The least frightening thing I have read all week
And least surprising–to me at least. A nifty little mind cooler courtesy of Christopher Booker’s Notebook:
We are set on a course of ‘planet saving’ madness
The scare over global warming, and our politicians’ response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.
This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level – not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.
If what Mr. Booker says here is inconveniently true, I would advise investing in the tar and feather industries. You might make a killing in the not so distant future.
Of course, now that you have used nearly the same title as my last post, people will assume we are the same person. Which of us is the sock puppet?
Regarding your post: Am I to assume, based upon previous comments and reenforced by your approving link to this article, that:
Not only do you reject the need to “do anything” about global warming, not only do you reject anthropogenic causes to global warming, you reject the very existence of global warming?
Comment by Jack — 11/27/2007 @ 9:33 am
1. I do not reject the notion of climate change. After all, the climate does that. We can’t even get a weather forecast right most of the time for crying out loud.
2. I do not reject the notion that human activity has an impact on climate, I reject the notion that the extent of that impact is what the hysteria suggests, or that this notion is indisputable fact.
3. I have no problem with the notion that humankind should be responsible in the use of Earth’s finite resources and environment, as long as it is done in a rational way.
4. Since I live in a “warming” world that, when I was 18, was predicted to be at the dawn of a mini ice age upon a planet devoid of rain forests and oil I tend to take this stuff with a grain of salt.
5. I don’t fault people for buying into the apocalypse du jour; after all, scientists have house payments due too, and we know politicians do. Just don’t fault me for chuckling through the infomercial, ok? Hell, I’m on like my third or fourth apocalypse already and they really take it out of you.
Comment by James — 11/27/2007 @ 4:50 pm
1. I think I am even less aware of your true thoughts after reading this first bullet. Is it meant to sound Zen? I can only assume you are saying “I don’t except global warming, because we cannot predict tomorrow’s weather accurately. But yes, tomorrow may be diffent than today.”
2. Human activity “effects” but you are not willing to say “warms.” Is it equivication or outright rejection?.
3. Says nothing, a politician’s answer.
4. It was only a matter of time before you trotted out the mini-ice age trope. The media’s overplay of the mini ice age meme was caused by at least two factors: On a long term geological scale, its loosely true, but the scales we are talking about are centuries and millenia. Second, in the 1970s for chrisakes we new a lot less about climatology. We did not have an adequate prediction model to determine which of the several opposed human effects would be overwhelming.
5. You don’t fault them, but you dismiss it out of hand, and belittle the concept at every opportunity. “Chuckling through the infomercial”, sly insuations that that the researchers are all in it to make a buck, and casual dismissal, over yet another yawn apocolypse. Silly scientists. And yet you will buy into AEI “research”, or Gregg Easterbrook the expert sports caster turned science writer, or what, Michael Crichton?
Comment by Jack — 11/27/2007 @ 9:41 pm
Sorry I forgot one.
6. See you in 15 years.
Comment by James — 11/28/2007 @ 3:20 am