GREAT RED SPOT, JUPITER—Alarmed by the growing quantities of harmful nitrides in their planet's atmosphere, Jupiter's liberals are encouraging their fellow sentient ammonia-helium tornado beings to take measures to reduce their ammonia footprint. "There are little things all of us can do to minimize our negative impact on our climate," thought-pulsed a spokesman for the progressive advocacy group Jupiter Action Coalition. "Buy your gleemie at a local farmers market, unplug your zorksnax when you're not using them, and remember the three Rs of environmental conservation: ryzzengak, rokklegorkensplark, and recycle." Jovian conservatives, however, are reportedly decrying the ammonia reduction efforts as a waste of time, pointing to the fact that this past winter was a typical minus 135 degrees Celsius and that Jupiter's so-called "climate change" is just a myth.
Environmentalist groups and celebrities are celebrating “Earth Hour” tonight. They ask that you turn your lights out for an hour, to call attention to global warming. Folks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute suggest that “this sends the wrong message — to plunge us all into darkness as a rejection of technology and human achievement.” In fact, they point out that it’s Earth Hour every night in North Korea, where people lack basic freedoms, as well as affordable, reliable access to many human achievements, such as electricity. Check out this famous photo of environmentally conscious North Koreans observing Earth Hour all night, every night:Wilco.
CEI rejects the rejection of technology. They have declared the hour between 8:30 and 9:30 tonight to be “Human Achievement Hour.” To join the celebration, just turn your lights on tonight and enjoy the human achievement of light when we want it. And watch CEI’s short video history of human achievement here.
“Air pollution is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone,” Paul Ehrlich in an interview in Mademoiselle magazine, April 1970.Hmmm. Perry sums up actual events:
Ehrlich also predicted that in 1973, 200,000 Americans would die from air pollution, and that by 1980 the life expectancy of Americans would be 42 years.
“By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half...” Life magazine, January 1970.
“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from the intolerable deteriorations and possible extinction,” The New York Times editorial, April 20, 1970.
The world will be “...eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age,” Kenneth Watt, speaking at Swarthmore University, April 19, 1970.
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” biologist Barry Commoner, University of Washington, writing in the journal Environment, April 1970.
Bear in mind that the Air Pollution Control Act was passed in 1955, the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Air Quality Act, 1967.
Here we are 40 years later, the U.S. population has increased by more than 50%, traffic volume (miles driven) in the U.S. has increased 160%, and real GDP has increased 204%; and yet air quality in the U.S. is better than ever - nitrous dioxide, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and lead have all decreased between 46% and 92% between 1980 and 2008 (see chart).
The problem with your reader's simplification of the AGW deniers' argument is that he's speaking very generally and generously about one small battalion in a broad coalition of deniers.Bold is my flavor. I further suspect that models of warming's deleterious effects are more uncertain and exaggerated than those sounding the alarm will admit, and am also not fully convinced temperatures are at a significant high compared to a millenia ago (pre-Little Ice Age).
We have the supposedly literate folks like George Will who don't understand what a trend is, and therefore they think the Earth has been cooling since 1998, ergo AGW is a hoax. Then we have the folks who think that the Earth may indeed be warming, but it's not because of human activity, or if it is, the absolute proof hasn't been found yet. Then we have the folks who think that it's too late, too hard, and too expensive to do anything about it, so, oh well, we'll deal with it and we'll "evolve." Then we have the Christian right, which thinks that God sets the thermostat, period, and scientists are evil ghouls who bring about things like the Holocaust. Then there are the worshipers of "common sense" who think it's a stroke of genius to say things like "carbon dioxide only makes up a tiny percentage of the atmosphere." And let's not forget the paranoid viral email forwarders who think that the East Anglia story is evidence of a genuine conspiracy fronted by Al Gore that seeks to make money by setting up carbon offset programs. And on and on and on.
It's a vast army of millions that is supported by the apathy of millions of others who, understandably, don't know what to think. The common bond is denial, and the common goal is to do absolutely zilch to change our habits.
I’ve waited a bit on this one to see how it would shake out. The hacked/leaked emails and data seemed to me like prime fodder for motivated cognition. My expectations were pretty much met. Many alarmists have inappropriately minimized the importance of the evidence of a shameful conspiracy to enforce what is clearly an ideological party line among climate researchers. Many skeptics have gone too far in using the revelations as grounds for casting doubt on the entire scientific case for AGW. But, clearly, the thrust of the scandal vindicates the skeptics’ claims that the science of climate change is conducted in an ideologically charged atmosphere, that there really are coordinated attempts to suppress or marginalize studies and scholars out of step with the favored narrative, and that there really are coordinated attempts to make evidence in favor of the favored narrative look better than it really is.Word. See also Clive Crook.
The scientific implications of the Climategate files are probably small, but the political implication is certainly large–because of the politicized nature of climate science confirmed by the files. Verification of the existence of conspiring enforcers of orthodoxy weakens the strongest rhetorical weapon in the alarmist arsenal. The idea that the science behind predictions of potentially catastrophic warming is rock solid and that the putative scientific consensus reflects the rock solidity of the science licenses the inference that there is no scientifically respectable excuse for skepticism of or disagreement with the consensus. That is a big stick to thump people with. But the Climategate files strongly suggest that at least some of the science is not rock solid and that the scientific consensus is at least in part the product of silencing or marginalizing those who might upset it. The files have made “How can we be sure that you did not fudge your data” and “How do we know that dissenting voices have been given a fair hearing?” questions that we now must ask rather than questions skeptics can be effectively shouted down for asking. The files show that suspicion is warranted. That’s a big deal.
It is not surprising to see a “Move along! Nothing to see here!” response from alarmists, but there is certainly something to see. Though I’m sure some ideologues will merely amp up their armtwisting thug tactics to protect the fragile perception of consensus they had achieved (precioussssssss!), I predict that the overall response from the scientific community will be healthy and invigorating. Climate science will become more transparent and more rigorously by-the-book because climate scientists are becoming more fully aware that the impulse to jealously protect a public perception of consensus can undermine itself by producing questionable science and a justifiably skeptical public.
ATLANTA—A Zogby poll of 1,542 American grandparents published Monday found that grandsons were described as "very" to "extremely" talented by 1,542 of the respondents. "Participants in the poll were emphatic in their descriptions of the talents of grandsons in fields as diverse as advertising and sales, choral performance, baseball, talking, crawling, making their beds, video games, and instructing their elders on proper cell-phone use," pollster Tom Waterton said. "In addition, an overwhelming percentage of grandchildren were described as outgoing, sharp, and looking just like Uncle Andy, you remember Uncle Andy, he was always up to something, too bad he passed so young, he would have loved the grandchild in question." Sources at Zogby admitted that the survey was incomplete, as several hundred pollsters are still unable to get their assigned grandparents off the phone.
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