J'accuse Homme (not Home)

Just a few years ago, during global warming, I had a plastic pipe split in the Rube Goldberg plumbing system of the Vermont house. (I once spent a day mapping the system, trying to identify unknown pipes.) Lost in the flood was a Scientific American magazine, back when it read like science, not first person travelogues. The 1970's cover image and story: OH MY GOD GLOBAL COOLING!



Well, I exaggerate on the headline, but that was the theme. I kept the magazine to be my exemplar of how lemmings run off the cliff. Or, was that chicken littles? Now we have the UN taking a vote on aspects of climate change to prove a political point - we need billions more to stamp out human activity. I never heard of a scientific axiom being proved by a vote. How democratic. The first sign of stupidity is judging the messenger instead of the message.

Indeed, I no longer take anyone's ideas seriously that are based upon a listing of others who say the same thing. If someone says 800 scientists agree with me within the first three minutes, they have nothing to add; they have properly identified their true believer status.

TIME Magazine, that bastion of (politically) correct reporting had a piece in a June 24, 1974 piece, Another Ice Age?, where a sad, familiar rhetoric could be found:

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims. During 1972 record rains in parts of the U.S., Pakistan and Japan caused some of the worst flooding in centuries. In Canada's wheat belt, a particularly chilly and rainy spring has delayed planting and may well bring a disappointingly small harvest. Rainy Britain, on the other hand, has suffered from uncharacteristic dry spells the past few springs. A series of unusually cold winters has gripped the American Far West, while New England and northern Europe have recently experienced the mildest winters within anyone's recollection.

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Telltale signs are everywhere —from the unexpected persistence and thickness of pack ice in the waters around Iceland to the southward migration of a warmth-loving creature like the armadillo from the Midwest.Since the 1940s the mean global temperature has dropped about 2.7° F....

I hope you sense the same ignorant rant in the language and approach to science. This could have been written by Al Gore's doppelganger. Of course, you may feel that because of the proven fact of evolution, today's scientists are more evolved than those of the era when people used to read and think, so when UN "experts" vote on establishing a scientific principal, they know what they are doing.

Contrast this: in April 2001, TIME had a 16 page section on OH MY GOD WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE BURNED TO DEATH. There was a frying pan on the cover. (OK, I made up the name of the section.) Apparently, TIME does not use TIME as a source. Good fact checking, at least.

In a recent article by Climatologist Tim Ball, I was reminded of the 1970's. Doctor Ball quoted:

"It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

Good thing the UN didn't vote on that one, we would all be under glaciers.

As you will see, if you read the article, Dr. Ball dismisses the causality of human activity after working through what seems to be half a century of work in climatology, being the first PhD in Canada in that field, the degree from University of London. He explains how academics are highly defensive, which non-academics already know, and that the J'accuse homme (I just made this up) element of this discourse is purely political, driven by the color of money. (If that is crappy French, please advise. I voted on it being correct, but it may not be.)

He indicated the Canadian government brags about spending $3 billion CAD on the issue. The money was spent where? Public relations - media. The media that pushes the issue.

Anyway, you can read the musing of an expert in the field at your leisure. I do wish to quote, however:

Another cry in the wilderness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

Just another right wing crack-pot.


fn: When I tell you who has opinions that are contrary to consensus, its not the same things as me disregarding others who tell me who holds their consensus opinion. When I figure out the difference, I will let you know.