In the New Republic, someone named Bill McKibben laments the Republicans moving towards a belief that there is no man made global warming. As he puts it, the GOP wants to "ignore the scientists". So is this really mass denialism by the GOP -- or is it common sense?
For a decade now, the world has been told at every turn that it was settled science that man was causing global warming. Of course, when the earth stopped warming, the changed into man was causing climate change. When it was discovered that the basic data used to justify the global warming charge had been corrupted and manufactured in part by the folks at East Anglia University in the UK, we were told that it was no big deal -- the adjustments were inconsequential. The existence of e-mails that indicated the contrary were to be ignored -- that's what the true believers told us. When we learned that the UN body that had led the alarmist chorus had issued reports filled with mistakes like whether or not Himalayan glaciers will disappear within 35 years (the report says yes, but hte facts say no), we again were told to ignore the mistakes. when we learned that the genesis of the mistakes in this UN report upon which the world was supposed to base the adjustment of the global economy was an offhand statement in a popular magazine (not even a half baked scientific study), we were again told to ignore it. When we watched the high priests of the global warming religion (like Al Gore) use ten or twenty times the average amount of energy while at the same time profiting by the tens of millions of dollars from promoting global warming, we were also told not to pay any attention.
The fact is that anyone who today believes that there is man made global warming does so on the basis of faith not science. There is simply no reliable and unquestioned data up which to base any other conclusion. given the enormity of the proposed cures for global warming, one would think that the US government would want to be sure that there really is a problem before undertaking those cures. That would require an effort to compile and validate actual climate data spanning the last 1000 years. While this sounds like an enormous effort, it could easily be done by NASA in six months. If the folks at East Anglia explained the sources that they supposedly used in coming up with their bogus numbers, the time might even be less. All of the data could then be posted on the internet and made available for review by scientists around the world. That would be a victory for science.
Of course, no such effort is underway. Rather than determining IF there is a problem, the Obama administration and the Democrats are out there pushing for actions to solve the possibly non-existent problem. Why is that? Could it be that since the "cure" for global warming involves massive government interference in the economy and a chance for major supporters of the Democrats to make enormous profits from the "cure", that the Democrats want to move forward with this no matter the cost. Or is it that the environmental extremists are all part of the Democratic base, so the Dems are captives to the desires and beliefs of these enviro-wackos?
The simple truth is that the GOP is displaying common sense by not just going along on the basis of flawed data, flawed descriptions, flawed conclusions, and conclusions who act more from true belief than from empirical data.
As of today, no one knows if there is any truth to the statement that man is causing global warming. Many believe this to be true. A doofus like Al Gore can call it settled science, but that is about as accurate as Gore calling himself interesting. There needs to be a major effort to determine the validity of this claim. After all, if the claim is valid, we will need to have the whole world act to stop it. On the other hand, if the claim is not valid, it would be the height of stupidity to severely damage our economy to cure a problem that does not exist.
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