KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL IS BATTING 1.000

Continuing with our theme of "we will restore science to its rightful place," I would like to point readers to another Kimberley A. Strassel column. It is a dandy of a piece; Ms. Strassel has combined a rather decent string of hits of late, and this one's good for at least a couple of bases.

In "The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic," Ms. Strassel reports on the all too familiar tunes applauded by global warming alarmists, particularly those arias sung by the alarmists' favorite "Bush Administration" soloist, James Hansen. Mr. Hansen, as some of you know, is a NASA director who positioned himself as something of a martyr for true science; he claimed the Bush Administration was persecuting him for both non-conformity to the party line regarding global warming and for blowing the whistle on the administration's habit of cherry-picking scientific data. I mentioned here that such woes as described by Mr. Hansen were hard to reconcile with his 1,400 public appearances where he spoke his mind boldly without any interference from the White House. The man, as far as I can tell, was not suppressed or persecuted at all.

Ms. Strassel points this all out, but what she also highlights is something far more insidious: the Obama Administration CLEARLY IS SUPPRESSING non-conformity in its (foiled?) attempt to muzzle EPA analyst Alan Carlin; the Democrats really are cherry-picking the data. This should come as no surprise. After all, this is the party that supported the Patriot Act and then pretended to denounce it, with said denunciation simply a cover for their real ambitions, which was to use the Patriot Act and "illegal wire-tapping" for their own totalitarian goals once they gained power. This is the party that supported the war in Iraq, then denounced it as a failure doomed to civil war and that America needed to immediately withdraw its troops, only to announce that the troops should stay a little longer. This is the party that believed Gitmo was a threat to national security -- that it must be closed NOW! -- and then announced, as if it was something new, that certain enemy combatants at GITMO will be held indefinitely at the discretion of the president. But I digress. (See how easy it is to get carried away?)

Please take a few minutes to read Ms. Strassel's column. It IS illuminating, at least for those who care, and care to think.

©2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

What Happened To "Global Warming"? You Know.

It's been reported that Al Gore and his friends have invested billions of dollars into "green energy" futures. A mere $50 billion or so. Like most eager investors, Al Gore and friends hope to make a renewable and sustainable killing.

Everyone who has visited this site should know that I have long been a global warming skeptic. I am not "anti-science." To the contrary, I am pro-science. I just have balked, as you know, at the non causa pro causa fallacies on which Al Gore's campaign has been based. Mr. Gore, it seems to me, is anti-science and anti-rational. Blind to the irony, Mr. Gore is a part of the very assault on reason he decries in his book, The Assault on Reason.

If you find yourself skeptical of the "science" of global warming, oops, excuse me, climate change, then know that you are in pretty good company. Kimberley A. Strassel spells it all out for you in a very encouraging essay in today's Wall Street Journal. Please read "The Climate Change Climate Change."

What I want to know is this: Where is the outrage?

Once again: THEY ARE LYING TO YOU. It is their wont.

Global Warming And "Consensus": Mark Twain, T.S. Kuhn, And Scientific Knowledge

From the editor's notes in Mark Twain: Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches, & Essays (1891-1910)†, we find this amazing tidbit of science and medical history:

Ignaz Phillipp Semmelweis, (1811-65), a Hungarian physician working in Vienna, demonstrated the infectious nature of puerperal ("childbed") fever in 1846 and greatly reduced the maternal mortality rate by requiring childbirth attendants to wash their hands with a chlorine solution. He was ridiculed for his belief and forced from his hospital post by his supervisor. He returned to Hungary and accepted a part-time position at Pest hospital, offered on the condition that he not promote his theory. His book The Etiology of Puerperal Fever (written in the mid-1850s detailing his experiments in Vienna) was harshly criticized when it was published in 1861. He died in a mental hospital of an infection resulting from a self-inflicted wound with a contaminated scalpel. His findings were not widely accepted until the 1890s. (Page 1038)

Those of you familiar with Dr. Semmelweis' story might recall that he had tried a variety of experiments in Vienna with many of his internists to determine why the mortality rate of new mothers in one ward of his hospital was higher than that of new mothers in a different ward. What he discovered would be startling to us today: his students were going directly from working on cadavers to giving gynecological exams -- without taking ANY sanitary measures. He made a rather grisly connection after a gruesome observation: a young colleague with whom he was dissecting a corpse accidentally slipped with a scalpel and cut himself, leaving a small, infectious wound that led to the young man's death. Dr. Semmelweis soon instituted a hand-washing protocol -- a radical idea -- not only before examining women but between EACH examination: puerperal fever basically disappeared in his ward.

Dr. Semmelweis' own death via a contaminated scalpel was a suicidal statement: he was the victim of "scientific consensus."
_____________________

Mark Twain's Thoughts On Scientific Consensus

In "Dr. Loeb's Incredible Discovery," a short essay by Mark Twain, Twain prefaces his remarks with an excerpt of what was at the time a recent editorial by the New York Times. (Published March 2, 1905: If you would like to read the original editorial, you can find it at this link; the PDF is worth looking at, as the column is shown in facsimile.)

Here is what Mr. Twain excerpts from the Times, with his emphasis added in quotation marks:

Experts in biology will be apt to receive with some skepticism the announcement of Dr. Jacques Loeb of the University of California as to the creation of life by chemical agencies ... Doctor Loeb is a very bright and ingenious experimenter, but "a consensus of opinion among biologists" would show that he is rated rather as a man of lively imagination than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena.

Here is, in small part, Mr. Twain's reply to the New York Times' trust in consensus:

...[I]n the drift of years I by and by found that a Consensus examines a new thing by its feelings rather oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that this is so. ...

Do you know of a case where a Consensus won a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus coppers (colloquial for "bets against"), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.

There was that primitive steam engine -- ages back, in Greek times: a Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester's steam engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton's steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great Napolean, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him. While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name? forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered by doctors alone) who discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke his heart, killed him. Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone, all "toys," of no practical value -- verdict of the Consensuses. Geology, paleontology, evolution -- all brushed into space by a Consensus of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom, assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists.

I must stop for fear of boring my reader with Twain's many examples of how scientific consensuses actually hinder scientific inquiry and progress. It is not merely a fact of history, but one of process: scientific knowledge is not advanced by consensus. If anything, it is advanced by the force of a lone voice, by the voice of a minority shaped and perfected by the stubborn denials of the majority.

By the way, Dr. Jacques Loeb was right. The New York Times, aligned with all the really "bright" minds united in consensus, was wrong.

____________________

Twain Not Alone

T. S. Kuhn, years after Mark Twain, argued that prior to scientific consensuses bearing any epistemological weight, a period of conflict between rival theories and theoreticians must -- and does -- take place. This conflict not only revolves around differences of methodology, but also around anomalies in data and criteria of value. Once the conflict phase has been passed, a paradigm shift occurs, or, truer to Kuhn's language, there is a revolution in science.

I believe it can be clearly shown that the current "consensus of opinion" regarding global warming has attempted to leap right over the conflict phase of scientific progress. Anomalies do abound; there is disagreement about variables and constants and algorithms. But the consensus is presented as if none of those things exist; it is consensus' pretense that all is fine and all is understood, accepted and assimilated. Amazingly, lone voices, all equally expert (if not more so), are dismissed as crankish, peevish, fatuous or corrupt if they challenge the consensus, or if they point out systemic problems and anomalies.

In a series of essays I wrote at NHInsider wherein I critique the assertions of an alleged expert on global warming who works in my home state, I was finally dismissed by one interlocutor as a "crank" (I make no claim to expertise, by the way). His dismissal of me is bemusing, and it reminds me of something Theodore Dalrymple wrote in In Praise of Prejudice: The Necessity of Pre-conceived Ideas, (especially if Dalrymple specifically had addressed the problem of consensus):

This is what one might call the Forty-million-Frenchmen-can't-be-wrong argument: that what other people do, provided they do it in sufficient numbers, is a guarantee of its rightness. We are very far here from the autonomous and inquiring individual ... who always reasons out for himself what he should do [or believe].

It is rather disconcerting to see so many people choose NOT to examine things for themselves, and if that is not disconcerting, the popular dismissal of a person's skepticism or a single person's innovation very much is. Mark Twain's incisive remarks serve as an augur's alarm: he passed down to us observations and warnings we should always heed.

I am thankful to that old crank for being so generous -- and for being so right.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2008/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

†published by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.; 1992: New York, New York.

Global Warming As Theology?

OK. Despite the fact that we are all about full and responsible freedom here at Contratimes, you must read "Global Warming As Mass Neurosis" by Bret Stephens. It is simply and unequivocally brilliant.

Mr. Stephens poses a very serious challenge to global warming "science" this morning in today's Wall Street Journal, and this excerpt is particularly daunting:

"This ... is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science."

No dispute here. Should there be?

And then he tosses us this gem:

"A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence."

And then:

"Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

"As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success."

Mr. Stephens ends strong referencing William James' stellar Varieties of Religious Experience, though I believe he fudges a bit what Mr. James meant by "sick-souled." Nevertheless, this is a tight and astounding essay, written to the pith, cutting to the marrow.

(If you have not read "Yellow Science" over at First Things, you are missing something special. Author James Kerian convincingly compares global warming science to yellow journalism. Fascinating.)

Peace.

BG

Flashpan: Helicopters Fanning The Flames

[Second post today]

I can remember a time in America when the shout could be heard in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the lecture halls. "You can't legislate morality!" was heard everywhere, particularly in the midst of debates about sexuality and abortion. Folks who described themselves as liberal or progressive were quick to yell this into the face of any would-be conservative who dared to advocate for social and cultural change, for moderation; these progressives usually followed such ejaculations with the daring "Get your laws off my body!" or "Keep Congress -- and the religious right -- out of our bedrooms!"

Last week Al Gore took issue with all of that, as you know, and nary a progressive said a word. For Al Gore, who spoke to committees in both the House and the Senate of the US Congress in order to influence legislation, said of global warming, "This is not a political issue, it is a moral issue."

Finally it is agreed upon even by leftists: you can legislate morality. And you must.
_______________What I am about to tell readers is absolutely true.

In 1973, when the gas and oil crunch swept over the United States, there was a family in my town who had a particularly abusive father running the household. Seeing the gas crisis as an opportunity to prepare his children for a bitter and difficult future without gasoline or oil, the father made this loving decision: He would make all of his children walk to school, despite the fact that they lived on a bus route and were the last house at the edge of town. So, everyday the kids would walk, first the three miles to the grade school in the village, and then three miles to the junior high and senior high schools. They would reverse the route in the afternoon. The kids did this routine faithfully -- for years. It was for practice, for preparation.

And in his benevolence their father did what any dad would do to instill proper discipline in his children: when his work did not take him out of town (it often did), he would hop in the family station wagon and FOLLOW HIS CHILDREN TO ENSURE THEY WERE NOT GETTING RIDES TO SCHOOL.

Big Father was good at watching. It was for the good of the kids.

________________
When Al Gore says that your use of carbon fuels is a "moral issue," he might be right. He might be as right as all those who believe that homosexual marriage is a moral issue, or abortion, or embryonic stem cell research. And he might be right to want to impose a sort of moral order on our lives. But the problem is that those who impose moral order on the world from outside often do so as tyrants.

Rather than encourage voluntary moral compliance, Al Gore and his panel of unanimous peers are suggesting a forced compliance. They are suggesting a form of tyranny. It's a "moral issue," after all, and there is "no longer any argument. The debate is over."

So says Big Father.

There is no skill required to divine exactly how this all will take shape, this lordship over the masses. Why? Because Big Father is already at work, and he is working exactly like that father did in my hometown in 1973. For if we can trust RIA Novosti, a noted Russian news agency -- and there is no reason for us not to -- then we can be assured that this story is reliable. Perhaps you've already heard it; maybe you've read about it. If not, then let me get you up to date:

BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) - The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming. [emphasis added]

There is no doubt that Big Father has moved from New Hampshire to Belgium. He is about to move over the whole world. And he will follow you in his car; he will hover over your picnic with a helicopter. He wants to watch your barbecues. To make sure YOU don't emit too much carbon. To make you pay if you do. To make you submit (islam).

This is just the beginning of madness. Grab a cup and cover your barbie. You're about to get kicked in the coals.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Culture & Carbon: Travolta, Space Travel, And Putting A Lid On It

I know that Scientology has something to do with extraterrestrial life. I believe it even has something to do with extra terrestrial privilege. That's why I am not surprised to read the following story about John Travolta, a Scientologist of some note, posted at Fox News' always-fun Grapevine :

Double Standard?

Actor and aviation enthusiast John Travolta says global warming is a very valid issue and that we should consider going to other planets or putting domes over our cities. But the Evening Standard of London reports Travolta conceded that, "I'm probably not the best candidate to ask about global warming because I fly jets."

In fact, Travolta has five private planes — including his own Boeing 707 — and keeps them at his home in Florida. The paper reports that in the past 12 months Travolta has flown about 30,000 miles, producing around 800 tons of carbon emissions, nearly 100 times the amount coming from an average person.
________________
It seems clear from the picture above of Mr. Travolta's Florida home -- just a little cottage somewhere near a runway -- that Mr. Travolta has already been living in something of a bubble. That might explain his eagerness to cap cities with domes. Of course, how he would manage to fly his little bubble, huge that it must be, into such domed heavens is a feat only L. Ron Hubbard might explain.

I like the idea, though, of extra-planetary polluting, of spreading the homicidal tendencies of humans to other realms. The world is not big enough for the Ego of Man; more space for Man is exactly what Man needs.

Florida, as we can see, is not at all big enough.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

PS. Make sure you click on the picture above to get a larger view. I just love the Heli-pad out front -- or is that out back? It all smacks of the Jetsons.

The Moral Center Is Green

[He continues to lose.]

I see a man coming toward me, offering salvation, if I only believe, if I just have the courage. Follow me, he says, though not exactly. I have a moral to place on your shoulders; my burden is heavy as coal, as easy as a bag of fluorescent lights. Take up your carbon cross and follow me. For I have a world I want you to make colder, harder. I promise you can do this, for this is no catastrophe. It is an opportunity. The fields are white, ready for harvest. Please, follow me, and I will make you a sort of fleecer of men.

And so I go forth to make the earth cold. It is unarguably my moral duty. I am required by conscience to ensure that winters are harsher, longer; that ice caps grow and arable land is consumed by glacial creep. I fight for shorter, cooler summers; I pray the earth to slumber longer during winter's solstice and yet to speed past the summer solstice with nary a heat wave, irrespective of hemispheric balance. I shall work miracles.

I am an equipped warrior: I have my word of truth -- the holy word of inconvenient truth -- infused with the infallible and inerrant words of science's best minds, minds that have gathered in great councils, dividing truth from all that isn't. I have my switch plate of righteousness that runs directly to my solar panels; the holy wind rushes through my windmills, and tongues of fire no longer lick at my carbon-smeared furnace. I wear the helmet of carbon sequestration. My feet are shod with the good news of hybridism.

Permit me, please, to cite only one passage of my new holy canon, prophetic in its precision:

'The harbinger of change shall come as Prius* -- which means before -- drawn from the legal term, nisi prius (unless before):"unless before the day appointed (nisi prius) the judges shall come ... (which they always do) and there try the cause."† The judges indeed are coming.' (AIT 6:6-9)

I walk with the cool, controlled sun in my face, and the carbon-neutral magisterium at my back. I cannot falter, for I have courage. I look with faith to the hills and see from whence my turbine help comes; I walk through the valley of the shadow of heat-death, and I cast the shadow aside.

(Blessed indeed are the carbon-pure in spirit, for they shall see their god shivering on a carbon-neutral street.)

But these streets are paved with green.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

*The Toyota Prius is a popular hybrid car. Owners consider this a carbon offset; though they do this, of course, without ever asking if Toyota uses MORE carbon fuel to manufacture and deliver the car.

†I happened to find this quote at the Free Dictionary after searching for the definition of "prius." I thought the passage perfectly apt for a satirical look at the religious fervor associated with much, if not most, environmental activism.

What A Different President Thinks

(It is maybe a bad sign that this is my fourth post today. Who knows? But I feel so strongly about what I buried in Post #2 that I cut and pasted it here. It's that important.)

Perhaps you have heard or read what the Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said in the past few days. President Klaus is ringing a different alarm. According to the Prague Daily Monitor, Klaus has written to the US Congress warning that "the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer forms." The biggest threat is "ambitious environmentalism." Klaus wrote:

"[I am] really concerned about the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. …While discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom. …the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world."

But I need to quote even more of this fine article for our purposes here:

"[Klaus] noted that this ideology wants to replace 'the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world.'

"Its followers, Klaus added, consider 'their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth' and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation to exert pressure on politicians to achieve their goals.

"Klaus claimed that the environmentalists' argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic, and in this atmosphere they continue pushing politicians to adopt 'illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making.'

"Klaus also said that environmentalists 'neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change,' that there is and has been no ideal state of the world, and they ignore the future economic and technological progress."

I find all of this philosophically fascinating. I wonder if you do too.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Important links relevant to this discussion: The Wizard, fkap (interesting story!); The Reference Frame (Klaus transcript!); Randall Sherman (hysterical!) [Nice job all!]

On Politics And Global Warming: What You Might Not Have Read

In preparing for today's entries on the global warming buzz, I happened upon this transcript posted at Rush Limbaugh's website. I did not go to Mr. Limbaugh's site intentionally; a Google search led me there, and I am glad it did.

Perhaps you read that James Hansen, a director at NASA, testified at yesterday's climate change hearings held by the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Mr. Hansen has relentlessly reported that the Bush Administration has tried to suppress his scientific voice -- and the voice of other government scientists -- for apparently refusing to conform their work to White House ideology. That Mr. Hansen has been free enough, however, to grant 1,400 or so media interviews in the last few years seems to have slipped his mind.

But if you want to read great political banter, and if you want to see what the major media have concealed from your view, then I urge you to read all of the transcript found at Mr. Limbaugh's website (actually, this is a transcript of Limbaugh's radio broadcast where he plays the audio clips from the hearing).

I am so intrigued by all of this that I feel compelled to paste some of the transcript here, but I will refrain. You must read Congressman Darrell Issa's opening remarks, and how he takes Mr. Hansen to task. Plus, I believe NASA research scientist Roy Spencer's remarks are really quite important. Please, I am pleading. Take the ten minutes to read the text found at the link above.

Also, I thought you might find this article, "Scientists have inconvenient news for Al Gore", published in the Sydney Morning Herald, a thoroughly decent read.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Politics And Global Warming: A Vice President And A President Do Battle

I tried to live-blog this morning, to very little effect and perhaps much frustration. The event I was watching included the Dalai Lama of Climate Change, former Vice President Al Gore, who testified today before the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce. I found him earnest but incredibly dulling, though dulling not by being boring, but by over-reaching and over-stating. Mr. Gore's most bold claim is that the scientific community -- the "consensus" -- is unanimous: mankind is the primary source of global warming and climate change.

Mr. Gore spent much of his opening statement arguing that CO2 levels are dangerously high; he sees a "correlation" between CO2 levels and increased temperatures. In fact, at one point in his testimony, Al Gore argued that the planet "has a fever" and that, though we are only talking about a few degrees of increased temperature, everyone would agree that the difference between 98.6 and 103.6 is cause for grave concern. Irrespective of this absurd anthropomorphism of the planet and the fundamental weakness of the analogy, Mr. Gore believes that the evidence proves causality, and that the proof is irrefutable.

As I have noted before, confusing correlation and causality is utterly unscientific. Mr. Gore commits this non causa pro causa fallacy right before our eyes; he says it with emphasis and conviction, and yet, seemingly, too few notice. If I were to argue that my age and CO2 emissions have increased in a directly proportional relationship, I could not be dismissed as unscientific, for CO2 admissions have increased as I have gotten older. But surely everyone would snicker at me if I concluded that my increased age is the cause of CO2 emission increases world-wide or, more pertinently, that CO2 emissions are causing me to get older. A correlation does not a causality make.

This is all, truly, quite alarming, though not because it is such bad logic, but because such bad logic is touted as brilliant and courageous leadership by the sychophants sitting in front of Mr. Gore. But Mr. Gore's presentations are nothing of the sort. He is confusing things to promote an agenda, an agenda which might very well be himself. That he is sitting in such high places is not surprising; what IS surprising is how successful he has been in convincing others that the science is unanimous, infallible and indisputable.

If you are not sure the debate is alarming, perhaps these lines from Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist Ellen Goodman, a columnist at the Boston Globe, will open your eyes:

"I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

Ms. Goodman's hyperbole -- one that borders, I believe, on the immoral -- can be found in her February 9, 2007 column, No Change in Political Climate. Of course, no one in the scientific community that I know is denying, or has denied, that climate data show a noticeable warming trend, so Ms. Goodman might argue that she is safe: people who deny the trend are this era's Holocaust deniers. But we know she is not saying that; she is asserting that anyone who disagrees with Al Gore and his band of unanimous, all-knowing scientists is the child of Holocaust-denying parents, so to speak. That Ms. Goodman's language utterly cheapens the historical and moral value of the Holocaust is undeniable; her remark is a contemptible cheap-shot and she should be soundly chastised for making it.

There is more to all of this, of course. As some of you may know, the recent news-cycle has brought to us the curious counter-arguments to global warming models offered by University of Copenhagen's Bjarne Andersen; the reports can be found all over the web, like here, here, or here. As these links show, the idea of a global temperature, particularly an average one, is fraught with problems; one report says that Mr. Andersen argues that "compiling temperatures from various places and averaging them would be like calculating the average phone number in the phone book." Good for Mr. Andersen. At least his study shows that the scientific community, at least those like Mr. Andersen who study thermodynamics, are not all of one mind.

WHAT DOES IT MATTER?

Perhaps you have heard or read what the Czech President Vaclav Klaus has said in the past few days. President Klaus is ringing a different alarm. According to the Prague Daily Monitor, Klaus has written to the US Congress warning that "the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer forms." The biggest threat is "ambitious environmentalism." Klaus wrote:

"[I am] really concerned about the way the environmental topics have been misused by certain political pressure groups to attack fundamental principles underlying free society. …While discussing climate we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment but a clash of views about human freedom. …the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world."

But I need to quote even more of this fine article for our purposes here:

"[Klaus] noted that this ideology wants to replace 'the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world.'

"Its followers, Klaus added, consider 'their ideas and arguments to be an undisputable truth' and use sophisticated methods of media manipulation to exert pressure on politicians to achieve their goals.

"Klaus claimed that the environmentalists' argumentation is based on the spreading of fear and panic, and in this atmosphere they continue pushing politicians to adopt 'illiberal measures, impose arbitrary limits, regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions on everyday human activities and make people subject to omnipotent bureaucratic decision-making.'

"Klaus also said that environmentalists 'neglect the fact that both nature and human society are in a process of permanent change,' that there is and has been no ideal state of the world, and they ignore the future economic and technological progress."

I find this all philosophically fascinating. I wonder if you do too.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

On Politics And Climate Change: "Peer Reviewed" – Al Gore Returns To The House

(Live blogging with Al Gore)

Announcement: Al Gore invents the ElectroNet!†

I know it is the epitome of nerdism -- or is it geekism? -- for me to sit and watch Al Gore testify before the US House joint subcommittee on climate change. And I can honestly say that I am dumbfounded.

But what does it matter what I think? Mr. Gore is right now making the lamest argument I've ever heard as he defends his thesis that humans are increasingly short-sighted in their vision of the future: apparently we are living too much -- contrary to all we were told by 1960s visionaries -- for today, or so Mr. Gore declares. Instead, we need to be planning for the long-term, for the far-off future. But surely my thoughts on this matter are utterly irrelevant. But may I ask, do you think that "day-trading" is proof that we are short-sighted, that we are even ignorant of the future? Well, Mr. Gore does.

And then Gore makes this strange connection between the Congress and the "300," the Spartan warriors depicted in the recent comic-book film, "300." Gore right now tells Congress that its members are the "535" who are called to fight "the greatest challenge America has ever" had to face: climate change. It is a cute pop reference.

"These are not NORMAL times," avers Mr. Gore. And now he gives us his suggestions to save the planet from ourselves, and restore normalcy:

1) Immediately freeze CO2 emissions in the United States. ... then start the reductions of CO2.
2) "I believe we should start using the tax code to reduce the taxes on income and make up the difference by pollution taxes". ...Carbon pollution is not presently factored into the marketplace. We need a revenue-neutral tax shift.
3) A portion of those revenues should be and must be earmarked for the lower income groups to help them make this shift.
4) We need to be part of a major global treaty ... [one that includes the following major domestic steps], one replete with cap-and-trade initiatives:

a) A moratorium on any construction of any coal-burning power plants that do not comply with certain standards.
b) †ElectroNet: Congress should allow regular folks to sell electricity back to the grid from domestic, household carbon-neutral power plants.
c) Raise CAFE standards.
d) Ban incandescent light bulbs.
e) Form a carbon-neutral mortgage association.
f) The SEC should require disclosures of carbon emissions in corporate financial reports: stockholders should know of the environmental hazards associated with companies' actions.

[I am paraphrasing because I haven't the skill to take strict dictation.]

Truly, I am numbed by all of this. Mr. Gore is so amazingly dulling to my wits that I can conclude that I must not be made of iron; if iron sharpens iron, then I am either made of lesser metal or neither of us is made of iron. But what is really interesting is Gore's sacred pronunciation of "peer-reviewed," as if this not only adds gravitas, it serves as the imprimatur to Mr. Gore's arguments drawn from "recent findings."

"The debate on the science is over with!" exclaimed Mr. Gore at 10:54 AM EDST.

Really, Mr. Gore?

More later, I think.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Goin' Up To The Scrubber In The Sky

Imagine all the deep-blue sky, free of CO2. It isn't hard to do. It's easy if you try. The clean blue sky, it's where I'm gonna go when I die.

Sir Richard Branson, music industry icon, billionaire tycoon, owner of an airline -- an ambitious man who has had big oil interests -- has called attention to his deep and generous concern. He wants a cleaner, healthier biosphere. He wants a cooler planet, one with thicker and broader ice caps; with shallower oceans. He wants longer, colder, more difficult winters. And he is willing to give away $25 million to the first person who can keep winter icy-hard.

The AP (and everyone else) reported this weekend that Sir Branson, of Virgin Atlantic Airlines (and Virgin everything else), hopes that his largesse shall spur on competition for a sort of atmospheric scrubber, or a sort of sponge, or a sort of respirator, that will remove harmful levels of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. One can't hardly be more impressed with such a noble call: Sir Branson has tapped into the deep reserves of scientific genius in the hopes of finding a cure for our self-inflicted malady.

That, I believe, is the big global warming story of the day.

But the real story is this, no?

Here we have a man who is heavily invested in the airline industry calling for someone -- anyone -- to bring forward some device or method that expurgates harmful levels of CO2 from the atmosphere. Now, let us imagine that I, of all people, have the answer to Sir Branson's challenge, and that I win his $25 million award; imagine that CO2 gases are indeed reduced, and the earth's atmosphere begins to cool to "normal" temperatures. What would happen?

What would happen is that people would not reduce their use of oil at all; rather, they would increase it. Find the certain cure for cancer and everyone starts smoking. In other words, Sir Branson's challenge is billowing with self-interest. He wants to destroy the effects of carbon-based fuel consumption in order to protect the use of carbon fuels. And even if that is NOT his motive, it will clearly be the motive for other people in similar industries. (Just forget about the political need to free the West of its dependence on Mid-East oil.) It hardly matters that Mr. Branson has also promised to invest in green fuels technologies (in his own Virgin Fuels), since that investment is also pure self-interest: he expects a return, and to cash in on popular anxieties.

Sir Branson's challenge certainly tickles the ears, but it is oozing with problems.

Or so it could be argued.

We could always just have people stop exhaling CO2 for half of each day. I mean, six billion CO2 pumps can't be one whit good. Or we could just put gels of algae over every mouth and every exhaust pipe on the planet, or fill the virgin atlantic with those great little creatures. That's it!

Peace.

BG

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All rights reserved.

¶ Of The Day: Seeing Clearly Through The Radiant Gas

Today's ¶ Of the Day is really but a sentence. But it is a really good sentence.

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal editorial, "Legal Hot Air" (2.6.07), which discusses, in part, California Attorney General Jerry Brown's intent to sue the auto industry for making cars (that spew greenhouse gases), the editors make this solid point about suing one part of the greenhouse gas-belching industry complex:

In short, there's scarcely any economic activity imaginable that doesn't somehow affect the balance of greenhouse gases, which is why a "nuisance" complaint against any single industry doesn't make sense. It's also why the judiciary has so far wisely refused to get drawn into this kind of game. ...

In any case, as global warming alarmists never tire of reminding us, any serious attempt to control greenhouse gas levels would have to be an international one. [emphasis added]

Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal does not -- apparently -- see what I see in this bold quote; I hope you at least see it, for it is buried right there before our eyes.

What is evident -- even if the most dire predictions of global warming are perfectly true -- is that global warming rhetoric is being used to foment discontent over the idea of separate nation states. In other words, what the WSJ has missed is that this is all about creating one great overseer, one great political monolith: Global warming is so dire we all must work together, now, under one set of rules, and under one enforcing body.

I am surprised I had not seen this before.

Perhaps I do not see as clearly as I believe I do. Of course I don't.

One.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
And all lefts.

Breaking Great Wind In The Storm's Eye, Part II: Roger Ebert On Al Gore

Trust me when I say that I am not opposed to the idea that the earth is warming. Trust me when I say I believe in climate change. Trust me when I even say that there has never been one instant in history when the earth has not either been getting cooler or getting warmer: Climate change is a constant. I get the big picture. I am about as green as green can be, within my means (only the really, really poor and the rich can be truly green). And trust me when I say that I am not agoraphobic: I am not afraid of crowds. But I might be Algore-aphobic, afraid of the crowds swirling around the low-pressure system which is the used-to-be "former President of the United States." (Ever see a satellite photo of a low-pressure system? It looks a lot like a bunch of spinning 6's. You know what I mean.)

Roger Ebert, the well-known film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, admits in his recent review of Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, that he is, as critic, working as advocate. And, in fact, he is doing so as an absolutist, even an infallible one:

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be "impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended.

It is good to know that infallibility is not the sole claim of the Vatican: Al Gore, Roger Ebert, and the "scientists" are absolutely right. Next thing you know Messrs. Gore and Ebert will be dictating sacred scripture for our edification in the new Church. But I digress. There is more from Mr. Ebert:

In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to.

I wish Mr. Ebert would explain, since he is clearly a science whiz, how it is that he and countless others, including Al Gore, have no problem dumping tens, nay, hundreds of thousands of gallons of burned jet fuel at 35,000 feet so they all can get to Cannes, France to watch movies. Perhaps he can also explain those solar-powered yachts at anchor just off-shore of that famed movie mecca. Perhaps Mr. Ebert will, eventually, explain his omissions about such emissions to his grandchildren. And I am absolutely certain that Mr. Ebert will tell his grandchildren that, when it comes to "burning fossil fuels" jet-setting from Cannes to Sundance, "no other view can be defended."

At least there is the one saving caveat to Ebert's review: it represents, in his words, "the truth as I understand it." Of course it does.

As I've said, An Inconvenient Truth is exactly that.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

Technorati tags: Roger Ebert, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore, Cannes, cannes film festival

Breaking Great Wind In The Storm's Eye: Al Gore And The Democratic Party

Former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, needs the world to melt away.

As you know, and as I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, Al Gore, with the help of his friends at Apple Computer, Inc. (where he sits on the board of directors), has recently released a film, An Inconvenient Truth. Ebert & Roeper have given the film Two Thumbs Up. I will skip the science part of the whole debate for today, and I will admit that I have not seen the film, though I intend to. What I want to point out is that Al Gore has done something utterly precarious: He has pinned his whole political life on a swirling, whirling, convecting and advective maelstrom of gas. In short, he has put his career on the line for a bunch of variables, hoping to win our plaudits by the hoped-for triumph of one constant: The planet is getting warmer.

Trust me when I say this: Al Gore is doomed if the planet begins to get cooler. He is doomed if the polar caps are indeed getting deeper in their cores as they are shrinking on their edges (as some have posited). He is doomed if November 2008 is bitterly cold, especially if September and October are cold, too. His career will be so much vapor looking for one constant particle around which to coalesce; yet if the rarefied air he hopes to coalesce in should become utterly clean of any particles, his raindrop will never form, and he shall be lost in the gases he fears.

I am not suggesting that he is wrong for being concerned about global warming, or that humans impact the environment in often grotesque proportions. I am saying that he is wrong for politicizing this whole "crisis", this "planetary emergency", as he calls it.

But what I am really saying is that the Democratic National Party is doomed for the exact same reasons. You see, they have embraced Gore's "science" completely: They have endorsed his view and made it a plank in the Democratic Party's weather observation deck. Gore is The Man right now, and he has got to be relishing the attention. Egads, he was even The Man at the Cannes Film Festival.

Yesterday I received this email titled "Gore-bashing" from Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. Let me remind you that Democrats repeatedly refer to the Republican leadership as "fearmongers". Here's the email:

Dear Fellow Democrat,

Hurricane season has arrived -- and two fresh studies point to a link between global warming and an increase in the number and power of storms like Hurricane Katrina.

What are Republicans doing about it? They're smearing former Vice President Al Gore.

One right-wing pundit compared Gore to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist. Another right-winger, who's been on the payroll of corporate special interests, likened Gore's pursuit of solutions to global warming to Adolf Hitler's pursuit of genocide.

I'm sending Al a note this week telling him to keep fighting, to keep standing up for the truth no matter how vicious the attacks. I thought he might like to hear from you, too. …

Facts are facts. Global warming is happening, and it threatens our very existence. But it also presents a historical opportunity to rise above politics and act boldly. Despite right-wing efforts to silence him, Al Gore has articulated one of the great moral challenges of our time and tried to move people to act.

This should not be a political issue. We need a conversation about climate change and its consequences. But special interests in Washington have a tight grip on the Republican leadership, and an entire network of corporate-funded front groups has emerged to deny reality and attack the messenger.

They hope that scorched-earth political tactics will cover up the reality that the scientific debate is one they've already lost.

Vice President Al Gore deserves our thanks for his courage and leadership. …

Did you know the National Academy of Sciences joined academies in the other G8 countries last year by concluding that global warming requires "prompt action"? Or that insurance companies are fleeing coastlines and charging huge premiums to avoid taking more losses from massive hurricanes? How about the fact that climate researchers have a new worry: that we could cross a tipping point that sends sea levels rising by 20 feet by the end of the century?

If you didn't know, that's by design. Corporate special interests are deeply invested in keeping us hooked to the status quo -- high gas prices, inefficiency, and dependence on foreign oil.

That's why last year, in the middle of a record-breaking hurricane season, Republicans in Congress and the White House gave oil companies $6 billion -- even as those companies ran away with the largest corporate profits in American history. And that's why we still have yet to see the Bush administration stand up and do anything to stop global warming.

Enough is enough, and people know it. Al Gore is demonstrating exactly the kind of courage and moral clarity that Democrats will bring when we take back Congress and win elections up and down the ballot this year.

The inconvenient truth is that global warming exists -- and thanks to Al Gore, it's now more likely that America will come together and do something about it.

Sincerely,
Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

And, according Dr. Dean, here are the two offensive quotes regarding Mr. Gore:

Citations

"You don't go see Joseph Goebbels' films to see the truth about Nazi Germany. You don't go see Al Gore's films to see the truth about global warming."
--Sterling Burnett, DaySide, Fox News, May 23, 2006.

"Gore believed in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews."
--Bill Gray, as quoted in The Washington Post Magazine, May 28, 2006.

Now, I have no idea who Sterling Burnett (?) or Bill Gray are, but to Dr. Dean, this amounts to an all-out right-wing attack on Al Gore. And if you don't think that Dr. Dean's letter suggests that the Democrats have politicized this issue, then recall with me what happened May 31 when a group of concerned citizens protested outside the headquarters of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Hurricane Center. What was their beef (excuse the references to methane)? That NOAA has been "covering up the growing scientific link between severe hurricanes and global warming." And NOAA is doing this in a gross conspiracy along with the Bush Administration and EXXON! Don't believe me? Then read this statement from the protest's organizers. It is clear that the protesters are not members of the Republican Party.

(Let me point out that real scientists would not say that there is a "growing scientific link" between anything. There is an alleged "climatological, meterological" link or "growing atmospheric-chemical" link. But a "growing scientific link"? That's middle school stuff.)

And lastly, look at this from the Democratic National Committee. It pretty much proves what the Democrats have in mind.

***

Why has Al Gore hitched his wagon to a melting polar ice cap? Simple. It is a perfectly hot topic right now, and it is perfectly ambiguous. It is the sort of scientific "fact" that can be used for glorious political gain, because it is one that has the appearance of certitude and yet is, by all honest accounts, a field of broad uncertainty. Moreover, Al Gore has hitched his wagon to so much gas because he wants to distance himself from "Big Oil", you know, the REAL source of global warming and the impending calamity. And the Democrats have hitched themselves to the very same vapors.

THAT is why they desperately need the planet to get hotter, at least for a couple of more years. They need the calamity in order to save not only all of us, but all of them. They need the planet to melt so badly they can see water already rising in New York. They are so knee deep in it that they might just propose putting life jackets in voting booths.

It is a bit of a joke when we hear Democrats insist that this "crisis" should not be a partisan issue. Of course it should: The Democrats have made it one. They are the real scientists after all, a fact well-established now that they've shown the Republicans to be all about Intelligent Design (which is about the philosophy of science, the very foundations of it, and not about science per se; which is a fact lost on critics of Intelligent Design). And it is the Democrats, long critics of Big Oil, who have laid the blame for most of the global warming on that giant industry.

Of course, there is great irony watching all those liberals, so concerned about global warming, flying over to Cannes to watch Al Gore's film. Gore also scarred the sky in a trans-Atlantic crossing. And now he flies around the globe, telling us all that the atmosphere is fragile and is becoming our enemy.

An Inconvenient Truth is exactly that.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.
Al Gore photograph courtesy of CBS News (via Google photos)

Technorati tags: Al Gore, Global Warming, Climate Change, An Inconvenient Truth, Environment, Democratic Party, Democrats, Howard Dean, DNC, Big Oil

A Really Inconvenient Fact

I may not have a B.S. in any scientific discipline, but that has never stopped me from recognizing BS, especially when I step in it. I know, I know: it is dubious at best to come to Contratimes for a science lesson, but once in a while it is OK for us to think like scientists, you know, critically.

My starting point is the rather recent installment of PBS's NOVA called "Dimming the Sun", which I watched a couple of weeks ago (and where I stepped into some serious BS). The point of that rather stimulating science program was that particulate matter released into the atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity, along with myriad contrails produced by airliners, combine to reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the lower levels of the atmosphere. Studies in the Maldives, for instance, have shown that air pollution may indeed reduce sunlight by as much as 10%. The result, obviously, is that air temperatures in "smoggy" zones are cooler. And cooler air has drastic effects on weather patterns, perhaps even distorting weather and (ocean ?) currents to such a degree that droughts and other sundry calamities occur.

But this is only half of NOVA's story. The other half has to do with reducing air pollutants, especially the particulate matter associated with solar dimming. The idea is that with cleaner air more sunlight reaches the lower atmosphere and ground, thus increasing air temperatures. In other words, the theory is that visible pollutants are masking the invisible catastrophe awaiting us: MASSIVE global warming due to invisible and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases which will "trap" heat should more light penetrate the atmosphere. For a full explanation and a virtual synopsis of the NOVA program, read the Wikipedia article "Global dimming." I urge you to read it not merely because it is interesting, but because of what it never mentions. And you know what? NOVA never mentions "it" either.

But before I tell you what "it" is, I must make one observation about the NOVA program. I might be wrong about this, but I don't think I am: NOVA did not interview a single person with a countervailing opinion regarding dimming, cooling or warming. Not one! Add to that the fact that NOVA only aired the opinions of at best five experts, and one MUST conclude that NOVA might best be taken with something like a grain of salt.

Permit me to back into what is missing in both NOVA's "scientific inquiry" and Wikipedia's article. This passage from Wikipedia is a great starting point. I mean, this is science at its (political?) best:

It is now thought that the effect (global dimming) is probably due to the increased presence of aerosols [sic] particles in the atmosphere. Aerosol particles absorb solar energy and reflect sunlight back to space. The pollutants can also become nuclei for cloud droplets. It is thought that the water droplets in clouds coalesce around the particles, and more aerosol particles result in the clouds consisting of a greater number of smaller droplets, which in turn makes them more reflective: bouncing more sunlight back into space.

Now there is nothing wrong with this virtual rehashing of NOVA's major premise. It is, for our purposes, completely true. But there is something massive, literally, missing from all of this, and one wonders how it could not be mentioned even in passing. I wonder if you have guessed what "it" is. Need a clue? Well, try this one, or this.

Yes, that's right: Volcanoes. What is missing in the global dimming report is the earth itself: that the earth is its own heat engine; and is its own cooler.

Remember in 1991 when Mt. Pinatubo absolutely ripped a hole into our earth's atmosphere, belching material in unimaginable quantities into the earth's very stratosphere? Remember what you were told, that the eruption would affect the entire globe for years? Remember hearing the same when Mt. Saint Helens blew apart in 1980? Remember hearing that such eruptions would cool the earth's atmosphere, even though they hurled millions of tons of gas and heat skyward? Well, if you need a refresher on Pinatubo alone, read this, this and this.

Now let's for a moment return to the Wikipedia quote above, where it is mentioned that global dimming is a result of the presence of aerosols in the upper atmosphere. Alas, there is no mention of volcanic activity. Yet in all three Pinatubo links above we read something like this:

Pinatubo injected about 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it reacted with water to form a hazy layer of AEROSOL particles composed primarily of sulfuric acid droplets. Over the course of the next two years strong stratospheric winds spread these aerosol particles around the globe.

Unlike the lower atmosphere (or troposphere, which extends from the surface to roughly 10 km), the stratosphere does not have rain clouds as a mechanism to quickly wash out pollutants. Therefore, a heavy influx of aerosol pollutants, like the plume from Mount Pinatubo, will remain in the stratosphere for years until the processes of chemical reactions and atmospheric circulation can filter them out. In the case of Mount Pinatubo, the result was a measurable cooling of the Earth's surface for a period of almost two years.

Because they scatter and absorb incoming sunlight, aerosol particles exert a cooling effect on the Earth's surface. The Pinatubo eruption increased aerosol optical depth in the stratosphere by a factor of 10 to 100 times normal levels measured prior to the eruption.

Oopsy! Just a small detail left out of Wikipedia and NOVA's uh, science. Call it a mere blippish oversight. And to think someone went to the Maldives in the 1990's to run tests to determine whether smog blocks sunlight!

Moreover, what is also not mentioned in either source is the effect the earth's core temperature has on climate; that the earth is not a frozen ice ball (though surface materials are indeed "frozen" in the scientific sense), but a sphere with an incredibly volatile heat source not far below its skin. That source of heat is not only important in maintaining life on this planet, it is important in this discussion of global warming and cooling. But more importantly, that NOVA and Wikipedia never mention either volcanic activity or the earth's radiant heat suggests that real scientific inquiry is not what either is interested in. Finally, neither the TV program nor the online encyclopedia mentions increases or decreases in solar activity, which also wreak havoc on terrestrial atmospherics.

Al Gore has released a new movie called "An Inconvenient Truth," in which he apparently divides for us the facts from fiction regarding global warming. I will venture a guess that the complexities of vulcanism and any one volcano's impact on climate make naught but a small appearance in Gore's film. But that's fine: he is a politician, after all, and he needs science to work for his agenda, which is, in part, to distance himself from "Big Oil," you know, that industry allegedly most responsible for global warming (and the one allegedly associated with Republicans). But that NOVA, an apparently neutral science program, should have neglected not only any countervailing opinions but the facts of Pinatubo––that such an eruption lowered global temperatures as much as .6 degrees C in 15 months––should give us all pause.

There is more that NOVA failed to tell us in "Dimming the Sun," but I will leave that for another time. But let us not in all this permit such "fact-based" programs and resources to have a dimming effect on our much needed minds. We need to think clearly about the complexities before us. I mean, let us beware (unlike Al Gore) of committing non causa pro causa fallacies, you know, mistaking correlation with causality. Gore and NOVA might be right, but we won't ever know if we accept only part of the data.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

For a complete transcript of NOVA's program, go here.

Pinatubo photo courtesy of http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/pinatubo/volcano/

Technorati tags: Al Gore, Global Warming, Global dimming, NOVA, Mt. Pinatubo, vulcanism, An Inconvenient Truth, Climate Change