New AGM-approved definitions:
SCIENTIST.
Old definition: someone with a science background
New definition: anyone who agrees with me

WEATHER.
Old definition: interesting observable and measurable atmospheric phenomena
New definition: any event which doesn’t support my argument

At least not explicitly stated, other than in the first couple pages where it talks about CO2 concentration and the graphic Anthony has provided for us.

interestingly enough there’s a lot in here for skeptics, lukewarmers, and other rational (i.e. not nuts!) believers/non-believers to use if they so choose. If someone tells you wildfires in the US are increasing due to AGW, well, on page S118 there’s a nice graph that shows they’re really not.

I don’t recall last years being so explicit.

I believe that the anecdotes presented here are important. Anecdotes are useful to counter the use of opposite anecdotes in the political debate that is raging quite apart from the serious scientific debate. There is infinitely more at stake than meets the eye when observing the current debates.

To illustrate how important the political debate over AGW is, I would point out some of the political debates from the past.

Hole in the Ozone.
Recent science has shown that the hole is not the result of chlorofluorocarbons. Yet tens of millions perhaps billions of dollars were wasted shifting to new refrigerants.

The spotted owl.
It turns out that it was not logging that threatened the extinction of the spotted owl, but competition from a larger, more aggressive owl. Some 150,000 jobs were lost in communities that had no alternate sources of income. (There were small communities that depended on logging for their existence.) People lost their homes, families were destroyed: a humanitarian disaster on the scope of Hurricane Katrina caused by a cruel, uncaring, and callous bureaucracy. When a whole group of people are crushed by their government, it’s no wonder they cling to their bibles and their guns.

DDT
First discovered about 1939, the inventor got a Nobel Prize in 1949 (?) for saving an estimated 500 million lives. It is the most effective weapon against malaria. DDT was banned by EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus without a scientific debate and the ban became more or less world wide. Malaria kills about one million people in Africa a year and perhaps another two million elsewhere. Most of the people that have died were poor and because of the way malaria kills, they were mostly women and children. An anti-malaria program sponsored by the Bush Administration in Tanzania has proven that the judicious use of mosquito nets and DDT (Not wide spread spraying- just on the inside and outside walls of houses.) will reduce the infection rate by 90%. Some 40 to 120 million people died painfully and needlessly because DDT was banned. Hitler and the Nazis “only” killed 12.5 million (common number) to 25 million.

In the great scheme of things, the political debate is as important, or even more important than the scientific debate.

Regards,

Steamboat Jack

There. A liberal blogger has disagreed with AGW.

Except… they’re not. But that meme still seems to be replicating happily, in odd corners of the media.

page 11 of Climate History and the Modern World by Lamb.