I enjoyed this:
The core trait of a scientific mind is that when its commitments clash with evidence, evidence rules. On that count, what grade do liberals deserve? Fail, given their reaction to the latest evidence on universal health care, global warming and universal preschool.
I am skeptical about global warming based on what I read about the science and how the pro-warming side treats questions--as if it was heresy. I don't read the actual science (any more than those who believe in it do). I'm not educated enough in the science to do that. But I can still evaluate those who present the evidence, and I'm not impressed. Revealed internal communications of the pro-warming scientists did not increase my confidence in their data, models, conclusions, or recommendations.
Nor do the Chicken Little cries of blaming global warming for anything and everything inspire my confidence in either the science or those who preen themselves on being on the side of science.
Perhaps I'm fooling myself, but I do like to believe that if the warming side could present sufficient evidence, that I would change my mind to conform to the evidence. Perhaps I could not, but the article shows that my potential failure on that issue is merely theoretical while the failure of the other side of the aisle to practice scientific thinking is not merely theoretical.
Again, I'm not convinced that being warmer than several decades ago (and we're in a decade-and-a-half plateau right now) is significant enough in the long history of climate to be significant. I'm not even confident that the data that uses sometimes flimsy proxies for past global temperatures is solid enough to determine that our recent decades are that significant. And I'm not confident that the models are accurate enough to predict the future.
While people are obviously responsible for the added carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere, I'm not confident that CO2 is as central to global temperatures as the warmists claim. There are lots of factors that contribute. If it was central, shouldn't global temperatures have gone up all this time as the models predicted? Even if temperatures are going up, how much confidence is there that we are responsible given all the inputs for our climate?
And even if temperatures will rise, why is the temperature of our recent past so ideal that we should do whatever it takes to defend it? Isn't it odd that we live in precisely the time when global temperatures are ideal? That isn't a little suspiciously convenient? What if the ideal temperature is 5 degrees warmer? Or 5 degrees cooler? I'd love to hear the science on that question.
Nor am I convinced that the solutions to the problem--if true--are the answer. Isn't it suspicious that the solutions lead to more government control of our economies and lives that have the result of wrecking economic growth? Isn't it convenient for the left to have a global problem that has as its solution the very level of government, form of society, and control of the economy that they'd want if there was no global warming?
The last is really key for me. I believe I can be persuaded that the data integrity, models, and causation can be nailed down sufficiently for me to believe that temperatures are going up (and will continue to go up), that we are responsible, and that this is a problem (whether it is our fault or not).
What the warmers will have trouble convincing me of is that they have any clue about solutions to resolve the problem. If even a quarter of the warmists came out and argued that autocratic government and lack of freedom are the problem causing carbon emissions (see China's current environmental problems and note that the European Union is meeting their goals for carbon emission reductions largely on the back of deactivated Soviet-era heavy industries in former Warsaw Pact nations) and that a crash program of nuclear power plant construction is the only way to combat carbon emissions, I'll believe they are letting science guide their beliefs. (Heck, I'd settle for them being happy with natural gas use growth that is an improvement carbon-wise over coal and oil, rather than bitterly opposing it)
Really, which side of the global warming issue believes in science and which side believes in acting like they believe in science?
