Michael Barone asks a good question:
If the globe isn’t warming, does that undercut EPA regulation of carbon dioxide?
…scientists note that the ice cover in the Arctic Sea has increased 60% this year as compared to 2012, instead of melting away as global warming alarmists predicted. And they note — and this is more significant — the embarrassing fact that there has been a “pause” in global warming since 1997 rather than the increase in temperatures that the alarmists predicted.
This is starting to look like an Emily Litella moment — you know, the Saturday Night Live character who, on being told that an elaborate theory she has spun out from a misinterpretation of words is wrong, says, “Never mind.”
Barone notes that the Supreme Court based its 2007 opinion (giving the EPA power to regulate CO2 as “pollution”) on the invalid assumption that CO2 is a pollutant:
The Court ruled that carbon dioxide, which is non-poisonous and necessary for animal and plant life, is a pollutant subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act of 1970. But if carbon dioxide is not producing supposedly dangerous global warming, there is no basis for calling it a pollutant. Is it possible that Massachusetts v. EPA will some day be reversed?
That depends not on what is happening, but on what “scientists” say is happening. “Global Warming” has already been abandoned in favor of the new, more rhetorically flexible “Climate Change.” Climate Change means anything the scientists want it to mean, and only those who possess the proper “credentials” (which are only given to those who agree with prevailing scientific doctrines) have a right to an opinion.
This is why environmentalists hate the political process.
Comments
4 responses to ““an Emily Litella moment””
Indeed, the nebulous “climate change” meme now is the preferred one. Bogus “global warming” claims and scare tactics were too often exposed for what they were. Its like the “global warming is killing the polar bears” media scare a few years ago. Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg, who achieved international fame with his previous book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, shows that “global warming” is not the problem for polar bears. The problem is people shooting bears for various reasons, and presents data to back up his argument in his book “Cool It.” He shows that 11 out of 13 distinct populations of polar bears in Canada for example are either stable or increasing in number.
Much of the “evidence” offered by assorted activists of polar bear doom due to “global warming” is shaky. One widely circulated report of doom- citing “drowned polar bears due to global warming”, is based on a single sighting of 4 dead bears after a bad storm. The “drowned” bears came from a population that was actually increasing, which has been the overall trend in the polar bear population since the 1960s. And so it goes on such issues- long on insinuation and ominous claims of doom, short on actual credible evidence, which too often is neither offered, or asked for.
Popper Knows Best Department:
“Climate Change” is an unfalsifiable hypothesis, and an example of a metaphysical research program.
Unfalsifiable because exactly what evidence would refute claims of climate change? It gets hotter, it’s climate change, it gets colder, it’s climate change. And exactly where is the compelling evidence it’s mostly caused by human CO2 emissions?
Whatever it is, it’s not science. Scientists at least try to get it right, these people are getting farther and farther from anything resembling reality,
In times of transition things can get unsettled. When things are unsettled weird events will happen. I say it’s too soon to make anything like a definitive statement about what’s happening. I can say that when you are doing science remember to take into consideration all relevant factors, and don’t be too quick in deciding what is, and what isn’t, a relevant factor.
Very aquarian age, dood. Really, does it mean anything at all, or just sound vaguely profound?? That fine sentiment and $4.00 will buy you a double soy decaff latte. What transition? The climate is blundering around the same random walk it’s been doing for thousands of years.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s predict the climate with a combination of I Ching, Tarot and Ouja Board. Makes about as much sense as you did.