"Cats and Dogs Living Together...Mass Hysteria"

That is what alarmists like PMF would have you believe

PMF must be proud of himself after his alarmist tirade, in which he said, “I will go on the offensive against any writers (hyper conservative or in the unlikely event of being otherwise) who squirms and whines their way out of this one.”

I am not worried about the merits of his “offensive” in the least, more so his penchant for accusing people of anti-Semitism (at least me anyway) when they disagree with him.

PMF should have taken Bruce Godfrey’s advice and provided, “links to your sources substantiating why global warming is not a speculative theory but rather a demonstrable effect, a proven theory, would strengthen your case.” Tellingly, PMF did not.

I will respond to PMF’s rant piece by piece, at least to the portions of it that do not devolve into inane spittle-flecked froth.

Skeptics do not allow for their own uncertainty but love to point to scientific uncertainty, or the appearance of it on this issue because they color everything, including all science through their narrow, distorted lens of hyper-conservatism, and their responses below prove it.


Uncertainty is the backbone of the skeptic’s argument. Enough wholes have been punched in the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming that there is definite certainty about the uncertainty of the science. What’s your point?

Alarmists “color everything through their narrow distorted lens.” But they won’t admit it, because like all progressives they superficially equate “reason”, “science” “progress”, or “justice” with their preferred policy goals. Therefore, they label anyone who opposes them as “anti-reason,” “anti-science,” “anti-progress,” “anti-justice,” or downright evil meanies, in order to shut down any real debate. Lionel Trilling’s 1949 description of the old right now perfectly encapsulates the left, especially climate alarmists like PMF, “they do not "express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”

The fact that anybody even argues over the repeatedly worsening conclusions of the UN's IPCC report says it all. The skeptics go out of their way to discredit the conclusion of thousands of scientists, the AAAS and the NAS but base their beliefs on a tiny minority of industry-paid apologists such as the loudmmouthed Rush Limbaugh of science, Patrick Michaels. By the way, I read his book and met hime over a decade ago. He's still a crank and if you think he is a scientist, why is he funded by the Cato Institute? That's not a scientific institution.

Notice how PMF does not specify that the dire predictions of impending doom are not from the actual scientific report, rather they are from the summary for policy makers(SPM), which is WRITTEN BY UN BUREAUCRATS. In fact, many of the scientists on the IPCC dispute the SPM and the fact that it grossly exaggerates their findings in the scientific report. One scientist Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute asked to have his name removed from the IPCC report, because of the inherently political nature of the panel. Of the IPCC Reiter said:

A galling aspect of the debate is that this spurious ‘science’ is endorsed in the public forum by influential panels of “experts.” I refer particularly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Every five years, this UN-based organization publishes a ‘consensus of the world’s top scientists’ on all aspects of climate change. Quite apart from the dubious process by which these scientists are selected, such consensus is the stuff of politics, not of science. Science proceeds by observation, hypothesis and experiment. The complexity of this process, and the uncertainties involved, are a major obstacle to meaningful understanding of scientific issues by non-scientists. In reality, a genuine concern for mankind and the environment demands the inquiry, accuracy and skepticism that are intrinsic to authentic science. A public that is unaware of this is vulnerable to abuse.

The IPCC refused to remove his name until he brought a lawsuit against it.

Analysis of the IPCC’s peer review process reveals that it is greatly flawed and the vaunted “consensus” is IPCC generated and self-perpetuating media myth.

The IPCC has problems with airbrushing inconvenient data from the historical record. The 2001 IPCC SPM report tossed the Medieval Warming Period and Little Ice Age down the memory hole. They appeared in its 1995 report but slapped them out of history in 2001, with the now debunked Hockey Stick. The UN bureaucrats who write the SPM reports remind me of the old joke about Soviet society, “the future is known, it’s the past that is always changing.”

Furthermore, the IPCC is not solely comprised of scientists, but in fact, included government officials. After all it is the InterGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change.

As I noted earlier, the idea of “industry-paid apologists” wilts as an argument in the face of the fact that alarmists receive BILLIONS of dollars in funding versus the millions that the so-called apologists receive. It is also quite dishonest to call these scientists apologists for industry, given the fact that General Electric and British Petroleum, who are heavily invested in wind and solar power, and donate big money to the alarmist cause.

PMF’s point about Patrick Michaels and his funding by Cato is also moot because avowed alarmist groups like the International Climate Change Taskforce (ICCT) are funded by left wing organizations like the Center for American Progress and the Institute for Public Policy Research. Clearly, they are NOT scientific institutions. Here in Maryland, Climate Change Strategies (CCS) the political advocacy group formulating the state’s climate policies, is funded through Rockefeller Brothers, Heinz, and Ted Turner, all of which are clearly NOT scientific organizations.

Do you dispute the rapid melting of the polar ice caps? The fact that we continue to experience the hottest years on record since record-keeping began? Do you continue to dispute the melting of the glaciers around the world? The melting of the snows on the world's mountaintops? More flooding? More severe storms? Measurable sea level rise? The death of coral reefs? The increasing presence of CO2 and other greenhouse gases? The rapid decrease in forests? Or do you somehow rationalize this and attempt to explain it away? Hmmm, I guess we answered our own question.

Okay polar ice caps melt during warming periods. But, guess what, they refreeze during cooling periods! Climate changes, always has and always will. That is why Greenland, which is ice, was once green (hence the name) and Vikings lived there and farmed its soil.

The hottest years on record! Really, that is quite a statement given that the IPCC’s own data show that temperature has been stable since 1998, for the mathematically challenged that is 10 YEARS of no temperature increase. Furthermore, increased in atmospheric carbon dioxide accompanied this temperature stasis. Just this summer, NASA had to revise its historical temperature records, due to flawed data, which knocked 1998 off as the hottest year on record, 1934 now holds that distinction.

I do not dispute the melting of glaciers around the world. However, other glaciers are indeed ADVANCING. By PMF’s tortured logic, glacial advance is proof of global cooling! Alarmists want to have it both ways.

Glacial melting is not proof of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Mt. Kilimanjaro, Al Gore’s favorite example of melting mountaintops fails to pass the smell test. Gore never mentions that two articles in the International Journal of Climatology and the Journal of Geophysical Research show that melting on Kilimanjaro is due to lack of moisture, which is a prerequisite for ice and snow, is the cause of its receding snow line, not global warming.

There is NO “consensus” that more global warming causes severe storms.

Sure sea level rises, but only the most inane chicken littles believe that parts of Manhattan will soon be under water. It should go without saying (but we have to given alarmist hysteria) that since climate changes, sea levels will fall as well.

Yes, there is more Co2 in the atmosphere, but that increase has not led to increased temperatures over the last 10 years, they have plateaued. Man made Co2 emissions account for roughly 3% of Co2 emissions. Furthermore, over time Co2 lags behind temperature by some 800-1,000 years.

Contrary to the alarmist myth, forest land, in the United States in increasing.

An inconvenient truth for the alarmists is the scientific study published this month in the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society that shows climate change models based on human influence DOES NOT MATCH OBSERVED WARMING!

What the hyper conservative skeptics do is say things such as, "Well I am not a scientist, so..." but they go on to even dispute the scientists, because there is a tiny hint of doubt, of uncertainty. Well of course there is, and that is due to the nature of science itself, bolstered by the few remaining and the increasingly shrinking number of scientific voices (or should we say formerly scientific voices) of paid apologists for the coal and other industries or think thanks that advocate for less government?

Someone fix this broken record please.
There is more than “a tiny hint of doubt” and uncertainty about the theory of catastrophic man made global warming. There are downright Sherman tank sized wholes in it. PMF is all for uncertainty unless it questions his progressive policy prescriptions.

Apparently, alarmists funded by think tanks that advocate for more government (and rent-seeking corporations) are fine and dandy. Oh I forgot, these scientists and think tanks are THEIR scientists and think tanks so they must be right and true!

What would you call it when a person runs his car's engine in a closed garage? Suicide! What do you call it when billions of people run their engines on a tiny planet with a thin atmosphere? Omnicide? It is simply a difference of scale.

PMF is conflating the poisonous gas carbon monoxide with carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide has that nasty little quality of causing that villainous process of photosynthesis. Flora absorbs carbon dioxide and use it to produce oxygen, which we humans use selfishly use to breathe.

The hyper conservative skeptics would rather claim they are right as we head toward potential doom than ever admit they might be wrong, and that the consequences might be devastating than actually begin to question their own assumptions and perhaps begin to do something.

This is alarmist projection plain and simple. This is the epitome of gall, coming from the crowd that claimed, “the debate is over” and then continually harass contrarian scientists, and squelch the free speech of those who dare disagree with them.

Hyper conservatives have been fighting environmentalism for decades while we profit and luxuriate off of passing externalities (i.e. waste and effluent and pollution) to the "environment." It is now time to pay the piper. Problem is, they don;t want to pay. They want to keep living beyond their means, thus leading to disaster. Yep, it will cost a lot to turn this around. But if you think we have a choice, I suggest you keep believing in creationism and the world to come, which many believe it, although there is not a shred of evidence.

I’m not sure what any of that inane babble means.

Talk about externalities--they'd rather send armies around the globe to fight terrorists based on flse assumptions than buils support her at home to fight an even greater global threat based on real data. It is the global warming skeptics who are basing their action or lack thereof on faith--the faith that humans can't possibly have a global effect on the world's climate. Agree with me or not, but cut out the hyper-conservative and phoney BS. Again, go back to the youtube link in my original post and listen to the reasoned argument of costs/benefits of doing nothing versus acting now.

See previous response.

UPDATE: I looked at that youtube vid PMF touts. Its an interesting argument, but short on accounting for complexities. However, if we were to follow the logic of the argument, that would mean following alarmist policies that would have no detecable effect on climate change, hence the alarmist calls for 30 Kyotos.