Here Comes The Sun
Ed Morrissey
The proponents of man-made climate change want to force an end to the debate over the causes of global warming. Some want to treat skeptics as if they were Holocaust deniers or heretics of old. However, some scientists still have their doubts about whether global warming is real, and whether man has any impact on it at all:
Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported. ...
In a way, anthropogenic climate change speaks to an impulse within humans whenever contemplating catastrophes, real or imagined. In something between arrogance and fear, people cannot believe that they have no control over the origins of events that shape their lives. This causes people to look inward for root causes, and the larger the problem, the greater this dynamic grows. Hence we have people blaming the West for radical Islamist terrorism and believing that a greater dialogue with Muslim absolutists will end it.
Global warming seems of a piece with this. Despite conflicting data and incomplete models, environmentalists insist that the Earth has begun an unstoppable global-warming cycle due to the massive release of carbon for energy over the past century. Evidence to the contrary gets shouted down and those who would challenge this new orthodoxy get shouted down and treated as a greater danger than terrorists in some circles. The problem, assuming it exists, simply has to be caused by mankind -- because it frightens some to think that we have no control over it at all. ...
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