How true, as I write of the progressive's 'Forward' as moving forward to the past. It certainly is anti-progress, anti-technology and anti-science at least where the empowerment and the natural evolution of conscious human life is concerned.

It's all model manipulation by the Greenies!

The Pope should stick with the Church stuff, backed by the tenets of same, which for those purposes he is supposedly infallible. For anything else, he is what he is, a human being who was raised in a socialist country. Butt out, Frank.

Wow! Loved the article. Thanks, WDonway. Easy to understand for us unscientific types and great ammo for "discussions" with the lefties in our midst.

On Thursday, two groups with essentially identical psycho-epistemologies and metaphysical views of man will come together in support of acting immediately and drastically on the Climate Catastrophe idea. Joining Greenpeace and other greens will be Pope Francis with a 191-page encyclical on the environment, which urges on some billion Catholics worldwide the moral imperative of drastic action to begin shutting down the entire fossil fuel energy system. The Pope told reporters that man's technology and economic growth "slaps nature in the face."

Get ready for a huge roll-out of this encyclical, though that has been blunted by the leaking of a draft to an Italian newspaper. The encyclical directly supports drastic action at the summit in Paris at the end of this year, which will try to plan for reducing global carbon emissions. The Pope says emphatically that no half-way measures should be tolerated...

If the defenders of the Industrial Revolution had a Paul Revere, he would be riding hard, now, to arouse them to arms.

Ideally, we need to make several copies of the Solar System, including planet Earth as it stands. Controlled experiments where some copies of Earth are allowed to generate huge CO2 emissions, and others that aren't, study the results over the next couple of centuries, and see what the differences are.

More seriously, there is some evidence of multipliers already, such as the melting permafrost.

As for whole Ayn Rand smoking thing, it makes a nice analogy but does not add any credibility to the weak smoking-lung cancer analogy with global warming-Climate Catastrophe.

The Green as profoundly, at root, philosophically antagonists to human economic development, man's means of survival by adapting nature to his needs, and the entire nature of an economy that views meeting the needs and desires of consumers as it reason for being.

The talk of Greenpeace about solar power, wind power, creating jobs, a new economic surge is window-dressing, pure and simple. They have zero interest in that. Putting man in his "place" on Earth is their passion.

There ARE environmentalists who do seek solutions compatible with continued economic growth. Many, of course, begin with the obvious move of support nuclear power, a known, highly developed technology with little or no environmental impact--one with a long track record of incredible safety, even including the recent accident in Japan. But, of course, Greenpeace's slogan is "No New Nukes."

I would suggest to you that the smoking-cancer link had a LOT more going for it in the 1950's than the fossil fuel-Climate Catastrophe link does today.

You see, in the hypothetical smoking-cancer link, smoking and lung cancer were known to EXIST. So seeking a link was very plausible. As for the fossil-fuel-Climate Catastrophe link, the Climate Catastrophe does not even exist, as yet. Yes, there is a link between man's generation of C02 and warming in the atmosphere, but the climate deniers readily admit that. The question is the link between man's generation of CO2 and Climate Catastrophe a century from now. So, in the case of the latter linkage, one side of the hypothetical link does not even exist in any form. At least we knew that lung cancer existed.

The topic that started this thread was the stomping of Dr. Willie Soon's reputation for being one of the authors of a scientific paper. That paper claimed to demonstrate that, although global warming exists, the theories that say it will result in catastrophic levels of CO2 a century from now require postulating many things in addition man's generation of CO2. One additional assumption required is that there will be sudden "multipliers" that will boost warming. Dr. Soon and his colleagues rebut this and other assumptions of Climate Catastrophe.

The lack of reason on climate change boggles the mind! No one among the global warming believes ever questions Al Gore's self interest and millions he makes on it. Yet, the quibble about funding for one scientist's study. Why does anyone care what GreeenPeace thinks anymore, we know they are self serving handmaidens of the UN, promoting Agenda 21, just like so many other environmental groups. None fo these leaders can allow the eco train to stop, they all stand to make too much in money and power if it continues. As to the grassroots level, did you ever hear any original thought from them, just more talking points they have learned to recite. They don't care where the temperature sensors were placed to reach the heating results, so what if a jet engine blew into it, they never question anything. They are qhat the one worlders want us all to be, blind followers.

Nice comments by all and a good read. I noticed "Scientific American" is listed in the article as one that echoed the Greenpeace stomping of Willie Soon. I used to be an avid reader and subscriber to "Scientific American", but either the late eighties or early nineties I noticed the publication taking a left political turn and it became less "scientific" and more of a leftist political shill with a "scientific" facade. That is, even within some presumably excellent scientific articles they couldn't help pushing the political agenda. I felt somewhat betrayed as a long time reader/subscriber and could no longer trust what they published as being real science. I have picked it up on the magazine rack from time to time and notice it is a skinny little rag compared to what it used to be, but the political op-ed crap is still taking ink space where real science reporting should be. Has anyone besides me noticed this? Am I somehow wrong in my assessment?

Global warming believers are the true deniers. They deny that the world’s temperatures have never changed. They deny that there have been Ice Ages. They deny that there have been inter glacial warm periods when crocodiles, elephants and lions roamed in Europe. There is plenty of evidence that Neanderthal men lived among hippopotamus, African elephant, spotted hyena, lion leopard, etc. during inter-glacial warm periods. Paleolithic plant studies have shown that global warm periods produce more rainfall and lush vegetation. The opposite is of course true of ice ages. In other words, warmer leads to more food and colder leads to less food. Do the climate change controllers think that they can keep global temperatures from changing forever? During recorded history, there have been many warm and cold periods. Vikings colonized Greenland during a warm period and had to leave 100 years later because of cold. There was a mini-ice-age during the nineteenth century. Plants rely on CO2 for growth and convert it into O2 and H2O. The climate change worriers are using several logical fallacies in their arguments. The fallacy of distraction from ignorance. Reducing CO2 emissions is not known to reduce global temperatures so it must be true. The slippery slope of increasingly unacceptable consequence is drawn, most of which are figments of someone’s imagination. The proposition is argued to be true because it is widely held to be true. The person’s character is attacked in the false dilemma that skeptics believe in a flat earth.

Please beware the temptation of buying into arguments which follow the line of "IF hypothesis A is true, THEN corporate profits will decrease in the short to medium term, THEREFORE Hypothesis A is incorrect, and the product of a left-wing conspiracy."

From an objective scientific viewpoint, we presently don't have absolute conclusive evidence to support or deny human contribution to climate change. The evidence we have at the moment is highly suggestive, but comparable to evidence of tobacco's link to cancer as it was in the 1950s - suggestive but not conclusively causal.

I just hope that by the time the evidence firms up to the satisfaction of the nay-sayers, that it isn't too late to recover some of the natural environmental beauty we once enjoyed and are at risk of losing rapidly.

I'm sure Ayn Rand would have given up smoking much earlier, and avoided her lethal lung cancer, if there had been much earlier proof of tobacco's link to cancer. She made a decision to take a personal risk with her own body, a risk which didn't pay off. She had the right to take that risk, since it only affected her own health, and her body was her property to do with as she pleased.

But when you have a global network of corporations wanting to take a similar risk with the planet, what they're affecting is far more than their own property. They're encroaching on the property rights of the global human population. No matter how far we go as indivualists/objectivists, there will still be some property in common.

Meanwhile, the green community includes some extremely pro-industry people, wanting to start a new industrial revolution based on renewable, sustainable resources. Some of today's most die-hard greenies could turn out to be the sustainability technology Hank Reardens of the future.

could happen

Just wait until New England is covered by a mile thick ice sheet........again.

So 'climate deniers" are financed by industrialists
whose "vested interest" is in not being wiped out
by government? --And are not "global warming" pro
moters being financed by a power-lusting govern-
ment run by power-lusters dedicated to the des-
trucion of industry?--So which research is"taint-
ed"?--I have also read that in the days of Pas-
teur there was a "scientific consensus" against
his theory, which would have prevented the
pasteurization of milk.

It is of no consequence that the winter weather is getting a little bit longer each year and during the height of winter a little bit colder, those in the political world will conveniently ignore it and claim it is caused by global warming anyway. There is no convincing them that they are wrong. So when there is limited summer and limited growing season and limited food supply maybe they might reconsider their position. Not a chance.

Thank you. I often bring up the vineyards of Roman Britain, but I did not know about the 11th C ones!

Jan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEBeF_Rz...

Readers may recall a thorough examination of the history of English wine here a few months ago – chiefly because the subject tends to come up as a contrarian climate talking point every now and again. The bottom line from that post was that the English wine industry is currently thriving and has a geographical extent and quality levels that are unprecedented in recorded history. So whether vineyards are a good proxy for climate or not, you certainly can’t use the supposed lack of present day English vineyards in any serious discussion about climate….
So along comes this quote today (promoting Fred Singer’s latest turnaround) (my emphasis):
“The Romans wrote about growing wine grapes in Britain in the first century,” says Avery, “and then it got too cold during the Dark Ages. Ancient tax records show the Britons grew their own wine grapes in the 11th century, during the Medieval Warming, and then it got too cold during the Little Ice Age. It isn’t yet warm enough for wine grapes in today’s Britain. Wine grapes are among the most accurate and sensitive indicators of temperature and they are telling us about a cycle. They also indicate that today’s warming is not unprecedented.”
- See more at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

I hope you never get stomped for telling the truth.

Truth be told!! A breath of fresh air.....

Thanks for the example. I read, wrote and talked all about ClimateGate at the time, but couldn't remember any specific examples.

Thanks for a very cogent summary.

"The journal Astronomy and Astrophysics replied that Soon’s funding is irrelevant to his scientific demonstration." Someone is still able to speak honestly!

Arguing against a scientific paper by talking abut who funded it is avoiding the content of the paper. It's a classic fallacy of "poisoning the well". It doesn't matter who funded someone if the research is accurate. It is a game of "follow the money, ignore the science".