Last Friday’s online version of the Wall Street Journal printed a letter from 16 scientists with connections to global warming studies (including a Princeton Physics professor) entitled, “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.”  The letter cites a Nobel Prize winning physicist (Ivar Giaver) describing the evidence of global warming as anything but incontrovertible.

 The letter had this to say, “In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the “pollutant” carbon dioxide wil destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinons of Dr. Giaever.  And the number of scientific “heretics” is growing with each passing year.  The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.”

Chief among these:  “The lack of warming for more than a decade-indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections-suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO 2 can cause. 

This is effectively what state meteorologist George Taylor said back in 2006 in his infamous OMSI debate presentation.  For his honesty and word of caution about CO 2 effects on climate, he got fired by the government establishment boss, Ted Kulongoski.  Unless your a braveHeart like Taylor, thou shall not say: the Emperor knows so much that is wrong.

Global warming will kill us all if we don’t take immediate action to reduce our use of fossil fuels.
Trust me on this.

The central problem is that computer models predicted we should have been warming and we have not for the past 15 years.

Does this tell us that there is no possibility that there will be warming? No of course not.

What it tells us is that we are unable to model and project temperature with any real accuracy given current understanding and technology.

Since the remedy for global warming depends on knowing both if there is a problem, and how significant it is, then that ability to predict temperature is crucial. Since we now know we cannot make such predictions, we do not know the extent of the problem at the very least or if there even is a problem at the very most.

Given those facts, the insistence on doing something now, especially of the drastic nature suggested by some, makes no logical sense. Better safe than sorry is a sound principle, but not unless the costs of safety are weighed against the threat being faced. This is why it makes sense for Israel to spend more on an air force than Tahiti.