Year 2, Month 6, Day 26: Bliss.

A twerp named Bronwyn Eyre writes a generic denialist screed in the June 10 Saskatoon Star-Phoenix:

I know it’s futile to complain about the weather. But are weather researchers fair game?

Last week, it was reported a University of Regina project, led by Prof. Dave Sauchyn, was being awarded $1.25 million from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) to study the role of climate change in natural disasters on the Prairies.

“Climate is a pattern. One event is weather,” Sauchyn said. “But if you get a bunch of these (weather incidents) from across the Prairies and it happens again and again, we say, ‘Something is going on.’ And it’s probably climate change.”

Sounds a bit like witchcraft reasoning to me.

Look: If there’s a clear pattern of global warming – sorry, “climate change” – that can be proven without skullduggery or obfuscation, most of us will be willing to do what it takes to rectify things. But increasingly, it seems, “experts” are claiming wacky weather simply to advance an agenda.

Sigh. Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Sent June 11:

Bronwyn Eyre’s flip dismissal of climate change relies on facile generalities when an outright misstatement of fact isn’t available. For example, the so-called “climategate” scandal has been debunked, and the researchers’ facts have been vindicated. Repeatedly. When she calls for the “hard, empirical evidence,” what does she mean? A stack of temperature readings and atmospheric CO2 levels, minus the expertise required to correlate and synthesize the data? If I’m really sick and need some tests, do I know how to interpret the results? No; without medical training, I require professional expertise. Climatologists are the professional specialists; it is destructive folly to reject their advice just because it conflicts with one’s ideological preconceptions. Arguing with a climate-change denialist like Ms. Eyre is eerily similar to arguing with a young-earth creationist who dismisses the “hard, empirical evidence” for Darwinian evolution; her glib insouciance is not genuine skepticism, but scientific ignorance and innumeracy.

Warren Senders