Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The Week in Denialism


Ken Green has discovered shocking new proof that climate modeling is inaccurate:

Gore claims that “Recent evidence shows the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us...”

Isn’t this, in effect, an admission that scientists with computer models can’t predict the future?
Touché, I guess.

If you've been dying to know what Pat Boone thinks about climate change, your wait is over:
Some months ago, while driving back home from an engagement, I became fascinated with George Noory's late-night radio interview with a solar physicist, one of a number of very dedicated scientists who actually watch and analyze the sun itself, and its ongoing powerful effects on planet earth....

[W]hile the main topic of discussion on Noory's program that night was the remarkable list of prophecies recorded by ancient Aztecs from centuries ago -- gleaned somehow from their study and even worship of the sun -- the guest scientist brought up the concern solar physicists share about "new, unexplained activity and disturbances" on the surface of that giant fireball in space!
As far as I can tell, Boone is talking about John Jay Harper, a clinical hynotherapist who has written a book called 2012: Fact or Myth? At the risk of shocking you, a search of Noory's site doesn't turn up any guests who qualify as solar physicists. Perhaps a careful survey of Aztec calendar stones can explain this anomaly.

One of the things that impressed Boone about this so-called physicist was his habit of speaking "assertively," as thus:
"Men's actions can and do affect his local environment, but neither man nor machine is powerful enough to seriously disturb our global ecology or our weather patterns."
Evidently, there's some physical mechanism that prevents myriad, ongoing local effects from having global ones. Maybe Noory's guest can win this year's Nobel prize in physics by telling us what it is.

Boone's column is worth noting mainly because it allows us to contrast his genial idiocy with the black-hearted dishonesty of the Wall Street Journal:
No one disputes that higher temperatures in the bear's Arctic habitat have disrupted the sea ice that bears use to catch food and breed. The problem is that polar bear populations have been rising over the last four decades, and may now be at an historic high. This is the result of conservation management, including international agreements on trophy hunting and federal safeguards like the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Why is this a "problem"? Because as usual, the gimlet-eyed scourges of "junk science" find it inconceivable that polar bears could simultaneously be rebounding from overhunting, and be threatened by loss of habitat.

This editorial also introduces us to the pejorative term "warmists," which apparently refers to people who agree with the WSJ "that higher temperatures in the bear's Arctic habitat have disrupted the sea ice that bears use to catch food and breed."

The term probably doesn't apply to U.S. trade rep Susan Schwab, who complains that climate change is being used as a pretext for protectionism:
"We have been dismayed at a variety of suggestions where we have seen the climate and the environment being used as an excuse to close markets," Schwab said.....
If we lived in some science-fiction world where it was possible for human activities to have an effect on the climate and environment, I suppose there could be another explanation. But as we don't....

(Illustration from The World Turned Upside Down, or No News, and Strange News, circa 1820.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hooray, you haven't totally disappeared!

Phila said...

I had to wait for car repairs yesterday, so I had a bit of leisure time!

I'm moving again, so things are hectic. But who knows...maybe I'll be able to get more done than I think...

chris said...

Friday Flabellin rubrolineata.
Perhaps someone could contribute a little ode to this fantabulous creature.
Hope this helps, good luck with the move.

Anonymous said...

"...an admission that scientists with computer models can’t predict the future?"

And the fact that the Bush administration has proved to be far worse than people imagined means that we were completely wrong about him!