The global warmists consistently tell us two things: 1. The science is settled about human activities causing global warming, and we are not to question it because this comes from scientists. If we doubt them, we are anti-science deniers. 2. If we don't act now, the consequences will be disastrous.
Well. Let's talk about scientists and their predictions about the future. Last year, a group of astronomers predicted that a star known as HIP 85605 might make a dangerously close approach to our sun. When might this happen? Oh, about a quarter of a million years from now. But best to be prepared!
Or not:
Last year, a different group of astronomers reported that a different star called HIP 85605 might make a dangerous pass through the Oort Cloud 240,000 to 470,000 years from now. Now Mamajek and his colleagues say HIP 85605 won't come anywhere near that close.
Mamajek is University of Rochester Professor Eric Mamajek, and he and his colleagues represent a different group of astronomers who have knocked down the year-old prediction of the first about something that will happen so far in the future that for all we know there won't even be a sun by that time.
Anyway, I suppose it's a relief for those 10,000 generations hence that this frightening close pass isn't happening, except . . . except for the fact that no one knows what is going to happen a quarter- to a half-million years from now. That doesn't mean there is no value to scientific models or projections. Of course there is. But we actually do science a disservice when we treat everything scientists say as the be-all-end-all of truth that settles all arguments forever. That's not how science works. Science is constantly challenging, testing and trying to disprove its own thinking. That's how you learn things.
It's no knock against the first group of astronomers that they were "wrong" (if in fact they were) because science is all about examining and re-examining the data and trying to learn from it.
Now let's apply this same thinking to global warming. We already know that the alarmist predictions championed over the past 20 years or so by the likes of Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich have not come true. Now they have new alarming predictions and tell us that if we don't act (which, by the way, means passing the very new taxes and industry controls that liberals just happen to favor anyway), then global catastrophe is sure to result.
And if you disagree, you're anti-science!
No. I'd say that if you abuse science by trying to turn scientists into fortune tellers for the purpose of pushing your political agenda, then you're the one who's anti-science. I don't really blame the climate scientists of a generation ago for getting their predictions wrong, because as I said, science is abour formulating hypotheses and then testing them. As you learn more things, you apply the new knowledge and form new hypotheses.
But I do blame politicians who tried to not only use these models to push for idiotic public policy, but who mis-defined scientists as near gods in order to include an appeal to authority in their propaganda.
And I blame climate scientists who are now keeping up this farce because it keeps government funding flowing to their labs, all the while accusing any climate scientist who disagrees with them of taking oil money or whatever.
Scientists cannot tell the future - about space, about climate, about anything. They can develop models, but they are not infallible and we should never enact idiotic policies because someone tells us we have no choice because of someone's very fallible prediction about the future.
But what if they're right? That's what Thomas Friedman and other global warmist propagandists ask.
Then we figure something out. But we're not going to enact crushing carbon taxes and hand control of American industry over to United Nations inspectors because of some scientist's wild-# guess, especially considering how their wild-# guesses have turned out so far.
