On Wednesday, November 17th, the House Committee on Science and Technology held a hearing regarding anthropogenic global warming, which is, of course, the so-called threat of our lifetimes, the end times for man, etc and so on, if you listen to climate alarmists. Thankfully, they devoted a whopping two hours to the most important issue facing the planet. The testimony is available along the left side of the webpage at the aforementioned link. Dr. Lindzen provides the beat down
I wish to thank the House Committee on Science and Technology for the opportunity to present my views on the issue of climate change –or as it was once referred to: global warming. The written testimony is, of course, far more detailed than my oral summary will be. In the summary, I will simply try to clarify what the debate over climate change is really about. It most certainly is not about whether climate is changing: it always is. It is not about whether CO2is increasing: it clearly is. It is not about whether the increase in CO2, by itself, will lead to some warming: it should. The debate is simply over the matter of how much warming the increase in CO2 can lead to, and the connection of such warming to the innumerable claimed catastrophes. The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak –and commonly acknowledged as such.
Dr. Lindzen continues on, and I recommend that everyone, especially you believers, read the whole thing.
On page 7, he writes
Virtually by definition, nothing in science is ‘incontrovertible’ –especially in a primitive and complex field as climate. ‘Incontrovertibility’ belongs to religion where it is referred to as dogma.
And the climate alarmists basically treat the issue as a religion. Later in the PDF, page 24, he actually refers to the science as a quasi-religious issue. Notice, though, that he calls climate science a primitive and complex field.
Page 16
However, with global warming the line of argument is even sillier. It generally amounts to something like if A kicked up some dirt, leaving an indentation in the ground into which a rock fell and B tripped on this rock and bumped into C who was carrying a carton of eggs which fell and broke, then if some broken eggs were found it showed that A had kicked up some dirt. These days we go even further, and decide that the best way to prevent broken eggs is to ban dirt kicking.
Dr. Lindzen also spends much time on the actual science, and we it is not “alarming” and “catastrophes” are not on the way.
