If anybody wants something to point to when arguing that the Great Global Warming Debate has mutated into an ideological boondoggle one need look no farther than this headline in the March 5th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Government should defend climate science
Timothy E. Wirth
Friday, March 5, 2010
That should make the point right there. If you thought the PC Police were bad, wait’ll you meet up with the Global Warming Gestapo! But, hey! What fun is shooting fish in a barrel? Everybody knows there are always tastier tidbits lurking further beneath the surface. Meme-fish. Trope-fish. Fixation-fish.
Mr. Wirth opens his article about climate science thusly and also proves himself not loaded-adjective-averse (emphasis mine — ed):
The status quo has many guardians, but the future is an orphan. From our out-of-control health care system to lax banking regulation, vested financial interests are having a field day distorting the facts in service of another year’s or decade’s profits.
Out-of-control. Lax (not the airport). Vested. All in the service of profits (shriek!!), which, from the context, one would judge that Mr. Wirth considers very naughty things indeed.
Then even shy, normally retiring modifiers become loaded under Mr. Wirth’s tutelage.
…and a few mistakes in a 3,000-page, 130-country scientific collaboration are blown grossly out of proportion to discredit the enterprise — indeed, the entire scientific process. [NOTE: OK, I’ll grant you that the entire scientific process is not a modifier; the technical term is … the-drama-queen-said.]
Where to start? How about with the entire scientific process? I don’t think anybody was discrediting the entire scientific process other than the people who were pushing an agenda and perverting the entire scientific process to do it. That’s Item One.
Item Two is that, if you have an hypothesis and anybody can break it in any way the hypothesis is invalid. That’s Scientific Method 101. You don’t need a few mistakes.
Item Three: how do you blow a mistake out of proportion? What is the proper proportion for putting falsehoods in a scientific paper?
The British scientist in the middle of November’s ClimateGate scandal says that contrary to what Al Gore and many in the media claim, the debate concerning manmade global warming is not over.
“There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well,” Phil Jones, the former head of Britain’s Climatic Research Unit told the BBC.
Then, in what some might call just pure showing-off, Mr. Wirth proves that up to now he was just teasing us, and demonstrates that when he really gets going he can be truly hilarious.
The IPCC has been one of the most important and far-reaching scientific undertakings in history, involving thousands of the world’s top scientists — who are not paid for this work.
Not paid. Thousands. And all avoiding any hint of a taint by those lurking sirens: PROFITS!
Of course, the Hindustan Times might take issue with that.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s faulty claim that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 had helped Delhi-based The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) win grants worth several million pounds, a news report in London-based Sunday Times said.
R.K. Pachauri heads both —IPCC and TERI.
We now return control of reality to you as we leave whatever planet we have visited in order to inspect the bona fides of a Global Walarmist cri de coeur.
Oh. I forgot to mention Mr. Wirth’s credentials. You remember him. The guy who wants government to MAKE us all believe in Global Warming? What, for the record, does he do?
Timothy E. Wirth is president of the United Nations Foundation.
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Tags: climate, global warming, reality
