"Global Warming Heats Up
The public could use an honest debate.
By Pete du Pont
Feb. 27, 2014 3:24 p.m. ET
Global warming is back. Not actual global warming, as the decade-long trend of little to no increase in temperatures continues. But the topic of global warming is back in the news. From Secretary of State John Kerry's recent climate comments in Jakarta to the White House's 2014 "year of action" plan on carbon emissions, global warming has garnered more ink and pixels than we've seen in a while.
It's an open question whether this renewed emphasis reflects sincere concern about global warming or is just the Obama administration playing to part of its base prior to the midterm elections. Either way, the White House and the eco-left must be disappointed by polls that continue to show Americans do not share their sense of urgency. Even though many believe some warming exists and is at least partly anthropogenic, the vast majority consider it a low priority. In a January Pew Research poll, climate change was ranked 19th out of 20 items for the president and Congress to address.
The warming alarmists might earn more support if they acted less like they had something to hide and actually allowed open debate. Perhaps they could respond to their critics rationally instead of reflexively branding them heretics, suitable for whatever is the modern university and research center equivalent of burning at the stake. Real science does not fear those who challenge it, does not work to have challengers' articles banned from science journals, and does not compare skeptics to Holocaust deniers or, as Mr. Kerry did in Jakarta, members of the "Flat Earth Society."...
I remember when the press was telling me the ski resorts were really concerned if their business model was even viable anymore. It would be too warm for snow, even artificial snow. More alarmist nonsense it looks like. Very good ski year marred only by the inability of people to get to the ski resorts because of excess snow.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
I can explain it to you but I can't understand it for you.
"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian." - Henry Ford
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges; When the Republic is at its most corrupt the laws are most numerous. - Publius Cornelius Tacitus
This is just how desperate these people are to change the subject, to divert our eyes from the stagnant economy and the government program from hell. Stimuls #1 was for "shovel ready" jobs and the next one will be for firing up the professional Chicken Littles with lab coats. If the polls say the people don't consider climate change as a high priority, then you know damn well THIS government will find a way to convince us, no matter how much the mass indoctrination costs us. Maybe they will find a way to mandate global warming education for all of us, even those of us not forced to study it in public school.
This from the article definitely sums up my thoughts exactly:
The warming alarmists might earn more support if they acted less like they had something to hide and actually allowed open debate. Perhaps they could respond to their critics rationally instead of reflexively branding them heretics, suitable for whatever is the modern university and research center equivalent of burning at the stake. Real science does not fear those who challenge it, does not work to have challengers' articles banned from science journals, and does not compare skeptics to Holocaust deniers or, as Mr. Kerry did in Jakarta, members of the "Flat Earth Society."...
This kind of judgment isn't all the different from what you get from those fine nutjobs at the Westborro Baptist Church. Granted the judgments are different, but they are made by people not willing to entertain that they could ever be wrong... "settled science" comes to mind.
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
And now Warren Buffet has said his insurance companies haven't seen an increase in claims due to global warming and he doesn't expect them to. Another case of the media over-dramatizing threats to get our attention?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
