Tuesday, November 24, 2009

It's Not True Until the Left Says It's True

I'm not sure if climate believerism vs. skepticism is a left/right thing, but I suspect it is. The skeptics generally question these things:

1. The completeness of man's understanding of climate.

Two sub-points follow from this:

a. The ability to accurately portion past/present climate behavior to specific factors such as CO2

b. The ability to create accurate predictive climate models that are sufficiently solid to justify political/economic/social revolution, i.e., "world government"

2. The association of AGW with the ideology of western guilt and the west-must-pay mentality. Whatever this is, it is something other than science.

3. The motivation of some climate change advocates. Climate change is big business. It is government grants squared and writ large across the spectrum of the scientific enterprise. Want a grant? Link whatever you are doing to climate change. Grant granted. This inconvenient truth is so apparent, it should be taken for granted. From this follows a skepticism towards the scenarios of predicted climate change effects -- increased prostitution, wars, mass migration of populations, massive increases in ocean levels, etc. etc. etc.

So which mind, the mind of the left or the mind of the right, is the most sober, sound, and rational? At the moment, you have to score one for the right. Warmergate has shaken even the true believers.

Look what Mark Steyn writes:

"Meanwhile, fellow Settled Scientist Tim Flannery is sounding ...kinda unsettled:

We’re dealing with an incomplete understanding of the way the earth system works… When we come to the last few years when we haven’t seen a continuation of that (warming) trend we don’t understand all of the factors that create earth’s climate...We just don’t understand the way the whole system works… See, these people work with models, computer modelling. So when the computer modelling and the real world data disagree you’ve got a very interesting problem… Sure for the last 10 years we’ve gone through a slight cooling trend.

Really? Golly, when I said as much a few months back, the excitable lads in the George Soros typing pool at Media Matters denounced it as a "false claim". Apparently, it's now safe to say it in polite society."

In other words, when the right expresses something, it's just wacko discardable opinion.

* * *

Another example occurred a few years back. The right in Canada had been saying for years that we should look at fresh options in healthcare. The left kept insisting that any tinkering with the publicly funded system was unthinkable. Better to let Canadians suffer than tinker with healthcare. If we're going to do anything, just pour more and more unending funds into this heavily unionized, special-interest laden maw. Want to see an interesting YouTube? Just watch Jack Layton spitting out the words "for-profit healthcare". The guy practically needs healthcare after he says it, he gets so worked up.

Until.

Until the Supreme Court of Canada (!) issued a ruling that waiting times were unconscionable and that it was OK for Canadians to consider other options. Yes, my American friends, in Canada the Supreme Court tells us what is socially acceptable to think. And the Supreme Court is, in case you missed it, and almost exclusively left-wing ideologue camp.

So, this is the way the world works.

It's not true until the left says it's true.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

No comments:

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"