You Can Bet Your Kid's Future on It

This morning I looked at the Drudge-linked story about Reid A. Bryson, the meteorology superstar who says global warming predictions are crap and hysteria. Money quote, which I have seen in other forms from other scientists:

Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”

That's what cracks me up about the man-caused global warming religion. We are literally unable to predict the weather five days into the future, but we claim we know what it will be like in fifty years.

As a resident of Miami, I can tell you with great confidence that meteorology is an extremely weak science. Had you spent the last few years watching hurricane tracks with the same attention I have expended, you would know that computer models are often way off, even when predicting events only hours in the future. And if you had my nineteen years of experience as a boater, you would know that even simple forecasts involving things like wind speed and wave height are completely unreliable.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone outside the night before a day on which calm waters were projected, looked at the sky, said, "The forecast is INSANE," and abandoned my plans. And turned out to be right.

All these things are true, and my experience is typical, yet somehow we are supposed to close factories and use costly anti-carbon measures and throw people out of work and take food out of the mouths of our children, because a bunch of smelly actors and musicians--almost all of whom are major polluters and carbon villains--claim to know what the climate will be doing in 2050.

Bryson's funniest claim? Eighty percent of reflected solar heat is absorbed by water vapor in the atmosphere, and greenhouse gas absorbs eight hundredths of a percent. Says Bryson, "You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide."

Unlike the climate of 2050, that's something you can actually measure, today, in a laboratory, with great accuracy. In other words, it's an indisputable fact. But instead of listening to this guy--one of the world's most prominent climatologists--we should listen to John Travolta, who stopped flying his five jets long enough to point out that global warming was real important.

If you doubt Bryson's word, think about this. What happens when the sun goes down in Miami? Nothing. It stays sweaty and muggy and hot until morning, because the air is full of water vapor. What happens when the sun goes down in Libya? The temperature drops fifty to seventy degrees. Because there's no CO2 in the air to trap heat? No, dear. Because Libya is dry.

Environmentalism is a hobby; no one likes to admit that. It's a hobby, like fly fishing or Dungeons and Dragons. And global warming is a fad, like the hula hoop, clackers, or--to cite a more dangerous fad--anti-Semitism in prewar Germany and Austria. Hobbyists like Ed Begley and Ted Danson love driving their funny little cars and talking about compost, and they're infecting the rest of us, and human beings are mindless herd creatures, so we believe them not because we are bright enough or informed enough to have any idea whether they're right, but simply because the herd has identified a new fad and we don't want to be left out. If celebrities started hitting themselves in the face with hammers, a good portion of the public would start doing it, too.

Want proof? Over twenty percent of American adults smoke cigarettes. And most started after they knew it caused cancer, emphysema, strokes, and heart attacks.

It's amazing, what a tiny role intelligence plays in the decisions of the smartest species on the planet. We don't even use our intelligence to decide who should choose our fads for us. Reid Bryson? No...Al Gore and Sheryl Crow. If you're going to shut off your brain and follow someone like a zombie, shouldn't your last act of reasoning be to carefully evaluate the person you intend to follow?

And what ever happened to common sense? Isn't it obvious that we can't predict the weather? Aren't a century of wrong forecasts meaningful? What we do when we predict the weather is, we issue educated guesses that have an acceptably low failure rate. It's okay to plan a picnic based on information like that, but do you really want to rely on it when crippling a global economy?

Here's a crazy fact the greenies don't like to mention: money is good. Money means education, health care, food, shelter, clothing, art, science, and industry. It even means environmental research and ecological progress; the Kyoto Protocols reflect this in the lenient treatment they give poor countries. It takes wealth to be green. That means it takes industry. Unless you want to live in a hole and use stone tools.

Screwing up our economy and living with less aren't just inconvenient. They're really bad. For the children. I say that to make you laugh, but it's true. Money buys vaccinations and prenatal care and good schools and all sorts of things we need to make our offspring thrive. It's a big deal if we put the brakes on the economy. It doesn't just mean you can't have a Hummer. It means people will suffer.

Think about the bums. People who get excited about global warming love bums and addicts and call them "homeless" and insist we ruin our Thanksgivings to feed them, so they can continue their bad habits without consequences. Where will the bums be if the economy tanks? Donations will suffer. Do we really want rabid environmentalism to starve our precious bums?

Think about all the other wonderful things that will wither if greenie hysteria wrecks the economy. PBS. Bad art. Planned Parenthood. The Brady Institute.

Hmm...maybe mindless reform isn't such a bad idea.

The extremists need to remember that sooner or later, we're going to know the truth about man-caused global warming, beyond a reasonable doubt. And what if it turns out to be BS, as it probably will? At worst, it will turn out to be manageable without destroying our prosperity.

I would hate to spend the last half of my life trying to explain why I ran around for several years, claiming to be absolutely certain about something that turned out to be utter crap.

Maybe no one will remember their squeals of alarm. No one seems to remember global cooling or the unbelievably stupid population explosion myths of thirty years ago. We were supposed to be so overpopulated by 2000 it would be impossible to turn around without stepping on someone else's foot. But look what happened in Europe. People stopped reproducing, and now they have to import Muslims to shore up their pyramid retirement schemes. Apparently people limit their own reproduction. That completely foreseeable factor was omitted from the Chicken Little differential equation that predicted we would be wading through each other's dung.

Mathematical models are great, except when they're constructed by hippies who never got past algebra and vetted by the likes of Sheryl Crow and Leonardo di Caprio. Hey Leo, what's an integral? What's a standard deviation? What's the difference between ordinary and partial differential equations?

He'd fill his Dolce & Gabbana socks if you asked him those questions.

I'd be impressed if he or the most respected climatologist alive could just tell me what the weather will be like next Tuesday.

That's how I see it. Call me crazy today, but remember, your words may bite you in the ass a few years from now.