Science Vortex

Sure, the current deep freeze isn't proof that man-made global warming theories are wrong. But rising temperatures don't prove human activity drives warming. And 16 years of flat temperatures don't prove global warming is real, either.

Fine. Fine. Weather is not climate:

Tuesday’s polar vortex has set off a new round in one of the world’s most predictable disputes: Does Extreme Weather Event X prove or disprove climate change?

In short: No.

I wish authors would be so quick to classify hot streaks in the summer as weather, too.

But he's right. This polar vortex doesn't disprove global warming theories that man is driving weather changes.

But it also needs to be said to global warmers that it doesn't prove global warming. Yes, there are believers who say this is so. Any extreme weather proves global warming, they say, conveniently making it impossible to disprove their belief.

Given that man keeps pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, that the models say increased CO2 will increase global temperatures, and that we are still coming out of the Little Ice Age which--all other things being equal--should feature rising temperatures, doesn't a decade and a half of flat global temperatures at least tell us that man's contribution to a couple centuries of generally rising temperatures (many of us alive today did experience decades of decline from the 1940s to 1970s, remember--despite CO2) isn't the decisive component of the rise?

I don't know why the global warmers are so fixated on what we do. If rising temperatures are bad, they are bad whether we are responsible or the planet is responsible, no?

So why shackle themselves so tightly to the CO2 cause? Simply study the issue until the models actually work and stop trying to force the data to prove the point you want to make--that man is guilty of the heresy of modernity and must sin no more to prevent Hell on Earth.

As long as I'm wishing for things, I wish the climate scientists would take a stab at telling us just what the ideal global temperature is. As long as we're supposed to cripple our economy and restrict our freedom to adjust the temperature, you'd think that this trivial fact would be good to know.

Of course, if this is all just a religion masquerading as science and you want to continue debating how many carbon atoms fit on the head of a pin a carbon offset credit, well, go and emit no more.

Hell, sing your praises! It's a free country.