This is from the Huffington Post. One can only hope that Kerry will follow through. For a quick primer on Kerry’s grasp of climate science, see this WUWT article: Kerry Blames Tornado Outbreak on Global Warming and a rebuttal Increasing tornadoes or better information gathering? I get a kick out of Kerry’s line “This has to stop”. Okay then, please debate Mr. Will, put a stop to it Mr. Kerry! – Anthony
John KerryFacts Are Stubborn Things: George Will and Climate Change-
To paraphrase the conservative columnist’s favorite president, “There you go again, George.”
George Will has been one of my favorite intellectual sparring partners for a long time, a favorite more recently because he had the guts to publicly recognize the disaster that was George W. Bush’s presidency.
But in his latest Washington Post column, George and I have a pretty big loud disagreement.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to see Will embracing the idea of recycling, but I’m very troubled that he is recycling errors of fact to challenge the science on global warming.
I’m even more troubled that Will used his February 15th column not only to cast doubt on sound science, but also to denigrate the work of two fine scientists.
Let’s be very clear: Stephen Chu does not make predictions to further an agenda. He does so to inform the public. He is no Cassandra. If his predictions about the effects of our climate crisis are scary, it’s because our climate is scary.
Likewise, John Holdren is a friend of mine and one of the best scientific minds we have in our country. Pulling out one minor prediction that he had some unknown role in formulating nearly three decades ago, as Will did in his February 15th column, and then using that to try to undo his credibility as a scientist may be a fancy debating trick, but it’s just plain wrong when it comes to a debate we can’t afford to see dissolve into reductio ad absurdum hijinx. (A side note: The incident in question occurred in 1980, which, as I recall, was just about the time Ronald Reagan made the claim that approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation and that, consequently, we should “not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emissions standards from man-made sources.”)
Dragging up long-discredited myths about some non-existent scientific consensus about global cooling from the 1970s does no one any good. Except perhaps a bankrupt flat earth crowd. I hate to review the record and see that someone as smart as George Will has been doing exactly that as far back as 1992. And it’s especially troubling when the very sources that Will cites in his February 15th column draw the exact opposite conclusions and paint very different pictures than Will provides, as the good folks at ThinkProgress and Media Matters for America have demonstrated so thoroughly.
This has to stop. A highly organized, well-funded movement to deny the reality of global climate change has been up and running for a long time, but it doesn’t change the verdict: the problem is real, it’s accelerating, and we have to act. Now. Not years from now.
No matter how the evidence has mounted over two decades — the melting of the arctic ice cap, rising sea levels, extreme weather — the flat earth caucus can’t even see what is on the horizon. In the old Republican Congress they even trotted out the author of Jurassic Park as an expert witness to argue that climate change is fiction. This is Stone Age science, and now that we have the White House and the Congress real science must prevail. It is time to stop debating fiction writers, oil executives and flat-earth politicians, and actually find the way forward on climate change.
This is a fight we can win, a problem we can overcome, but time is not on our side. We can’t waste another second arguing about whether the problem exists when we need to be debating everything from how to deal with the dirtiest forms of coal as the major provider of power in China to how to vastly increase green energy right here at home.
“Facts are stupid things,” Ronald Reagan once said. He was, of course, paraphrasing John Adams, who could have been talking about the science on global change when he said, “Facts are stubborn things.”
Stubborn or stupid — lets have a real debate and lets have it now.
I know George Will well, I respect his intellect and his powers of persuasion — but I’d happily debate him any day on this question so critical to our survival.
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“It would be a good time for someone of great prominence and scientific acumen to lay down the law on AGW, though, someone the media couldn’t ignore. Who would that be? I’ll bet there are prominent scientists who, despite the flood of grant money, are fed up with the political agenda and fear-mongering of the AGW proponents, but up to now have been too concerned about peer pressure to speak out.”
Democracy insists that we rotate leaders, and of course that’s an admirable thing. But ex-leaders, like John Howard of Australia vanish from the scene.
Howard, while not a scientist, (and known to Australians as Honest John,) opposed Kyoto, and since losing to Kevin Rudd has apparently vanished.
His perspective now would be very much appreciated…
As trite as this sounds, the “proof” will be in the pudding, so to speak. There’s no telling what the climate will do over the next ten years. But, I have a feeling that at some point, we will all be freezing and the powers that be will be still telling us that we are “warming.”
In the old Republican Congress they even trotted out the author of Jurassic Park as an expert witness to argue that climate change is fiction.
The man is a harvard educated anthropologist and M.D. with an IQ off the charts, and Kerry attempts to dismiss him with the “he’s just an author” nonsense? It’s generally not a smart move to dismiss out of hand the opinion of the smartest guy in the room. This tells us more than enough about Kerry.
Anthony,
George Will’s response, backed up by a clarification of the U of I Arctic Climate Research Center, was too well done and too believable for the masses. An icon of AGW had to step forward and re-muddy the waters. All of this is choreographed.
The sad observation I made was that the U of I ACRC clarification was almost apologetic for its data. Their clarification didn’t just acknowledge the factual basis of the original observation, as it should have, instead it went to great lengths to make it appear that the global data cited was not appropriate to describe today’s reality. Why collect the data if it doesn’t mean anything?
Its as if the U of I custodians of the data were embarrassed that it was displayed for the unclean public’s use.
Can we make sure that George Will can get all the facts straight? Who could make sure he knows all the facts? I mean, after all, he is not a scientist.
I can’t believe Kerry taked like that about Michael Crichton. The guy is dead! It’s so easy for him to challenge a dead person. No respect what so ever. Michael Crichton did not have all the answers but he was in the right direction.
John Kerry’s words and techniques mirror those of another senator from the 1950s – Joe McCarthy, who also used mortal fear mongering as an excuse to demonise journalists and other people he claimed had beliefs that threatened the country.
One journalist, Edgar R Murrow risked his career to end the madness and protect free speech. It is scary stuff to have a senator launching an attack on a journalist, just as it is having the body of journalists take sides with the fear mongers.
HURRICANES DRAMATICALLY INCREASING…
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/yearly_tcdays_big.jpg
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/where-have-all-the-hurricanes-gone-4695
WHOPPING INCREASE IN F3-F5 TORNADIC ACTIVITY…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/tornado/tornadotrend.jpg
…NOT!
Mr Lynn (20:31:50) :
“This is likely just bravado on Kerry’s (or some staffer’s) part.”
Most likely.
I wonder why the data from NOAA here…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/02/08/increasing-tornadoes-or-better-information-gathering/
…is so much different than the data they show here…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/tornado/tornadotrend.jpg
…from here…
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/tornadoes.html
Hold the phone!
Is it possible the bar graph in the first link above is mislabeled? It looks an awful lot like this one where the bottom are the storms, and the top bars, in blue, are deaths from the storms, not total storms…
http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/edu/safety/guideimg/pic13.jpg
The numbers and the trend are about the same, though why the numbers should be slightly different between the new and the old, I don’t know, unless different data bases were used, and one or the other isn’t correct.
A.W. might want to check to see if that is, as it appears, mis-labeled, because if it is, it’s very misleading.
BONUS for the Tornado Geek.
http://hsci.cas.ou.edu/exhibits/exhibit.php?exbid=30
I agree – the loony left is naturally counterbalanced by the loony right.
Unfortunately we see far to much of the loony right here.
Can we please remain centered?
on the other hand we could all email Senator Kerry and say “Go for it matee!! get those redneck deniers and sock it to them!, you’re the Man to tell it like it is”
then sit back and watch the bloodbath 🙂
Nope, I was apparently wrong. It seems the little ones are either increasing, or more likely, we are getting better at reporting them. I guess it’s just a coincidence that the total # of hurricanes is in the ballpark of the number of fatalities.
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/publications/mccarthy/tor30yrs.pdf
I wonder. The frequency per year of F3-F5 storms is going down, and that of F0-F1 is going up. Is that a relation one might expect? Whenever really violent storm activity decreases, moderate to mild storm activity increases?
OK, THIS IS MY LAST POST, I PROMISE….
“No matter how the evidence has mounted over two decades — the melting of the arctic ice cap, rising sea levels, extreme weather… ”
Well, I realise all these things in themselves are highly questionable, and certainly whether recent trends are in any way unusual.
But isn’t this the core of the argument? Wouldn’t this be the focus of any debate? If these things are happening to a problematic degree, exactly what are they “evidence” of? They are happening is evidence that they are happening.
I bet Mr Kerry would never get past there, to the questions of causes and solutions and the evidence related to that.
Smokey, I was just ruminating on life at 2.30 am… being aware that excellence here depends on many people coming here with many different excellent lines of life experience, as well as staying here long enough to appreciate nuances. Like you do.
Kerry Debate: it would sure be good to get ANY real debate with skeptics in the public eye. Don’t want to revert 400 years of good scientific tradition to superstition.
janama:
please don’t throw me in the briar patch!
yes! rephelan – the debate should be screened on FOX.
“Dragging up long-discredited myths about some non-existent scientific consensus about global cooling from the 1970s does no one any good”
What a numbnut! G. Will NEVER said there was a scientific consensus about that. “Scientific consensus” is an invention of the AGW crowd, it never existed before and will never exist again.
He said, there were scientist in the 70es that warned of a new ice age. It can be proofed easily. Kerry’s level of discussion is very very low.
Bruce Cobb (15:02:35) :
You may have got the impression I was bashing the entire blog but I wasn’t.
As a long time reader and first time submitter I was not suprised to see Sen. Kerry’s attack on George Will. This is what politicians do best. Lie and gloss over the obvious falsehoods. So I sent the following e-mail to Sen. Kerry this morning.
Having read your attack on George Will on the web site http://www.wattsupwiththat.com I was appalled. You are obviously one of the many naive politicians who keep spouting the same falsehoods about severe storms being attributed to the climate when this is patently untrue. This has been proven to be wrong by the IPCC and the UK Met Office. Dr. Vicky Pope of the Met Office recently posted an article stating just this point. She said that it was doing a great disservice to science by making these claims. You should know that you are making a mockery of climate science by continuing this sham in order to advance a cause that seems more bent on hysteria than real science. The so-called deniers, skeptics is the correct term, have been refuting this hysteria for years now and maybe it’s high time our elected officials get their collective heads out of the sand and go to the above mentioned site and learn some science and stop the usual alarmist rants.
“savethesharks (20:22:22) :
Kerry’s panties are in a wad because his agenda is collapsing around him, not unlike the graphs on global temperature graphs since 1998.”
The only thing I disagree with is that Kerry doesn’t HAVE an agenda, he’s never been that smart. Kerry is like so many politicians of late…his “handlers” look around for what they believe to be the most popular vote-garnering position, and that’s the direction they’ll point him in.
I also agree that this will never happen. His handlers just aren’t that stupid. They’ve taken a cheap shot, grabbed a few major headlines, all done. There’s no upside to any further engagement with this issue, and he can claim victory.
Btw…many may not know that a year or two ago, Kerry recieved an award from a congressional watchdog group…for going the longest time without submitting ANY meaningful legislation to be considered on the floor of the senate…not a single bill.
So no…I don’t believe any debate will ever take place. And if it did, it would almost be embarassing.
JimstuckinmassachusetssB
D Werme (16:21:02) :
The right wing tone mant of the posts here may make you feel good, but they are counter-productive.
I often refer people to this site as a place to find some good science. When they read all the political remarks, they dismiss the science.
I’m sure many of the readers here would feel the same if they went to a site purporting to have good scientific discussion and found it was full of left wing inuendo.
Anthony’s message will be better received if it isn’t linked to matters of war, taxes, media bias etc.
Since Kerry is a politician, it would be an easy mistake to simply label all the comments as being politically motivated, and therefore of no merit. I have actually only seen a few comments about Kerry’s purple hearts, which could be classified as politically-motivated ad hominems, and maybe one or two off-hand comments on taxes and centralized government. The biggest problem with them is that they really don’t add anything to the topic at hand, are just “noise”, and in fact only detract from what the commenter is trying to say.
However, it is both disingenuous, and a bit too convenient to dismiss this entire blog on the basis of the fact that some posts do discuss the very real political side of the AGW debate, which in fact has very little to do with the usual liberal vs conservative or Democratic vs Republican argument. When Hansen talks about coal trains being “death trains”, for example, that is an entirely political argument, which must be addressed. What I’ve discovered, in fact, is that the AGW/CC side of the debate is mostly of a political nature, since there is little in the way of actual science supporting it. The IPCC is a good example of that.
Blogs such as this probably would never have come into existence were it not for the fact that climate science was subverted for political reasons. Since it was a new field, this was relatively easy to do. Maggie Thatcher played a big part in that, as did Hansen and others. It became a bandwagon, which had a lot to offer the various organizations, politicians and scientists as well as the MSM who climbed aboard. The science supporting it was weak, but that no longer mattered, as the bandwagon effect took over, effectively steamrolling over any opposition to it. In effect, science and truth itself took a back seat, and when this happens democracy itself is threatened. We here tend to take that personally. All we ask for, indeed plead for, is that the playing field be righted once again. Let the debate, which never actually took place, and which they claimed was “over” begin, finally. And, halt the Cap n’ Trade legislation, demonization of coal, and alarmist “we-must-act-immediately” propaganda, etc. etc.
OT: Bloomberg headline:
“Two Winter Storms Bring Snow to U.S. East Coast Today”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aB52Uopqoi80&refer=home
I was going through the comments under the original article at the Huffington Post. When compared to the general comments about AGW that could be seen about a year ago, there is major awakening. There are now more people questioning the falsehoods of AGW. And for this reason, I am pretty sure Kerry won’t follow up on the debate offer.
“Hasse@Norway (11:16:19) :
I fell asleep halfway through Kerrys rant. What was he talking about…”
OMG Funny!! Best comment in a long time!