If you are not reading the California Majority Report, you are not fully informed about the insanity of the left. Last week, I commented on Al Gore, and global warming, which generated a respone on the left wing blog, the California Majority Report. You should take a look at the response to my global warming comment on that blog. If you read my comment, you will see that I was making fun of the good former Vice President, and the current debate on global warming. I find it is always easier to make a point with humor than with ranting. Historical accuracy on the details was not my goal.
I will say that I took some literary license to make the points in my article. But my point was simple, science is not a moral imperative, and when politicians try to make science a moral imperative, scientists take their life into their own hands. When Al Gore, the quintessential politician, the scion of a southern (racist) political family, tried to make global warming a "moral" issue, he started down a road that, historically, has been dangerous for knowledge and liberty.
Global warming is a scientific discussion. Those who want to turn it into a political issue are trying to control our lives, take our liberty, and destroy our lifestyle. The fact that they are also trying to make it a moral imperative is evidence of their desire to stifle dissent. That is when they are dangerous.
That being said, the critique of my comment makes my essential point. Politicians make bad scientists.
Here are the important admissions
(1) There was indeed a medieval warming period and a cooling period in the 17th to 18th century. The "little ice age" ended in the mid 19th century, about the time modern scientists started keeping tract of temperatures.
(2) The "government" of the middle ages imprisoned those "heretical" scientists who deviated from the scientists who happened to disagree with the predominant "scientific" opinion of the day.
I never said that scientists imprisoned other scientists. I did say that politicians, clothed in the rhetoric of a moral imperative, imprisoned scientists who happened to disagree with the politicians. Indeed, whether it is Pope Urban VIII or some other political figure (such as Al Gore), politicians who use the power of the state to stifle scientific dissent are dangerous. My point was that the attempt of Al Gore the Earthen to raise the question of global warming to a moral issue was a dangerous move. Laws should not be based on this kind of science.
Here is the problem of the current global warming debate. We know of the medieval warming and the cooling that followed. We also know that the current measurements are based on measurements taken at the end of the last cooling period (see here).
We also know that since that cooling period we have seen a warming period through the 1930’s, a cooling period from the mid 1960’s to the early 1980’s (which led to the global cooling scare of the 1970’s), and some warming since the 1980’s. What we don’t know is whether we are as warm now as we were in the 13th century. Since they are not growing wine grapes in Northern Europe (as they were in the 13th century), there is at leas some evidence that we are not yet as warm as we were when global warming was a natural, as opposed to manmade, phenomenon. To base our laws on the current state of scientific knowledge on global warming is short sighted. We need a lot more study before we can conclude that the current warming is either "long term" or "man made." Those who are rushing to judgment in the current debate have ulterior motives. They are not trying to save us. They are trying to enslave us.
I don’t claim to be all knowing, just a little skeptical. The current debate on global warming demands that kind of skepticism. Our friends on the left, however, fear that kind of skepticism.
You can comment on this column by going to it’s corresponding post on the FR Blog here.