Global warming holocaust deniers

Mark Steyn:

Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future."

That would be yours truly: the climate holocaust denier. I wrote last week about "global warming," or "cooling," or "climate change," or (the latest term) "climate disruption" -- for those parts of the world where the climate isn't really changing but you get an occasional blip: a warm day in winter or a flurry of snow in late April, or (for British readers) a summer's day where it rockets up to 58 and cloudy instead of being 54 and drizzling. As a result of my climate holocaust denial, I received a ton of letters along the lines of this one:

"Your piece gave most of my students, most of whom are conservative, a laugh. A journalist's word against six years of peer-reviewed research conducted by world authorities on the subject.

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Presumably Professor Pierson signs himself "Professor of English" to establish his credentials for opining on how I can make a living writing. To be honest, I'm flattered to know I'm being discussed at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, N.Y.: Did I displace Shakespeare? Or Maya Angelou? Or the class where you learn not to put an apostrophe in noun plurals? Has Professor Pierson's judgment of my writing also been peer-reviewed by world authorities?

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Indeed. However, when you do read the actual science, you quickly appreciate that it's not by any means "settled" -- that there all kinds of variables. To quote the Finnish-Dutch big shots:

"There is general agreement that variations in the global (or hemispheric) tropospheric temperature are, at least partly, related to those in solar activity (e.g., Bond et al., 2001; Solanki and Krikova, 2003; Usoskin et al., 2005; Kilcik, 2005)."

Therefore: "Variations of the mean tropospheric temperature must include stratosphere-troposphere interaction." However: "A detailed mechanism effectively transferring stratospheric heating into the troposphere is yet not clear."

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And is nought-point-seven of an uptick worth wrecking the global economy over? Sure, say John Kerry and Al Gore, suddenly retrospectively hot for Kyoto ratification. But, had America and Australia signed on to Kyoto, and had Canada and Europe complied with it instead of just pretending to, by 2050 the treaty would have reduced global warming by 0.07C: a figure that would be statistically undectectable within annual climate variation. And, in return for this meaningless gesture, American GDP in 2010 would be lower by $97 billion to $397 billion -- and those are the U.S. Energy Information Administration's somewhat optimistic models.

And now Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research says "it might take another 30 Kyotos" to halt global warming: 30 x $397 billion is . . . er, too many zeroes for my calculator.

So, faced with a degree rise in temperature, we could destroy the planet's economy, technology, communications and prosperity. And ruin the lives of millions of people.

Or we could do what man does best: adapt.

You do the math.

As Barbi said, "Math is hard." But, global warming has so much prospect for letting the left establish its control freak agenda. Personally, I like warmer weather. It requires fewer clothes and just feels better. Think about what global warming can do for places like North Dakota. One thing have notices is that the globo warmers are really concerned about the prospect of shooting down an explanation that does not include the hands of man.

This report suggest comic rays from out space are contributing to the warming.