I have to admit, watching the great “Global Warming consensus” retreat has given me a great deal of satisfaction. When it comes to the theory of man-caused Global Warming I have never been a blind ideologue. There are many environmental issues that I think are much more important than this frenzied paranoia about climate change.
Thomas Malthus was wrong about population trends, but he is proof that being an alarmist never grows old. In fact, all the cool people are still afraid of over population.
Many of the issues I’ve had with temperature data over the past 20 years or so has to do with how temperature is measured in the first place. Due to urban heat the temperature in cities is often much warmer than the surrounding countryside. Anthony Watts has covered this issue effectively for years, but his observations have always been shot down with the blood curdling screams of consensus. Or should I say “liberal condescension.” This is groupthink on a massive scale. The world has witnessed people like Al Gore fly around the world and receive standing ovations, Oscars, and a Nobel Peace prize for a fraud.
My guess is there will never be an Oscar given out on a documentary that discusses the great Global Warming swindle. The alarmists on the left will act like none of this ever happened, just like the Population Bomb and Silent Spring. In fact the theory will go on; it will never die. “Scientists” will reinforce the theory and cast aside the fraud. There’s too much money at stake. Climate Change is a billion-dollar research industry. Like William Wallace in Braveheart, researchers will cry, “You may take our lives, but they’ll never take our research dollars!”
Expanding on the points I made yesterday about character assassinations, I stumbled onto this blog post by Roger Pielke Jr, a professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Pielke is a liberal environmentalist who believes in the theory of anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a., human caused climate change); however, he’s made the mistake of correcting many of the alarmist talking points such as idea that there’s been a huge increase in weather-related damage due to global warming. Pielke documents how well respected liberal bloggers like RealClimate and Brad Delong are out to destroy anyone they disagree with on this issue. Read about it in his post “Giant Fish, Big Fish, and Minnows of the Liberal Blogosphere.”
Here’s how it works. The really giant fish — public intellectuals like Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman — confer authority on the big fish of the liberal blogosphere. They do so by applauding the work of the big fish and saying that they trust them. This is a useful exchange because the big fish amplify the writings of the giant fish in the blogosphere and do the dirty work of taking down their political opponents by playing some gutter politics that the giant fish would rather not be seen playing. This has the effect of establishing the big fish as people to be listened to, not because they are necessarily right about things, but because the giant fish listen to them and the giant fish set political agendas.
Anyone who disagrees with the talking points of the big fish are then targets of character attacks. There’s no debate. I have no problem with different opinions or lively debate. People are never going to see eye to eye all the time, but these character assassinations campaigns are just leading to massive groupthink. Many of the global warming alarmists have adopted theory as a religion. Believers of the theory like Pielke are treated like Galileo when he stated that the sun was at the center of the universe.
There’s no doubt mankind has made incredible progress over the past 150 years, but we’re still not infallible. Many accepted theories in science, math, and politics will be challenged in the future. We should encourage ideas to be challenged because ideas fuel progress. Alarmists should welcome debate. The idea that scientists have figured out how to predict something as complex as our climate is ridiculous. The computer models have failed to predict the current temperature trend because there are too many unknown variables. There’s a long way to go in the area of climatology before it is considered settled science.
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