Wednesday, July 02, 2008

India & Global Warming Hysteria

1) India and China are two of the developing countries that are also among the largest global polluters, and in this article from the New York Times, it appears they are still talking, but not following through much on their global warming plans, feeling it is primarily a problem for the West to solve.

An excerpt:

“During a speech here on Monday, [Indian] Prime Minister Manmohan Singh acknowledged that climate change was a dangerous problem, but the plan he introduced reinforced India’s long-held stance that developed nations created the bulk of the mess and should be responsible for cleaning it up.”

2) Global warming as mass hysteria is the theme of this article from the Wall Street Journal, and here is an excerpt:

“Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited. Now it's time for political scientists, theologians and psychiatrists to weigh in.

“What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").

“But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

“The Arctic ice cap may be thinning, but the extent of Antarctic sea ice has been expanding for years. At least as of February, last winter was the Northern Hemisphere's coldest in decades. In May, German climate modelers reported in the journal Nature that global warming is due for a decade-long vacation. But be not not-afraid, added the modelers: The inexorable march to apocalypse resumes in 2020.

“This last item 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.”