Green thumb sucking

The Monk is on record time and again with his view that the notion that global climate change is either manmade or heavily influenced by human activity is one of the more preposterous fictions in scientific theory. Simply stated, if the expected scientific outcome cannot be replicated, the theory cannot be proven. In the case of "climate change" (which used to be "global warming" before the preposterously cold winter of 2004-05), the proof and the theory do not jibe -- climate change computer modeling is so far outside an acceptable margin of error no scientist without a specific political agenda would tout the findings (the way to test the computer model that tries to predict 2007-2057 is to use its equations to try to replicate actual climate changes in the past, i.e. from 1907-1957).

Mark Steyn took on the latest global doom-mongering in his column for the Chicago Sun-Times last week because wooden-American Al Gore has an environmental doom predicting movie coming out soon entitled "An Inconvenient Truth." Some of Steyn's observations are worth noting:

Here's an inconvenient truth for "An Inconvenient Truth": Remember what they used to call "climate change"? "Global warming." And what did they call it before that? "Global cooling." That was the big worry in the '70s: the forthcoming ice age. Back then, Lowell Ponte had a huge best seller called The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

The answer to the first question was: Yes, it had begun. From 1940 to 1970, there was very slight global cooling. That's why the doom-mongers decided the big bucks were in the new-ice-age blockbusters.

And yet, amazingly, we've survived. Why? Because in 1970 the planet stopped its very slight global cooling and began to undergo very slight global warming. So in the '80s, the doom-mongers cast off their thermal underwear, climbed into the leopardskin thongs, slathered themselves in sun cream and wired their publishers to change all references to "cooling" to "warming" for the paperback edition. That's why, if you notice, the global-warming crowd begin their scare statistics with "since 1970," an unlikely Year Zero which would not otherwise merit the significance the eco-crowd invest in it.

But then in 1998 the planet stopped its very slight global warming and began to resume very slight global cooling. And this time the doom-mongers said, "Look, do we really want to rewrite the bumper stickers every 30 years? Let's just call it 'climate change.' That pretty much covers it."

Given the track record of environmental doomsayers since the inception of the "environmental movement" in the 1960s, acting on anything this lot says is somewhere between unwise and flat stupid. Don't confuse political "science" for reality.