‹ Can The Last Supper, featuring the Obamessiah, be far behind? •
I have not yet posted on the whole global warming controversy. But then here comes this article about global warming—on Jupiter! And it’s not just a degree or two over a hundred years. Instead, it’s 18 degrees in a few years. Those Jovians must be driving really big SUVs. But Al Gore and the Governator will set them straight about some inconvenient truths and how Jupiter is in the balance.
Of course, if there is global warming on Jupiter, there must be on other planets, too. Well, Venus’s surface is hundreds of degrees hot, so warming is water under the bridge, so to speak. But, lo and behold, now comes evidence of global warming on the Red Planet. The Martian ice caps are shrinking significantly and temperatures are higher than several decades ago. Those Martian polar bears must be in a panic. But at least we know what causes it—human activity.
I really enjoy climate and weather forecasters’ lack of a sense of the absurd. I recently heard a prediction about the current hurricane season. The forecast boldly predicted that the number of hurricanes would be between near-normal and above average. Given that the past two seasons have been well-below normal in storms, and given that predicting an extreme year would be, well, extreme, the forecast covers the likely gamut.
Now comes this report from a Bush critic who has changed his mind about the impact of global warming on hurricanes. He believes that, rather than intensifying such storms, global warming will reduce their ferocity. Others disagree and argue for storm intensification. Many of the hurricane researchers also disagree, but that is because they don’t believe in a connection between global warming and hurricane cycles. So much for scientific “consensus.”
Or, the whole thing could go away. Perhaps global warming will take a breather, or the Earth (or parts of it) will even cool. I’m just glad that, unlike the researchers, those eminent scientists Al Gore, Arnold, and some of my colleagues are convinced. I know I can trust their scientific expertise.
“The facts of life are conservative.” - Margaret Thatcher
Recent Articles
-
NPR and the “tyranny of constituency”
I have been re-reading quite a few of the Federalist Papers for the constitutingamerica.org project and for a summer class I am teaching on the Foundations of the Constitution. A recurrent theme therein is the…
-
Daily Briefing 06/26/10
First Alvin Greene in South Carolina; now this. A Congressional candidate in Texas wants to impeach President Obama and, during the campaign, carried an oversized picture of the President with a Hitler-style moustache. Obviously, this is the type…
-
Laugh it off!
Iowahawk’s occasional guest columnist T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII returns, somewhat chastened over his earlier gushing and fawning over Barack Obama. “Each day seems to introduce some new crisis on the world scene with hint…
-
Alexander Hamilton on tax policy
Why are certain basic economic proposition known to everyone but Democratic (and unacceptably many Republican) politicians? Here is Alexander Hamilton, writing more than two hundred years ago about the usefulness and limitations of consumption taxes. Hi…
-
Daily Briefing 06/24/10
The Supreme Court has unanimously decided three federal “honest services” fraud cases by (rightly) limiting such cases to bribery and kickbacks, as intended by Congress when the law was drafted, rather than the more…