AGW Is Not a Problem

[This arose from an exchange on WUWT with a die-hard Global Warmist, one who (rather typically) is snide and just short of being nasty with his / her comments.  He/she writes anonymously, which says much for his/her character.  I'm going with "his," just a guess, of course.  Commenter DJ is unhappy that WUWT devoted blog space to the unusual and prolonged snow events across the U.S., in particular as measured by snow depth at two ski resorts.  Apparently, in DJ's world, it is perfectly OK and indeed a public service to trumpet daily each warming weather event, such as heat waves, record high temperatures, wildfires, sea ice decreases, polar ice meltings, glaciers retreating, polar bear population counts, etc.   He did refrain, at least thus far, from repeating the AGW mantra "The U.S. is not the whole world."  Perhaps he forgot for the moment.    The "good for the goose, good for the gander?  comment is mine, reminding DJ that his side continually blares on and on about any warm event, so he is hypocritical by whining about anyone publishing and discussing a cold event.   He then responded that the skeptics must hold ourselves to a higher standard if we want respect.   ]

AGWer DJ wrote:  “What is good for the goose, surely is good for the gander?” is exactly wrong. Hold yourselves to a higher standard if you want respect.”

My reply:  

Respect is something one earns. Wanting it or craving it is never the way to earn it.  It is earned by doing the right thing at the right time, without regard to the consequences or the cravens who take potshots from the sidelines, especially those who hide behind a sorry excuse for science.

Practicing proper science, as Dr. Richard Feynman so eloquently stated it, would go a long way toward earning some respect for your side, the AGW proponents. That would include such things as carefully measuring the data, providing all the data in a completely transparent manner, drawing logical and supportable conclusions based on sound physics and math, stating the areas of uncertainties, and how those would impact the conclusions.

And yes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Why shouldn’t WUWT or any other blog publish cold weather events as they occur? Are you advocating censorship?

Speaking (writing, actually) only for myself, I could care less if anyone respects me or not. My concern is keeping the policy-makers from heading down the wrong path, wasting trillions of dollars (and other currencies) on an ideologically-driven, scientifically-unsupportable movement to punish affluent Western societies for having had the resources and opportunities to build a better world.

As I wrote elsewhere, Western man has done more good in this world with energy and ingenuity than the liberal idealogues will ever admit. Obama got one thing right thus far, and that is that we should be willing to extend a helping hand to others. But that help is provided by energy, and comes in the form of using energy. As E.M. Smith wrote on his chiefio blog, there is and never will be a shortage of energy. He is right.

And because there will never be an energy shortage, if and when the Earth is ever in dire need of reducing excessive air temperatures, or the opposite, reversing severe cold, the engineers will step up and get the job done. If the AGW proponents turn out to be correct in their assertion that CO2 causes unacceptable global warming with the massive increase in sea level, in perhaps 10 or 20 or 30 years, there will be plenty of time to make adjustments. As I have written before, there is no technical challenge to adjusting the atmosphere’s composition with respect to any component gas. We have all the knowledge we need, right now, to remove 100 ppm or more of CO2 or any other gas within a very short time frame.

When (I should say, IF) the first non-floating polar ice slides off into the ocean, and the sea level rises that first centimeter, call me. Let me know. At that point, the engineers will stop the ice slides and fix any other problems that require fixing, and nobody need panic. Impossible, you say? Hardly. Talk to some engineers sometime.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. 

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