Vox

Musings, rants, rambling, general nonsense

Focus

Posted on | September 9, 2005 | 4 Comments

I ♥ Ben Stein

There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people.

Read the whole article for point by point rebuttal to the Blame Bush crowd.

Is there any problem in the world that is not Mr. Bush’s fault, or have we reverted to a belief in a sort of witchcraft where we credit a mortal man with the ability to create terrifying storms and every other kind of ill wind?



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Category: politics

Comments

4 Responses to “Focus”

  1. Michael
    September 9th, 2005 @ 1:34 pm

    Wonderful article. I get so weary of the “hate Bush all the time” crowd.

  2. David Dodenhoff
    September 10th, 2005 @ 12:57 am

    I think it’s incorrect to say “there is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists.” The debate is not over whether the planet is getting warmer, but over the extent to which the warming is caused by human beings. I know you were just quoting Ben Stein, but he’s wrong on this one.

  3. Vox
    September 10th, 2005 @ 4:17 pm

    I think there is still debate about whether there is a consistent warming trend, or one that is abnormal. There appear to be wide temperature arcs over the centuries, and around the globe. There is data showing cooling trends in places, and in fact that was the argument of the environmentalists not so long ago – “beware the coming of a new ice age”. Arizona was much wetter at one time so it must have warmed long ago, yet this is the first summer in quite a while I remember it getting really hot (though I remember many summers like this in my youth, and I have missed them)
    There are some interesting articles about it at Stats.org, for instance this one, which don’t take sides but merely review the presentation of data.

  4. David Dodenhoff
    September 10th, 2005 @ 7:55 pm

    Well, I just lost a big, long post. My Stanford alumni magazine arrived in the mail today, though, and the cover story was on global warming. How about that? Here’s the money quote: “…there is no argument among climatologists that the average global temperature has risen since the mid-19th century, by 0.6 degree (roughly 1 degree F).”
    Here’s the same point, in a National Academy of Sciences press release on a report requested by the White House: “With regard to the basic question of whether climate change is occurring, the report notes that measurements show that temperatures at the Earth’s surface rose by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (about .6 degrees Celsius) during the 20th century.”
    There may be some people who reject the science, but they are a small–and I would argue irrelevant–minority.