What better endorsement could skeptics ask for? – Anthony
by Lawrence Solomon in the Financial Post
The justices of the United States Supreme Court this week became the world’s most august global warming sceptics. Not by virtue of their legal reasoning – the global warming case they decided turned on a technical legal issue — but in their surprising commentary. Global warming is by no means a settled issue, they made clear, suggesting it would be foolhardy to assume it was.
“The court, we caution, endorses no particular view of the complicated issues related to carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change,” reads the 8-0 decision, delivered by the court’s acclaimed liberal, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The court decision noted that the Environmental Protection Agency itself had “Acknowledg[ed] that not all scientists agreed on the causes and consequences of the rise in global temperatures,” before suggesting readers consult “views opposing” the conventional wisdom. Specifically, the justices’ recommended reading was a superb profile of Princeton’s Freeman Dyson, perhaps America’s most respected scientist, written in the New York Times Magazine, March 29, 2009.
Freeman, an unabashed skeptic, believes that carbon dioxide, rather than being harmful, is both necessary and desirable, arguing that “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Somewhat in the same vein, Justice Ginsburg notes carbon dioxide is necessary and ubiquitous, and thus shouldn’t be the target of indiscriminate attacks. “After all, we each emit carbon dioxide merely by breathing,” she notes, repeating a point that Dyson couldn’t have said better himself.
To see exactly what the Supreme Court said in its remarkable American Electric Power v. Connecticut decision, click here.
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers.
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See also:
Freeman Dyson: speaking out on “global warming”
Freeman Dyson on Heretical Thoughts and Climate Change
Yes, we all exhale CO2, even Al Gore, who arguably has a larger-than-life footprint.
But the biggest emitter is Lisa Jackson, who needs to be regulated by Congressional purse strings.
She may be riding the wave now, but I see the ultimate snip awaiting the EPA if they can’t tone her down.
Mark Wilson says @ur momisugly June 24, 2011 at 3:15 pm “Mainstream science does not say that the GHG affects of CO2 will be bad. A few computer models do. ”
Huh? What sort of alternative universe are you making this assertion from.
Who is “mainstream science” in that alternative universe? I ask because here on earth the “mainstream science ” that is qualified to offer research on the climate impacts of the amount of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere overwhelmingly says it it is an issue.
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 2:59 pm
Mark Wilson says @ur momisugly June 24, 2011 at 12:57 pm “Since every study done shows that plants benefit from CO2 levels up to 10 and 20 times higher than we currently have. I know of no study that has found a CO2 level that is high enough to harm plants… As usual, you are just grasping at desperate strawmen.”
No, as usual you are wrong again due to not understanding the science Mark.
Agriculture yield is not dependent solely on CO2, so to make any claim based solely on CO2 levels relating to agriculture is either deliberately mislead or just stupefying ill-informed. Farmed plants behave differently than those in the wild where conditions aren’t managed. And more plant growth doesn’t inherently equate to healthier plants or improve agriculture yield.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/co2plant.htm
BTW – you are misusing the concept of a strawman argument as well. If you are going to assume someone of something at least use the term properly.
moderate republican
BTW-If you are going to make assumptions of someone at least use the term properly.
Dan in California said:
“If a scientist submits a proposal for a research grant, it [the EPA] will not be funded unless it will conclude that CO2 is a problem.”
And how would they know the conclusion at the time of issuing the grant?
Here is mainstream media in 1969;
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/1969-humans-making-the-climate-hotcoldwetdryiceage/
They havent evolved much.
banjo says:
“Agriculture yield is not dependent solely on CO2…”
“Solely”?? Whoever made that statement?
Agriculture is dependent on many factors. But it is irrefutable that increased CO2 raises agricultural productivity. Greenhouse growers would not waste their money on CO2 injection systems if CO2 had no effect.
Every so often, a new form of entertainment appears at WUWT (and most blogs, for that matter), that I like to call the persistent troll. PTs wander into a blog and attempt to “educate” or “correct” the regular visitors. They are far more intelligent than the ordinary person, and know so much more that it’s amazing they deign to waste their obviously valuable time on what some would consider a lost cause.
This month’s PT is, of course, using a moniker that they most likely find hilarious… because to the far left, anyone with an “R” beside their name is obviously “far right”. Therefore, the logic of a “moderate republican” is a joke. I find the blinkers of the left to be amusing, but hey, that’s just me.
Our “MR” has very little science knowledge, and is hopelessly stuck on a particularly useless avenue of argument, the “appeal to authority”. Another hallmark of the PT is excessive use of the exclamation and question marks, mostly while feigning amazement.
PTs are not interested in learning anything, they are here to “educate”. Thus, responding to the PT is an exercise in futility, as even the most meticulously researched links and quotes will be simply ignored, or more often mocked.
The benefit to having a PT in the group is obvious, though. Fence-sitters can easily read through the comments on a given thread and clearly see who is intelligent and has science knowledge and experience, and contrast them with the one who appears as a raving ignoramous. And as a benefit, they get the research that others post in their futile attempts to educate the PT.
My favorite recent posts have been from the one who claims that “protesters ended the Vietnam War”, and the one where “there was no Ice-Age scare in the 70s”, although the one about “mainstream climate science” was pretty good too.
The EPA is not going anywhere. Decisions will ultimately and always be made inside the economics spectrum, all the way to the Supreme Court if need be. This is just another example of politicians and NGOs with an agenda trying to fight a losing battle in the aforementioned economics spectrum.
It is this simple, “clean the air”, “save the planet”, while killing people’s hopes, jobs, and the whole of US of A . Guess who’s going to win that one. It’s not going to work. And in time, the EPA will either be overruled or diminished to the point of ineffectiveness. Have faith in the system – it works.
Best,
J.
Mark Wilson:
banjo,
Thanks for posting that link, which confirms the benefits of more CO2:
Those findings support the FACE study’s key findings:
heh… co2 has no significance for a photosynthesizer but it controls global climate?
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:04 pm
…
Who is “mainstream science” in that alternative universe? I ask because here on earth the “mainstream science ” that is qualified to offer research on the climate impacts of the amount of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere overwhelmingly says it it is an issue.
___________________
You are free to prove that assertion. Let us see your links to ‘proof’ which stand up to scrutiny from this august forum.
Sean:
You’ve really lost the logic here. The Supreme Court said that CO2 fell under the Clean Air Act’s definition of a pollutant (Mass. v. EPA), The logic of the decision flows from that. Since the federal government has “filled the space”, the right to regulate CO2 falls to the federal government. Lower courts held that this was non-justicable (not open to interpretation by the courts) because it was a political issue. Circuit court held that because of the SC decision in the Massachusetts case it was a federal matter. Supreme court held that it was indeed a federal matter. Period. (It should be noted that the SC, as noted in the decision, split on whether or not the Circuit court as correct. A split upholds the decision). Once the court decided to here the underlying case, the decision flows from basic supremacy clause doctrine on issues of this sort, and cases which constitute controlling law on this seem to go back to 1901.
Just keep telling yourselves, on any side of this issue, that the decision had anything to do with global warming. It did not and the basic law governing this decision is long, loud and clear. That is why it was an 8-0 decision.
Finally. A reasoned decision by a governmental body that seems to take into account much more than the potential taxes a government can squeeze from, or the daily control it can force on its subjects. Of particular note: liberal judges voted with conservative judges, and none are on the payrolls of Big Climate Change or Big Oil.
Perhaps we can finally see light at the end of the climate-stupidity tunnel. And maybe, if we’re very lucky, it’s not a windmill- and solar-powered people-mover subsidized by the last 13 taxpayers in the country.
I guess the alarmists will have to start a campaign to gas and tattoo Justice Ginsberg! Nice group of people those alarmists.
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:04 pm
Who is “mainstream science” in that alternative universe? I ask because here on earth the “mainstream science ” that is qualified to offer research on the climate impacts of the amount of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere overwhelmingly says it it is an issue.
MR, that’s simply a Mantra. You have either been unknowingly caught by a classic “word game” used by an obvious Propaganda Operation, or you are trying to perpetuate the same one yourself. Climate Scientists do not get to self-anoint themselves as “mainstream” or even as “real” scientists. It’s their actual practices while doing their “science” which determine whether they are doing real science and whether they are “qualified”. Which means they have to adhere to the well-established practices of real scientific method and principle science, which are known to work. But, objectively, they don’t adhere to the principles of real science.
Among other things, how could anyone with a modicum of real world sense think that a “science” whose CO2 = CAGW hypotheses, tied solely to Warming Model runs = “the physics”, have not yet resulted in delivering even one successful prediction as confirmed by empirical results in the real world – and also as compared to its lack of being necessary to explain anything which has happened climatically, excluding any effect any net increased living biomass might have on the climate – is “mainstream” or its purveyors “qualified”? – But also granting that CO2 “might” possibly be responsible for a very small amount of current atmospheric warming, which has not been “catastrophic” in the way CAGW means, while atmospheric CO2 has apparently still never produced an alleged runaway or prevented cooling in the past, and that’s about it.
John B says:
June 24, 2011 at 4:40 pm
And how would they [the EPA] know the conclusion at the time of issuing the grant?
Money. The EPA just knows how to train or select for a certain sub-species of “scientists”. And the “scientists” in turn know a good pay master or provider when they see it. Their
science and resultssign or scat, as in “sheep dip”, speaks for itself.“Moderate Republican” babbled:
“Who is “mainstream science” in that alternative universe? I ask because here on earth the “mainstream science ” that is qualified to offer research on the climate impacts of the amount of CO2 we’re pumping into the atmosphere overwhelmingly says it it is an issue.”
Circular argument. Epic fail.
JPeden is right. The EPA knows the playas, and the alarmist contingent gets preferential treatment. The grants show that, and it would be naive to believe otherwise.
How dare they suggest science is not settled. How dare they say the debate is not over. How dare they endulge these evil, oil-funded deniers.
Thank god for some sanity.
D. King says:
June 24, 2011 at 1:23 pm
Moderate Republican says:
June 24, 2011 at 12:28 pm
“And no – a YouTube video of a plant in a greenhouse doesn’t qualify as proof of anything. If you really think it does then you’ve got other bigger issues to deal with…”
Here!
http://csccc.fcpp.org/files/f12.jpg
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D. King:
Although I’ve seen that graph many times, it still leaves me edgy whenever I see it. The long term trend line for CO2 is obviously down. Fortunately, CO2 is trending up at this time, but looking at the steepness of some of those drops on the graph, it looks like nature could lower the atmospheric CO2 a couple of hundred ppm at any given moment. That would result in levels going below 200 ppm.
As all of us know (with the probable exception of MR) that would not bode well for life on earth.
I see a dearth of atmospheric CO2 to be a large and real threat. Not even the most catastrophic predictions of the ‘evils’ of rising CO2 levels come close.
No doubt about it, no matter how it is spun, there is a palpable change in “attitude” revealed by the Opinion. Here is how the alarmist tabloid “Nature” reacted in a column: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110621/full/474421a.html . In particular the close: “That the nation’s highest court would repeat this misleading refrain, and seemingly endorse Dyson’s views as equal to those of the IPCC and the EPA, simply takes the breath away.”
So here we have again the appeal to the authority of the “IPCC and EPA.” Interestingly most of the commenters seem to prefer Dyson to the IPCC or EPA.
[Snip. Read the site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
CodeTech,
Correctomundo. The site pests who post incessantly trying to argue and nitpick everything they possibly can are violating site Policy. Being a crank in order to try and drown out reasonable dialog is simply a tactic. And I notice that they never answer questions, but they constantly demand “Yes or No?” answers to their own questions. People like that have no interest in facts, they are just running interference.
@ur momisugly Smokey and Banjo – isolated example of crops prove nothing about additional CO2 levels overall impact on the earth’s vegetation. As shown in the actual science in the link above nutritional yields cannot be assumed to e better and natural vegetation most certainly doesn’t have e benefit of ideal water and nutrients that commercial crops do. For anyone to argue that plants in a controlled environment are a proxy for all of the earth’s vegetation is ridiculously unscientific. So consistent with your other posts.