It’s Climate Alarmists Who Remain in Denial

Marc Sheppard:

“…Chuck Todd opened last year’s final Meet the Press show, which focused its entire hour on climate change, with a pompous, long-winded speech blaming human activity for a disastrously overheating Planet Earth.  The NBC News host made news himself by declaring that “climate deniers” aren’t welcome to the discussion because “the science is settled.”

It was an awful show, even by NBC standards – a Sunday news and discussion program that not only deliberately invited only one point of view to the table, but proudly proclaimed as much in its opening statement.  As promised, what followed was as one-sided and alarmist-biased a presentation on the subject as you’re likely to see anywhere.  And yet, even in the absence of opposition opinion, Todd somehow seemed to lose the debate.

One member of the silenced opposition, Dr. Roy Spencer, principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was quick to point out Todd’s mistake.  Addressing the “settled science” canard from his excellent blog:

The belief in human-caused warming exceeding a level that what would be relatively benign, and maybe even beneficial, is just that – a belief.  It is not based upon known, established, and quantified scientific principles.  It is based upon the assumption that natural climate change does not exist.

Having attended numerous lectures by Richard Lindzen, the American atmospheric physicist Lord Monckton referred to as “the greatest climatologist of his age,” I couldn’t help hearing his words in my mind’s ear:

Virtually by definition, nothing in science is ‘incontrovertible’ – especially in a primitive and complex field as climate.  ‘Incontrovertibility’ belongs to religion where it is referred to as dogma.

And remembering Prof. Robert M. Carter:

As to “the science is settled”; or, there is a “consensus” on the issue. … [S]cience is about facts, experiments and testing hypotheses, not consensus; and science is never “settled.”  Indeed, Einstein’s relativity theories are still being tested; e.g.”Lorentz invariance.”

Incidentally – of course no science is ever settled, nor would we want it to be.  Suppose computer science had been “settled” back in 1946, when the IBM 603 was developed.  Can you imagine cramming all those big, bulky vacuum tubes and relays into a smartphone?

Fortunately, just as are the sciences of semiconductors, sensors, mobile processors, and image capture tools (to name just a few), climate science is in a constant state of flux, as is the climate itself, and neither will likely ever be “settled.”…”

Original

Doug Santo