Thoughts from Judith Curry on the current state of knowledge in climate. The warm mongers never consider the possibility that their proposed cures may in fact be worse than the disease. I personally think it’s nuts to consider climate a greater threat to humanity than poverty, and particularly energy poverty. But then, many of them don’t really care about humanity, or consider humanity a problem in and of itself.
[Update a few minutes later]
A new paper on the epistemological status of general circulation models.
Seems to me that the climate chick littles start their world view with the idea that everything “natural” (besides humans) is a priori good. And anything that humans do to build things is bad.
I fundamentally disagree. Human interventions are often beneficial–building a dam for example, produces electricity, reduces or eliminates flooding, and so on. There may be other effects — like reducing frogs that would live in the river. I see little, perhaps zero, reason to weight those effects as significant compared to the human benefits.
The same is true with humans mild effect on the climate. Climate warming is almost entirely benign if not even beneficial to humans. All the doom and gloom is unsubstantiated fantasy.
These are the same people who look down their noses on Creationists, while essentially espousing an anti-Evolutionary view that nature is benign.
Nature is not kind. Its function is to winnow out the weak from the strong, and it is constantly coming up with new ways to do so.
For a long time kids have only heard about man destroying habitats and ecosystems. They think he wanders into a highly productive rain forest and slashes and burns and destroys the land, and that man could never improve on the natural state.
But then most kids have never farmed. A farmer goes in and starts fixing the soil. He aerates it, adjusts the pH, breaks up the clays, adds whatever essential nutrients or trace elements it lacks, such as nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, sulfur, calcium, iron, copper, magnesium, manganese, and boron. He turns poor, marginal soil where plants struggle into the best soil the planet has to offer, and that makes plants thrive.
And he does it while he’s trying to turn a profit.
The warm mongers never consider the possibility that their proposed cures may in fact be worse than the disease.
These are always the same people who’ve promulgated every apocalyptic scare (overpopulation!, pollution!, coming ice age!, acid rain!, nuclear winter!) since the 1960s, and their only “cure” is always to have them impose a discredited 19th Century pseudo-economic system whose only success is that it lead to over 100 million deaths.
We thought it was over when the Soviet Union fell. Surely, nobody could miss the utter failure of that system.
But, a new generation with no memory was born, and responded to the same siren old song of free stuff, without knowing how thoroughly it had been discredited.
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.
And if you agree the climate is changing but disagree about whether or not the proposed remedies will be effective, you become a science denier. Out of all the areas people disagree with AGW alarmists, uncertainty of outcomes is greatest with policy.