Here is a wonderful column to help the few remaining sensible people combat the legions of climate and environmental extremists. We have far too few people like George Will, Freeman Dyson and the now deceased Michael Crichton to help us keep our common sense in the face of the-science-is-settled progressive agenda.
Sunday, Aug. 19, 2012
Apocalypse Not
By George F. Will - Washington Post
Will marks the 2012 United Nation’s Rio+20 conference — 50,000 participants from 188 nations — which otherwise passed without notice. It was this crowd that led to the 1992 Kyoto treaty, about which we can proudly say, America never signed it. Nothing was accomplished at the conference this year and public opinion is shifting back toward healthy skepticism.
In this column Will mentions that given previous alarmists, we should have starved to death by now due to population growth and capitalism should have collapsed long since due to our exhaustion of natural resources. But the expert’s “irrefutable science" was wrong. The point is that we must remember that environmentalism is a political movement with an agenda and that there is no such thing as “settled science” – “irrefutable science” is an oxymoron.
Don’t miss this bit sarcasm in the column: environmentalism, indoctrinates children to “reduce, reuse and recycle.” Good old Yankee thrift is an important value but recycling is “a feel-good gesture that provides little environmental benefit at a significant cost.” We spend countless hours sorting, storing and collecting used paper, which, when combined with government subsidies, yields slightly lower-quality paper in order to secure a resource” — forests — “that was never threatened in the first place.”
What should alarm us quickest is any “great idea” that needs federal government subsidies. Why do we continue to let the progressives get away with this stuff?
And in case you missed it, it was also Will who reminded us of these facts a few years back:
"The debate is over," or so Time magazine declared on the cover page of its April 3, 2006 issue. “Be worried, be VERY worried,” they said. “Earth at the Tipping Point: Global Warming Heats Up” was the inside headline and the article assured us that “the climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame”.
If that’s not alarmist, we’re gonna need a new dictionary.
At the time, eighty-five percent of Americans believed it and 62 percent said it threatens them personally.
But, in the 70’s we were told to be worried, very worried, about global cooling.
· Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation."
· Science Digest (February 1973) reported that "the world's climatologists are agreed" that we must "prepare for the next ice age."
· The Christian Science Monitor ("Warning: Earth's Climate is Changing Faster Than Even Experts Expect," Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers "have begun to advance," "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter" and "the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool."
· Newsweek agreed ("The Cooling World," April 28, 1975) that meteorologists "are almost unanimous" that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that the New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said "may mark the return to another ice age."
· The Times (May 21, 1975) also said "a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable" now that it is "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950."
Michael Crichton argued persuasively about the science of modeling and the nearly impossible task of modeling a planet due to the massive number of assumptions necessary to make them work. As the number of assumptions goes up, the number of possible combinations grows exponentially and the chance for accuracy diminishes. Crichton suggested that the climate modelers needed to publish their methods and assumptions to allow for scrutiny – to do otherwise is not science he said. There were no takers, “our work is proprietary” and besides they worried, “people with an agenda might criticize our assumptions” – they meant those nasty non-cult members whose only agenda is accuracy.
Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we’re asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? - Michael Crichton
In many speeches and articles, Freeman Dyson and others have demonstrated how we could remove CO2 from the air if the alarmists ever turned out to be correct – Tyson was widely trashed for his efforts by the climate cult. “It will be too late,” we are repeatedly warned but if we put it there, we can take it back. And if every little bit we add to the air hurts, then any amount we remove will help.
For me, apocalypse fatigue – boredom from being repeatedly told the end is nigh – is not my major gripe. My biggest complaint is the total lack of skepticism, particularly by the Forth Estate and especially regarding anything government. Where are the newspapers that hated all things government and knew that all politicians are liars?
I am dead tired of being called a racist just because I don’t agree with a black man and I am even more tired of being told that skepticism isn’t science. Science is precisely that, skepticism and curiosity. “The debate is over” and “there is no room for doubt” are the proclamations of religion, not science.
