"The Long Consensus On Climate Change"

This is funny!

Liberals: A very modest proposal
By Burt Prelutsky
Monday, March 12, 2007

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My friend Pat Sajak recently made an excellent point. He said that inasmuch as he doesn’t take global warming to heart, he sees no good reason to alter his life style. However, he wonders why those who are insisting they can feel the rising ocean lapping at their ankles don’t take drastic action to alter theirs.

He’s right, of course. I mean, assuming you are one of those people who actually has faith in U.N. reports and really believes that man controls the earth’s thermostat, wouldn’t you have to shape up? I mean, wouldn’t you think these worrywarts would all begin riding bicycles and start wearing their snow suits to bed? It’s damn hard taking their “The End is Near†placards seriously when they’re driving their Hummers to and from the demonstrations.



House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., discusses the House Democrats' "U. S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health and Iraq Accountability Act " during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, March 8, 2007. Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., left, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis., right, flank Pelosi. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) Consider Al Gore, the man who could give Chicken Little lessons in panic and hysteria. As ominous as global warming is, it obviously hasn’t done anything to spoil his appetite. And why, when he isn’t shrieking into a microphone, doesn’t he look terrified? If you thought that, say, a giant comet was hurtling at the earth or a dozen nuclear bombs were set to explode, would be you be grinning and saying “Cheese†to every camera pointed in your direction?

The thing about liberals is that they’re always telling the rest of us how to live and then, oh so conveniently, ignoring their own advice. Take such professional busybodies as Arianna Huffington and Bobby Kennedy, Jr., for instance. She excoriates people who drive SUVs while she and her two tots live in a mansion that I can guarantee sucks up BTUs at a rate that would make your head spin. As for Mr. Kennedy, who spends his life screaming about what the rest of us are doing to destroy the ozone layer, he’s constantly gadding about on private jets.

Let us not forget that other holier-than-thou character, Michael Moore, who has also sworn off commercial airlines in favor of corporate aircraft.

Of course, that brings us to her royal highness, Nancy Pelosi, non-stop Speaker of the House. First off, she insisted on an upgrade to a larger military jet than the one her predecessor had. She wanted one with a private bedroom, a kitchen, and room for her entire family -- second cousins included -- on a jet that was capable of flying non-stop from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco.

When some people began to question the need she had for this airborne palace, she insisted that rabble-rousers were only raising a stink because she was a woman. Poor dear! She had no sooner lifted that marble ceiling all by her wonderful self, and here it came crashing down on her tiara!

Personally, I think she should have the largest plane the military has available. As I see it, they’ll need a jumbo jet just to get Pelosi’s ego airborne.

What’s interesting about global warming is how quickly the Left added it to their manifesto, right along with pacifism, affirmative action, bi-lingual education, open borders, and outlawing gun ownership. What makes global warming such a joke is the way that the same liberals who know even less about climatology than I know about 18th century Romanian poetry are trying to pass themselves off as science experts. As Michael Crichton pointed out, when folks start talking about consensus among scientists, they’re talking politics, not science. Nobody goes around claiming there’s a consensus of experts when it comes to the laws of thermodynamics or asks the U.N. to decide if there’s any validity to DNA. Only with global warming are we supposed to put it to a vote, and then abide by the results of a fixed election.

 

Wow you are quoting Michael Crichton? That really gives your post the credibility it needed

...however I agree that change has to come from within. That is the only way to achieve a sustainable result. With that comes the courage to stick to ones conviction. So let me make a broad statement. All of us conservatives and liberals reading and posting to this board, have most likely a larger effect on global climate change in the right direction, then any politician, author or other well paid speaker that travels the global to proof their opinions, pro or con to the GW, GCC or whatever you want to call it.

Here is to making a permanent change into the right direction, one Prius at the time!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Mar 12 2007, 08:48 PM) [snapback]404578[/snapback]</div>

So the author of this article is stating that scientist were saying in the mid-60's that Global Warming was due to man made greenhouse gases, specifically CO2 and that we had better change our ways? Very entertaining but also pretty dubious as temps were going down during that decade as they did the prior 20 years before and would continue to do so for another decade at least and scientist were almost all saying that another ice age was just upon us if we didn’t change our ways. :lol:

Wildkow

p.s. “The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proven to have their counterparts in the world of fact.†J.T.

 

I think what the scoffers need to keep in mind is....the wolf eventually ate the sheep.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 12 2007, 10:59 PM) [snapback]404665[/snapback]</div>

I think the little boy that cried "Wolf" is a little more apt here.

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930's the media pedaled a coming ice age.

From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.

Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/tgr092606.htm

Wildkow

 

The wolf eventually ate the sheep.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Mar 12 2007, 10:14 PM) [snapback]404643[/snapback]</div>

I wonder how much had to due with aerosols which cause solar insolation to decrease and thus the temp goes down. Search the INDOEX experiment.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Godiva @ Mar 12 2007, 11:12 PM) [snapback]404670[/snapback]</div>

The Wolf is a figment of the little boys imagination the sheeple that believe in GW are ok sleep tight don’t let the bedbugs bite.

Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Wildkow @ Mar 12 2007, 10:14 PM) [snapback]404643[/snapback]</div>

Well there you go facts that the GW Sheeple don't have a glib retort for.

Wildkow

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mirza @ Mar 15 2007, 09:44 AM) [snapback]406026[/snapback]</div>

Are you saying the prevailing scientific thought in the mid-1970's was not saying there was a coming ice-age or global cooling?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(malorn @ Mar 15 2007, 02:55 PM) [snapback]406030[/snapback]</div>

Absolutely not. That's what's known as a "lie". Just the sort of thing the deniers make up to try and muddy the waters.

As ever, there is a grain of truth in it - enough to fool a lot of people.

Back in the 1970s there were a few papers, which the popular press immediately latched on to. In other words, it was much akin to all the usual "red wine is good for you"/"bad for you" you get regularly. There was no consensus at all. And certainly no claimed certainty there was going to be a sudden impact in the next couple of hundred years.

This in no way compares to the huge amount of research and supporting evidence for global warming, and the massive body of work from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Now, the cooling trend from the 40s to 70s was largely caused by the emissions of aerosol pollutions into the atmosphere. It's now known that this served to largely mask the heating effect of the CO2 emissions, meaning that the effects of the CO2 were being underestimated.

And, yes, if we weren't spewing out gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, there would be a gradual cooling due to natural cycles. But the difference is like that between a ball gradually rolling down a shallow hill on its own suddenly being kicked back up the hill. The problem isn't so much that the climate is changing - it's that its changing incredibly fast.

For more discussion, see RealClimate.