Really Sciency

Visit my other blog 'Really Sciency' looking at Climate Science and its portrayal, misrepresentation and denial in the media.

Thursday 17 March 2011

Global Warming does not exist - official!

I have been following events in the US House of Representatives where the US Congress was poised to pass legislation that would overturn a scientific finding on the dangers of global warming. The bill is intended to prevent the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions, which the agency declared a threat to public welfare in 2009. That assessment serves as the EPA’s legal basis for regulation, so repealing the ‘endangerment finding’ would eliminate its authority over greenhouse gases.

Several top climate scientists including the few qualified sceptics testified last week in front of Congress in an attempt to show the scientific case for global warming and therefore allowing the EPA to do its job.

But but as a podcast on the Scientific American site reports;
"Congress has finally acted on global warming - by denying it exists."
Not even the sceptical scientists deny that global warming exists, and as far as I know they even all apportion part of the blame to Human emissions. So for a legislative authority to actually declare that it doesn't even exist is bizarre. It really is like passing a law against gravity. That a scientifically sound finding had no bearing on the decision to push the legislation is a global embarrassment.

How can it be ethical, never mind legal, to pass judgement on scientific findings rather than their implicatiopns? This seems a clear case of politicians with their heads in the sand trying to avoid the implications of scientific findings.

1 comment:

  1. "Not even the sceptical scientists deny that global warming exists"
    I follow back and forth on the topic quite a bit. As a nonscientist, I must say that using the models that one makes to try and understand our chaotic world as forecasting devices seems unwarranted hubris. There are certainly odd comments about data sources that make one wonder about scale, integrity and usability.
    In fact, a very impressive lecture on the correlation between rise in temperatures and rise in co2 levels - concurrent with Great Extinctions - says little to me except 'we're f**ked'. Causation ? Not so much.
    But to decry the ethics of government....excuse me ; ROFLMAO !
    Try this on for size.
    http://www.monbiot.com/2005/12/27/how-britain-denies-its-holocausts/

    ReplyDelete