Environmental Law

HOW CAN WE RELY ON THESE PREDICTIONS?

By STEPHEN HOLZER

    The Associated Press  reports today on a recalculation by the University of Bristol (Great Britain) of the sea-level rise from a warmer planet.

     Just a couple of years ago, you will recall, global-warming gurus confidently predicted that the Earth's seas would rise 16-19 feet because of melting ice.  Now, however, University researchers have concluded that

the entire [Antarctic ice] sheet would not collapse, with parts of it remaining grounded on the continent. Thus, they said, sea level rise would be only about 3 meters, or just under 10 feet.

     So, in just a few short years the consensus prediction of a nearly 20-foot rise in sea levels has been nearly halved.  Moreover, per the Bristol study, the 10-foot rise will take 500 years to occur.

     So, the government (more accurately, opportunistic politicians), big business (have you noticed all the "green" commercials on TV lately?) and the more extreme environmentalists are asking us to curb our lifestyles based on unreliable forecasts of doom and gloom.  Even accepting the Bristol study as accurate (in a couple of ore years, will there be yet another revision?), to avoid a 10-foot ocean rise over 500 years should we all be plunged into an even deeper recession, or even a depression, now through such nutty schemes as California's AB 32 or the federal government's brilliant decision to declare carbon dioxide (i.e., the breath we exhale and that plants need to breathe) a "pollutant"?

     The clarions of doom and gloom about global warming will eventually be recorded by history as climate ideologues, not as rational thinkers.  Indeed, even now, have you noticed how many of these ideologues are changing their warnings from ones about "global warming" to warnings about "climate change"? 

     Since human intervention totally aside, the climate has been,is and always will be, "changing", these claims can never be disproved.  Thus, belief in "climate change" is more like a religion than a scientific movement; if we are going to make public policy based on this new religion, let's at least admit that we are doing so.

Full post as published by Environmental Legal Blogs on May 16, 2009 (boomark / email).