The News Junkie, at Maggie's Farm, says "The Global Warming Scare is over." I think the Junkie is over-optimistic about that. Global Warming is conventional wisdom and will shortly be goverment policy as the Obama nominees are confirmed. As the scientific evidence melts away, elite opinion will be more frozen in place.
In The American Thinker, this time:
Scare Watch: 'Arctic Warming is Unprecedented'Much more at the link. (via)
The scare:
In late January 2009, a U.S. government report on Arctic climate, prepared by an international team of 37 climatologists, concluded that the recent rapid warming of polar temperatures and shrinking of multi-year Arctic sea ice are "highly unusual compared to events from previous thousands of years". The report's summary says, "Sustained warming of at least a few degrees" is probably enough "to cause the nearly complete, eventual disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet, which would raise sea level by several metres."
[…]
The truth:
This report reveals very little that is new, and is predicated on a number of unproven assumptions, not the least of which is that the "global warming" that began 300 years ago, when the Sun was at its least active for 10,000 years, and continued until the latter part of the 20th century, when the sun was at its most active for 11,400 years, is chiefly anthropogenic. The mere fact of this warming, nearly all of which took place before humankind can possibly have had any significant influence, does not tell us its cause. Likewise, the mere fact that the warming has had effects on the climate does not tell us the cause of the warming. According to Scafetta & West (2008), some 69% of the warming of the past half-century was natural.
5 comments:
Have you ever heard of "monkeybar relationships"?
A friend of mine explained this to me as "not letting go of the last one until you've got a hold of the next one".
AGW is over, but there will be hold outs until the next attack is prepared. My money's on overpopulation.
Nice expression. I have certainly seen the phenomenon, but I don't think I've heard it described in that way. Now I am picturing a drinking establishment for unruly simians, and the sort of hook-ups that might take place there.
("I bought her a coconut. She drank it and socked me with the empty shell, and I knew it was love. What a great twenty minutes!")
Seriously, if they would let go of the AGW and take up the population control, all right, let 'em switch hobby-horses (in midstream). But as I said in the post, AGW is conventional wisdom now, becoming increasingly embedded in actual legislation. Communism was a failure from the start, but it took generations before the countries where it was established were able to break free of it. Some have not done so yet. And since AGW and population control are entwined in the minds of the formerly radical, now establishment left, it's all one big mess. One good way to cut down on greenhouse gases is to cut population way, way back. Adding taxes and cutting back on industrial production in order to reduce emissions will lead to poverty which will lead to starvation among the imprudent and to fewer children being born to the prudent. None of this applies to those in power, of course: just look at the confirmation hearings. "Didn't pay your taxes? Oh, that's all right, for you, Mr. Geithner, for you, Mr. Daschle. Step right up and join the leadership." <sarcasm>Gaia will be so much happier without so many pesky, itchy little people all over her surface.</sarcasm>
Yeah, maybe.
Then again, maybe not. The left has all the power, they can let go of the AGW now. It's going to get harder and harder to push it anyway. Starving people don't care about the environment. At all.
In fact, you should take the legislation attempts to heart: The government never acts until it's way, way too late. The very presence of the legislation should be heartening.
Sure enough, there's the entwined population control and AGW on Althouse's front page this morning: "The Optimum Population Trust... says each baby born in Britain will... burn carbon roughly equivalent to 2½ acres of old-growth oak woodland...."
Search here for "Deep Green" to bring up a few posts on this. Paul Watson is right up front about what he sees as a need not merely to control but to reduce population. If these characters would start with themselves, I would have a little more respect for their position. But no, they always want to stick around to make sure that it's done right.
Here comes the "major legislation." Some comments on this at the House of Eratosthenes.
As Morgan Freeberg says,
"Too late. The globular-wormening activists have been voted in. Let that be a lesson to y’all: It’s not enough simply to withhold support from a shitty idea. You have to do what you can to defeat it, as well. Kick it when it’s down.
"We didn’t do that. Now we’re going to pay the piper."
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