Who Is Blind to Facts?

Josh Marshall unconsciously contradicts his own premise in his analysis of why people think what they think.

Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations? Or is it vice versa?

There's been a lot of recent evidence not only that Republicans disproportionately disbelieve the evidence for man-made global warming but that their skepticism is growing. I think that trend is fairly classed under the general heading of Republican/conservative hostility to science.

This is a strange argument to make, given all the recent revelations of global warming believers' tampering with scientific evidence to achieve the results they desire. Surely, more than anything, that shows hostility to science.

Does This Mean Al Gore Has to Return His Nobel Prize?

Earth on the Brink of Ice Age.

12 Days of Global Warming

Courtesy of Flopping Aces,

Global Warming

I don't remember when I noticed the term "global warming" had been replaced with "climate change," but it was some time after a number of prominent scientists had declared their skepticism of man-made global warming.

There are still liberals claiming that Barack Obama is the second coming of Christ because he's appointing "real scientists"(i.e., global warming believers) to his cabinet. These fools continue to argue that skepticism that humans have that much to do with any particular warming trend across the globe constitutes a blind allegiance to religion or something. I use the word "fools" pointedly, because stories like this one point that the trend is in favor of skeptics, not against them.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

It hasn't simply been "greed" that caused the Bush administration to reject the draconian measures Kyoto and other measures would place on American business, although the effects would be devastating to our GDP. As skyrocketing gasoline prices showed last summer, high prices and caps hurt the poor far worse than "the rich" they are aimed at, and it seems a little absurd that the same people constantly railing about equality and justice see absolutely nothing wrong with crushing the poor in order to punish "the rich."

More to the point, pulling the emergency brake on our economy isn't (or wouldn't) necessarily have stopped global warming. That's one reason so many scientists didn't jump on the Inconvenient Truth bandwagon. There are plenty of reasons to explain the warming of the planet (normal cyclical changes comes to mind), but American use of CO2 isn't necessarily one of them.

BTW, this is not to say that searching for alternatives to gasoline is a bad thing. I support the interest in other technologies. But the liberal whingeing that George Bush is personally responsible for every tornado, hurricane, tsunami, and mudslide of the last eight years is not only delusional but gives us one more reason to ignore them and leave them to their delusions while the rest of us move in more logical and normal directions in terms of energy use.

About That Global Warming Consensus

There is none.

The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."

In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."

I tend to agree with Patterico's take on this.

We don’t really know how likely it is that we are throwing off the balance on our planet and causing it to become overheated. People on either side like to pretend that they can tell you, but they really can’t. But if it happens, it will be catastrophic, so we should do everything within our power, within reason, to prevent it.

I don't want to trash the economy in pursuit of a greener planet, but I don't think we need to, either. And, as Patterico points out, you don't have to believe in global warming to notice the nastiness of smog, landfills, and water pollution. Anybody who thinks ozone action days are just a normal part of summer is delusional. I'd like to have a clear view of the Fort Worth skyline, thank you.

Just One More Little Tax Won't Cripple the Economy, Will It?

San Francisco has decided that the way to combat global warming is to kill business. At least, that's my take on the new tax imposed on businesses for emitting greenhouse gases.

The Bay Area Air Quality Management District's board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said.

Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in America. The new rules are set to take effect July 1.

The modest fee probably will not be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.

"It doesn't solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms," said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley.

Of course, as anyone knows, fees imposed for doing business aren't really borne by the businesses. Those fees are passed through to customers or the business goes under.

Analyzing Media Bias

Power Line does a terrific job dissecting this Associated Press story about a local weatherman who scoffs at Gore's global warming rhetoric.

As I've told many people before, media bias isn't usually so blatant as "all conservatives are Hitler" (a.k.a. nutroots blogs). What one typically finds is that the choice of words used to describe a person, his qualifications, his claims or complaints, his actions, are words which will portray the person in a negative light.

Take this from the article:

Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by human activity are causing the world to warm.

As Power Line notes, the use of "railed" and "long railed" implies that his claims are whacked out and crazy. We don't hear journalists talk about Al Gore "railing" about global warming.

The following paragraph gives Gray credit as the U.S.'s most reliable hurricane forecaster. But the paragraph after that has the punch:

Gray's statements came the same day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.

So, it's just Gray--a nice ol' guy--versus all those scientists. They might as well have drawn a wizard's hat on Gray and said he was still trying to turn lead into gold.

Is this the worst example of media bias? No, there's worse examples. But it's always insightful to see what the media agrees with and what it doesn't. I'm sure this piece will be played as "balance" for all the pro-Gore articles that have preceded and will follow this one.

But when you hear the global warming alarmists talk about "consensus," remind them that there was once consensus that the sun revolved around the Earth, too.

It's Snowing Today

Last Tuesday, it was 85 degrees. Today, we had snow flurries. In Texas. In April. The last time we had snow in April was April 8, 1938. Believe me, that was long before I was born.

So, is this what global warming looks like these days?

We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.

So says Timothy Ball, chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, about global warming.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

Ball points out that he's already lived through two climate cycles: a cooling cycle from 1940 to 1980, and a warming cycle from 1980 to the present. He also says that it appears we are heading into a cooling cycle again.

A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As (Richard) Lindzen (atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT) said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

The agenda is driven by governments looking for particular answers and by extremist groups.