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April 28, 2006
Climate Change: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
Today is the 31-year anniversary of a Newsweek piece that announced that we are all doomed because incipient global cooling will soon lead to a "drastic decline in food production — with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth." But the new ice age failed to materialize.
The same problem has come up again with global warming. Evidence that carbon emissions effect temperature just isn't there, forcing some to twist themselves into knots with bizarre "warming causes cooling" explanations.
Twice burned, the Chicken Little industry is starting to learn. Although no one knows whether it will be warmer or colder in the future, the one thing we can bank on is that the temperature will change, because it always has. Dr. Chris de Freitas, a climatologist, geographer, and environmentalist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, explains how the fear-mongers are now covering their bets:
Recently, media and politicians have virtually stopped talking about global warming and are now referring to climate change instead. That's because predictions of doom and gloom from warming just aren't coming true. But with "climate change," Kyoto advocates can now cite any change or phenomenon as proof that CO2 emissions have upset the global apple cart.
Unless weather suddenly stops happening altogether, research dollars will continue to flow, and left-leaning politicians will continue to demand ever more suffocating regulation, because there will always be evidence that cataclysmic "climate change" is upon us.
This clever approach will even allow Time Magazine to repurpose the heart-wrenching oppressed polar bear photo they recently put on their cover:
If the weather cools off, as it did during the massive industrialization between 1940 and 1979, they might use this picture with a story on the danger of ice floe–riding polar bears attacking Florida beachgoers.
Too bad the energy the science community puts into political spin doesn't go into pure research instead. We would probably have a cheap alternative to gasoline by now. But of course, pure research doesn't generate grant money the way PC hysteria can do.
Hat tip: Bergbikr
Posted by Van Helsing at April 28, 2006 6:51 AM
Comments
Actually, I'm more worried about ManBearPig.
Posted by: V the K at April 28, 2006 3:44 PM
Van H -- On the issue of global warming asshattery, get this from Rolling Stone's epic contribution to political commentary, "The Worst President in History?" by Princeton history prof Sean Wilentz: "... Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science -- dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has decleard, to 'the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.' The Bush White House's indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurrican Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them -- much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the Director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. ...." So, as of January, 2001, the Bush presidency ushered in a dark age of non-science that has now wrought super-cyclonic disturbances. Wilentz goes on to regurgitate every myth, fable, urban legend and tin foil hat whopper the moonbats have conjured up out of dope smoke as unassailable historic fact. The whole gist is that Bush is a bad president because he won't listen to Wilentz and the rest of the left lunatic fringe. Go figure. Love the blog. Thanks.
Monsoon
Posted by: monsoon at April 28, 2006 5:20 PM
VH,
Great article. I linked to you from my blog and included the link to the original Newsweek article too. http://www.belch.com/~blog/2006/04/28/eco-religion-blast-from-the-past/
Posted by: BelchSpeak at April 28, 2006 5:45 PM
By the way, speaking of Global Warming, last week, I took a picture of my son standing in front of an eight foot snow drift in the Cascades.
Posted by: V the K at April 28, 2006 6:17 PM
global dimming
Posted by: mickey at April 28, 2006 10:01 PM
