I worked on a project about 25 years ago regarding CFC's and ozone depletion. We could model ozone breakdown by CFC catalysis in the laboratory but we also could model ozone creation and destruction by ultraviolet radiation and charged particles both of which come from the sun. the former was emphasized by the politicians while the latter was carefully ignored because it did not fit the political narrative.

It is axiomatic that professional politicians are unscrupulous power hungry elitists that seek power by any means available. This applies across the political spectrum and exceptions are rare indeed. It is my conviction that any politician that remains in office for more than two terms has become so corrupt that they can no longer be trusted to manage the fate of the citizenry. I know of no exceptions to this rule.

People tend to distrust science unless the scientist predicts something bad. Then, for some reason, their words are accepted as gospel. Such is the case for global warming, cooling, change, etc. While they are scoundrels politicians are not fools and they clearly see an opportunity when one presents its self. Anthropogenic Global Climate Change presents just such a juicy opportunity. The latest villain is carbon dioxide. It is true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and as the relative molecular abundance of this gas increases in our atmosphere the black body equilibrium temperature of the Earth increases along with it. From this line of reasoning it follows that left unchallenged CO2 would eventually dominate the atmosphere and the Earth would become a boiling cauldron much like Venus where life would be impossible. This is the ultimate prediction of most of the climate change models currently in vogue. Clearly, this is an eventuality that should be avoided at all costs.

The part that the politicians and enviro-zealots avoid is that the biosphere doesn't work that way. The most aggressively opportunistic life form on the planet is vegetation. And vegetation responds with considerable enthusiasm to increases in its most important component, carbon. Even slight increases in carbon content in the atmosphere are met with dramatic and corresponding increases in vegetation growth. This process poses strict limits to CO2 increase in the atmosphere. This is left out of most of the AGW models for two reasons; it doesn't fit the political narrative and dynamic modeling on this scale is very difficult to do. And nobody believes good news from scientists anyway.

None of this is lost on those that seek arguments for increased government control over the populace. The point is that the cleanest countries on Earth are those with the greatest liberty and best technology and this presents an uncomfortable truth that the "progressives" chose to ignore. The worst polluters on the planet are those that are ruled by the very kind of governments that the AGW alarmists seek to impose everywhere. Unfortunately, that linkage is far to complex for most people to fathom so it is ignored.

I have had this AGW garbage cross my console ever since I made public this e-mail by Phil Jones, Director, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England, UK:

"I've just completed [Michael Mann]'s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to the data series for the last twenty years, i.e., from 1981 onwards, and to the 1961 series for Keith[ Briffa]'s to hide the decline."

Michael Mann was then at the University of Virginia. Keith Briffa was at the time Phil Jones' assistant director.

Excellent article. Thanks for the link.

Jan

Oh. Wow. I did not know one could do that. Reading now...

Jan

Interest, Jan. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. In 2003, when I was editor of Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science, we commissioned an article by Matt Ridley and its was excellent. Here it is. And thanks, again. http://dana.org/Cerebrum/2003/The_Myth_o...

But on June 13th the NY Times also published another article - an editorial supported a new view of Environmentalism: http://rationaloptimist.com/blog/eco-mod...

It used to be that Climate Skeptics could not get published at all. Now, people (and even politicians - gasp!) are beginning to turn around.

Jan

Bravo WDonway,
Excellent article. Follow the money! It is the same old meme of the ludittes and the malthusians... Technology, people, civilization that has allowed more people to live and thrive on earth are actually destroying us all... The fact that past predictions and models have proven wrong is not to be observed.
Regards,
O.A.

"“interim under-secretary for science,” interviewed by the Chronicle of Higher Education, made a rambling response but managed to get in that Dr. Soon’s research “is not the highest quality.” It was a strange pronouncement by a Smithsonian science director about one of its scientists given Dr. Soon’s 25-year association with the Smithsonian."

Welcome to the SSI, Dr Soon. You should have a chat with Dr Stadler as soon as possible if you want continued funding.

"But the Smithsonian has a problem. "
What's a little hypocrisy and fraud among colleagues?

Is Rearden Metal good?
Yes.

(Good article, WD. Thanks!)