Saturday Learning Series - Philosophy crash course 5 (skepticism)

Philosophy. Today it's Cartesian skepticism, and Neo from The Matrix:

Another Climate Change skeptic is born

BAM.

John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel, shocked academics by insisting the theory of man-made climate change was no longer scientifically credible.  

Instead, what 'little evidence' there is for rising global temperatures points to a 'natural phenomenon' within a developing eco-system. 

In an open letter attacking the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he wrote:

"The ocean is not rising significantly.

"The polar ice is increasing, not melting away. Polar Bears are increasing in number.

"Heat waves have actually diminished, not increased. There is not an uptick in the number or strength of storms (in fact storms are diminishing).

"I have studied this topic seriously for years. It has become a political and environment agenda item, but the science is not valid.

Not an insignificant addition to the roll call of skeptics.

Climate change of desperation

They are really, really trying to resurrect climate change as an issue aren't they?

There's this story and this one, And this one too.  All in the news this week.  Ignore the man with the evidence behind the curtain.  The problem is as severe as ever, and the fierce urgency of now demands we all do something like setting our cars on fire or something.

Skeptics have good reason to believe it's a case of do as I say, not as I do.  There's plenty of examples like this or this or this to prove their point. Our point.

Say Anything Romney becomes a climate warming skeptic

Flip-flop alert!  Flip-flop alert!

People are entitled to change their minds.  People learn from experiences and learn from what goes on around them, so changing an opinion is not a bad thing.  But in the span of a few months, a change this dramatic is a change of convenience.  Mitt Romney has gone from climate change believer to climate change skeptic in short order.  This is politics of convenience.  It's say anything politics at its worst.

RFK Junior, Where are you now? Stuck in a Snow Bank?

Robert Kennedy Junior, 15 months ago: Global warming means no snow or cold in DC. Really? No snow - global warming. Too much snow - global warming. Saints win the Superbowl - global warming. No doubt.

David Freddoso in the Washington Examiner has the story;

Having shoveled my walk five times in the midst of this past weekend's extreme cold and blizzard, I think perhaps RFK, Jr. should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.

Alright, so is he going to take Time to task over this pretzel logic?

There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter - in December and during the first weekend of February - are already among the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.

But there have been hints that it was coming. The 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years. While the frequency of storms in the middle latitudes has decreased as the climate has warmed, the intensity of those storms has increased. That's in part because of global warming - hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.

Okay, I'm in Toronto, north of the big Northeast storm. We've barely had any snow this winter - it's been too cold! And that's just an off the cuff observation about the silliness Time is trying to propogate.  Wait, here's another - the article mentions the truly vicious cold snap LIKE THE ONE IN JANUARY.  It contradicts itself.

How about StopGlobalWarming.org in 2006 saying global warming means less snow for skiers in the NorthWest?  Does storm then mean that global warming affects different parts of the country differently?  Then I've got a solution; move to the part of the country that suits you.  Move the farms.  Move the ski resorts.  The end.

Obviously one storm or two does not a scientific rebuttal make, but the eco-police try to use every warm snap to say we are doomed too.  What is even more troubling is this sentence in the Time article;

After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer - and the past decade was the hottest on record.

Is that a fact?  No!