A Convenient Lie

Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has a premise that dangerous global warming caused by human activity is a proven scientific fact.

That premise is false. Al Gore’s movie should have been titled “A Convenient Lie”.

In fact, there is no scientific consensus on almost any aspect of global warming, most especially with respect to mankind’s contribution to it as compared with the natural contribution.

Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam recently wrote this:

Speech codes are rare in the industrialized, Western democracies. In Germany and Austria, for instance, it is forbidden to proselytize Nazi ideology or trivialize the Holocaust. Given those countries' recent histories, that is a restraint on free expression we can live with.

More curious are our own taboos on the subject of global warming. I sat in a roomful of journalists 10 years ago while Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider lectured us on a big problem in our profession: soliciting opposing points of view. In the debate over climate change, Schneider said, there simply was no legitimate opposing view to the scientific consensus that man - made carbon emissions drive global warming. To suggest or report otherwise, he said, was irresponsible.

Indeed. I attended a week’s worth of lectures on global warming at the Chautauqua Institution last month. Al Gore delivered the kickoff lecture, and, 10 years later, he reiterated Schneider’s directive. There is no science on the other side, Gore inveighed, more than once. Again, the same message: If you hear tales of doubt, ignore them. They are simply untrue.

I ask you: Are these convincing arguments? And directed at journalists, who are natural questioners and skeptics, of all people? What happens when you are told not to eat the apple, not to read that book, not to date that girl? Your interest is piqued, of course. What am I not supposed to know?

He goes on to describe his discovery that there is no consensus on Al Gore’s inconvenient “truth”. It’s well worth reading.

Now my state (California) has passed an emissions cap law that is intended to mitigate global warming (read about it here and here $). My summary: California just decided to voluntarily spend billions of dollars and discourage a wide variety of manufacturing industries, all for a reason based on junk science and political correctness.

Earlier this week, our state Assembly passed a bill mandating Hillary-style “single payer” health insurance. This is the system that exists in Britain and Canada today, the same system that has Brits and Canucks fleeing their country to find reasonable quality health care, delivered in a timely fashion. The waiting list for MRIs in Toronto is about six months; for heart bypasses in London over a year. Doctors are fleeing both countries — not for better health care, but to make more money, as the single payer system has relentlessly chipped away at their entrepreneurial opportunities. Our Assembly has decided that we need this sort of third-world medical care in California. Their apparent motivation? They want to make sure that all illegal aliens would have taxpayer-funded health care coverage (I read the bill myself, and that is exactly what it mandates). This bill is sitting in front of Governor Schwatzenegger, who has not announced where he stands on it. I sure hope he’s on the side of the angels on this one…

The first event makes me long for a revolution in Sacremento. The second one, should Schwartzenegger sign it, will have me seriously considering moving out of state.

Hmmm… I wonder if Jamul could secede from California?