Soccer Dad

Cry havoc and let slip the fog of (agw) lore

In science there is a concept of falsifiablity. Though it isn't accepted by everyone, the concept introduced by Karl Popper is that an experiment cannot prove a theory, if there isn't some result that would prove the theory wrong. So if you claim that that anthropogenic global warming will cause BOTH an increase in fog AND a decrease in fog, (h/t Seraphic Secret) you aren't making a scientific claim. Since both contradictory results lead to the same conclusion, that conclusion isn't based on science, but faith.

Consider Thomas Friedman's latest:

Avoid the term "global warming." I prefer the term "global weirding," because that is what actually happens as global temperatures rise and the climate changes. The weather gets weird. The hots are expected to get hotter, the wets wetter, the dries drier and the most violent storms more numerous.

The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington -- while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought -- is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever.

In other words, every single climactic change "proves" global warming. Aside from the fact that this isn't necessarily so, Friedman's assertion means that any result "proves" his desired thesis. Again this makes it faith, not science. Or as Ann Althouse put it:

So weather is not climate -- which, duh -- but he still wants to use weather as climate. And he even gets to say that cold is evidence of heat, because we shouldn't be saying heat anymore, we should be talking about weirdness.

James Taranto:

See, it works either way! More fog? It's global weirding, man! Less fog? Also global weirding! What if the amount of fog stays exactly the same? Well, how weird would that be!

But the best response to Friedman came from Charles Krauthammer, 14 years ago.

We've been lectured incessantly on how prideful man is spewing tons of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, causing global warming. We've been told further that this desecration of nature will ultimately wipe out winter, turn Kansas to desert and put Long Island under water. Now comes the exact opposite climatic event -- a monster snowstorm -- and that, too, is caused by our sinning against Gaea? Yes, holds the newest variation in environmental scolding. Global warming is now the cause not just of warming but of all weather "extremes," i.e., calamities. How? Warming increases water evaporation, adding moisture and energy to the atmosphere, making for more rain and storms -- and, mirabile dictu, "more severe droughts" as well. Huh? Exact opposites again? Yes, writes the Times' William Stevens: "in cases where atmospheric circulation conspires" -- a deliciously revealing anthropomorphism -- "to keep rain away from a given area." So global warming has now become a theory of everything, or at least everything bad: rain, snow, heat, cold, storms, droughts. You name it, we caused it. When anything unpredictable and unwanted occurs -- particularly if it occurs near a media center like Washington or New York -- we can now blame it on global warming and, by extension, on us. Is there a primitive religion that can match this one for attributing natural calamity to the transgressions of man -- this time around, to man's sins against Mother Earth and her environmental priesthood?

At the end of his column Friedman lectures Americans once more:

China, of course, understands that, which is why it is investing heavily in clean-tech, efficiency and high-speed rail. It sees the future trends and is betting on them. Indeed, I suspect China is quietly laughing at us right now.

The record so far shows that "green jobs" are an expensive bet; no returns on whether they are a good one.

Is it possible to write a column that gets more science and economics wrong? What Tom-foolery.

Friedman deserves scorn for more. As Instapundit has written on many occasions:

As I've said before, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis.

Have you ever seen his house? If he's going to use phony science to lecture us how we need to change our lifestyles, he could start by demonstrating his own sense self-sacrifice.