It’s time again for another action-packed edition of Global Warming Consensus Watch, wherein we highlight the unshakable, unbreakable scientific consensus that Global Warming is a dire threat to our existence and humans are entirely to blame. Long Live the Consensus! In this roundup: WE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ PROOF!; AL GORE DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ MEDIA COVERAGE; just how accurate are those predictions, anyway?; a whole bunch more scientists off the reservation; Kyoto – not all it’s cracked up to be; and Live Earth vs. the British Power Grid.
- “The fallacy of proof”: This is a bit old (dating from April 29), but it’s still worth reading. Orson Scott Card takes issue with Columnist and UNC Greensboro Researcher Andrew Brod:
Insurance is designed to pay you money after a loss. It does not prevent a loss. The valid comparison is to protection money: Somebody comes to you and demands you pay money “or you might have a fire.” You pay the money so that they won’t burn you out of business.
That’s what the global-warming protection racket is about: Hey, we can’t prove anything is actually happening, but look how many people we’ve got to agree with us! You’d better make a whole bunch of sacrifices which, by coincidence, exactly coincide with the political agenda of the anti-Western anti-industrial religion of ecodeism — or global warming will get you!
Brod actually admits precisely what he’s doing, when he says: “Fortunately, people finally seem to understand the fallacy of requiring proof.”
Think about that. He calls it a fallacy to require proof.
Science is worthless without good, solid, reliable evidence. It isn’t even science…
…I wonder if Brod, in his job as director of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Office of Business and Economic Research, he has that same attitude toward proof — that it’s a fallacy to require it.
If so, what value does his “business and economic research” have? Why would anyone who thinks that requiring proof is a fallacy be hired to do his job? Of course he can’t say with certainty what will happen, but my bet is that he makes darn sure he provides plenty of proof that his projections of the future are based on solid evidence about the past.
That is precisely what is missing in the claims about global warming.
If you can find a link to Brod’s original article, please drop it in the comments. I’ve searched but haven’t turned it up, and I’d like to see it.
- So important that the media can’t cover it: Does anyone have a good explanation for this?
On the request of Gore’s media handlers, Saturday’s event was closed to the media. Because of the importance of the issue and Gore’s status, the San Antonio Express-News chose to cover it anyway.
Hat Tip: The New Editor
- The State of the Science: Jim Manzi give a very solid overview of the state of climate science and the accuracy of the predictive models that are often cited in climate change debates. An excerpt:
When evaluating model reliability, the second test—can it predict accurately?—is the acid test. We can debate all day about whether a model is complete enough, but if it has correctly predicted major climate changes over and over again, that is pretty good evidence that its predictions should be taken seriously. There are plenty of studies that show what is called “hindcasting,” in which a model is built on the data for, say, 1900-1950, and is then used to “predict” the climate for 1950-1980. Unfortunately, it is notoriously common for simulation models in many fields to fit such holdout samples in historical data well, but then fail to predict the future accurately. So the crucial test is actual prediction, in which a model is run today to forecast the climate for some future time-period, and then is subsequently validated or falsified. No global climate model has ever demonstrated that it can reliably predict the climate over multiple years or decades—never.
Jim’s piece is well worth a read in full for a more balanced view of what is and is not happening than you’ll get from typical coverage of the issue.
- More scientists off the reservation than you can shake a stick at: Lawrence Solomon has put together a series of columns that changed his mind about the issue of climate change:
My series set out to profile the dissenters — those who deny that the science is settled on climate change — and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world’s premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop — the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gratitude for my series.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists — the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects — and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction.
The 23 profiles in the series (so far) are illuminating, to say the least. Give them a read.
- Kyoto – not doing much of anything: The Guardian takes a look at what the Kyoto Treaty has accomplished since 1997, and finds very little good:
The CDM is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.
What did we expect, really? After all, what’s a UN operation without wholesale corruption while accomplishing virtually nothing?
- Saving Britian from the ravages of Live Earth: Symbolic of the whole climate change alarmist movement? You be the judge:
IT WAS intended to be the symbolic gesture at a global series of rock concerts next month to alert people to climate change. Al Gore, the former US presidential candidate turned climate doomsayer, had wanted a massive switch-off of lights by television audiences, but the National Grid has vetoed the idea….
…The switch-off was conceived as an emblematic act in the same way that Will Smith, the actor, coordinated people across the world to click their fingers every three seconds during the Live 8 concerts to convey that in Africa another child had died.
It was meant to create a moment that would resonate round the world and provide a counterpoint to the old fad for holding carbon-emitting cigarette lighters aloft at concerts.
It would also have given Britain its biggest blackout since the blitz and the miners’ strikes of the 1970s – and encapsulated the message of the urgency to save energy.
However, it has had to be shelved after the keepers of Britain’s power supply said no. “We are in favour of sustained energy efficiency as opposed to people just doing it very suddenly as a stunt,” said a spokesman for the National Grid.
“The organisers of Live Earth planned to do this very symbolic act but we had concerns because it was impossible for us to forecast what would happen.”
John Gaydon, producer of the British concert at the new Wembley stadium, said: “The National Grid warned us that it would put too much pressure on the power supply and would be potentially dangerous for hospitals.”
I’d say that this sums up the overall situation nicely – a proposed solution to a non-problem that hasn’t been thought out very well and is likely to actually cause greater problems than the one it is supposedly intended to address.
- Old, but still worthwhile: Get your carbon debits here!
