Here Comes The Sun

The proponents of man-made climate change want to force an end to the debate over the causes of global warming. Some want to treat skeptics as if they were Holocaust deniers or heretics of old. However, some scientists still have their doubts about whether global warming is real, and whether man has any impact on it at all:

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.
Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

In a way, anthropogenic climate change speaks to an impulse within humans whenever contemplating catastrophes, real or imagined. In something between arrogance and fear, people cannot believe that they have no control over the origins of events that shape their lives. This causes people to look inward for root causes, and the larger the problem, the greater this dynamic grows. Hence we have people blaming the West for radical Islamist terrorism and believing that a greater dialogue with Muslim absolutists will end it.
Global warming seems of a piece with this. Despite conflicting data and incomplete models, environmentalists insist that the Earth has begun an unstoppable global-warming cycle due to the massive release of carbon for energy over the past century. Evidence to the contrary gets shouted down and those who would challenge this new orthodoxy get shouted down and treated as a greater danger than terrorists in some circles. The problem, assuming it exists, simply has to be caused by mankind — because it frightens some to think that we have no control over it at all.
I’ve written before that I think the use of hydrocarbons for energy has outlived its usefulness. It pollutes the air, not because of its carbon dioxide release but because of carbon monoxide and other pollutants. I grew up in Los Angeles and know a little about that. The extraction of crude has become a critical national-security problem. We need to apply our technological advantages to developing alternatives to crude oil for energy production — but we have to do it rationally, without encumbering our economy due to irrational hysteria.