If you’ve been reading the news carefully, you may have noticed some stories about something that used to be called “global warming”, and is now, I think, referred to as “climate change”. The idea, if I understand it correctly, is that the Earth is getting warmer — which of course it has done often in the past, this being a relatively cool spell, in geological time-spans. From what I can gather it appears also that some people think this is due to human activity, and — I know this seems even more of a stretch, but stay with me here — that we can actually control the climate ourselves, if we are willing to stop using fossil fuels and subjugate everything we do to the supervisory control of a global panel of experts. This is also imagined to be not only “worth it”, but is somehow seen to be morally necessary as well.
The idea, simply put, is that carbon dioxide, as a “greenhouse gas”, traps heat, and we emit too much of the stuff. But, as the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson pointed out some years ago, water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas, and so the effect of CO2 should be evident primarily in the coldest parts of the Earth, where there is little water vapor in the air.
You’ll be relieved, then, to know that both the Arctic and Antarctic are doing just fine, ice-wise. In fact, instead of losing ice, as we were assured they would, they’re making more of the stuff.
If, by the way, you are the sort who likes to think, shall we say, “independently” about these things, and would like a good source of data for your inquiries, you might have a look here.
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OMG, a facetious naysayer dares to contradict the officious consensus! Prepare for blinding shitstorm, stage Left.
What shitstorm? If our esteemed host wants to pretend that someone with no training in or knowledge of climate science is an expert on the subject, or that the thousands of scientists who actually do have knowledge and training in climate science are all wrong, who am I to quibble?
Similarly, if he wants to ignore the facts that 2014 was the hottest year on record, 2015 is hotter, ocean temperatures have been rising steadily for years, coastal areas are flooding because of continually rising ocean levels, and pretend that spewing tons of effluvia into the atmosphere every year wouldn’t change a thing, who am I to intrude on such fervent beliefs with mere empiricism?
Fact, data, and reason are powerless against right wing agnotology. Why bother?
Higgs boson walks into a church.
Priest: “sorry, we don’t allow Higgs bosons in here.”
Higgs boson: “without me, how can you have mass?”
OEM was the ghostwriter for “Spots on the Wall” by Hu Flung Shit.
Meanwhile, no-one has done more to suppress actual science than the left. The left has successfully suppressed research into intelligence, group differences, sex differences, sexual deviance, down the line. You can go to just about any campus in the country and see speakers shouted down, classrooms invaded, students and professors intimidated, and all the rest of their tactics aimed at suppressing debate and scientific discovery.
I’m agnostic on the issue of climate change. The left would probably help itself persuade the unpersuaded, such as myself, if it didn’t behave abominably . . . having a conversation with a lefty about this stuff is impossible (the left’s epistemic closure is very un-sciency, but don’t tell them that, they love science!).
OEM also ghostwrote “Take It to the Limit” by Will Ben Dover.
And if our esteemed guests…
— want to pretend that there aren’t plenty of well-qualified scientists on both sides of this issue;
— would rather recite dogma than accept that, in contradiction to what we were told to expect, the actual data show that the poles are gaining, not losing ice, that the seas are rising at a sedate 1 to 3 mm a year (i.e., far less than they were in the earlier days of this interglacial period, and again, far less than we were told to expect), and that there has been no statistically significant warming for almost 19 years now;
— prefer not to acknowledge that, so far, every major prediction of the computer models we’ve been commanded to accept as “settled science” has been wrong, and in most cases glaringly, egregiously wrong;
— fail, moreover, to understand that there is not now, and never has been, any such thing as “settled science”, and that when it comes to this new, secular religion we’re all supposed to kneel to there is a great deal more in play behind the scenes than mere “science”, settled or otherwise — including powerful academic, financial, political, and ideological vested interests;
…then who am I to intrude on such true belief, and such grateful, slack-brained submission to party-line thralldom, with mere evidence? After all, truth is always the first casualty of Leftism, and the powers of darkness must always, first and foremost, block out the light.
So why bother?
I am pretty sure you have pointed all of this out before, Malcolm. At least seven times. Your patience for your esteemed guest’s drudgery is extraordinary. I hope he appreciates what a steadfast friend you are.