Year 2, Month 10, Day 29: Where Do These Guys Come From?

The October 25 edition of the Baltimore Sun wastes paper on a denialist named Richard Haddad, whose buffoonery goes under the title, “Moving Past Man-Made Global Warming Alarmism.” Heh:

It seems that the man-made global warming scare, long promoted by those opposed to the burning of fossil fuel, is now behind us.

It turns out that there is no unanimity of scientists supporting man-made global warming theory and never has been. It’s also now becoming widely recognized that there is no incontrovertible evidence that global warming is caused by human activity, and that there is quite a bit of evidence that human activity is not a primary cause of such warming.

It’s becoming better known that for at least 240,000 years, a rise in CO2 has followed rather than preceded global warming. This squares with the reality that the oceans hold the vast majority of the Earth’s carbon, and when the oceans warm, they release some of their gases into the atmosphere.

Guys like this give the rest of the world’s idiots a bad name, y’know? Sent October 25:

Richard Haddad’s anti-science screed reminds me uncannily of the previous White House’s readiness to disregard well-grounded warnings from their political opponents, as when Bush officials treated the briefings they’d received from Clinton staffers about Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaeda as unwarranted alarmism. 9/11, of course, brought us the infamous Cheney doctrine: even a one-percent chance that Saddam had WMDs was sufficient reason to mount a military offensive.

Notice that beforehand, justified warnings were dismissed, and afterward, no evidence was required to justify action.

Mr. Haddad needs to hear a few plain facts: the earth is in fact getting hotter; the scientific consensus on human causes of global warming is exceptionally strong; the “climategate” scandal has been repeatedly debunked; the economic consequences of shifting to renewable energy are overwhelmingly positive. When scientific expertise is politicized by conservatives who prefer to deny inconvenient facts, our country and the world are the losers.

Warren Senders