Barrel Strength

Last night’s Munk debates saw George Monbiot and the leader of Canada’s Green Party, Elizabeth May, debate Bjorn Lomborg and Nigel Lawson on “Resolved: Climate change is mankind’s defining crisis and demands a commensurate response”. After the event, the crowd gave the vote to the May-Monbiot side by 56%-44%. The debate had caused a five point move towards  Lawson-Lomborg.

The debate never got to the main issue: that man-caused global warming is a complete fraud.

This is what I would have said.

Man-caused global warming is the issue. Does it exist and can we stop it?

Natural variations in climate are not the issue. Antarctica could melt tomorrow and it would be a disaster, but it would not be our fault, or caused by us, if it were the result of natural forces.  Polar bears could drown, hurricanes intensify, and spring might come to central Canada in March instead of April, and it would not prove a  thing.

We have been relentlessly assaulted by stories of melting ice-shelves and stranded polar bears, and we have been told we are responsible. But this would be true only if increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide increased global temperature. Apparently it does not, and the whole cap and trade scam goes out the window in consequence.

 The global warming argument is simple, and rational. It may not be defended by reasonable people acting in a proper scientific way but it is at least a rational argument.

1. Increases of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere cause global warming. No other cause is relevant: not the position and tilt of the earth, the shape of our orbit, the output of the sun, not clouds, not cosmic rays, not continental drift, not volcanoes, not anything that acts on the earth naturally. We, and we alone, are the cause of global warming.
2. The proportion of the atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide continues to increase . All observers agree to this.
3. We are causing that increase of carbon dioxide, so global warming is our responsibility.
4. Drastic action is needed to reduce our carbon footprints to save the earth from runaway global warming caused by man’s pollutive activities.
5. Those who disagree are in bad faith and should be silenced.

But wait! Global CO2 is increasing, but global temperature has not increased for ten years.

“The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it’s a travesty that we can’t” – Kevin Trenberth.

This is the central fact that the warmist ideologues at the East Anglia Climate Research Centre and elsewhere sought to explain, deny or avoid. Why did their models fail to explain why, when atmospheric CO2 was increasing, global temperature did not? They, at least, understood the key logical link in their own argument. This failure of the fundamental causal link in their theory is what they attempted to cover up, by a variety of thuggish and deceitful measures.

This is not a story about science, or about nasty scientists. It is about the colossal failure of a prediction based on a flawed premise. CO2 does not drive global temperature.

The fact that CO2 does not appear to control global temperature is the logical fault at the core of the warmist argument. Say it again: CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere, but global temperature is not.

Obviously, the theory is wrong. Atmospheric carbon dioxide does not drive global temperature. Since we are not causing the problem, the warmist case fails.

All the rest is just shouting at the bar. 

_____________________________________________

Lomborg maintained a brilliant debating style. His take is that, of many pressing world problems, global warming is nearly last on the list, and fixing it will take trillions and prevent the solution of other, readily soluble problems. Elizabeth May was so enraged at Lomborg – and so filled with rage generally – that she had to be silenced by the cutting off of her microphone for several minutes. (I have started to notice a bunch of unhappy women of a certain age turn into scolds: May is in a large company of people, disproportionately female, who feel they have the sovereign right to tell people how to live, feel, think and believe).

Ross McKitrick.

Jon Stewart mocking the fraud artists, available on Youtube.  Life takes on a new sweetness, doesn’t it, when the leftists find themselves at stage five, their stage five, “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.” Alinsky’s rules for radicals work for us.  We are the rebels now.  We have the cool songs, the rag-tag uniforms, the bold, breath-taking women and truth on our side. Laugh as the hapless global warming guards rush to and fro, while the fat sergeant screams and the commander twists his moustache in impotent rage. Sing as we march to victory!

93-days after Gen. McChrystal requested 40,000 additional troops, Obama has finally made a decision.  For comparison, Kabul fell on Nov 14th, 2001, 65-days after 9/11 and the intervening period, especially the pause before attack on Mazar-e-sharif, was widely described as a quagmire in leftist and mainstream press.

By sending additional 30,000 troops and then promising to start withdrawing them in July 2011, Obama will accomplish precisely what he has accomplished before in his political career – nothing.  Troops are not enough to be effective and a withdrawal date provides Taliban with a date to use in strategic planning of their campaign.  Completely missing from his speech was the word “victory” which encapsulates his entire thought process.  Of course it is entirely possible that Obama will change his plans, as he has done before, but for now it seems he has safely punted the ball after the mid-term elections, due next year.