Posted on 02/11/2010 2:02:11 PM PST by neverdem
Exaggeration and alarmism have been a chronic weakness of environmentalism since it became an organized movement in the 1960s. Every ecological problem was instantly transformed into a potential world-ending crisis, from the population bomb to the imminent resource depletion of the "limits to growth" fad of the 1970s to acid rain to ozone depletion, always with an overlay of moral condemnation of anyone who dissented from environmental correctness. With global warming, the environmental movement thought it had hit the jackpot — a crisis sufficiently long-range that it could not be falsified and broad enough to justify massive political controls on resource use at a global level. Former Colorado senator Tim Wirth was unusually candid when he remarked in the early days of the climate campaign that "we've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing — in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." (Not surprisingly, after Wirth left the Senate and the Clinton administration he ended up at the United Nations.)
The global-warming thrill ride looks to be coming to an end, undone by the same politically motivated serial exaggeration and moral preening that discredited previous apocalypses. On the heels of the East Anglia University "Climategate" scandal have come a series of embarrassing retractions from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding some of the most loudly trumpeted signs and wonders of global warming, such as the ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers would disappear within 30 years, that nearly half of the Amazon jungle was at imminent risk of destruction from a warming planet, and that there was a clear linkage between climate change and weather-related economic losses. The sources for these claims turned out to be environmental advocacy groups — not rigorous, peer-reviewed science.
To be sure, these revelations do not in and of themselves mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is false. But this is probably the beginning of a wholesale revision of the conventional wisdom on climate change. One of the central issues of Climategate — the veracity and integrity of the surface-temperature records used for our estimates of warming over the last few decades — is far from resolved. The next frontier is likely to be a fresh debate about basic climate sensitivity itself. There have been several recent peer-reviewed papers suggesting much lower climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases than the IPCC "consensus" computer models predict. And alternative explanations for observed climate change in the Arctic and elsewhere, such as shifts in ocean currents and wind patterns, should receive a second look.
Dissenters who pointed out these and other flaws in the IPCC consensus were demonized as deniers and ignored by the media, but they are now vindicated. (The American media are still averting their gaze, though the British press — even the left-wing Guardian and the Independent — is turning on the climate campaigners with deserved vengeance.) The IPCC is mumbling about non-specific reforms and changes in the process shaping its next massive climate report, due out in three or four years. The IPCC should emulate a typical feature of American government commissions and include a minority report from dissenters or scientists with a different emphasis. But the next IPCC report may not matter much: With the collapse of the Kyoto-Copenhagen process and the likely rejection of cap-and-trade in Congress, climate mania may have run its course.
NPR took this NRO staff editorial and renamed it: "National Review: Climate Change Hypocrisy."
My impression is that their intent was to label National Review with hypocrisy, but I don't know.
I don’t know who said it first, but my favorite take on the global warming/climate change movement is this:
“Green is the new Red.”
I well remember the movement that banned DDT, thereby killing millions of people by malaria. Liberals are not only stupid, they are criminally stupid.
As long as they cannot see the blood, killing millions is of no matter.
Even when they can see the blood, they don’t care, especially if they consider the murder as an exercise of “choice.”
Ground zero was Erlich’s, “The Population Bomb” and Rachel Carson’s, “Silent Spring” both flawed, but widely believed.
This is encouraging.
I'm not so sure with their new title. Read comment# 1. Some will be attracted to it because they think it's about National Review's hypocrisy, thinking it's confirming their notion of the hypocritical right. Some will ignore it because they think it confirms what they already think they know.
I want to see some coverage about climategate on PBS. They have been nauseating about global warming.
‘Climate-Change Pseudoscience is Fraught with Fraud’
*******************************EXCERPT*****************************
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Climate-Change Pseudoscience is Fraught with Fraud’ [Greg Pollowitz]
The editors of the Washington Times write:
Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global
warming fraud is without equal in modern science.The fundamental problems exposed about climate-change theory undermine the very basis of scientific inquiry. Huge numbers of researchers refuse to provide their data to other scientists. Some referenced data is found not to have existed. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change 2007 report that global warming activists continually cite invented a large number of purported facts. Consider a few of the problems with the U.N. report that came to light over the past few weeks.Washington Times article Link:
EDITORIAL: Global warming snow job
I like that title ....deserves a thread.
EDITORIAL: Global warming snow job ( IPCC and their ....ERRORS....)
Thanks for the links. I rarely check NPR unless I stumble into something. My impression was that they literally are state run media, so I was surprised to read the NRO editorial there.
later
An Editorial,...maybe the Media embargo is breaking.
Let us see what they follow up with. Besides, it appears the author still believes in AGW.
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