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<DIV>Jenkins Jr. writes:</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff><I>"In any case, </I>evidence of warming is not
evidence of manmade warming. </FONT></DIV>
<P><FONT color=#0000ff>It would surprise the public, and even the Supreme Court,
to know how utterly <STRONG><FONT size=4>the science of global warming offers no
evidence whatsoever on the central
proposition</FONT></STRONG>."</FONT></P></DIV>
<DIV>To judge the probable truth of Jenkins Jar's. above
statement:</DIV>
<DIV><A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Simply written, illustrated with graphs and tables driven by verified
observations, the immediately above referenced article will assist those
open-minded people who are trying to find their way through a barrage of
information, misinformation, and economic/political/religious polemics on this
issue.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>At Tuesday night's journalism symposium at WSU <EM>Frontline</EM>
executive producer David Fanning commented upon their experience with the Global
Warming issue. The producer assigned to do the project was
a degreed, well-trained, respected scientist who was a real skeptic about
global warming and its causes. Hence, <EM>Frontline</EM> at the start of
the project had planned a contrarian approach. However, after an extensive
review of literature, interviews with scientists, critics, etc the skeptical
producer changed his mind, reversing his initial opinion.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It may be safe to say that a part of global warming is due to nonhuman
causes. Given the current evidence, it is hard to believe that human
activity has not contributed significantly to and has not accelerated global
warming. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Of course, no scientific hypothesis is absolutely true, but is a matter of
probability subject to change depending on future observations and/or
reinterpretation of known observations. However, the probability that
global warming is occurring is extremely close to 1.00. The probability
that warming is being caused to a significant degree by human activity is
estimated by an <STRONG>almost </STRONG>unanimous consensus of scientists
<STRONG>whose specialization is in this field</STRONG> to be
about .90.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is also hard to believe that thousands of scientists worldwide from many
different countries and with many different political, social , religious, and
economic viewpoints have secretly joined together and are engaged for some
arcane purpose in some dark conspiracy to flimflam the rest of us, including
those of us who can read and evaluate scientific research. People who
believe in such conspiracies are rightly called crackpots.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Many critics are like Jenkins Jr., who not only do not argue for
their point of view by giving specific verifiable evidence to refute or to
change the current scientific consensus, but haven't even read or reviewed the
most basic observations like those found in <A
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming</A> giving
rise to the current scientific consensus. For Jenkins Jr. to assert that
there is <STRONG><FONT color=#0000ff>"no evidence whatsoever"</FONT></STRONG>
for human activity contributing to global warming is the acme of very dangerous
ignorance and arrogance. It is highly probable that those that cling to
and advocate for such foolishness will be partially responsible for much human
and animal suffering.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This debate reminds me of the times in the past when various villages
were warned that the probability of a cholera epidemic was imminent was
high. Very few believed it, especially the leaders, and therefore did
not take the very drastic actions necessary to avoid the
epidemic until it was too late, and then after most of the original
doubters had perished from cholera. I do not see that humankind in the
majority has progressed very far on this account, especially the so-called
leaders.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>W.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=areaman@moscow.com href="mailto:areaman@moscow.com">Dan Carscallen</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=vision2020@moscow.com
href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com">vision2020@moscow.com</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:05 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Vision2020] WSJ -- Climate of Opinion
(editorial)</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007>I think the key phrase is thus: </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007>"In any case, the evidence of warming is not evidence
of man-made warming."</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007>enjoy,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Comic Sans MS" color=#800000 size=2><SPAN
class=390210215-12042007>DC</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Garamond size=5></FONT></STRONG> </DIV>
<DIV><STRONG><FONT face=Garamond size=5>Climate of Opinion</FONT></STRONG>
<BR><FONT face="Garamond, Times" size=4>Why we believe in global warming.</FONT>
<BR><FONT face="Verdana, Times" size=2><BR><B>BY HOLMAN W. JENKINS JR.</B>
<BR><I>Sunday, April 8, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT</I> </DIV>
<P>Al Gore will have no trouble finding in Monday's Supreme Court ruling more
evidence that global warming is a reality, indeed a dire threat.
<P>He will soon say--you can take this to the bank--words like: "Now, even a
majority of the Supreme Court has recognized the danger of global warming." And
he'll be right in the sense that the Court invokes the magic word "consensus"
for a physical fact that itself is unproven, unprovable and exists purely in the
realm of speculation.
<P>Al Gore has made himself, in his curious way, the personification of a
society's impulse to manufacture political certainty out of irresolvable
scientific uncertainty, of which the Supreme Court is the latest culprit/victim.
You can see this by arranging the questions related to global warming in
descending order of urgency.
<P>The most urgent, by definition, is Mr. Gore's claim that the atmosphere is in
such a calamitous state that we have "no more than 10 years before we cross a
point of no return." How does he know, asked interviewer Charlie Rose last year?
<P>Mr. Gore's answer: "I accept the fact that the most respected scientists
whose judgment I think is the best are now concerned that we may be in that
territory."
<P>The second question is whether human-produced carbon dioxide is driving this
dangerous warming. Invariably, Mr. Gore cites a single observation: that such a
belief is the "consensus" of scientists.
<P>Only at the third question--is there evidence that global warming is actually
occurring?--do we enter the realm of the observable. Air and sea temperature can
be measured. The standard observation is that the planet has fitfully warmed by
one degree Celsius over the past century, but this figure is produced by
massaging inconsistent readings from many times and places. Different
assumptions would produce different trends, or none at all. And that's without
considering whether a planetary "average" temperature is even a meaningful data
point (some have likened it to averaging all the phone numbers in the phone
book).
<P>
<P align=center><IMG height=6 alt="" hspace=0
src="http://www.opinionjournal.com/images/storyend_dingbat.gif" width=88
align=center border=0>
<P></P>
<DIV><I>In any case, </I>evidence of warming is not evidence of manmade warming.
</DIV>
<P>It would surprise the public, and even the Supreme Court, to know how utterly
the science of global warming offers no evidence whatsoever on the central
proposition. What fills Mr. Gore's film, books, speeches and congressional
testimony are scientific observations and quasi-scientific observations, all
right. They concern polar bears, mosquitoes, hurricanes, ice packs and
everything but whether humans cause global warming.
<P>Some of this evidence may suggest, weakly or strongly, the existence of
warming trends in particular parts of the world (such local trends, both cooling
and warming, have been observed in many places and many times). More dubiously,
some may indicate a generalized warming. But none offers any evidence that
carbon dioxide is causing warming. Mr. Gore's method is the equivalent of trying
to prove that Jack killed Jane by going on and on about how awful it was that
Jane was killed.
<P>Polemicists in favor of human-caused global warming liken skeptics to tobacco
lobbyists who denied the link between smoking and lung cancer. In fact, it makes
a useful analogy.
<P>Suppose the world consisted of exactly one smoker who could be observed only
from a distance to test the theory that smoking causes lung cancer. If he died
of cancer, it wouldn't prove smoking causes cancer. If he failed to die of
cancer, it wouldn't prove smoking <I>doesn't </I>cause cancer.
<P>The link between smoking and cancer is made by observing millions of smokers
and nonsmokers. Indeed, what led scientists to seek systematic evidence of a
link in the first place was anecdotal evidence that smokers, of whom there have
been millions, appeared to die in unusual numbers from lung cancer.
<P>Nothing remotely similar has been involved in developing the hypothesis that
carbon dioxide creates warming. The relevant observations are a mess: Measured
global temperature has both risen and fallen for considerable periods during the
past century, even as CO2 has risen steadily. The geologic record suggests the
world was much cooler in the past despite CO2 concentrations higher than
today's. Unlike smoking and cancer, there's no anecdotal observation for the
hypothesis that CO2 causes planetary warming. It may or may not be true, but to
believe it is a "scientific truth" is to make a leap of faith, not science.
<P>The consensus that human activities are causing global warming is purely a
social invention--there's no way of showing it to be so, and no self-evident
reason for preferring to believe it's so. The "consensus" is, in truth, a
product of itself.
<P>
<P align=center><IMG height=6 alt="" hspace=0
src="http://www.opinionjournal.com/images/storyend_dingbat.gif" width=88
align=center border=0>
<P></P>
<DIV>Now we are prepared to get the joke. It came during last fall's Supreme
Court oral argument about global warming, when the learned Justices, allowing
the word "consensus" to serve as evidence of manmade warming, devoted themselves
instead to a solemn discussion of how many inches of sea-level rise, and thus
how many square miles of coastal inundation, the EPA is guilty of failing to
prevent by refusing to regulate U.S. tailpipe emissions (which account for just
8% of human CO2 output). </DIV>
<P>Sen. James Inhofe is notorious for saying the theory of manmade global
warming is a "hoax." Obviously we need a better theory than Mr. Inhofe's of when
head-counting is a useful way of estimating the validity of a factual
proposition and when it isn't. Until then, it's perhaps sufficient to say that
many people believe in manmade global warming because many people believe in
manmade global warming; Al Gore believes in it because many people believe in
it; many people believe in it because Al Gore believes in it; and so on, right
up to the highest court in the land.
<P><I>Mr. Jenkins is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His
column appears in the Journal on Wednesdays.</I>
</FONT><SECTION:CONTENT_FOOTER></P></SECTION:CONTENT_FOOTER>
<P>
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