Friday, December 11, 2009

It's "Logical"

So this morning on Fox & Friends Geraldo weighed in on the CRU Email issue.   He said is isn't about the data being wrong ... (it's not?  Then why hide, obfuscate, and destroy?) ... it's about it "looking" bad, and it'll deal a body blow to the movement.

He then went on to say (correctly) that this doesn't mean there isn't global warming, it's just a blow to the case, but in saying that he blurted out something very close to  ... It's logical that there is global warming because of pollution.

NO!

How can you appear to be so close to getting it and just miss it entirely in the end?

Isn't that what this research has been all about?  To figure out what, if any, effect  man's contribution to earth's carbon budget has?  If it were just logical, then what has all this money been spent for, exactly?

He only says that because it's been repeated ad nauseum for 20 years on every newscast, every movie, every award ceremony, sit-com, newspaper -- because these clowns who can't explain the stabilization in temperatures, whose dire predictions keep getting pushed farther and farther into the future, whose models cannot reproduce past climate variations -- have systematically interfered with anyone checking or even questioning their work -- decree that it is so.

I'll admit, I heard "obvious" instead of "logical" at first, which is what got me fired up.  There is a line of logic (we call these things "theories" until they're proven -- that's what the scientific method is about) that says that since CO2 is a strong visible absorber and IR emitter,  more of it (up to a point) would contribute a positive temperature feedback.  In the absence of any other negative feedback that might be introduced by other factors.   Still, while "obvious" and "logical" aren't technically synonymous, they are in the minds of most lay people.

Maybe Geraldo's right about this.  It's not about the data.  It's about the whole process from beginning to end.

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