Brrr....

Be assured that there are great many individuals who are willing to look you in the eye and say with a straight face that - of course - this is exactly what global warming looks like... just what we should expect. Global warming might actually, umm... cause the planet to cool. Yeah... that's the ticket. That may be why increasing numbers of alarmists are ever so quietly moving away from using the term Global Warming in favor of the much more flexible term Climate Change. The advantage being, of course, that if you hold hold to a theory of Climate Change, you can present basically anything that happens as evidence that supports your theory.

Even such headlines as, "China Battles 'Coldest Winter in 100 Years' ".

BTW, the mean temperature of the planet has held steady for the past nine years... no warming at all. That's not to say we are not still in the midst of some trend or other. Presently, I take the bold position that the planet may or may not be warming and human activity may or may not be involved to a significant degree.

But DO panic and run in circles, anyway.

Comments

[J.R. Stoodley]

In my experience, every time it is unusually warm or unusually cold, any time there is a blizzard or there is no snow on the ground in January, people blame it on Global Warming. One supporter recently told me he is no longer sure it is a real phenominon, but thinks we should continue to say it is to the general public because it will encourage pollution reduction.

I've taken a couple college-level classes dealing this sort of subject, but I no longer think this qualifies me to say anything definitive. What I will say is that the enthusiasts are making themselves sound more and more foolish every year.

[Del]

I'm also incredulous about the Chicken Littles making political hay out of dubious science.

But... it seems intuitively obvious that pumping millions of tons of fossil fuels out of the ground (which took millions of years to collect) and burning it all in one year will PROBABLY have some sort of deleterious effect.

I'd like to see us switch to biodiesel. Last year's CO2 becomes this year's fuel, with no net increase in atmospheric CO2.

[The Aesthetic Elevator]

My beef with global warming is that they only have ~150 years of stats. This is hardly noteworthy if you believe in an earth that's billions of years old — or even the more Evangelical viewpoint of 6,000 years.

Regardless, I'm all for responsible, sustainable living. We should be good stewards of what God gave us. Recycle (or be less wasteful in the first place, using biodegradable stuff for production), renewable energy (I like solar and wind, and there are some neat ideas with water too) etc.

[BJ Buracker]

Was that a John Lovitz allusion buried in there?