In the Washington Post today, Bill McKibben, President of 350.org, a climate activist group fixated on maintaining an arbitrary level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, tries to stand reality on its head. If you want a scientific consensus on climate change, here’s one: virtually every scientist will tell you that you cannot link individual weather events, or even a short-term series of events, to changes in the earth’s climate, which is measured in 30-year increments.
But that particular consensus has never set well with climate alarmists like McKibben, so he has come up with a new type of logical argumentation: argumentum ad capellum stannum, which is, (very) roughly, the argument of the tin-foil hat.
Rather than eschewing false linkages, McKibben sees them everywhere; tornadoes in Missouri, Alabama, and elsewhere must be linked to climate change. (Perhaps, it’s just tornado season?) Fires and droughts in the summer should make you think about rainfall in the spring and snowfall in the winter. And everything that isn’t average weather should make you think of climate change because, as everyone knows, historically, the weather has always been exactly average, everywhere, all of the time.
This is where paranoia starts. You’re driving to work, and you see two blue cars, of the exact same make and model. Then, you go into work, and you notice that three of your co-workers are wearing blue shirts or blouses, but you’re wearing brown. Someone jokes about a dress code memo that you didn’t get. At lunch, you see a man wearing a bowler, which, because it’s unusual, catches your attention. His lunch box is blue.
Soon, you’re seeing blue things related to bowlers everywhere. You notice that the cereal bowls in the break room are blue, but you thought they were red. You read your horoscope, and it says that you might be prone to the blues and to consider taking up bowling, but you find yourself obsessing over the fact that your bowling league uses blue bowling balls and has a blue logo. You pass a TV screen and realize they’re playing the movie Undercover Blues. You keep thinking, “I didn’t get a memo.”
That’s when it comes to you: these things, however unrelated they may seem, are really all related. You have figured it out: the blue cars were being driven by agents of the blue bowling-ball conspiracy, and your co-workers in the blue clothes and the bowler guy were in cahoots with the cereal-bowl makers, the lunch-box makers, the logo makers, the horoscope writers, the DVD makers, and, of course, the bowling ball industry. They’re all working to brainwash you into spending more money bowling. How could it be more obvious?
It’s a fine thing to see events and realize that they form a pattern. Many things in nature form patterns, since nature is a highly ordered thing by, well, its nature. But when you start taking disparate events that are not particularly unusual and you weave them together into a nefarious narrative that sounds like a bad plot from a B movie …well, it might be time for an intervention.
Having asked lots and lots of warmists claiming the support of a “scientific consensus” (including Hansen and Mann) if they can name any scientists at all who are part of this alleged “consensus” and don’t get paid by the government I have found not one of them able to produce a single verifiable instance.
One conclusion from this must be that if we had a free enterprise society there would be very few, if any, scientists supporting this fraud.
What’s paranoid is assuming that every scientist in the world, including those working in our government (and who’ve worked there throughout Democrat and Republican administrations) are part of a global conspiracy to fabricate global warming.
Here’s what the director of the National Climatic Data Center at NOAA wrote recently about extreme weather events:
I find it systematically tends to get underplayed and it often gets underplayed by my fellow scientists. Because one of the opening statements, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard is “Well you can’t attribute a single event to climate change.” But there is a systematic influence on all of these weather events now because of the fact that there is this extra water vapor lurking around in the atmosphere than there used to be say 30 years ago. It’s about a 4% extra amount, it invigorates the storms, it provides plenty of moisture for these storms and it’s unfortunate that the public is not associating these with the fact that this is one manifestation of climate change. And the prospects are that these kinds of things will only get bigger and worse in the future.
You can read more about the actual science here:
http://climateprogress.org/2011/05/02/tornadoes-extreme-weather-and-climate-change/
What a shame that conservatives, who have such a long history of, well, conservation, and free enterprise champions, who one would think could support the rise of the clean energy sector, are now so adamantly opposed to basic physics and chemistry.
That’s funny, i think the same thing about environmentalists: they USED to be all about conservation. Now they’re all about social engineering. Because, you know, EVERYTHING you do has an effect, therefore EVERY aspect of our lives if fair game for regulatory bureaucrats.
I really don’t know why the alarmists even bother anymore. Do you ever listen to yourselves? If you did, you might not be so shocked that the public doesn’t take you seriously. How many more years will need to pass without a world-ending climate apocalypse before you fold up your tent and go home, like Rev. Camping who just couldn’t figure out why Ol’ J.C. didn’t show up last week?
Neil, below, makes an excellent point. The global warming industry is driven by govt grant money, and nobody’s giving out grants to DISprove global warming. We don’t need to evoke some theory about a massive conspiracy (although certain inconveniently leaked emails provide more than a little ammo). All you need to do is follow the money. Isn’t that what you alarmists do? Any skepticism coming from private enterprise is immediately demonized because you just can’t trust those money-grubbing scoundrels. It’s “profits before people,” you scream! So, why is it any different with the alarmists? A whole generation of climate scientists has come of age living on grant money, knowing full well that only certain types of studies will garner the grant money, or be published by peer reviewed journals edited by academics who, without exception, have drunk the alarmist Kool Aid. As it stands now, expressing any dissent in academic circles is a sure career-killer. If you want to see how money corrupts the global warming debate, that’s it.
It’s a shame that tornado activity is not caused by water vapor… Niether is the severity of storms. That is caused by hot and cold air masses meeting.
If that were true wouldn’t the hurricane frequency and severity be way up too?(like you liberal AGW folks predicted, wrongly.)
Basic physics and chemistry apply to a proper context, unfortunately you applied a statement about hurricanes to a piece about tornado activity. I guess when your first prediction fails, you just get to change it… Oh yeah, that’s kind of what this post is about!
To: “Science Matters”.
1. “Every scientist in the world”???? Ever heard of the term “hyperbole”? For someone to refer to himself as “science matters”, he would first have to believe that “truth matters”. This statement is patently untrue. You have already impeached yourself. We do not have to read further.
2. To claim that the only alternative to the concept of “global warming” being an absolute fact is the concept that “a global conspiracy to fabricate global warming”, is another hyperbole. In fact, it is a straw man. An alternative concept exists, as well, as was demonstrated in the UEA e-mails: there is a group of researchers who actively suppress data that contradicts their assumptions, and that they attempt to ensure that alternative ideas cannot be published. The motivation for that is easy: grant money. Millions of dollars are currently being given away, and money has always been an attractor of the corrupt, as the UEA posters have been shown to be.
3. You and your buddies consistently attempt to ignore the current cooling cycle. It is certainly a fly in your AGW ointment. But keep whistling in the dark, my friend. You demonstrate your cupidity by buying everything that is being poured down your throat. Someone who truly believed that “science matters” would understand that scientific advance is based upon scepticism.
Anyone who discusses climate change phrases like “every scientist in the world” can be ignored.
There are a lot of top scientists that do not buy into the AGW scam. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
Science Matters says: “What a shame that conservatives, who have such a long history of, well, conservation, and free enterprise champions, who one would think could support the rise of the clean energy sector….” Uh, professor, the “clean energy sector” is anything but free enterprise. The government, providing massive subsities to “clean energy” to make people use something they wouldn’t on their own free will use, is not free enterprise. Mr. Science, again: “…..the fact that there is extra water vapor lurking aroud in the atmosphere than there was 30 years ago….it invigorates the storms….” Well. “More that 30 years ago”- you’re kidding, right? The earth is 4 billion years old. Kinda think maybe we had more (or less) water vapor sometime in all those years than we do now, don’t you think? If you are what your name says you are, than surely events happening 30 years apart do not make a “trend”. Still, I bet you were captain of your eigth grade debate team, right?