The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)
The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
Friday, June 26, 2009
The collapsing climate change consensus
As Catholics on the Left mobilize on behalf of measures aimed at curbing man-made "climate change," scientists grow skeptical. From Kimberly Strassel's essay in this morning's Wall Street Journal:
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12 comments:
The just passed bill in the house has nothing to do with the climate. It is about the democrats need for ever increasing revenue. Like drug addicts, they will do or say anything to get their drugs which to them is power and that requires money to pay off their stooges in the unions and the far left. They need money to turn this into a socialist nation like venezuala and we have our Hugo in the white house in Obama.
The new EPA report shows them for the fraud they are and there should be an investigation as to who tried to keep this public report from seeing the light of day in time for this vote.
When are the dems going to pay a price for the pork that Barry said he was going to end.
Us conservatives don't have an activist streak. But we do vote. The adulation surrounding O and the subsequest journalistic toadying and bizarre expansion of our federal gov't are almost too ridiculous to be believed.
Like many others I imagine, I'm waiting to see what happens in 2010. Now that people see what it is they actually put into power (not into office, into *power*) that will be the real referendum. And it will be instructive of whether this country has any interest in maintaining the principles on which it was founded.
Anybody know a good place to buy gold?
The Catholic Church in the United States has no business concerning itself with this so-called global warming.
The Church is dying right before our eyes. The Bishops are closing parishes and Catholic schools at an alarming rate across the United States. The schools are the future of the our Church and they want to talk about global warming?
How soon we forget that we are only passing through this life and our time on earth is much shorter than you think.
If you don't believe those words, first ask yourself, if you ever had a family member or friend that has died a sudden death such as a heart attack, stroke, car accident or even lost a parent or child to illness. A sudden death of someone close to you will shake the strongest of us right to the core and make you think about how fast life is passing us by on earth.
We have to start calling all of the fallen-away Catholics back home, to the church.
We also have to start evangelizing our neighborhoods around each parish and bring these souls to the church.
Perhaps the rumors are wrong, Chicken Little....
I'm so glad to see that Catholics on the left include Pope Benedict XVI and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Bob,
Where specifically has Pope Benedict thrown his weight behind, e.g., the thankfully doomed climate change bill passed by the House? I'm aware of only two rather measured statements. In his Urbi et Orbi message for Easter 2009, he merely listed climate change in a parade of horribles: "At a time of world food shortage, of financial turmoil, of old and new forms of poverty, of disturbing climate change, of violence and deprivation which force many to leave their homelands in search of a less precarious form of existence, of the ever-present threat of terrorism, of growing fears over the future, it is urgent to rediscover grounds for hope."
Previous to that, in December of 2007, he actually cautioned climate change partisans: "It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions ..."
Has he addressed the subject elsewhere?
And your use of "U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops" is potentially misleading. So far, Bishops Wenski and Hubbard have issued statements on behalf climate change legislation in their capacity as conference committee heads. Hubbard, unsurprisingly, is the first and thus far only bishop to voice his support for the House bill in his capacity as a conference member. To my knowledge, neither climate change as a concept nor this bill have been put to a vote by the full body of bishops.
Rich,
The link you provided from the "left" quoted Benedict and the USCCB. Your post is about the underlying science, not the current energy bill. And as you point out the Pope and the Bishops list climate change in a "parade of horribles". Sorry I assumed that horribles should be prevented or mitigated. I didn't realize you were pro-horrible.
Bob,
You didn't address the substance of my comment. Shall I take that to mean you don't have a response?
Rich,
You didn't address the horrible nature of climate change. Shall I take it to mean you are pro-horrible?
As far as I can tell there is no substance in your comment.
You didn't address the horrible nature of climate change.
I believe Dr. Richard Lindzen has estimated that the mean temperature of the Earth has increased by 0.6 degrees centigrade over about a century. This is 'horrible'? Dr. Lindzen is among the country's most eminent meterologists, one of just two-dozen elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He has for two decades been disputing interpretations of the general circulation models which lie at the base of much alarmism re global warming.
C'mon Art Deco, if "climate change" makes the "parade", it doesn't matter in what postion it forms up as long as it's the gaudiest float or the loudest band...(-* Tom G.
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