I've ranted about this a few times here using the thin pretext that since foreign countries bash us, it is vaguely a foreign affairs issue. (See here, here, and here)
So let me quote (via the Weekly Standard newsletter) this article:
For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.
Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?
I want the global warming fanatics to hear one thing at the moment:
Under the presidency of President George Bush, the temperature of the globe has not increased.
Heh.
For the record, let me repeat my basic philosophy on the issue:
I don't assume we are experiencing a general warming based on a mere century of purported data;I don't assume we have caused whatever increase there is;
I don't assume that the Left's so-called solutions will work;
I sure as heck don't think we can afford them and should look to cope rather than halt any warming;
And finally, until the global warmers can tell me what the planet's ideal temperature is, I don't know why we should move Heaven and Earth to prevent the planet from getting warmer for now (even if it is within our capabilities). We've had different temperatures over human history, so I don't know why a little warmer is necessarily a catastrophe--isn't that a little time centric? If the Left ever goes back to warning us about a new ice age, they might want us to pump CO2 back into the atmosphere.
But for the moment, I shall enjoy the fact that for the last seven years, the global temperature has not actually increased despite the constant bleating about how hot our summers have been lately and how that proves the global warming theory, cause, and solutions offered by the Left to stop it.
