Is Optimism Rational? by Bill Walker

Optimism is out of favor. But then as Matt Ridley points out in The Rational Optimist, optimism has never been IN favor. Even in the fastest-growing booms in human history, "experts" were always sure that doom was imminent. We were going to run out of wood, then of coal, then of whale oil, then of petroleum, then of petroleum again, then of petroleum again. (We were never going to run out of uranium or thorium, but that was fixed by running out of the permits to build nuclear reactors.)

In the 1960s, the world was going to be destroyed by fossil fuels, by running out of fossil fuels, by acid rain, by overpopulation, by pesticides, by famine, and by Global Cooling. But what actually happened was that fuel production went up, population growth rates fell in every nation (except Kazakhstan, thanks a lot you idiot Borat), pesticide use dropped off with the invention of BT crops, food production went up until recently (we still produce more crops every year, but they are drained off to make ethanol and not to feed people), acid rain was overblown, and you know what happened to Global Cooling (it’s still a huge threat as far as anyone knows, one good asteroid or volcano and it’s Fimbulwinter for sure! I mean, ummm, everyone believes in global warming so there won’t be any more Ice Ages, because, ummm… Al Gore, QED. Take no notice of my pack of Malamutes, they’re just show dogs. Really. They mainly guard the snowmobile, anyway.)

Doom: The Big No-Show Of History

Hillary's scientific acumen somewhat lacking (OneNewsNow.com)

Marc Morano, executive editor of ClimateDepot.com, thinks it is "very sad to hear the level of scientific acumen coming from a secretary of state."

"Her scientific thinking is no more advanced than the Aztecs who ordered the slaughter of people to end a drought in 1450," he contends. "Her scientific thinking is no more advanced than witch trials during the little ice age where they blamed witches for the crop failures. Her scientific thinking is no more advanced than the readings of Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar."

Morano believes Clinton's comments are an insult to everyone's intelligence. "She's literally saying that our SUVs are weather machines," he explains. "That is climate astrology; that is not science. That should not be coming out of the mouths of anyone in our government."

Not PC: James Cameron—a Titanic lack of balls [update 3]