax because it is cold, today, where I live."

Any single, anomalous piece of bad weather has as much to do with the global climate as the Sandy Hook shooting has to do with the overall trend in firearm homicides in the United States.

And that is your answer -- because look at how much political hay has been made out of the Sandy Hook shooting.

In addition, bad things are more important when they happen to people on the East Coast (especially in or near Manhattan) because the people there are so much more important and better educated.; 1/24/13, 9:30 AM
Crimso said...: Because in the former, data trump theory every time. In the latter, it's the reverse.; 1/24/13, 9:31 AM
Anonymous said...: This just in:

black people not good at science.

Also in:

blacks will also extraordinarily exaggerate any claim of suffering the make, whether past or future.

Current unemployment rate: 7.75%. Gas $3.50 a gallon, credit rating downgraded, 1st Amendment in tatters.

Good job Althouse!; 1/24/13, 9:32 AM
Levi Starks said...: It's ok,
He's nothing like Hitler.
And that's all that really matters..; 1/24/13, 9:34 AM
Scott M said...: The IPCC is once again under fire for using obviously agenda-driven publications for it's upcoming climate change report. This is the same problem they had with the last big report that based melting Himalayan glaciers on a remark some guy made in one of those activism rags.; 1/24/13, 9:35 AM
Big Mike said...: It's only hard when you use junk science to guide your politics.

Questions that "climate change" doesn't address.

(1) Is it really happening?

(2) If it is really happening, what is the real role of CO2?

(3) If it is really happening, and CO2 is a major contributor, then is this good for us or bad for us?

(4) If it is really happening, and if CO2 is a major contributor, and if it is bad for us, then do we really need the expense of cap and trade and the consequent impoverishment of the elderly and poor people living in Ohio, rural Pennsylvania, Appalachia, and the like?

Nearly all liberals treat question (1) as a form of apostasy, much less the others. But the real answers are (1) yes, but very slowly; (2) almost negligible next to the role of the sun; (3) almost certainly good -- milder winters and longer growing seasons in the northern tier of states in the lower 48 are good things; and (4) the US is already reducing its CO2 output merely by moving to more natural gas-fired power plants.

I find (3) to be especially indicative of a bias towards junk science on the left. The only justification for viewing anthropogenic global warming with alarm was Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph, and this was debunked well over a decade ago.

The only valid conclusion one can draw is that the American left wing has elbowed aside Christian Fundamentalists as the group most in love with junk science. Indeed one can make a stronger scientific case for Creationism than for anthropogenic global warming.; 1/24/13, 9:36 AM
edutcher said...: All those revelations of rigged data are like the bad math about the debt.; 1/24/13, 9:38 AM
BarrySanders20 said...: These are carnival tactics. I wonder if Obama knows he's teh clown, or if he cares.

Climate change has happened since climate existed. Species adapt. ostly, or if they can't, they die off. Most move to where they can survive. Like Sam Kinison said to the starving people in Africa: "We have deserts here too, we just don't LIVE IN THEM!"

The earth has been on a general warming trend for the past 14,000 years, and if geological evidence of past interglacial warming periods is predictive, it is not finished yet. But it is also an absolute certainty that the Earth will revert back to an ice age at some point, and that will bring true death and destruction, enough to warm the hearts of the humans-are-plague types.

A warm earth has allowed humans to flourish. A slightly warmer Earth than it was in 1890 is almost irrelevant. If the worst fears of Algore come true, and Obama fails to keep another promise (that the sea levels have begun to recede), then some who are living at or below sea level and who refuse to adapt will have to move. Big deal. Life on Earth has done that for millions of years.; 1/24/13, 9:38 AM
Paul said...: You know Obama is more and more starting to sound like....

AL GORE!; 1/24/13, 9:40 AM
Bob Boyd said...: If you are interested in the climate change controversy watch this 4 part video.
Total time investment
about 35 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOLkze-9GcI#t=50; 1/24/13, 9:40 AM
Peter said...: The problem isn't that governmetn does stupid things and wastes resources. Governments have always done these things.

The problem is that government has become so damn big that the consequences of the stupidity and waste have become serious.

Expecting government to be wise and thrifty is not realistic; that is not and never has been how politics works.

The cure is not better government, it's less government.; 1/24/13, 9:48 AM
bagoh20 said...: Cooling is what I fear. When I hear the Earth is warming, I think: excellent!

This planet would be far better at about 4 Deg. C. higher. How do I know. The same way you know it would be worse, plus some fossil records. I'm prepared to adapt and flourish, but I doubt I'll be around for it. I'm doing my part though, by trying to maximize my carbon footprint. That's really hard to do without Al Gore type bucks. I wondered why he pursued money so vigorously, but now I know - carbon is expensive.; 1/24/13, 9:50 AM
chickelit said...: I worry more about the damage done to the credibility of American science than CO2. Where is the American Lomborg? Repressed by grant & funding dynamics?; 1/24/13, 9:55 AM
mccullough said...: What does Obama know about science? He majored in political science and has displayed no aptitude for science or math. He's a bullshitter.; 1/24/13, 9:58 AM
Strelnikov said...: One is based on objective truth, or the effort to find it, and the other on lies. Oil and water.; 1/24/13, 10:07 AM
gerry said...: Science and politics should never be combined.

For example, the wondrous combination of "scientific socialism" (Stalin) and the evolutionary "science" of Lysenkoism retarded USSR and Red Chinese agriculture for decades. It also resulted in death and imprisonment for scientists whose opinions did not conform to Lysenko's (he considered Mendelian genetics bourgeois and anti-Marxist, and so did Stalin).

AGW "science" is Lysenkoist, skewing results to conform to ideology. Truth be damned, dissenters must be destroyed so the Progressive good, proven by "science", may triumph!

FORWARD!; 1/24/13, 10:10 AM
sonicfrog said...: Icepick said...

Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

Science is about determining how the universe works. Politics is about getting what you want.

Nailed it. Thread winner.; 1/24/13, 10:29 AM
Seeing Red said...: Crippling drought? What happened in the 30s?

This is a recent post from Samizdata, it looks like they're upping their game:

Just as the incoveniently disprovable “global warming” gave way to irrefutable “climate change”, so “The Science” (TSIS) gives way to “The Physics” (TPIS). Climate activist Bill McKibben will demonstrate:

We’re talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable.

Physics doesn’t understand that rapid action on climate change threatens the most lucrative business on Earth, the fossil fuel industry.
All you hoi polloi** with your so-called degrees in The Chemistry (TCIS), The Biology (TBIS), The Meteorology (TMIS), The Zoology (TZIS), The Geology (TGIS), The Climatology (TCIS), not to mention even those poor old bits of the The Science* (TSIS) that are so uncool that they have to have the word “Sciences” in their names (TPOBOTTS(TSIS)TASUTTHTHTWSITNIS), are just going to have to face facts. The Physics (TPIS) iz da maximum cool. You all want to be us. When times are tough for your cause, who ya gonna call? Who they gonna believe when they don’t believe you? The Physics (TPIS), that’s who.

Only slight problem is the physicists. Not that we have a superiority complex or anything, but we sometimes do get a leetle touchy when inferiors, sorry, less rigorous folk, start stretching our error bars. If I may recommend a strategy to non-physicists wishing to keep us on side, your best bet is continued abject flattery.; 1/24/13, 10:34 AM
rhhardin said...: Global warming is a problem that needs fixing, but...

It's bad science right there.

It's bad science to the second level.; 1/24/13, 10:34 AM
test said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

It's only hard when the policies you mean to enact aren't actually supported by the science. Obama gave the game away when he appointed Van Jones as his global warming czar. When your global warming czar is a social justice political activist it's pretty clear the 'remedial' policies you support are not driven by concern over global warming.; 1/24/13, 10:36 AM
chuck said...: Politics and science are incompatible. In politics, people rule, in science, Mother Nature. Scientists found the disinterested embrace of Mother Nature more satisfying before the pretty politicians turned their smouldering eyes on them and offered money. No one thought scientists were worth the trouble in earlier times, but now they have been seduced.; 1/24/13, 10:40 AM
traditionalguy said...: The issue is government organized crime stealing money from the middle class and the world's poor in the name of a sci-fi hoax that everyone knows is an illusionist's.
fraud.

That confidence man super power over us is lead by the UN, Obama and the GOP guys who want some of the the loot.

It's theft. There has never been any science except for some nonsense computer programs modeling non existent feed backs from faked data by run by fraudulent academics who were paid millions of government dollars to sell us out.

That the USA's center of the academic fraud operation was located at Penn State University is ironic.; 1/24/13, 10:44 AM
Seeing Red said...: UK's Met office revised their chart down a wee bit, not going to warm as fast as they thought, and The American Interest just had posting on if we clear up soot, we lower the temperature. IF I read that right.; 1/24/13, 10:46 AM
traditionalguy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/24/13, 10:46 AM
Paul said...: What do you get when you mix science with politics?

Politics.; 1/24/13, 10:55 AM
Bryan C said...: It's because when you set out to combine politics and science, you get religion. A really nasty one that thinks it's still science.; 1/24/13, 10:55 AM
sparrow said...: Truly objective scientific practice is more rare than you might think. The short answer to your question is that we Scientists are ordinary people with the same familiar flaws. The farther the field is from the personal the easier it becomes to be objective, that and competition and rigorous peer review between Scientists. Because politics is intensely personal it tempts people to reinforce their own biases. Sometimes this is an unconscious confirmation bias but in the climate world it crossed the line. The peer review process and and the data were tampered with to produce the politically correct result. The calls for consensus are a marker of dishonest science. Science is driven by skepticism, no reasonable question should be off limits. It has very frequently occurred in the history of science that the skeptical outsider is the real leader, although that takes time and evidence to see.; 1/24/13, 10:55 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: It's theft. There has never been any science except for some nonsense computer programs modeling non existent feed backs from faked data by run by fraudulent academics who were paid millions of government dollars to sell us out.

I think that we knew that the fix was in when AlGore made his first $100 million from AGW hype, and, in particular, from selling carbon indulgences. It isn't just to slow down the warming of the planet (never mind that the Earth would probably be better for humans if a little warmer). Rather, I think that there was always a lot of money making involved here. It is the type of crony capitalism so loved by the left these days in this country. And, not only do we have those carbon indulgences, but also many billions squandered on "green energy" grants and loan guarantees to companies with losing business plans. You know that the companies getting this loot, through their connections with the Administration of Dems in Congress, had losing business plans because they had to go to the government for the money - which they fairly quickly either pocketed or squandered.; 1/24/13, 11:05 AM
Dave D said...: The single thing I am MOST disappointed about is how most of my fellow scientists (I am a chemist) have compeltely bought into this hokum lock, stock and barrel. I expected better......; 1/24/13, 11:11 AM
bagoh20 said...: Great Moments in Failed Predictions

Some of the very same people are still considered "experts" and are sure of themselves this time too.; 1/24/13, 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: Scientific method: Change one thing and observe the result.

Political method: Change everything and blame your predecessor.

"Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics? "

Why indeed?; 1/24/13, 11:22 AM
MadisonMan said...: (3) If it is really happening, and CO2 is a major contributor, then is this good for us or bad for us?

How do you define us? :)

I agree that the climate has most definitely warmed in the past 30 years. Historic heatwaves -- such as in Australia this month, or in the midwest last March -- occur with more frequency than historic coldwaves.

The imbalance between Record Highs and Record Lows, for example, over the US (not a *global* signal, but indicative, I think), is way away from Cold. Madison had 25 daily record highs last year. A record number! The last daily record low was in 2007.

The problem of course is that carbon-neutralish energy sources are expensive, so any developing country (India, China) is going to go for cheap carbon-based power (who can blame them!) -- so how will changes here really affect the Global carbon balance? I don't think the USA should go bankrupt trying to fix a Global Problem.; 1/24/13, 11:27 AM
MadisonMan said...: Bagoh, I found that an interesting list, especially the one about the Platte River being dry. Because I just saw this video about the Canadian River in Oklahoma!

I hope we have a wet Spring here in WI, or the farmers are in for a very bad year.; 1/24/13, 11:33 AM
bagoh20 said...: "Madison had 25 daily record highs last year."

You can't use records from cities. Very little of the planet is city. Unless they are shrinking, cities will always be getting warmer.

The fact is that the average global atmospheric temperature (a real global measurement) has stop rising for almost 2 decades now.; 1/24/13, 11:35 AM
bagoh20 said...: "I hope we have a wet Spring here in WI, or the farmers are in for a very bad year."

Yea, they could use some global warming which would most likely increase rainfall.; 1/24/13, 11:37 AM
Big Mike said...: @MadMan, is your comment a form of "what do you mean 'us,' kemosabe?"

From charts of I've seen I infer that there is little or no net warming between the Tropic of Capicorn and Tropic of Cancer, with most warming concentrated in the northern portion of the temperate zones in the Northern Hemisphere only. Miami is not going to melt, alas. But we might be able to squeeze in an extra growing season in Montana and the Dakotas.

Such warming as has occurred may also be due to placement of weather stations. Stations that once were out in rural areas are now within the urban heat islands, which themselves are getting warmer.; 1/24/13, 11:44 AM
DADvocate said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

Seems most of us are on the same page. Politicians rarely care about science, they care about power and subverting the populace to their desires.; 1/24/13, 11:48 AM
MadisonMan said...: You can't use records from cities. Very little of the planet is city. Unless they are shrinking, cities will always be getting warmer.

Cities may be getting warmer, but is the thermometer recording the temperature reflecting that? That's only true if site for the "official" thermometer is static, which is not the case in Madison. In the mid-40s it was moved from fairly warm North Hall on Campus to the airport, Truax, home of the notorious "Pit Effect". The all-time record of -37 F was recorded there on 1/30/51. It was "only" -26 at North Hall on that day.

There are interesting studies on the effect of "terrain management" near thermometers (Example). Note that the effects of these changes are understood and are incorporated into studies.

You can use lakes out in the middle of nowhere to study how the climate is changing. Lake Ice extent is a very nice indicator of whether or not the climate around the lake is warming or cooling.; 1/24/13, 11:50 AM
Original Mike said...: "Note that the effects of these changes are understood and are incorporated into studies."

This is what is meant by "homogenizing" the data, no?; 1/24/13, 11:55 AM
MadisonMan said...: @MadMan, is your comment a form of "what do you mean 'us,' kemosabe?"

I meant that if you live in low lying areas (Waves at Bangladesh) and you are concerned about the melt of Greenland, for example, then maybe warming isn't a good thing.

Bagoh20, I find your comment about the Global Temperature not rising in the past two decades difficult to reconcile with something like this. I admit I'm not a huge fan of using just the 1951-1980 norms to anchor the line (although I don't think changing the norms would substantially change the line).; 1/24/13, 11:56 AM
MadisonMan said...: This is what is meant by "homogenizing" the data, no?

Correcting known biases would be a more appropriate term.

I wonder if I should mention the Sommerville word study now :); 1/24/13, 11:58 AM
Big Mike said...: @MadMan, the oceans will rise by inches. Statements to the contrary are hyperbole.; 1/24/13, 12:03 PM
Jerome said...: "Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?"

Uh, hard for whom? The Commies have never had the slightest difficulty combining science and politics. They can do it in their sleep. Easy as breathing.; 1/24/13, 12:04 PM
Joe said...: Why does it have to be so hard to combine science and politics?

Because you can't get "ought" from "is"

(...without abandoning the assumptions of scientific methodology.); 1/24/13, 12:04 PM
Original Mike said...: This is where one of my concerns lie. Raw data will always need corrections. It's the nature of the beast, but it's an avenue for error, both honest and dishonest.

GW critics like to show data before and after corrections. They're probably cherry picking, but in a lot of the presentations I've seen there is no warming until the older temperatures are "corrected" downward.; 1/24/13, 12:06 PM
Seeing Red said...: I read an interesting or wacky speculation awhile ago.

It seems the Poles switch every
46K years and we might be getting ready for that.; 1/24/13, 12:10 PM
traditionalguy said...: Also ironic is that the current solar flare minimum has increased the cloud cover which has started the earth on a climate cooling trend.

The cooling starts at the poles and results in Jet streams dipping southerly and trapping Bermuda Highs in the summer months first over Russia and then over the US lower plains states.

But those events are only 4 to 5 week events of higher highs from trapped domes of hotter air.

They are followed by the lower lows during the winter in areas such as Russia and Alaska.

Cooling is the enemy. Carbon based fuels are the savior.

So why do the Government Thieves want to triple the costs of carbon based fuels? That answer is the actual goal of global cleansing of the disease of surplus humans.; 1/24/13, 12:17 PM
Richard Dolan said...: The science is bad, but Lomborg's basic point is that the economics is worse. The key sentence in his WSJ piece was that the EU today spends about $250 billion annually on various climate change initiatives, for which they may obtain an immeasurably small decrease in the projected average temperature (about 0.1 degrees) decades from now.

Only a fool playing with other people's money would pursue such policies. Naturally, you can only find such fools working (I use the term loosely) for governments.; 1/24/13, 12:51 PM
dbp said...: Increased clouds have opposite effects on the poles and the rest of the world:

Clouds do two things: Reflect sunlight and insulate. The net effect is cooling except for polar areas. The reason is that the poles are already very reflective and so the net effect of clouds is warmth from insulation.; 1/24/13, 12:56 PM
Larry J said...: Paul said...
What do you get when you mix science with politics?

Politics.

This is like the old questions:

Q: What do you get when you mix an ounce of wine with a barrel of sewage?

A: Sewage

Q: What do you get when you mix an ounce of sewage with a barrel of wine?

A: Sewage

And political science is an oxymoron.; 1/24/13, 1:03 PM
sparrow said...: The infamous hockey stick graph actually uses data from completely different sources without indicating the change on the graph itself. If I pulled that trick I'd be fired.

No controlling legal authority indeed.; 1/24/13, 1:23 PM
sparrow said...: Your should be able to empirically test public policy (50 states as laboratories), but that would require putting results ahead of ideology. So a scientific approach to policy is possible just unlikely.; 1/24/13, 1:26 PM
Bruce Hayden said...: There are interesting studies on the effect of "terrain management" near thermometers (Example). Note that the effects of these changes are understood and are incorporated into studies.

Let me suggest that this is in great debate, and that most of these effects are supposedly taken into account by mathematical modeling that arguable greatly underestimates their effect.

I find your claim about Madison interesting, since airports are considered some of the worst places to take temperatures, given their acres of concrete and all the hot jet wash. But, yes, proper siting of temperature stations is important, and we have enough badly sited stations, and NOAA somewhat cares about the subject. How about the rest of the world? Or, that a large number, maybe half, of the stations in the old Soviet Union were lost at its breakup, and many of those were in the colder regions, esp. Siberia, coincidentally about the time that the global temperature seemed to head up for a bit.; 1/24/13, 1:32 PM
Portia said...: "You know Obama is more and more starting to sound like....

AL GORE!"

ALGORE for Secretary of Climate! Yay!; 1/24/13, 1:33 PM
Strelnikov said...: When I was in my senior year in HS ('72 - I'll give you a moment to do the math.), my chem teacher - an earnest young man less than 10 years older than me, announced that he and his equally sincere wife had decided not to have children because he believed he would live to see them starve to death. In the coming Ice Age. Which would be here by '80 (we were having a particularly long winter at the moment.). I bet if I could find him now, he would be a rabid promoter of "climate change".; 1/24/13, 1:41 PM
Seeing Red said...: Raging fires?

Huh?

Maybe if we had some semblance of a sane policy, there wouldn't be as many.

Like, not letting rotting wood stay there and build up.; 1/24/13, 2:18 PM
MadisonMan said...: It seems the Poles switch every
46K years and we might be getting ready for that.

I've read that to, and my question is always: Do we then call the North Pole the South Pole? Or redefine North and South?; 1/24/13, 2:28 PM
Cincinnatus said...: Because the IPCC itself lies about the science.; 1/24/13, 2:30 PM
bagoh20 said...: MadisonMan: "Bagoh20, I find your comment about the Global Temperature not rising in the past two decades difficult to reconcile with..."

Here's the report. It's actually only the last 16 years that there has been no change, and I think Althouse posted it when it came out.

The rub is that it's only a 16 year period which of course is not real indicative of any long term climate change one way or the other, but it does happen to be the most recent 16 years. So we can't just ignore that.

Warming stopped 16 years ago.; 1/24/13, 2:32 PM
bagoh20 said...: The argument will be that it's just a short term fluke, but it's actually longer than the previous warming period that produced the current hoopla. A much longer period does show warming, but that's been true since the end of the last ice age.; 1/24/13, 2:36 PM
Methadras said...: Leftists in their vein to continually lie to the world about 'climate change' will say and do anything to promote that lie because they want it to confer as much control over the wealth stream as much as possible. Someone go as Al Gore how much money he made on carbon tax credit schemes. Someone go ask China about building a brand new coal plant, offsetting their carbon credits, demolishing several of them and building more where the other ones previously stood. Leftists don't give two shits about science because they've been able to successfully present themselves as being pro-science while in reality end up being anything but. They will lie, cheat, steal, and kill anyone who gets in their way. Science is merely one of their victims.; 1/24/13, 2:49 PM
MadisonMan said...: Actually, Bagoh, the argument is more substantial than that. (Link)

That's really a horrible picture of Judy Curry in that Daily Mail article. She of course has a UW connection -- post doc here in the 80s.; 1/24/13, 3:13 PM
traditionalguy said...: CO2 is not dirty. Oil, Natural gas and Oil sands and oil shale are not dirty.

The croaking propagandists attribution of unclean/dirty to carbon energy is a religious holiness approach of a State Religion.

The only so called clean energy sources are hydroelectric and nuclear. Both of those work well so they are also verboten.

The wind mills and solar panels are not productive of anything at all so they are the only energy source the Obama Tyranny will permit us to develop.

Corn gone for ethanol is a twofer. It uses Government subsidy to make a political group rich while it creates world food price rising famines.An Enviro nazi cannot ask for anything better than that.; 1/24/13, 3:31 PM
bagoh20 said...: I don't think the valuable argument is about whether it is warming or not. It has been slowly warming for a long time, but it has also been warmer in the past than now.

It is important to note that nobody can be sure the climate won't suddenly start cooling, or stay where it is, or get warmer due to some other mechanism besides CO2.

This question is what do we do about the fact that we don't know what is or will happen. We really don't know. We should continue to do research into technology that would reduce the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, if we can do it without damaging people in ways that are worse risks than the climate one, which is pretty slim.

We should also accept that forcing the world's people to stop using fossil fuels will fail, and do great harm in the process of attempting it. The reduction will happen eventually through normal economic and social forces, without attempting a doomed coercion.

The climate may warm regardless of anything we do about CO2, so we should be prepared to adapt to that as well.
I think a global hair shirt approach is probably the worst possible plan, with no chance of success and a definite harm to billions, and the climate may very well not care at all what we do anyway.; 1/24/13, 3:37 PM
Cincinnatus said...: leslyn, I guess you are trying to be cute. Fail. Carbon dioxide is not "pollution".; 1/24/13, 5:33 PM
Big Mike said...: A much longer period does show warming, but that's been true since the end of the last ice age.

Point of information, if your starting point for the period that shows warming is circa 1850, that's normally taken to be the end point of the Little Ice Age, when temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were abnormaly for a period of centuries. So of course climate shows a warming trend since the end of a period of abnormally cold climate.; 1/24/13, 6:00 PM
Gahrie said...: Just for the record, the US has reduced it's carbon emissions more than anyone else over the last two decades.

Also, countries with free market capitalism and respect for private property have the best record in dealing with pollution and environmentalsim.; 1/24/13, 6:06 PM
Cinderellastory said...: Famous bank robber Willie Sutton said, "I rob banks because that's where the money is!"

Famous climate scientists study climate change (aka global warming) because that is where the money is!

The connection between science and politics is money.

True science has little or nothing to do with politics.; 1/24/13, 6:20 PM
n.n said...: This is not a new phenomenon. However, unlike faith or philosophy, "science" and science promises tangible returns. The former, "science", is especially appealing, as it promises redistributive and retributive change. Although, like faith, there is, for the majority of people, gate keepers who maintain a pretense to possess special knowledge, skill, and authority, who prevent or direct obstacles to challenge and conrol passage of lesser beings.

It is dissociation of risk which causes corruption. It is dreams of instant (or immediate) gratification which motivates its progress.; 1/24/13, 7:40 PM
MadisonMan said...: "Climate change" and "global warming" are a conspiracy by most of the world's scientists to convince us that pollution is bad.

The problem -- a problem -- with Carbon Neutral schemes, and the emphasis on so-called "Green" energy is that it takes the focus (and money) away from pollution control efforts that would do good things.; 1/24/13, 10:48 PM
Palladian said...: I prefer cold temperatures. Frozen vistas are conducive to thought.; 1/25/13, 1:43 AM
Cinderellastory said...: "The problem -- a problem -- with Carbon Neutral schemes, and the emphasis on so-called "Green" energy is that it takes the focus (and money) away from pollution control efforts that would do good things."

MadisonMan - Bingo! You hit the nail right on the head!; 1/25/13, 9:29 AM