Global Warming: If you don’t have good science, lose the science you have

One thing you can say about global warming climate change alarmists is that (like all leftists), they are almost amusingly utilitarian, i.e. they will do or say anything to reach their goals, even if their goals are based on a concept that has no foundation.  Actually, that’s not fair.  It’s not that their goals have no foundation; it’s that their goals and the foundations are not what they claim.


For example, I’m sure there are a few global warming alarmists who really do believe the planet is warming and the end of the world is nigh.  However, far more of them are simply anti-capitalists and big-government supporters and rent-seekers trying to gain wealth or power through psuedo-science.


As we all know, the public is becoming increasingly skeptical of global warming claims (not least because none of the major alarmist claims are true) and of the cost to address the non-problem.


President Obama spoke at the UN Climate Change summit last week and offered some of the same tired mythology that we hear from Algore, James Hansen, and other self-serving scare-mongers.  In particular, he talked about a warming planet, rising seas, and increasing storm intensity.


However, as the data show, the planet hasn’t warmed since about 1998 and has cooled since 2002.  Sea levels are barely rising…to the tiny extent they are rising, it is much slower than in prior history.  Also, “hurricane intensity is at its lowest since satellite monitoring began” and there is no evidence that droughts have been getting worse.  In fact, in recent years, the planet has been getter greener, not dryer.


That’s the counter-alarmist side: The ACTUAL DATA show that the alarmists are wrong, not to mention the fundamental fact that they try to blame climate change on human-produced CO2 even though the data show that atmospheric CO2 concentrations primarily change AFTER, not before, temperature changes.  In other words, a warmer climate releases more CO2 into the atmosphere.


So, what do you do if you’re an alarmist researcher and you realize that you’re losing the argument (and maybe the road to easy lifetime funding)?  Apparently you lose the data which you collected with other scientists might be able to use to disprove your claims.


In a remarkable story, climate scientist (and rather funny guy) Pat Michaels tells us the story of how “The Dog Ate Global Warming“, recounting how some of the people who had the oldest temperature sensor data in existence now say the data is gone, but only after asking one scientist who had requested the data “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”


To quote Michaels: “Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to ‘try and find something wrong.’ The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.”


As I said, it’s not surprising that the alarmists will cheat, lie, and destroy data to protect their precious government funding, their path toward regulating absolutely everything and taxing absolutely everything, and their rent-seeking behavior (not least by Algore.)


The public is slowly but surely catching on.  Skepticism about people causing climate change is rising. In a Gallup survey earlier this year, two interesting highlights:



  • Among all environmental issues, global warming was the one people cared about least

  • The percentage of Americans who think the threat of global warming is exaggerated is at its highest level ever, and far exceeds the number who think the threat is underestimated, by 41% to 28%

A new Rasmussen poll shows that 65% of Americans believe creating jobs is more important than trying to stop global warming (as if stopping climate change is possible, anyway.)  The rest of the poll is also interesting to read, for those of you interested in such things.


And separately, polls consistently show that support for climate change legislation or renewable energy mandates falls off a cliff when people learn how much their energy prices will rise if those things pass.


Americans are not stupid.  They’re just mislead consistently by their (primarily Democrat) leaders and by the leftist media who love the idea of government regulation of everything (except of them, of course.)