January 12, 2005

WHERE IT'S P.C. TO SEE I.D.:

Warmed Over (Chris Mooney, Jan. 11, 2005, American Prospect)

The U.S. Senate's leading abuser of science has struck again. Not content with calling the notion of human-caused global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" (as he did in a July 2003 Senate floor speech), last week James Inhofe returned with an "update" on climate-change science. In his latest speech, timed to coincide with the final steps toward implementation of the Kyoto Protocol (which the United States won't be joining), Inhofe asserted that "put simply, man-induced global warming is an article of religious faith." Clearly, he hasn't changed his tune.

What separates Inhofe’s fixation from similar conservative crusades is just how brazenly it ignores what scientists know with confidence about global warming. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society all broadly agree on this basic point: Temperatures are rising, at least in part as a result of human greenhouse-gas emissions. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2004 was the fourth-hottest year since 1861, while the past 10 years (excepting 1996) were "among the warmest 10 years on record."

That's not all. Drawing on highly sophisticated computer models, climate scientists can project -- not predict -- how much temperatures may rise by, say, 2100 if we carry on with business as usual.


So how does that contradict Mr. Inhofe's point?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 12, 2005 12:48 PM
Comments

what scientists know with confidence

Didn't they also know w/confidence the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth?

And whatever happened to the hockeystick computations? Did the originator of the formula prove his calculations correct or not?

Posted by: Sandy P at January 12, 2005 1:39 PM

Whenever computers are involved, "highly sophisticated" is a synonym for "so complex that nobody understands it".

Posted by: Mike Earl at January 12, 2005 2:26 PM

Considering that for most of the globe, we only have halfway reliable data for the last 50 years or so, having the warmest decade on record is not difficult.

It remains cooler today than it was in the 13th century CE and certainly cooler than it was in the 3rd century CE. I do not remember reading about Vikings and Romans and their extensive use of fossil fuels and internal combustion engines.

Are these the same highly sophisticated computer models that missed a certain tidal wave a few weeks ago?

Posted by: Bart at January 12, 2005 3:46 PM

The "scientific consensus" at one time also assured us that plate tectonics was nonsense. Even if there's a consensus regarding global warming (and I don't think there really is), what does that prove?

Posted by: Matt Murphy at January 12, 2005 4:40 PM

Sandy : no. Put Monte Carlo (random) input into the hockey-stick model and a hockey stick comes out: Global Warming Bombshell

Posted by: joe shropshire at January 12, 2005 5:52 PM

Incidentally, has anyone explained another, somewhat earlier "global warming" -- the ending of the so-called Little Ice Age in the last decades of the 16th century, well before the Industrial Revolution got underway?

Posted by: Josh Silverman at January 12, 2005 8:30 PM

Incidentally, has anyone explained another, somewhat earlier "global warming" -- the ending of the so-called Little Ice Age around 1700, well before the Industrial Revolution got underway?

Posted by: Josh Silverman at January 12, 2005 8:31 PM
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