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Blinded by Science
· Sunday, February 21, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Science, many scientists say, has been restored to her rightful throne because progressives have regained power. Progressives, say progressives, emulate the cool detachment of scientific discourse. So hear now the calm, collected voice of a scientist lavishly honored by progressives, Rajendra Pachauri.
He is chairman of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which shared the 2007 version of the increasingly weird Nobel Peace Prize. Denouncing persons skeptical about the shrill certitudes of those who say global warming poses an imminent threat to the planet, he says:
"They are the same people who deny the link between smoking and cancer. They are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder -- and I hope they put it on their faces every day."
Do not judge him as harshly as he speaks of others. Nothing prepared him for the unnerving horror of encountering disagreement. Global warming alarmists, long cosseted by echoing media, manifest an interesting incongruity -- hysteria and name calling accompanying serene assertions about the "settled science" of climate change. Were it settled, we would be spared the hyperbole that amounts to Ring Lardner's "Shut up, he explained."
The global warming industry, like Alexander in the famous children's story, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Actually, a bad three months, which began Nov. 19 with the publication of e-mails indicating attempts by scientists to massage data and suppress dissent in order to strengthen "evidence" of global warming.
But there already supposedly was a broad, deep and unassailable consensus. Strange.
Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, aka the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.
In 2007, before the economic downturn began enforcing seriousness and discouraging grandstanding, seven Western U.S. states (and four Canadian provinces) decided to fix the planet on their own. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger intoned, "We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment." The 11 jurisdictions formed what is now called the Western Climate Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, starting in 2012.
Or not. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer recently suspended her state's participation in what has not yet begun, and some Utah legislators are reportedly considering a similar action. She worries, sensibly, that it would impose costs on businesses and consumers. She also ordered reconsideration of Arizona's strict vehicle emission rules, modeled on incorrigible California's, lest they raise the cost of new cars.
Last week, BP America, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar, three early members of the 31-member U.S. Climate Action Partnership, said: Oh, never mind. They withdrew from USCAP. It is a coalition of corporations and global warming alarm groups that was formed in 2007 when carbon rationing legislation seemed inevitable and collaboration with the rationers seemed prudent. A spokesman for Conoco said: "We need to spend time addressing the issues that impact our shareholders and consumers." What a concept.
Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.
Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.
Last week, Todd Stern, America's Special Envoy for Climate Change -- yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government -- warned that those interested in "undermining action on climate change" will seize on "whatever tidbit they can find." Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?
It is tempting to say, only half in jest, that Stern's portfolio violates the First Amendment, which forbids government from undertaking the establishment of religion. A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become. It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions which everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify.
(c) 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
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veritaseequitas
We had snow this winter in beautiful Beaufort,SC. How is that global warming thing working now?
Posted February 21, 2010 at 6:52:50 AM
Rick Maguire
Brilliant, as usual.
Posted February 21, 2010 at 11:24:28 AM
Victor
According to Wikipedia:
His "occupations" are these:
Chief, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Former Director General, TERI
Translation: Bureaucrat.
Education:
Pachauri was awarded an MS degree in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University, Raleigh, in 1972, as well as a joint Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974
Translation: Things that go bump in the factory.
Nothing to do with meteorology, astronomy or any sort of weather.
According to the "progressives" this, makes him the perfect cadidate to oversee a body on "climate change" and anything relating to weather, because he is untainted by any predjucial knowledge relating to the subject at hand.
Much as our Community-Organizer-in-Chief has the experience to run and oversee private and free enterprises.
Posted February 21, 2010 at 11:40:23 AM
Jimmy D
I gotta say, I can't get enough of this stuff.
Border-line geezer or not, it all makes me feel like the little kid who can't sleep the night before the family trip to Disney. And there's more every day. It's like the Berlin Wall coming down. New exposures, LAWSUITS, States, Countries and Companies dropping out of the organized connivances, old "Deniers", formerly banished, suddenly being re-recognized and heard.
"...and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism." What a great line! The day is actually coming that the Lib press will have to face the music.
Victor, good job! I hear that and see an image of Janet Napolitano and Raji Pauch giggling together over a couple UN paid $500 a glass wines, and he's saying, "Yes, so verrry funny, yes, I knew nothing of my job either, nothing! Ha!"
Posted February 21, 2010 at 2:10:00 PM
MichaelSSEC
It was never about the planet. If it was, if they really believed that all this carbon-based economy stuff was killing the planet, they would walk it like they talked it. They'd ground their private jets, park their limos, turn down their thermostats. But they don't do that. They want YOU to do it, but they don't do it themselves. Obama lectured the country that we can't drive big SUVs and keep the thermostat on 75 and expect the rest of the world to be okay with that. Then he moved into the White House and cranked the thermostat there up to 80. Do as I say, not as I do. Save the planet by changing YOUR life, but I'm too important to be inconvenienced.
Of course, Obama's admonishment totally missed the point. We can't expect the world to be okay with that? Why not? If they were paying for the fuel we're using, then I could see why they'd be upset, but they're not. We're paying for every drop we use. If we're willing to pay for 130 gallons instead of 100, the rest of the world can mind its own damned business. This argument has ALWAYS been about control, about Statism and bullying decent people into accepting government control over every aspect of their lives.
We're winning even though they control the whole media. We're winning because we're right. They have to lie in order to prevail, and that means we can beat them by exposing their lies. In Mixed Martial Arts that's known as "ground n pound." It's time to bring the pain.
Posted February 21, 2010 at 8:43:08 PM
Duke of Earl
Has anyone noticed that this soul searching, by the scientists who rushed to the wrong conclusion, is NOT being reported by the cast of usual suspects? If the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. reported on this, they would probably lose Al Gore as a subscriber.
As George points out, some of the annointed visionaries in the scientific community are blaming everything right wing for catching them in their lies. These scientists are absolutely flabbergasted, flummoxed and just plain shocked that anyone would doubt their conclusions and their veracity.
To paraphrase that great communicator of All the truth that is fit to print: YES, VIRGINA!! THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING!!
Duke
Posted February 22, 2010 at 12:39:02 PM
TJS
Learning about supposed global warming has been amazing. The alarmists' "science" is pure conjecture, propaganda, anti-science and fraud. I encourage everyone to learn about global warming, making sure to include listening to the skeptics. It is a lesson in the abominable behavior of leftists. It is a scandal as bad as leftists' softness on communism.
Posted February 22, 2010 at 12:59:47 PM
Sidney Tiemann
good paper
Posted February 22, 2010 at 5:21:40 PM
OPA
The phrase was also used in a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile:[3][4]
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.[5]
From Wikipedia
Sure sounds familiar to me...
Posted February 23, 2010 at 10:20:57 PM
Jim Gover
What facisnates me is the manner in which they are almost hysterically circling their little global warming wagons, even as the contradictory evidence, almost daily, unravels their web of deceit and exposes their Statist agenda for what it has always been - a big government power grab. It's almost comical now to look back at the contempt with which they treated noted scientists and climatologists who dared disagree with their "settled science of Man-Caused Climate Change." But I guess Hayek had the pschycology of the leftists nailed down long ago.
"Contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith." ~ F. A. Hayek
Posted February 24, 2010 at 7:17:32 PM