Tax Those Whose Hair Is on Fire, Too - Chris Horner - Planet Gore on National Review Online

If your forests burn, why, you need to pay someone else for carbon offsets.

On climate realist John Coleman: You Don’t Need a Weatherman

“It’s a trace. How does that destroy the planet?” says Coleman. “And they publish their papers and scream and the media says, Oh God, the end is near! And it’s all baloney; there isn’t anything to it. It turns out to be sheer folly. But it all comes back to CO2—they haven’t got anything else.”

“Have temperatures gone up? No. Is global warming sweeping the planet? No. Is the ice melting at the poles? No. Is there any proof that it’s creating significant impact? No. Can you produce a computer model that predicts that it will? Oh yeah, anyone can manipulate a computer model, and they have.”

Of course, the prevailing wisdom is that yes, temperatures have gone up, that ice is melting, and that the scientists assessing climate data aren’t doing so with malicious intent. Attempting to debunk those who are attempting to debunk climate change, as it turns out, is complicated.

To get some sort of definitive explanation, I talked to Kerry Emmanuel, who is a professor of Atmospheric Science at M.I.T. Emmanuel agrees with Al Gore that the debate is over (although he does think the movie has some “scientific flaws”). “I would not take anything that John Coleman says too seriously,” Emmanuel tells me. Emmanuel says he could relatively quickly give me a “good feeling for the evidence.” But, he says, to bring me up to speed on the physics behind the greenhouse effect, “you’d have to take a semester class.” On top of that, he says, “The models are even difficult for the professionals to understand.” So the problem, as Emmanuel presents it, is that scientists often expect the general public to accept conclusions “as an article of faith” because the explanation can be so intricate and difficult to communicate. “Therein lies a problem,” says Emmanuel. “You have to take my word for that.”