Tag: global warming

Categories
ideological culture

Fingernail Adjustment

The oldest method of fraud is the classic merchant’s trick of “putting finger to the scale,” in days before pre-​packaging. Buy a pound of grain? Watch the seller’s hands, make sure they’re clear of the measurement device …

Some climate scientists might have been engaging in similar rigging of measurement, in this case of the sea’s much-​prophesied rise, as FoxNews​.com reports:

The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters — or about the thickness of a fingernail — every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.

So, instead of putting a finger on the scales, they’ve put a fingernail’s worth of bias to the data.

The scientists say they have to offset for other factors in the land-​sea ratios, and, for all I know, they are correct. But in the context of the “global warming” debate it doesn’t look so good, especially when what we hear from climate change alarmists includes scant talk of complex, offsetting factors. Indeed, in that light, the repeated fingernail addition looks like a piling onto the data, to make the evidence match the prophecy.

Ideally, scientists would not ever dumb down their opinions — or skew their forecasts — to the point where we become suspicious of every complexity they add to their models.

But, as we have learned, we don’t live in an ideal world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Ice Is Also Great

We all like talking about the weather, and one reason “global warming” theory caught on was not because of the science, but because it gives us a “just-so”-type scenario to spice up any conversation.

Here on the East Coast, we’ve endured one of the snowiest winters in years. Elsewhere, the winter’s been moderate.

Must be global warming!

The tendency to make every kind of weather a paradigm-​case instance of global warming has become something of a joke. We all know that “weather is not climate,” but we’ve also heard a lot of silliness about how this or that weather proves a coming global warming catastrophe.

Al Gore almost invented the technique.

Last week a quip — a “tweet” — from Senator Jim DeMint made the rounds. He wrote that “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

Droll. But the truth remains that one cold snap does not a climate make. What counts for global climate depends on averages, highs, lows, medians, means, and all that.

Knowing this — and knowing that world climate has been much cooler than now as well as much warmer — still leaves me something of a skeptic about the notion that human civilization is the major factor.

Or that warming is altogether bad. An Ice Age, which scientists have been saying we’re overdue for, would be worse.

Brrr. Do I know!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people

Haiti on the Hot Seat

Television theologian Pat Robertson attributes Haiti’s current woes to a two-​century-​old pact:

[S]omething happened a long time ago in Haiti.… They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, “We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.” True story. And so, the devil said, “OK, it’s a deal.” … Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.…

Pact with the devil? True story??

The Haitians threw off the French long before the rule of Napoleon III … but, whatever. It is doubtful that any amount of thumbing through an encyclopedia before going on air would have saved Pat.

Soon after the Robertson clip we got the clip from actor Danny Glover. Glover says climate change caused the earthquake. Apparently, he was mad about the failed summit. “They’re all in peril because of global warming … because of climate change.… When we did what we did at the climate summit in Copenhagen, this is the response, this is what happens.…”

Hey, why not? “Global warming” causes everything! Maybe even the heated hectoring of Pat and Danny.

Where’s the common sense? 

Oh, here: This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility too much government

Global Gall

Human cells have 46 chromosomes. So all the relevant evidence tells us.

But suppose persuasive evidence emerged that human cells have, say, 48 chromosomes? And suppose hackers discovered emails by prominent biologists talking about the need to “hide the extra chromosomes”? Or to prevent other biologists from discussing the evidence for these extras?

And suppose after the scandal broke, a government agency asked biologists to sign a petition “defending the integrity of genetic science” against “skeptics”?

Hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Unit confirm that there is more deception and less unity in climate science than many have claimed. Debate about the extent of global warming and of mankind’s contribution to it intensifies. But some scientists have struggled to suppress this debate and even to hide basic climate data.

In response to the scandal, the United Kingdom’s national weather service recently asked climatologists to sign a petition saying everything is hunky-​dory in climate research and the official global-​warming paradigm. 

Hey, I like petitions, but … are we doing science here? Or politics? 

One anonymous scientist, quoted in The Times of London, explained that UK’s weather service “is a major employer of scientists and has long had a policy of only appointing and working with those who subscribe to their views on man-​made global warming.”

I think my question has been answered.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Global Warming Conspiracy?

In politics, we’re used to being lied to. But in science?

Revelations coming out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit spark such questions, and more.

Hackers have released onto the Internet confidential emails of the CRU climatologists largely responsible for the “global warming” conclusions in the famous report by the International Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC. 

The emails include ugly stuff, like researchers’ fantasies about beating up catastrophe skeptics. They also include the tricks catastrophists used to cook up their numbers.

In particular, scientists reported temperatures in the Medieval Warming Period as cooler than they were, and more recent cooling trends as warmer. Anthropogenic global warming catastrophists have engaged in a massive public fraud.

Now, you might not bat an eye were you to learn that economists associated with, say, our recent bailouts, had been fudging numbers. Trillions of dollars to spend! 

But when climate scientists get caught lying — as well as conspiring to keep their basic data secret, and hijacking the peer review process — it’s hard not to feel a bit abused. Natural scientists are supposed to be above this.

Public, open criticism is the hallmark of science. Climate researchers who stonewalled to keep their actual data hidden from critics were scuttling science. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility

Who’s Really Doing Science?

Recently, comedian and talk show host Bill Maher defended his questioning of the wisdom of mass vaccination by saying it’s “not settled science, like global warming.”

And, around the world, scientists and critical thinkers and just generally knowledgeable folks fell out of their chairs, like so many calving icebergs.

Climate science remains controversial. Maher’s trendy gambit claiming that the science has been “settled” is absurd.

To really settle the matter, a whole lot more scrutiny would be required. And the critics who have mounted attacks on the anthropogenic — “human-​caused” — hypothesis for global climate change would have to have their work considered more openly to earn any credit for the now-​dominant hypothesis.

Why? Because science is all about open, public testing. As Karl Popper explained, science is the process of conjecture and refutation. When those who criticize a theory are castigated as being unscientific simply because they criticize, science is no longer happening. Then we have pure ideology, non-​science if not pure nonsense.

Though the critics of anthropogenic global warming catastrophism often get dubbed as kooks and crazies by current scientistic prophets of doom, they are, in fact, doing the work of science. Even if they are eventually proved wrong.

And Bill Maher is no more the judge of “settled science” than I am. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t got my flu shot yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.