Filed under: Capitalism, Economy, Environment, Global Warming, Junk Science, News the Media Doesn't Want You to Hear | Tags: Common Sense Causes Panic, Forget Decarbonizing, Global Warming Is a Religion
Well, well,well. The Wall Street Journal opinion page had a headline today “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.“
Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 “Climategate” email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.
The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2. …
Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.
This kind of statement from major newspapers has been long overdue. The evidence has been incontrovertible, and building, but somewhere along the line “global warming’ became a religion, and its adherents tolerated no dissension. Many prominent scientists have long been skeptics, for science is a discipline built on skepticism. If you don’t constantly question your assumptions, you are going to reach a lot of dead ends, and maybe be deeply embarrassed at some point.
The rewards of being a true believer, however, trumped many lingering doubts. The skeptics were attacked, called “Deniers,” and supposedly intelligent beings suggested that anyone who denied global warming should be shot. The ClimateGate emails were not only revealing, but after the first release was fully digested, another batch appeared and the powers that be sicced the constabulary on finding the thief or hacker who stole the emails.
The revelations were becoming seriously troubling. Combine that with an out-of-control EPA in the United States, eager to eliminate any trace of the carbon dioxide we all exhale. The more ludicrous the power plays get, the more people are apt to start paying attention.
Budgets deeply in the red tend to concentrate the mind; and projects that seemed perfectly designed to demonstrate the forward thinking of promoters of everything ‘green’ and ‘clean’ started going belly-up in increasing numbers. You can shrug off a few bankruptcies as accidents due to factors beyond one’s control — but when the numbers pile up, it raises some real questions. Not everyone can be good at both economics and science — or math too, as far as that goes — but at some point those flashing red numbers on the budget should garner attention. Can that possibly be why President Obama’s budget is late again this year? Not likely, he just has trouble getting them in on time.
The Journal’s editorial was signed by sixteen prominent scientists from all over the world with sterling qualifications, representing some of the World’s most prominent institutions. They will be described as crackpots by the true believers, or on the payroll of the Koch brothers.
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But… it’s so perfect! Demonize something in the atmosphere (which is not harmful) that will never be completely eliminated, and just sound the alarm about how there’s “too much” of it (as determined by the Goreacle (who is not a scientist) and the IPCC (which does no research)). Voila! Something that, with the assistance of the environmental “movement”, can get people to think of you as a serious person, as well as put you on the gravy train of government grants and subsidies.
This was, at best, a fringe discussion in the scientific community that was allowed to blow up into something much more than it was simply to serve a political agenda. I glad that thinking people who understand the research (and can help the rest of us understand as well) are starting to get more public forums.
Comment by Lon Mead January 28, 2012 @ 9:33 pmAh, but think of all that has grown out of the global warming fraud. Wind farms, ethanol, solar arrays and all the Solyndras. Germany and Spain are now getting rid of their solar efforts. All the jobs that have not happened because of the fear of carbon dioxide warming the planet. Billions wasted. It’s not over, by a long shot, but it is being exposed and dying.
Comment by The Elephant's Child January 29, 2012 @ 10:51 pmAnd it seems you were right (not that I doubted you for a minute)… DISCOVER magazine has a thing out now “rebutting” the WSJ piece, including a link to a website that supposedly shows the “links” the 16 scientists have to Big Oil. And the whole tone of it is not one of scientific discussion, it’s “they’re LYING and we have to tell people they’re LYING because they are LYING!”. No evidence we haven’t seen before, the usual claims that the studies done that may refute AGW are somehow fraudulent (“Big Oil!”) and that the Op-Ed itself is somehow suspect (“Rupert Murdoch!”).
Comment by Lon Mead January 30, 2012 @ 10:01 pmFor some, it has meant big grants for their school, money for equipment and an assistant, prestige for the school, new interest from the students. Grants were mostly upwards from $200,000. You wouldn’t be too anxious for the gravy train to end. For others, it’s a religion. There’s a mindset that says that mankind is a blot upon the Earth, destroying the purity of nature, cutting down trees, damming rivers. The Earth would have been better without man. It’s a major guilt trip. I don’t pretend to understand the mindset, but I’ve seen it written often enough.
Comment by The Elephant's Child January 31, 2012 @ 1:30 am