Pete Du Pont:
Global warming is back. Not actual global warming, as the decade-long trend of little to no increase in temperatures continues. But the topic of global warming is back in the news. From Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent climate comments in Jakarta to the White House’s 2014 “year of action” plan on carbon emissions, global warming has garnered more ink and pixels than we’ve seen in a while.
It’s an open question whether this renewed emphasis reflects sincere concern about global warming or is just the Obama administration playing to part of its base prior to the midterm elections. Either way, the White House and the eco-left must be disappointed by polls that continue to show Americans do not share their sense of urgency. Even though many believe some warming exists and is at least partly anthropogenic, the vast majority consider it a low priority. In a January Pew Research poll, climate change was ranked 19th out of 20 items for the president and Congress to address.
The warming alarmists might earn more support if they acted less like they had something to hide and actually allowed open debate. Perhaps they could respond to their critics rationally instead of reflexively branding them heretics, suitable for whatever is the modern university and research center equivalent of burning at the stake. Real science does not fear those who challenge it, does not work to have challengers’ articles banned from science journals, and does not compare skeptics to Holocaust deniers or, as Mr. Kerry did in Jakarta, members of the “Flat Earth Society.”
A movement with confidence in its scientific theories would be able to admit there are many climate factors beyond carbon dioxide that are not yet well understood, and that some climate models have been shown to be unreliable. Such a movement would not downplay or whitewash leaked emails evincing the possibility of massaged data. When it criticizes its skeptics as hired guns of the fossil-fuel industry who are influenced by money, it would be willing to acknowledge that it thrives on government and private funding that would shrink if its research did not continue to say warming is here and getting worse. And there would be more confessions such as Al Gore’s belated acknowledgment that his support for ethanol was misguided.
All that might not be easy, but what comes next would be downright difficult. The alarmists must admit that every policy decision involves an equation and that polices directed at reducing carbon emissions come with costs. Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, just issued a study that points to European Union climate polices (renewable energy subsidies and mandates, as well as a carbon cap-and-trade scheme) as a significant reason the 27 EU nations pay on average more than twice what we pay in the U.S. per residential kilowatt-hour of electricity, with Germany paying three times as much. Following such policies in the U.S. would shrink our economy as it would cost more not just to run our homes, but to power our offices and factories and operate our schools and hospitals. It’s fine if the alarmists feel these higher costs and the impact on jobs and our economy are worth bearing, but they need to admit these negative impacts and justify them to the public.
There is no way there can be a single figure temperature can be applied to the whole earth. To do so requires interpolations and judgments. The sampling grid is inadequate, the urban stations are biased, and the people doing the interpretation are manifestly doctoring the data.
In brief, there is no science behind the warmist policy.
A book written by one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, Dr. Patrick Moore, who has for at least the last 4-5 years been speaking out against the radical environmental movement.
That is a link which includes Dr. Moore’s recent testimony before Congress on AGW. Here is some of the most telling testimony:
And further revealing the bizarre reasoning behind the alleged “settled science” purported by the IPCC, Dr. Moore further comments:
The AGW movement is nothing more than leftists with a political goal using pseudoscience to manipulate the gullible into giving up their freedoms to the will of the self-appointed elites.