The Climate Science Isn't Settled

While I acknowledge that it is actually a much bigger story than a golfer getting in a fender bender, I haven't weighed in on Climate-gate (or climaquidick as some call it) because Anthropogenic Global Warming has been so thoroughly discredited that the only fools who still believe in it are those (like Newsweak's Eleanor Clift) who view it from a faith basis just as normal people view their religious beliefs. However, their are some folks in positions of power (Like White House spokesman "Bagdad Bob" Gibbs) who are clinging to the defense mechanism of "it's settled science" in an attempt to squelch disagreement.

Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal titled "The Climate Science Isn't Settled." Unlike most articles on the subject which are written by journalists who fall for the party line because they have no real scientific knowledge or experience, this column is penned by Richard Lindzen who is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Don't know about the rest of you guys but I'll listen to Professor Lindzen a little more closely than to Eleanor Clift. He speaks common sense. Here is a taste:

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

When people are trying to get you alarmed about a problem and claiming massive actions and changes are required to avoid a catastrophe watch your wallet.