[asa] What's so hot about fickle science?

There are some great links and comments in the
thread below. My main comment is here (# 45)
---- for those interested. :)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1778980/posts?page=45#45

Then I have a couple other comments here (# 50 and 52):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1778980/posts?page=50#50
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1778980/posts?page=52#52

~ Janice

Mark Steyn: What's so hot about fickle science?
Chicago Sun Times ^ | February 4, 2007 | Mark Steyn
Posted on 02/04/2007 7:48:09 AM EST by Tom D.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1778980/posts [refresh browser]

 From the "Environmental News Network": "Science
Is Solid on Climate Change, Congress Told." "The
science is solid," says Louise Frechette, deputy
secretary-general of the United Nations.

"The science is solid," says Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

"The science is really solid," says TV
meteorologist Heidi Cullen. "The science is very solid."

And at that point, on "Larry King Live" last
week, Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric
science at MIT, remarked: "Heidi says the science
is solid and I can't criticize her because she
never says what science she's talking about."

Indeed. If the science is so solid, maybe they
could drag it out to the Arctic for the poor
polar bears to live on now that the ice is
melting faster than a coed's heart at an Al Gore lecture.

Alas, the science isn't so solid. In the '70s, it
was predicting a new ice age. Then it switched to
global warming. Now it prefers "climate change."
If it's hot, that's a sign of "climate change."
If it's cold, that's a sign of "climate change."
If it's 53 with sunny periods and light showers,
you need to grab an overnight bag and get outta
there right now because "climate change" is accelerating out of control.

The silliest argument is the anecdotal one: "You
only have to look outside your window to see that
climate change is happening." Outside my window
in northern New England last week, it was minus
20 Fahrenheit. Very cold. Must be the old climate
change kicking in, right? After all, December was
very mild. Which was itself a sign of climate
change. A few years ago, the little old lady who
served as my town's historian for many decades
combed over the farmers' diaries from two
centuries ago that various neighbors had donated
to her: From the daily records of 15 Januarys,
she concluded that three were what we'd now
regard as classic New Hampshire winters, ideal
for lumbering or winter sports; eight had January
thaws, and four had no snow at all. This was in
the pre-industrial 18th century.

Today, faced with eight thaws and four entirely
snowless Januarys, we'd all be running around
shrieking that the great Gaia is displeased. Wake
up and smell the CO2, people! We need to toss
another virgin into the volcano. A virgin SUV,
that is. Brand-new model, straight off the
assembly line, cupholders never been used. And as
the upholstery howls in agony, we natives will
stand around chanting along with High Priestess
Natalie Cole's classic recording: ''Unsustainable, that's what you are.''

As we say in the north country, if you don't like
the weather, wait five minutes. And if you don't
like the global weather, wait three decades.

For the last century or so, the planet has gone
through very teensy-weensy warming trends
followed by very teensy-weensy cooling trends
followed by very teensy-weensy warming trends, every 30 years or so.

And, even when we're in a pattern of "global
warming" or "global cooling," the phenomenon is
not universally observed -- i.e., it's not "global," or even very local.

In the Antarctic, the small Palmer peninsula has
got a little warmer but the main continent is
colder. Up north, the western Arctic's a little
warmer but the eastern Arctic's colder. So, if
you're an eastern polar bear, you're in clover --
metaphorically, I hasten to add. If you're a
western polar bear, you'll be in clover literally
in a year or two, according to AlGore.

And, if you really don't like the global weather,
wait half-a-millennium. A thousand years ago, the
Arctic was warmer than it is now.

Circa 982, Erik the Red and a bunch of other
Vikings landed in Greenland and thought, "Wow!
This land really is green! Who knew?" So they
started farming it, and were living it up for a couple of centuries.

Then the Little Ice Age showed up, and they all died.

A terrible warning to us all about "unsustainable
development": If a few hundred Vikings doing a
little light hunter-gathering can totally
unbalance the environment, imagine the havoc John
Edwards' new house must be wreaking.

The question is whether what's happening now is
just the natural give and take of the planet, as
Erik the Red and my town's early settlers understood it.

Or whether it's something so unprecedented that
we need to divert vast resources to a
transnational elite bureaucracy so that they can
do their best to cripple the global economy and
deny much of the developing world access to the
healthier and longer lives that capitalism brings.

To the eco-chondriacs that's a no-brainer. As
Mark Fenn of the Worldwide Fund for Nature says
in the new documentary ''Mine Your Own Business'':

''In Madagascar, the indicators of quality of
life are not housing. They're not nutrition,
specifically. They're not health in a lot of
cases. It's not education. A lot of children in
Fort Dauphin do not go to school because the
parents don't consider that to be important. . .
. People have no jobs, but if I could put you
with a family and you could count how many times
in a day that that family smiles. Then I put you
with a family well off, in New York or London,
and you count how many times people smile. . . .
You tell me who is rich and who is poor."

Well, if smiles are the measure of quality of
life, I'm Bill Gates; I'm laughing my head off.

Male life expectancy in Madagascar is 52.5 years.
But Mark Fenn is right: Those l'il malnourished
villagers sure look awful cute dancing up and
down when the big environmentalist activist flies
in to shoot the fund-raising video.

If "global warming" is real and if man is
responsible, why then do so many "experts" need
to rely on obviously fraudulent data?

The famous "hockey stick" graph showed the
planet's climate history as basically one long
bungalow with the Empire State Building tacked on the end. Completely false.

In evaluating industrial impact, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used
GDP estimates based on exchange rates rather than
purchasing power: As a result, they assume by the
year 2100 that not only South Africans but also
North Koreans will have a higher per capita
income than Americans. That's why the
climate-change computer models look scary.

That's how "solid" the science is: It's
predicated on the North Korean economy overtaking the United States.

Could happen. Who knows?

But that's the point: Who knows? You could take
every dime spent by every government and NGO and
eco-group to investigate "climate change" and
spend it on Internet porn instead, and it
wouldn't make the slightest difference to what the climate will be in 2050.

However, it would make a dramatic difference to
the lifestyle of the "climate change" jet set.

Which is why, even before latest new IPCC
doomsday scenario was released, the Associated
Press was running stories like: "New Climate Report Too Rosy, Experts Say."

The AP's "science writer" warns that even this
"dire report" is the "sugarcoated version." It's
insufficiently hysterical, in every sense.

© Mark Steyn 2007

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Received on Sun Feb 4 13:47:11 2007