I tend to avoid posting much on NLT about this climate change business--I could post ten items a day if I wanted to and had the time--because I think most NLT readers rightly view the subject as a crashing bore and because it sets off another round of the usual cliches in the comments section that everyone has heard 1000 times now, but Julie’s post immediately below gives me license to post a link to this paper I wrote recently with two of my collaborators here at AEI (where we are known as the Three Musketeers) about the latest UN report on the matter.
Gore and his chorus keep yelping that the entire matter is "settled," and that it is an act of bad faith even to mention "uncertainties" in the science. So it came as a bit of a revelation to find that the term "uncertain" or "uncertainty" appears 1,300 times in the UN’s full 976 page report on climate science. The technical summary of the UN report identifies 52 "key uncertainties," many of which have a bearing on our estimation of the problem, and which would affect the sequence and timing of the whole range of policy responses. None of this is reflected in either the summaries the UN bureaucrats produce, nor in the press accounts.
I play a fun parlor game with reporters who call me. I say, "Of course I know you’ve read the whole report, so I know you’ve noticed the important bit on page. . ." Always leads to some awkward moments.
Note how the Pope criticizes climate change prophets of doom
Yes, indeed. I think this is highly significant, coming as it does after the Vatican's declaration some months ago that it was going to be "carbon neutral," and after a Vatican conference on climate change in the spring that looked pretty conventional. (I was invited to attend, but declined.) Clearly the Pope is paying attention.
Steve, I think your sense that people find "climate change" a crashing bore is dead on. I think that's true even of the average apostle in the movement. It seems like it's something that is impossible to affect--even if people are the main cause of it (which looks like an increasingly dubious contention). But lead in our babies' toys coming from China . . . that's an issue that could reignite the security moms in a New York minute. A smart Republican could take up the issue, pre-empt the Dems, and (without urging too much hysteria, please) simultaneously win a good deal of female and working class support.
Maybe I missed it here, but did anyone cover the fact that Huck, Rudy, and McCain embraced the global warming idea?