You Can Say This For The 1,000th Time. It'll Still Be Wrong.

In Sunday's Warming to the Inconvenient Facts, the Post's Michael Grunwald misrepresents, as current fashion dictates, the degree to which there's a scientific consensus on global warming, and what the consensus is about. I'd summarize the rational case this way: Average temperatures may well have risen in recent years. There have been far warmer and colder periods during pre-industrial  periods. We don't understand our role in climate change and the extent to which we can alter it.

The Op-Ed does provide at least one benefit, showing how many on the global-warming bandwagon want radical changes across society. Grunwald's premise is false, but he's honest about what he's asking for:

The problem is, most scientists now believe dramatic action is necessary to prevent a climate catastrophe. They warn that unless humans can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent, global warming could threaten the habitability of the earth. That's the inconvenient part of "An Inconvenient Truth." And when Gore's critics complain that such drastic reductions would require an assault on our way of life, they're telling the truth, too.

If our get-serious rhetoric on climate change were to be more than a new form of low-carbon emissions, we would have to change not only the way we live and the way we drive, but the way we think about political issues. And not only the politics of energy and the environment. If the scientists are right about an apocalyptic future of floods, droughts, dead coral reefs, rising sea levels and advancing deserts, global warming is an existential threat that should affect our approach to just about every issue. To take it seriously, we would have to change the way we think about transportation, agriculture, development, water resources, natural disasters, foreign relations and more.

Kumbaya. Ken Shepard at the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute notes some of Grunwald's past work, including a 2003 piece saying "many scientists believe" that 40 million Africans were facing the possibility of starvation, supposedly the result of changes in climate linked to global warming. Is Grunwald still working as a straight reporter? Because this is pretty strong stuff. As Shepard says about Grunwald's global-warming Op-Ed and a related piece on the glories of Al Gore:

It’s a slow news day and you’re an environment reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper. What do you do to kill time before your bicycle ride home? If you’re The Washington Post’s Michael Grunwald, you might pen a couple opinion pieces telling your readers they are destroying the Earth and that Al Gore can help save it with another vice presidency.

The latter a reference to Another Kind of Gore '08 Bandwagon. You're on your own with that one, but hopefully it's more reliable than the global-warming piece and its claim that "most scientists" think we need to reduce greenhouse emissions by 70% to avoid killing the planet.

It's possible that "most scientists" believe dramatic action is called for, but remember that many of the alarmist documents flying around are signed by scientists whose expertise is unrelated to climatology. I'll go with groups like the 60 scientists who informed Canadian PM Stephen Harper about the limits of current knowledge. Via Les Jones:

As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government's climate-change plans....

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based. Even if the climate models were realistic, the environmental impact of Canada delaying implementation of Kyoto or other greenhouse-gas reduction schemes, pending completion of consultations, would be insignificant. Directing your government to convene balanced, open hearings as soon as possible would be a most prudent and responsible course of action.

While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formulation. The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an "emerging science," one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary....

Kyoto being one of the most ridiculous iniatives in recent history, requiring a massive upheaval in Western economies to produce a minuscule reduction in greenhouse gasses to be completely overwhelmed by non-signatories including China and India. Well played, my green friends. Well played.

More commentary and excellent link pointers at Red State.

Comments

[Erin Leadkip]

Think about this.

If temperature goes up 3 degrees without human interaction, do you think adding a few more degrees with our economic exhaust will matter? Probably. But temps will still go up 3 degrees, so WHY BOTHER?

Until it is 100% proven that my beachfront house in Palm Beach won't become a submarine if I stop spraying my yard with DDT, I'll keep driving my coal burning car and punching holes in air conditioning compressors to release their freon gasses.

Remember, nothing we do to the "environment" really matters. IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!

Tell me, since when did GREED and ABUSE become bad words???? When will my neighbors leave me alone????????