When You Are Losing the Argument on the Facts...
...call people names! The latest from Al Gore.
Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.
If you have the stomach for it, read the entire piece. Then, ask yourself a question: Does he make a single verifiable scientific point? For example,
This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."
In the above study, "climate scientists" included people who, by education and profession, are professors of advertising and marketing! Regardless, science is about what can be proven through measurements not what people "think" or "believe."
Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.
If you have the stomach for it, read the entire piece. Then, ask yourself a question: Does he make a single verifiable scientific point? For example,
- Does he tell us why his predictions of temperature rise have not come true and explained why? No.
- Does he tell us why his (actually the IPCC's) predictions of ocean heat content are off by 50% (half of what was predicted), why they were wrong and when, if ever, the rapid rise will occur? No.
- Does he explain that soot is causing the Arctic ice melt rather than temperatures? No to that, also.
This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."
In the above study, "climate scientists" included people who, by education and profession, are professors of advertising and marketing! Regardless, science is about what can be proven through measurements not what people "think" or "believe."
At Oak Island, NC this week with my family and extended family, I had time to read your first-rate tome: "Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather."
ReplyDeleteYou well explain ideas I developed in the early 1980's when I was doing emergency management work and teaching at the Emergency Management Institute, that is, the problem is humans, not technology.
Back then I would take the writings and data of hydrologists about flood life cycles and try to convince political leaders of the importance of the hydrologists discoveries. It was a fools mission in some ways. But I learned a valuable lesson: Never give a decision maker more than a one page analysis.
What I admire about you is that you took this data and created a private sector company that has delivered this data to decision makers, most in the private sector, who can help save lives and prevent damage to property. I salute your perspicacity, grit, intellectual curiosity, and vision.
I still keep a volunteer hand in civil defense. For example, I just helped create the emergency operations plan, the continuity of operations plan, and emergency supplies for my little town of Mt. Airy, MD.
http://poetslife.blogspot.com/search/label/Emergency%20Exercise
http://poetslife.blogspot.com/search/label/Emergency%20Plan%20Exercise%202011
http://poetslife.blogspot.com/search/label/Carroll%20County%20Tornado%20Emergency%20Exercise
http://poetslife.blogspot.com/search/label/Civil%20Defense%20Redux
I work hard to make sure families are ready for natural and man made disasters because I have studied history and there are so many there as prelude.
And I have seen what they do up close, as you have, and it changes you.
As your book so well demonstrates, the private sector gets it done.
My gratitude for creating your company. My eternal gratitude for doing it in private sector where it will continue to safe life and property through the generations.
And thanks for your measured, professional, rationale, and scientific deconstruction of Al Gore's false science, inaccurate date, rabid and self serving ideology. It's grand.
"So much depends upon a wheelbarrow..." said the American poet, William Carlos Williams. "So much depends upon the weather.." you so nobly warn in Warnings.
Good job. Very good job.
I think I have another application for your products and will recommend them next week.