George Rebane
The 27jan12 WSJ publishes a major piece ‘No Need to Panic About Global Warming’ signed by sixteen science and technology heavyweights. From my perspective as a systems scientist, I long ago joined the once lonely voices that pointed out that the climate change alarmists (especially of the anthropogenic global warming stripe) were intellectually naked shills with a pernicious political agenda.
Led by internationally recognized serious science commentators (links on right) like Anthony Watts, and locally by Russ Steele, the voices of reason and scientific accuracy have been growing and becoming more prominent over the last years. But the political steamroller has yet to show significant slowing. AGW is now a recognized and much applied tool of the political Left which uses it at every turn to remove individual liberties and shackle economies.
The authors of the cited piece point out the eerie similarities of how politicized science today recalls the days of church proscribed scientific enquiry and communist mandated politically correct sciences of (Lysenko, et.al.) of the USSR during the first half of the 20th century. We are there again with claimed “incontrovertible evidence” that AGW exists. Science contains no incontrovertible evidence, and once ‘evidence’ is so ascribed, it exits the halls of reasonable enquiry and science and enters the temples of religion.
The piece concludes –
A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.
If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.
Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.
rebanesruminations.com 
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