[Vision2020] University of Idaho Argonaut, 1-25-11: Bret Zender: "Climate change is not to be ignored"

[Paul Rumelhart]

His terms are a little imprecise, but anthropogenic global warming is 
not anywhere near as established as gravity or evolution.  It's a 
science where we have 150 years of somewhat reliable data in a field 
where you have to have 30+ years of data just to be able to say anything 
at all about climate.  Is it warming, on average, right now?  Yes.  Do 
we know how much of it is due to man's carbon footprint?  I would say 
no.   The ice cores show that temperature has gone up and down over the 
last few thousand years.  We're recovering from the little ice age.  I 
wouldn't place any bets on global warming or global cooling right now.  
Why?  Because we don't know why the temperature has risen in the past.  
We suspect the Sun is involved, but we can't really say. 

I will say that the Global Climate Change Media Machine is being 
successful in getting across their narratives.  They've turned a new, 
more-or-less untested science into a science that people believe is as 
solid as the law of gravity.  This is despite their earlier efforts to 
try to make people believe that there was little variation until evil 
man came around and screwed it all up, what I like to call the Hockey 
Stick Era.  Despite their resistance to criticism, including (if the 
Climate Gate emails are to be believed) conspiring to get around FOIA 
laws, they eventually had to concede that their famous graph had 
statistical problems.

For this and other reasons, I'll still be skeptical about climate 
forecasts more than three days ahead.  I will continue to avoid stepping 
off of high places, though.

Paul

Ted Moffett wrote:
> Other journalistic offerings from the Argonaut on the problem of 
> anthropogenic climate warming have been rather lacking, but I thought 
> this article covered some important points concisely, while being 
> entertaining. 
>  
> Given gravity is just a theory, for fair and open minded debate and 
> education in the public schools, physics classes should present the 
> theory of levitation, don't you think?  This makes as much sense as 
> insisting creationism be taught in physics classes.... After all, 
> evolutionary biologists might be just as fraudulent and or incompetent 
> as some insist climate scientists are, ditto for physicists and their 
> "theory of gravity."  Just a theory, remember!
>  
> http://www.uiargonaut.com/sections/opinion/stories/2011/jan/12511/climate_change_is.html
>  
> Climate change is not to be ignored
> Bret Zender | Argonaut
>
> I get this weird aura sometimes. It's that sort of 
> "Alice-in-Wonderland"-like sense of being in a place where reality 
> isn't at all what you know, love and thought it was. It's like reality 
> came home violently drunk and slapped you around and said it was 
> cheating on you. Then it swiftly apologizes and says it's sorry and it 
> should never have done that and didn't mean any of it, but things are 
> never quite the same again.
>
> I felt that aura while reading a news story at ClimateScienceWatch.org 
> about the newly elected Republican House majority disbanding Nancy 
> Pelosi's Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. 
> That's right — disbanding. Why are they doing this?
>
> In the words of Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), the climate 
> scientists might have been the perpetrators of a "massive 
> international scientific fraud." In James Sensenbrenner's mind, 
> science is an organization — a competing organization like any other, 
> driven by its own profit.
>
> In other words, it's something they have a reason to commit fraud for 
> — as though scientists will finally get to show numbers in the black 
> this quarter. Some say you can only perceive the world as it appears 
> through your own eyes, and it's hard to find a better example of that 
> than James Sensenbrenner.
>
> Disproving global warming at this point is like trying to disprove 
> evolution or gravity. It's not about disproving Darwin — it would be 
> like uncovering the Illuminati, Bigfoot, King Arthur and the hidden 
> alien knowledge Egyptians used to build the pyramids at once.
>
> That's how big of a conspiracy this would require within the 
> scientific community. It would be a conspiracy within NASA, the 
> National Organization for Science, the Pew Center, and 99 percent of 
> the scientific community. So many people have tested the evidence and 
> theories out there that you can barely find a single reputable 
> scientific organization that contests it.
>
> And yet, another glance down the page reveals this other gem of a news 
> story: "Sarah Palin Supports Teaching Creationism in Schools." Great. 
> She declines to say what she believes is truth but the controversy 
> should be taught in schools, slipping back to the core argument that 
> "debate is always healthy." This is the 2008 Republican nominee for 
> vice president. This is the woman who was a heartbeat away from 
> becoming the leader of the free world.
>
> Do we teach the controversy to gravity? Do we allow the view that 
> Yggdrasil drags the planet along by its tentacles a fair shake right 
> up there with Einstein? Do we let Holocaust deniers present their side 
> of the Anne Frank story?
>
> No. Schools teach the truth. They teach science.
> ------------------------------------------
> Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
>  
>
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