The Patriot Post® · The Wages of PC Is ... Expensive

By Fred Fox ·
https://patriotpost.us/commentary/26214-the-wages-of-pc-is-dot-dot-dot-expensive-2014-05-30

Next week the administration will “unveil a cornerstone of its climate-change initiative with a proposed rule aimed at… meet(ing) aggressive goals for reducing carbon emissions by existing power plants.” The price tag begs reflection on whether the benefits justify the cost of political correctness. The answer is a resounding NO.

PC is a political, not a scientific, animal. There is no evidence of man’s activities causing disastrous climate change; climate change is a perfectly natural phenomenon that will be handled effectively by those same natural processes that have been operating for millions of years. New evidence has positively debunked the claim that 97% of the world’s scientists support the conclusion that human activities are responsible for most of the observed ‘disastrous’ warming over the previous 50 years. There is NO WAY that number can be supported, yet that’s the number they’re using…

“They,” by the way, is a small minority of vociferous political activists, a clear case of “the Mob of the Minority” taking control over the “silent majority.” This is the curse of political correctness, the power of feelings over fact.

Serious international surveys (published in Environmental Science & Policy) found that most climate scientists do not believe that climate processes are sufficiently understood to predict future climate change. Most climate scientists in fact disagree with the consensus on key issues such as reliability of climate data and computer models.

The frequently-cited sources have been proven fictitious, conclusions and methodology alike. The 97% number in fact is the product of one survey citing only 79 respondents. There are many thousands of earth scientists expert in climate. Are 79 representative of these?

The same number (97.1%) was repeated in a survey (by one John Cook, NOT a climate expert). However, his data were subsequently reexamined by a panel of three confirmed experts who found that only 41 out of 11,944 papers (0.3% rather than the quoted 97.1%) endorsed the claim that human activity is causing most of the current warming. (Science and Education, August 2013).

On the other hand, 31,000 scientists (nearly 30% having PhDs) have signed a statement that “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of … carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

It’s time that reason prevails over emotion and PC is abolished. The facts are clear. Man is not in control of nature, politicians’ claims notwithstanding. There are any number of blogs dealing with this issue at www.extremeethics.org. Read them and be enlightened. You may wish to start with this one.

[The source of much of this information is an article in the 5/27/14 issue of the Wall Street Journal]