Wednesday, July 18, 2012

When weather is climate is weather is climate

If you can keep track, you're better than me. When it was hot in the 90s, we were told because it was so hot in the 90s, that it proved Global Warming. Then some time in the mid-00s, it became cool, really cool. At first we got the new term 'Global Climate Change', and were told bad winters were the result. But as several years brought mild to cool summers, and terrible record breaking winters, we were told it didn't matter. All that was just weather. Now, we're told that all this that was called weather is really climate and once again proves Global Warming.

Two blogs that are better than mine take up the order of business about all the latest. Michael Flynn does a wonderful job explaining for us novices why we should be skeptical about the latest 'this proves we're right' study that supports what MMGW advocates want to believe. Meanwhile, Thomas McDonald uses common sense to point out that all of this near record breaking heat in the summer was once understood as being part of summer. Notice the emphasis on near record breaking when we hear it discussed. So far, it's not record breaking. The worst since the 50s. Not even close to the Dust Bowl yet. And yet, the beat goes on.

I'm sorry, but by now you have to have faith in the purity of humanity not to smell a rat. Many advocates of MMGW rush and say I don't know the science so shut up. They're right. I don't know the science. So I can only rely on scientists to explain it to me. But when those scientists exhibit the same characteristics of a used car salesman standing beside a Buick and insisting that it's no big deal that it has an oil leak the size of a small wading pool, forgive me for being cautious. Especially when so much of the frenzy and hysteria fits with the modern 'We're all going to feakin' die!', when the solutions range from 'give us more billions to research this' to 'vote for more government control of your lives', to 'there's just too damn many people in the world and it's time we start thinning the herds', I'm going to take a second look.

More and more, as I hear scientists change what they said a month ago, rename what they named a year ago, and tell me it's time to pay attention to what's happening outside my window again (despite saying the opposite a few years ago), I think less of clear scientific reasoning and theorizing, and more about a desperate attempt to ignore any pesky data that could show they are wrong:

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