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There are four planks upon which the anthropogenic global warming
theory, or whatever they are calling it today, is built:<br>
<br>
1. The earth is currently warming.<br>
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas (more CO2 raises the temperature).<br>
3. Mankind is the cause of the majority of the warming, because of
all the CO2 we've been dumping.<br>
4. The effects are going to be catastrophic.<br>
<br>
The personal reactions of some Republican talking heads or bloggers
aside, very few members of the United Front of Denialism (OOOH RAH!)
would argue with the first two items. It's the third and fourth
planks, mostly based on computer modeling, that they have a problem
with.<br>
<br>
I applaud Professor Muller. He appears to be a true skeptic. He
looked at the temperature record, the placement of the thermometers,
listened to the concerns about possible irregularities with the
handling of the data, and decided he'd have a go at seeing what the
truth was for himself. The results he came up with are only
"inconvenient" for those invested in "denialism". <br>
<br>
I truly hate how polarized this topic is. Watts reacts like a
spoiled child, and his opponents yuk about the fact that they didn't
get the results they were looking for, tittering behind their hands
like giggling schoolgirls.<br>
<br>
Suddenly, Professor Muller isn't considered a climate skeptic any
more. Despite what his views may be on items 3 and 4 above, he'll
now go down in infamy as the climate skeptic who became a believer,
almost a modern myth in the making.<br>
<br>
Paul<br>
<br>
On 04/04/2011 07:18 AM, Joe Campbell wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:BANLkTimetgQC0yEWYkXqAe2eiiXVpVVDdQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<h1>The Truth, Still Inconvenient</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per"
title="More Articles by Paul Krugman" class="meta-per">PAUL
KRUGMAN</a></h6>
<div id="articleBody">
<p>
So the joke begins like this: An economist, a lawyer and a
professor of marketing walk into a room. What’s the punch
line? They were three of the five “expert witnesses”
Republicans called for last week’s Congressional hearing on
climate science. </p>
<p>
But the joke actually ended up being on the Republicans, when
one of the two actual scientists they invited to testify went
off script. </p>
<p>
Prof. Richard Muller of Berkeley, a physicist who has gotten
into the climate skeptic game, has been leading the Berkeley
Earth Surface Temperature project, an effort partially
financed by none other than the Koch foundation. And climate
deniers — who claim that researchers at NASA and other groups
analyzing climate trends have massaged and distorted the data
— had been hoping that the Berkeley project would conclude
that global warming is a myth. </p>
<p>
Instead, however, Professor Muller reported that his group’s
preliminary results find a global warming trend “very similar
to that reported by the prior groups.” </p>
<p>
The deniers’ response was both predictable and revealing; more
on that shortly. But first, let’s talk a bit more about that
list of witnesses, which raised the same question I and others
have had about a number of committee hearings held since the
G.O.P. retook control of the House — namely, where do they
find these people? </p>
<p>
My favorite, still, was Ron Paul’s first hearing on monetary
policy, in which the lead witness was someone best known for
writing a book denouncing Abraham Lincoln as a “horrific
tyrant” — and for advocating a new secessionist movement as
the appropriate response to the “new American fascialistic
state.” </p>
<p>
The ringers (i.e., nonscientists) at last week’s hearing
weren’t of quite the same caliber, but their prepared
testimony still had some memorable moments. One was the
lawyer’s declaration that the E.P.A. can’t declare that
greenhouse gas emissions are a health threat, because these
emissions have been rising for a century, but public health
has improved over the same period. I am not making this up. </p>
<p>
Oh, and the marketing professor, in providing a list of past
cases of “analogies to the alarm over dangerous manmade global
warming” — presumably intended to show why we should ignore
the worriers — included problems such as acid rain and the
ozone hole that have been contained precisely thanks to
environmental regulation. </p>
<p>
But back to Professor Muller. His climate-skeptic credentials
are pretty strong: he has denounced both Al Gore and my
colleague Tom Friedman as “exaggerators,” and he has
participated in a number of attacks on climate research,
including the witch hunt over innocuous e-mails from British
climate researchers. Not surprisingly, then, climate deniers
had high hopes that his new project would support their case.
</p>
<p>
You can guess what happened when those hopes were dashed. </p>
<p>
Just a few weeks ago Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent
climate denialist Web site, praised the Berkeley project and
piously declared himself “prepared to accept whatever result
they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” But never
mind: once he knew that Professor Muller was going to present
those preliminary results, Mr. Watts dismissed the hearing as
“post normal science political theater.” And one of the
regular contributors on his site dismissed Professor Muller as
“a man driven by a very serious agenda.” </p>
<p>
Of course, it’s actually the climate deniers who have the
agenda, and nobody who’s been following this discussion
believed for a moment that they would accept a result
confirming global warming. But it’s worth stepping back for a
moment and thinking not just about the science here, but about
the morality. </p>
<p>
For years now, large numbers of prominent scientists have been
warning, with increasing urgency, that if we continue with
business as usual, the results will be very bad, perhaps
catastrophic. They could be wrong. But if you’re going to
assert that they are in fact wrong, you have a moral
responsibility to approach the topic with high seriousness and
an open mind. After all, if the scientists are right, you’ll
be doing a great deal of damage. </p>
<p>
But what we had, instead of high seriousness, was a farce: a
supposedly crucial hearing stacked with people who had no
business being there and instant ostracism for a climate
skeptic who was actually willing to change his mind in the
face of evidence. As I said, no surprise: as Upton Sinclair
pointed out long ago, it’s difficult to get a man to
understand something when his salary depends on his not
understanding it. </p>
<p>
But it’s terrifying to realize that this kind of cynical
careerism — for that’s what it is — has probably ensured that
we won’t do anything about climate change until catastrophe is
already upon us. </p>
<p>
So on second thought, I was wrong when I said that the joke
was on the G.O.P.; actually, the joke is on the human race. </p>
<div class="articleCorrection">
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