Richmond County Daily Journal - [Global warming]: A broken burning bandwagon

Now, I’m not going to make the cheap rhetorical point that plenty of Carolinians wouldn’t have minded a little global warming last month. The real point is that because any state or federal measures to achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions would necessitate pushing energy prices higher, there is simply no constituency for such measures. People have enough sense to recognize that jacking up the cost of operating businesses, creating jobs, and running households is no way to help North Carolina recover its economic footing. No amount of gobbledygook will persuade the public that it’s in their interest to surrender more of their money and freedom to a bigger government with the uncertain promise of some benefit 90 years from now.

That bandwagon over in the ditch is broken and burning. Both faulty mechanics and driver error are to blame.

Is climate change the new faith? | Simon Hoggart's week | From the Guardian | The Guardian

As a climate change agnostic – and I suspect most of us are, especially now, and more especially after the Guardian series this week – I've been bothered by two aspects of the argument. The first is the religious overtone. Humankind has always wanted to blame its own behaviour for natural events, whether Noah's flood, plagues of frogs, or volcanos which demonstrate that the gods are angry.

Three years ago a British bishop announced that gay marriage had caused our floods. I've often wondered whether global warming is another example of this, an irrational belief designed for a rationalist world.

And there is an element of religious faith in the true believers. Those who disagree are "deniers", with its echo of fanatics who don't believe in the Holocaust. Years ago I saw a sceptic howled down at a British Association meeting; scientists shouldn't behave like that. If people disagree with you they might not be morally wrong, or agents of Satan. (Or big oil, as the believers often claim.) This ties in with my second worry. Clearly many believers have played fast and loose with the data: since what they believe is true beyond doubt, they have a right – no, a moral duty – to suppress any evidence that might contradict them.

Climate science: Truth and tribalism | Comment is free | The Guardian

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is the mantra of the courtroom, but it is also the motivating ideal of good science – as well as good journalism. The Guardian's special report into the leaked emails between climate scientists has revealed as many roughnesses, pimples and warts as any Cromwellian portrait. In and among (plentiful) electronic evidence of the University of East Anglia researchers going about their job diligently, we have uncovered an abject failure to ensure essential records were kept on Chinese weather stations, determined manoeuvring to exclude critics from leading journals and international reports, and suggestions of deleting potentially embarrassing correspondence with a view to evading the Freedom of Information Act.

For a newspaper that prides itself on leading the fight to fix the climate, avoiding such a forthright interrogation of the scientific pro­cesses on which our call for action ultimately depends might have been more comfortable – comfortable but wrong.