Global Warming's 16 Words
By Michael R. Bowen (08/12/03)
Not long ago our President recognized a growing threat from the Middle East. Large amounts of classified information, as well as the public record of the enemy, made this threat quite credible. And even though he didn't have pinpoint-accurate data about the enemy's capabilities, the general picture was quite enough. He made a powerful case for action, and proceeded to do what he believed must be done.
Subsequent events have called into question some of Mr. Bush's assessments, and of course his political enemies have capitalized on this. I will leave aside the rank partisanship of these critics, as well as the fact that, although some of the President's specific claims about Saddam may turn out to be wrong, there is no question that he was right overall. Instead, I'd like to point out that there are two ways of judging a decision: one can judge by the outcome, after all the facts are known, or one can look instead at what a reasonable and prudent man would have done with the information available at the time. The former is what pundits, activists, and Presidential candidates do. The latter is the province of men in positions of responsibility, and it is the best (and most honest) test of quality. This test is never used by Mr. Bush's enemies, because they are opposed to any decision he makes. In their anger they readily swallow the camel, while straining at the gnat of the famous 16 words.
Senators McCain and Lieberman have issued a joint call for a "sensible approach to global warming". Stumping for the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, they tell us that "The debate on global warming itself has become overheated with acrimony and polluted by misinformation." They urge us to "transcend the current zero-sum thinking about climate change and make the right cost comparison. The question is not whether the costs of doing business will rise if emissions caps are imposed. The real question is how much it will cost business -- and the American people -- in the near future if we fail to tackle this growing threat now."
In other words, the good Senators' "sensible approach" requires the doubters to shut up and get in the global warming line. They have a simple solution to the disagreements about global warming: make a law to silence the opposition and force them to do what they're told. With unprecedented hubris, they claim to be able to estimate the exact annual cost per American household for their ambitious program, and even the cost which will be borne by each of those households if we do not follow their instructions. This from leaders of a government which routinely loses complete track of billions of tax dollars every year.
Now let's apply the test of honest decision-making to the Senators' little scheme:
Do we have credible information now that global warming is real?
And if we have such information, do we know whether it is abnormal, or merely part of the endless cycle of warming and cooling which has been going on since the earth was formed?
If it is in fact an abnormal process of warming, is it being caused by human activities?
And finally, if there really is abnormal warming being caused by human activity, will the proposed act do any good?
McCain and Lieberman have gone straight to the last point, and, not surprisingly, answered "Yes." But if it's a sensible approach we want, we need to start with Question 1 before advancing to Question 4. And on that critical first question, the simple fact is that we don't know. But wait, doesn't everybody know that global warming is real? Why, the United Nations itself tells us it's a serious problem!
Does it really? The U.N.'s International Panel on Climate Change released a very alarming report in 2001. Few people have read the underlying data, relying instead on the summary released to the media by the Panel, which describes catastrophic global warming coming our way. The summary even does a 'McCain-Lieberman', predicting the exact number of degrees of climate change 100 years from now. But if you dig into the body of the report, and find the words of the scientists instead of the public pronouncements of the U.N. politicians, you get a different story. Here is what the scientists said, and what the U.N. chose to ignore:
"In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate is not possible." (Italics mine)
There are so many weaknesses in global warming theories that it would take all day to cover them. Global warming has become such gospel that scientists and media people now take climate events and make them fit the theory instead of taking the scientific approach of asking whether the theory fits the data. A case in point was the much-ballyhooed appearance of open water at the poles a few years ago, leading the New York Times to scream that the sky was falling. Veteran Arctic experts had to point out later that open water has always appeared annually at the poles. Another report, swallowed whole without question, described the disappearance of great tracts of floating Arctic ice. Submariners calmly pointed out that the ice hadn't melted, it had only moved. After all, it's floating ice.
It may well be that all the flaws in the theory are minor, and the overall picture is correct, but no one can claim that until the weaknesses are answered. And they are most emphatically not being answered. Until they are, we are stuck on Question 1, but it's interesting to note that Japan, home of the famous Kyoto Treaty, has already answered Question 4 by refusing to sign.
Senators, we're not talking about 16 little words here. When you claim a man is threatening your life with a gun, and it turns out that he actually had a knife, you're still right about the threat—as President Bush was right about Saddam. Right now there are tens of thousands of words suggesting that your proposal is a solution in search of a problem. A sensible public will demand better documentation of the threat before they allow you to take over the economy. And even if the threat turns out to be real, taking Congress' word on how to deal with it would be like taking investment advice from a drunken sailor.
But perhaps that last comment is unjust. As President Reagan said, "we could say that Congress spends money like a drunken sailor, but that would be unfair to the sailor. After all, he's only spending his own money."
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