The really worrying thing about the man-made global warming cult – as Booker points out in today's column - is that it has become so pervasive that even president-elect Obama was swallowed it whole.

Anyone who starts off a statement on this issue by declaring "the science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear" is demonstrating nothing more or less that their own scientific illiteracy. Yet these were precisely the words used by Obama in a recent policy statement, delivered from the home of the greenies in California.

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I don't think "even" is the right word to describe a community organizers getting caught up in the post-scientific frenzy. Actually I think he, "the one" belongs to those most likely to succumb to that.

The sad thing was that among the four leading candidates for president and vice-president there was only one who was skeptical about AGW: Governor Sarah Palin. And she was the one the press and the TV called dumb. That says a lot of both our media and our politicians.

Here's a good post from Klein Verzet that expands further on "Post-Normal" Science.

Apart from Vaclav Klaus and Sarah Palin, is there a senior politician anywhere in the West who has not signed up to AGW.

The temptation for politicians, of more tax money and greater powers to order us around, is just too overwhelming to allow common sense any space at all. That combined with the MSM's wholesale embrace of the Mellon agenda, is shutting down all debate, in the political bubbles.

However the mkts have noticed and since the Chosen One's rise to eminence in '07, the Stock mkts have been noticeably weak and really bad since it looked like he would win, yes other factors have certainly been active, but his embrace of the AGW lunacy has not helped at all. Killing the Stock mkt, should ensure a single term and Carter like infamy.

Anything that is beyond dispute is no longer science.

But even if the climate predictions of the IPCC were correct, the policies advocated by the AGW activists are IMHO like asking the pilot to switch off the helicopter engine because it is making noise. A passenger insisting on this kind of action should probably be offered the choice between earplugs and a parachute.

It is interesting that when people make decisions on their own personal level, they aren't that afraid of changing climate. Somebody moving to another country, or even another town within a large country, may well experience "climate change" greater than that likely to occur at most places within a human lifetime. Yet people do move, very often for economic reasons.

Why was the word 'even' included in the preamle of the article? -
".....that it has become so pervasive that even president-elect Obama was swallowed it whole".
Obama and the Dems are drivers of this stupidity, not mere spectators awaiting the verdict of science before presenting considered opinions and action plans.

Obama's advisers might want to read McIntyre and Watt before going crazy on this. That said, economic constraints will likely force postponement of the most costly policies. In any case, the obvious path is to pursue pebble-bed nuclear technology (http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/). Unfortunately, Gore's Silicon Valley solar, wind and ethanol buddies control the big bucks. So, we'll likely end up spending countless billions on these boondoggles rather than the small-scale nuclear plants which are the real solution.

Thanks for that link, which itself links to Climate Science: Is It Designed To Answer Questions?, a paper dated 30th October 2008 by the superb Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT. (I'm disappointed to learn of its existence only now but grateful nonetheless.)

I have read only about 6 pages so far but it is very good and I recommend it to everyone. It concerns the corruption of science, climate science in particular.

Fed Up,

Actually, I think Obama is more shrewd than that. Obama always says what the right people, for him, want to hear; however, he does what the situation most seems to call for. I think he will use his first term to puruse economic and foreign policy goals: restabilizing the economy (his largest and most questionable task) and presiding over the gradual draw-down of US troops in Iraq, which no doubt he will make as good of a PR event as possible though he is to be given no credit for its possibility but merely the chance of being in office while it happens. He will no doubt spin it as a 'great American victory' unnecessarily prolonged by the actions of the previous administration, which has some truth in it. I think Lincoln was the last American president to actually let his generals fight the war without handicapping them unnecessarily with political aims.

If Obama is foolish enough to implement his 'green jobs' plan during this credit-frozen economy, then I think you will be right. That will further damage the economy, his standing as president, and the idea that just anything 'green' is a good idea. I think subtle things like roads and bridges - public works projects - will begin first. The explicitly 'green' stuff will be left until public perception holds that we are on better ground financially. That will probably not happen at the least until his second term. Granted that our Congress, now Democratically led, is clever enough about slipping stuff in there, and that may be the route to choose. But I cannot imagine Obama not taking advantage of a great PR opportunity to tout the resurrection of the American economy via 'green jobs' and its attendant implication that America has joined the rest of the world in fighting the phantom of global warming.

The worst thing the Republicans ever did was making this administration possible. The last time we were in an economy this bad a world war helped ramp up production. It made it possible for us to be both lender and supplier to the European continent, both before and after we joined in the war, which had been ravaged by two major wars within 20 years. The New Deal did nothing to end the Great Depression and most probably, along with other governmental actions, prolonged it. We do not have a war looming on the horizon, probably the only good thing about the Democratic party being as dovish as it is, so Obama's true skills (if he has any beyond rhetoric) will be put on true display. He will not be 'rescued by war' as FDR was. It will be interesting to see what he does do if he can truly do anything at all. As I have often thought, however, Obama has to true identity and thus he will be a victim, laughable as that sounds, of the advice and favorite ideas of others.

The problem with this AGW nonsense is that no party is immune to it anywhere. Even John McCain was in favor of largely the same ideas as Obama when it came to fighting global warming. I think there are both Dems and Reps that have a better eye when it comes to the facts about so-called global warming, but they would get chewed up by the the press. And the American public is still misinformed/propagandized enough to worry about the role in global warming it is allegedly playing, even if it is not yet willing to go wholesale along with the green agenda. So that gives any opposition candidate a tactical edge if he/she wants to take it. Few politicians would risk losing power over something so seemingly trivial, though that does go perhaps to illustrate how thoroughly they do not get it. Our present way of prospering economically and the economic ideas inherent in Warmists ideology are inherently incompatible. The only way we get back to sanity is with a political party that is willing to take on the media and the scientific establishment, present the real facts along with all their messiness and uncertainty (in broad contrast to the nice little media-friendly set-in-stone package the Warmists have) to the public, and propose policies that are in line with real world thinking. Unforunately, the tranzis have a huge 30 year jump on us, and have a large pool of sympathizers in one our major political parties here in America. It may already be too late.

I suppose time will tell.

Idiots do idiotic things because they are idiots. Even when they stop, they still are idiots and so it is not long before they find the next idiocy to engage in...

AGW is pretty harmless as it goes, it only costs us money we don't really have for things we don't need and which don't work.

I can think of worse pursuits to keep the fools busy -- the last time they played at WW1 and then WW2, so I think this climate lark is a blessing in disguise, it takes up their time 'safely' and keeps them happy and very very busy.

Are you all really sure you want to convince them of the errors of their ways and chance what happens when they find a new hobby-horse to pester us with?

Excellent T-shirt:
AGW
pretty cheap really
compared to say,
WW II

Nice one Harissa.

Well, sorry... but you know, this all reminds me of so much of these old tales:

"The Schildburgers, it has been already remarked, are the Gothamites of Germany, and the stories of their stupidity, after being orally current for years among the people, were collected near the close of the sixteenth century, the earliest known edition being that of 1597. In a most lively and entertaining article on "Early German Comic Romances" (Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 40, 1837), the late Mr. W.J. Thoms has furnished an account of the exploits of the Schildburgers, from which the following particulars and tales are extracted:

"There have been few happier ideas than that of making these simpletons descend from one of the wise men of Greece, and representing them as originally gifted with such extraordinary talents as to be called to the councils of all the princes of the earth, to the great detriment of their circumstances and the still greater dissatisfaction of their wives, and then, upon their being summoned home to arrange their disordered affairs, determining, in their wisdom, to put on the garb of stupidity, and persevering so long and so steadfastly in their assumed character as to prove 'plain fools at last.'

No way inferior is the end of this strange tale, which assumes even somewhat of serious interest when the Schildburgers, after performing every conceivable piece of folly, and receiving the especial privilege of so doing under the seal and signature of the emperor, by the crowning act of their lives turn themselves out of house and home, whereby they are compelled, like the Jews, to become outcasts and wanderers over the face of the earth, by which means it has arisen that there is no spot, however remote, on which some of their descendants, who may be known by their characteristic stupidity, are not to be found."

Their first piece of folly was to build a council-house without windows. When they entered it, and, to use the words of the nursery ballad, "saw they could not see," they were greatly puzzled to account for such a state of things; and having in vain gone outside and examined the building to find why the inside was dark, they determined to hold a council upon the subject on the following day.

At the time appointed they assembled, each bringing with him a torch, which, on seating himself, he stuck in his hat. After much discussion, one genius, brighter than the rest, decided that they could not see for want of daylight, and that they ought on the morrow to carry in as much of it as possible.

Accordingly, the next day, when the sun shone, all the sacks, bags, boxes, baskets, tubs, pans, etc. of the village were filled with its beams and carefully carried into the council-house and emptied there, but with no good effect. After this they removed the roof, by the advice of a traveller, whom they rewarded amply for the suggestion.

This plan answered famously during the summer, but when the rains of winter fell, and they were forced to replace the roof, they found the house just as dark as ever. Again they met, again they stuck their torches in their hats, but to no purpose, until by chance one of them was quitting the house, and groping his way along the wall, when a ray of light fell through a crevice and upon his beard, whereupon he suggested, what had never occurred to any of them, that it was possible they might get daylight in by making a window."

All I can say is that Schilda indeed lives and that the Schildburgers appear to have multiplied like Zombies -- the place is crawling with them! (aaarrrgh!) ;-)

More original Schilda stories: http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/bon/chap03.htm

And for another modern Schildburger story of the day see http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/qu ... 05517.html

I know it looks off-topic, but to me it is the same symptom of the same malaise, and it affects people who were given an education that is second to none in all of human history -- all these people have been taught to know far far more than any other generation and manage to be pig ignorant whilst thinking they know it all.

Just look at the news and count how many times you figure that a story is way beyond good or bad, or perhaps, just in your normal day-to-day life you probably already have enough examples already of complete breakdown of common sense and the inability to consider the future results no matter how obvious and imminent they are.

Would we be able to put together another Bletchely Park or Manhattan Project?

Nops, because we don't have those kind of people of this quality amongst us anymore in a quantity that has enough sane influence on their surroundings. That crazy law maker in Australia who is about to enshrine the duty making a profit on house sales genuinely believes that this will solve the problem(bless) -- she thinks the law is some kind of spell that compels reality to conform, and there is no-one around to instill normality either.