RSS Feed MenuThe Washington Examiner may need to be renamed The Oceania Times after a brilliant bit of Orwellian doublethink. In its Monday editorial, the Washington Examiner declared both that (1) “the Earth’s average temperatures have been declining for a decade” and (2) that Europe’s cap and trade program “has been in effect for five years, yet has had no measurable effect on global temperatures.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Europe has single-handedly pulled temperature down, but you would think the Examiner could simply pick one bad argument and make it consistently, rather than jumble contradictory trains of thought.
Quickly, let’s tackle bad argument Number One. 1998 was really, really hot. The years since then have generally only been really hot. Put it all together and you end up with a ten year period from 1998 to 2008 that was the hottest decade on record. No atmospheric scientist worth his salt would ever predict a perfect stair-step ascent to higher temperatures. Climate is not the same as weather, and one year being slightly cooler than one previous does not a crumbled theory make. Longer term trends are what matter.
While I don’t agree with every policy prescription from physicist and Clinton Energy Department official Joseph Romm, he does a pretty good job of explaining the basic data here (complete with graphs). You’ll note that climate change skeptics who toot the “declining for a decade” horn never show a picture; for it would take far more than a thousand words to undo the visual damage inflicted on their weak argument.
Bad argument Number Two goes: Europe’s been doing this for five whole years and things haven’t gotten cooler yet. The response is that no one could reasonably expect five years of policy in one region of the planet to make a big dent in two centuries of rapidly rising global emission of greenhouse gases. Right now, we are just talking about slowing the increase of these pollutants in the short run.
Rudimentary knowledge of climate change, however, is apparently in short supply in many Republican quarters. Rep. Joe Barton is living up to the jokes they tell in Texas about us Aggies when he worries that those big green-power producing blades will slow down the wind. And the only word that can describe the House Minority Leader’s This Week performance on the topic is embarrassing. Surely someone in the party can speak for the 48% of Republicans and 67% of independents who believe that global warming exists — not to mention the 97% of climatologists on board?
Now even Michael Steele is getting into the act. In a recent fundraising email I received, the RNC Chairman assails the Waxman cap-and-trade bill as a massive tax without ever mentioning that the cap-and-trade concept was a Republican innovation that resulted in an important reduction in acid rain. The GOP leadership today treats “cap-and-trade” like a curse word even though our top two Republican presidential candidates, McCain and Huckabee, both favored some form of the system. There is likely much to criticize in the Democrats’ bill, as McCain himself has done. Cap-and-dividend or a carbon tax may indeed be the better way to go; yet, Steele, like Boehner, offers no alternative plan. He merely raises the t-word, forgetting that taxes can sometimes be economically necessary to account for market externalities — and global warming is the mother of all externalities.
Amazingly, the Chairman closes his appeal with a reference to Big Brother. He missed his opportunity to borrow a more appropriate motto from the author of 1984: Ignorance is Strength.
jjv // May 20, 2009 at 1:11 pm
I think most conservatives are agnostics on climate change. What we are not agnostic on is that it is lunacy to think that by electing the right people and passing the proper legislation the American government has the power to keep the planet at the “right” temperature. To state the proposition is to refute it. Electing politicians to change the weather is not a rational response to anything.
jjv // May 20, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Sinz54:Lynsenko was a scientist! So were all the eugenicists of the last century. As were the nuclear freeze scientists pushing “the Day After” to tell us we had to disarm in the face of the Soviet threat. They were right that a nuclear war could ruin your whole day but wrong on their prescription for that eventuality. What do you say to those who claim the current “cures’ for this problem are worse than the disease?
kroner // May 20, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Mike K: It’s a pretty good story, but an engineer making a mistake is not relevant to the issue. Obviously people make mistakes, but a consensus among scientists in the field of climate change can’t be chalked up to a simple mistake. You’re alleging that the members of an entire field of science are deliberately misleading people out of greed, which is absurd.The point I was making before is that if scientists were in the business of primarily padding their pockets, the entire body of work would be unreliable and therefore unusable. Every time you wanted to design something new you’d have to work out the entire knowledge base from scratch and progress would be doomed. The world we live in contradicts that. Mistakes are made along the way, but inevitably the picture becomes more refined and more accurate.If that engineer had found that the reported laws of fluid dynamics were wrong, that Bernoulli had just been making things up to gain fame and fortune, that would be something to worry about. But that’s not what happened. He was able to rely on the past body of work, even if he managed to screw up himself.
kroner // May 20, 2009 at 1:34 pm
jjv: It’s fine to argue that the prescriptions the scientists are pushing for aren’t satisfactory. Finding solutions that are politically and publicly viable isn’t really the area of expertise of a climate specialist. But that’s different than blowing off their findings as a hoax.
JJWFromME // May 20, 2009 at 1:35 pm
jjv: “Lynsenko was a scientist!”If so, only in the same sense that Dick Cheney is a marksman. He’s not known for his straight shooting. Similarly, Lynsenko–not known for his empiricism.
balconesfault // May 20, 2009 at 3:57 pm
jjv: At this point, I don’t think that anyone in the scientific community expects to halt climate change in the forseeable future. But there are likely actions we can take to slow the rate of climate change.That is important, because many of the effects that we’re going to see will require relocations of populations, and some large infrastructure projects, not to mention some species adaptations. If climate change takes occurs too quickly, the problems that arise will hit us too quickly, and cause much greater levels of instability. Slowing the process will allow more time for planning and action.
Mike K // May 20, 2009 at 4:12 pm
“If that engineer had found that the reported laws of fluid dynamics were wrong, that Bernoulli had just been making things up to gain fame and fortune, that would be something to worry about.”There are no “laws” of global warming. There are correlations and there are simple models like water vapor and infra red but the models being used to turn the world economy upside down have never predicted anything.We do have some experience with previous similar attempts at modeling the future. Paul Ehrlich, in the 70s, predicted famine in the 90s world wide. It didn’t happen. Obama’s science advisor has a history with Ehrlich and has never dissociated himself from that farcical episode.I am not implying greed on the part of the scientists. There is a group-think going on and I know of examples where climate projects that did NOT fit the current consensus were simply not funded. If you want to get a grant, you had better choose the right subject. Years ago, when I was working in marine biology while a pre-med, a friend told me his rule about research. “Find a place you want to go; find a creature that is found only there; and become an expert on it.He later became the world expert on venomous sea animals. He loved SCUBA diving.I have a feeling that you have not spent much time around scientists.
Churl // May 21, 2009 at 2:28 am
JJWFromME , you are correct, the point I wanted to make is that the models are used to predict future weather and provide much of the justification for draconian carbon reduction proposals.I believe that the neither the accuracy of the models nor the quality of the data that supports them are sufficient to justify the negative economic impact of these proposals.Balconesfault: “Scientists enter the study of science not because they dream of grants, or tenured positions, but because they believe in what they’re doing.” I’d like to see evidence to support the assertion that scientists, as a group, are any less driven by human nature than the rest of humanity.Can you point to any profession people join because the majority of them do NOT believe in what they are doing?
balconesfault // May 21, 2009 at 7:55 am
Mike – before you rag on Ehrlich – note that in the late 60’s, the global fertility rate was about 5 infants per woman. By the early 90’s, this had dropped to 3 infants per woman.The “doomsaying” of people like Ehrlich resulted in fairly aggressive action globally, including many Western nations moving rapidly towards ZPG, China’s draconian 1-child policies, and aggressive education campaigns across the 3rd world to sell the idea that huge families are now a liabililty and not added security, as was traditionally believed.Had the world maintained the fertility rates from the 60’s for the following decades, would we have been likely to had encountered massive famines? You betcha.
Mike K // May 21, 2009 at 8:34 am
Global fertility rates have actually followed a pattern that shows prosperity and better public health leads to a decline as parents learn that children will survive. Also, the era of human and animal power ended only 150 years ago. The production of children was an important source of energy in agriculture. Ehrich should have known this by 1960.The overshoot in the drop in fertility, probably stimulated by socialist policies in Europe and by tyranny in China, will result in population collapse in older societies. It is the subject of Mark Steyn’s book. I had five kids because I felt someone had to produce taxpayers. Being now involved in educating the fifth one, I can certainly understand the European instinct to party instead of raise children.Russia will disappear in two generations as a result of the precipitous drop in male life expectancy and birth rates. Italy is not far behind. The hope that Muslim immigrants would assimilate and become “Europeans” seems to be futile. Our Mexican immigrants, a large share anyway, seem far more likely to assimilate if the agitators will leave them alone but there is a huge uneducated segment that will be a drain for a generation or two. We have got to fix education or it will be two or three generations.Lomborg has an interesting op-ed today in the WSJ that points out which side “greed” is supporting in the climate wars.
Mike K // May 21, 2009 at 8:36 am
If you are interested in China, a new book by George Freidman, CEO of Stratfor.com, has a section on China suggesting that they will fall short of their ambitions, partly because of the one-child policy.
sinz54 // May 21, 2009 at 9:04 am
Mike K: Increasing affluence will slow population growth in India and China, but they’re already starting from a huge current population.For your edification, here is a cartogram that’s a map of the world with countries weighted by population in the year 2050:http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=11There is a wealth of other information available at that website.Greenhouse gases:http://www.worldmapper.org/display.php?selected=299
sinz54 // May 21, 2009 at 9:08 am
jjv: The point about Lysenko was that Stalin elevated Lysenko’s crackpot theories to official dogma–and geneticists who were doing real science that contradicted Lysenko’s theories were sent to the GULAG.Stalin chose to ignore the vast majority of geneticists and go with Lysenko, because Lysenko’s theories were crudely compatible with prior Marxist dogma.The lesson here is that a Government chose to take an arbitrary stand on a scientific THEORY, and purge all those who disagreed.Government should fund science, but Government should NEVER dictate the results of science.If tomorrow, scientists discovered that laptop computers cause cancer, we should not dismiss them just because we don’t like what they’re saying. We should either find a way to minimize the risk of cancer–or else just stop using laptops altogether.Just like Americans stopped smoking after they found it it caused cancer.
barker13 // May 21, 2009 at 11:55 am
Re: Balconesfault; 7:55 AM –Arguing uchronie, now, are we?(*GRIN*)Cutting to the chase… Ehrlich gets the gong.(*WINK*)BTW… China’s “one child policy” had no more to do with “saving the planet” than did Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” actually move China… er… forward.Now… let’s stay on topic.Re: Sinz54; 9:04 AM –”…in the year 2050…”Time will tell, Sinz. http://www.worldmapper.org/about_us.htmlNot knocking ‘em, Sinz… just noting… five academic colleagues from the same university plus “Mark from Michigan.”Hey… I’m not saying I’d wanna debate ANYTHING with folks as obviously accomplished as these… but 41 years away is still… er… 41 years away.(*SHRUG*)”Just like Americans stopped smoking after they found it it caused cancer.”(*LAUGHING MY BUTT OFF*)Oh, Sinz… I love it when you show a sense of humor!BILL