Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Bad Optics

There has been a lot of this going on.
Groups go out and protest about global warming and find themselves suddenly in much colder circumstances than they were likely prepared for.
And then a global warming denier makes fun of them.

As a comic I have to believe that God has a sense of humor. Yesterday those two things ran smack into each other in Washington D.C.

In the middle of the worst spring blizzard of the past thirty years, and with temperatures in the twenties, some of those sharp minds who have “settled” the global warming debate held a protest.

If the deniers left this at an all in good fun position, I would have more sympathy.
But even this poster does not.
This winter is the coldest in over thirty years in North America and Europe. The polar ice cap in the north, you remember the one that wasn’t big enough to chill a decent martini last year according to Al Gore, is at its thickest since 1979. Polar bears are thriving, Key West is still above water and one of the few places in the country where real estate is dropping faster than the far left’s credibility.

All that aside, my major objection to the climate hysteria is that no one knows what the optimum temperature for human life on the planet is. Who’s to say that the human race won’t thrive even more if the temperature goes up a few degrees? I hope we won’t be leaving the answer to that question up to Greenpeace.

The poster proves here he has little respect for the truth or relevance.
I am pretty sure he got the polar ice cap claim from George Will in the Washington Post, and that claim has been utterly destroyed. Regarding global warming, how cold the winter is in a part of North America seems not to define the issue for the globe. Note also that he provides NO sources for either claim, just says it. Moreover, the issue is climate, not weather, and both vary.
I think his second paragraph is better.
But the whole story here is optics and there is no question pictures of global warming enthusiasts (who are intellectually no better on the accounts above) shivering in the snow and cold as they fret about something regarding over-heating is a danger for the cause.
I am curious to see how they respond, other than by lying and saying every climate scientist agrees with them.
Disclosure: I am concerned about AGW and think weakly that we need a carbon tax. Actually more strongly but not just for AGW.

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