This isn’t new, but that doesn’t diminish the value of reading it. Orson Scott Card, a scribe of many talents, writes a regular column in which he took the Global Warming religion to task for following ideology over science. I highly recommend reading his March 4, 2007 column in its entirety, but here are some key quotes:

In other words, whoever wrote this New Yorker piece [ February 12 New Yorker "Talk of the Town"] did not check. He or she just spouted.

What is really being said here is, “We believe in the IPCC and anybody else who supports Global Warming. We believe it so much that we refuse to listen to anybody who says otherwise.”

The only difference between this and Jim and Tammy Baker on the old PTL Club is that nobody says “Jesus.” It’s all faith, no science.

They’re like four-year-olds putting their fingers in their ears and chanting “La la la la” until the person talking to them goes away.

The Hockey Stick Hoax should be a scandal as big as the discovery of the Piltdown Man Hoax. Bigger, really, since so much more is at stake.

But because the media are dominated by True Believers, they are doing everything they can to maintain the hoax, to keep the public from learning the truth.

This reinforces my comments in “Truth or Obsession?“. This has long since moved from being a group of scientists stoically warning the rest of us about a potential problem to being a bunch of pompous, self-important pseduo-scientists claiming the world will end if we don’t turn our lives upside-down. The evidence is rapidly falling apart for the theory of calamitous, anthropogenic climate change, but the rhetoric is getting louder and more extreme. This is the common behavior of a dying idea, not one gaining traction.
As I continue to say: When you all are ready for an honest, logical debate of the facts and the research, we’ll talk.

As I’ve noted before, those who would argue that Global Warming is new, dramatic, and manmade are sounding more and more like dictators and cult leaders than scientists. They make unfounded claims and then simply threaten to either de-fund or unethically discredit critics when they argue with the “one true faith”. Here is a case in point: Marlo Lewis writes this article for The American Spectator that challenges the idea that we can effectively limit our carbon dioxide emissions without dramatically affecting our economy. Within a couple of days, Dr. Lewis received this juvenile threat letter from the President of the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) as mentioned in this this blog post at National Review Online:

Marlo –

You are so full of cr*p.

You have been proven wrong. The entire world has proven you wrong. You are the last guy on Earth to get it. Take this warning from me, Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan to the Harvard community of which you and I are members. I will call you out as a man who has been bought by Corporate America. Go ahead, guy. Take me on.

Mike

Michael T. Eckhart

President

American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

Wow. What a clear and concise rebuttal of the facts! Mr. Eckhart has really convinced me of his point of view!

Then there was this approach by RFK Jr. while speaking at Live Earth (from this Newsday.com article):

“Get rid of all these rotten politicians that we have in Washington, who are nothing more than corporate toadies,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist author, president of Waterkeeper Alliance and Robert F. Kennedy’s son, who grew hoarse from shouting. “This is treason. And we need to start treating them as traitors.”

Again, I ask, where is the debate? Where is the willingness to discuss facts that may conflict with the “one true faith”? Where is the civility?

Finally, Dr. Walter Williams wrote this article in January for WorldNetDaily that really sums up the insanity now going on. Read the whole thing, but the key points are:

Heidi Cullen, Ph.D., the Weather Channel’s climatologist, hosts a weekly program called “The Climate Code.” Dr. Cullen advocates that the American Meteorological Society strip their seal of approval from any TV weatherman expressing skepticism about the predictions of manmade global warming, according to a report by Marc Morano, communications director for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

Dr. Cullen has had a lot of help in demonizing skeptics of catastrophic manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News “60 Minutes” correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to “Holocaust deniers,” and former Vice President Al Gore calls skeptics “global warming deniers.” But it gets worse. Mr. Morano reports that on one of Dr. Cullen’s shows, she featured columnist Dave Roberts, who, in his Sept. 19, 2006, online publication, said, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.” (See the Morano report.)

And finally, Dr. Williams hits the real issue:

The environmental extremists’ true agenda has little or nothing to do with climate change. Their true agenda is to find a means to control our lives. The kind of repressive human control, not to mention government-sanctioned mass murder, seen under communism has lost any measure of intellectual respectability. So people who want that kind of control must come up with a new name, and that new name is environmentalism.

When you all are ready for a actual, legitimate debate of the evidence, ideas, and consequences, let’s talk.

We had a very localized thunderstorm roll through here the other night. Being fascinated with the beautiful lightning, we sat out in the driveway watching it roll over Portland and towards us. It was quite impressive.

While watching, we began to hear what sounded like someone slowly emptying a bag of gravel on the roof. We could hear it all around us, but we didn’t feel anything. But, it was getting louder. Finally, we realized what it was and began to get pelted a little. We hurried back under the porch cover and watched as a few hailstones suddenly turned into a torrent. I’m amazed it didn’t kill the chickens across the street:

This turned to rain and passed after a few minutes. By the time we turned on the news a few minutes later, the weather radar showed that the storm had already moved several miles north of us. Very quick, but very impressive.

Now, that’s not to say that we forgot David’s birthday. We just didn’t get around to putting up pictures. So, here’s one to get you started:

The rest of the photos (included David and Dad playing Guitar Hero) are in the photo gallery. Happy birthday David!

As those of you who have been following us for a while, you know it’s about that time of year that we get David’s test scores back. As a review for the non-homeschoolers, Oregon only requires that David tests after his 5th, 8th, and 10th grade years. We have tested him every year, though, for our own purposes so we can keep track of what areas need more attention.

As is usual, he blew away most subject areas. We always seem to have one or two subjects where he’s lower than the rest, but even those are still well above average for his age. In ten separate tests, he was rated as being at a post-high school level in seven of them. Two were rated as being at a senior level and the lowest score was rated as being a sophomore. That was in the reading comprehension, though, and David complains every year that the stories he has to read are “girly”. Nonetheless, he continues his march through school with high scores and great skill.

Since David is likely to attend college, we have also begun keeping an official transcript for his schoolwork. For the first time in his life, David received a report card with actual grades. The result? Five As and two Bs and a 3.71 GPA.

We’re very proud of David’s grades and we’re gearing up for a busy sophomore year! Way to go, David!

For years, I have seen biorhythm charts and software that purport to help you plan the high and low points of your life. If you ever look at one, you’ll see that the three waves run on different cycles. But, since the cycles are regular, they will all eventually sync up such that all three are down or all three are up. Over the past week, I feel like my sports biorhythm is syncing up.

You see, I have three major sports teams I root for and feel a real emotion about when they win. I have been a Blazers fan since elementary school. I have been a Seahawks fan since high school. I became a Mariners fan during our stint living in Seattle. Now, at any given point in the year, I have one or two teams to be rooting for and following.

This last week the Blazers drafted a center who is both young and talented. He seems to be a truly nice guy, to boot. People are talking about building a stable core of talent like we haven’t seen since the Drexler days of the late eighties. The fact is that Drexler’s teams never had a good center (apologies to Kevin Duckworth). Arvydas Sabonis came along a few years later and would have been a great fit with those Drexler teams had he left the Soviet Union/Lithuania earlier. I guess that means the Blazers biorhythm was just a little off then. I think the Blazers of the next decade have the opportunity to be even better, and I’m going to get to watch every day of it.

The Mariners seemed to have peaked between ’95 and ’01 with the Refuse To Lose teams and the 116 win monster. Today, though, they completed their second consecutive sweep of winning teams and are twelve games over .500. They are playing great baseball and I’m having fun watching them again.

Finally, the Seahawks were in the Super Bowl two years ago and narrowly missed a return visit last year due mostly to critical injuries on the team and a leaky offensive line. I believe they are prepared for a strong run this year.

So, it is not unreasonable to think of all three of my teams making the playoffs with a chance to make some noise. None are locks to win, but they’ll be challenging. I’m used to having to write one or two of my teams off during a year and rooting for the one that happens to be on an upswing. Over the next couple of years, I think all three of my teams will either be approaching or finishing their peak period.

I plan to enjoy it while it lasts. I just won’t look ahead to that point in the biorhythm chart where they all sync up again, because that’s usually when they all bottom out.

This article in the Chicago Sun-Times by James M. Taylor provides a checklist for why Al Gore cannot be trusted in any way on the subject of global warming. Mr. Taylor has the references, but let me summarize the items that Gore has wrong:

• Gore claims the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking. They aren’t. They are growing.
• Gore claims the snowcap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking due to global warming. No, it’s shrinking to the nearby deforestation which is not providing as much moisture to the air around the mountain.
• Gore claims that global warming is causing more tornadoes. The IPCC has stated that there is no known link between the two.
• Gore claims that global warming is causing more frequent and more severe hurricanes. Hurricane experts have shown that hurricane activity has actually declined over the past four decades. In fact, if the global warming is real, it is morel likely to decrease hurricane activity due to increasing the wind shear.
• Gore claims that African deserts are expanding. In fact, they are in retreat and making more land available for farming.
• Gore claims that Greenland is losing it’s ice. In fact, the ice sheet in Greenland is gaining mass and that the last two decades have been the coldest for Greenland over the past century.
• Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting. As I mentioned in an earlier post, that ice sheet is stable at worst and is likely to grow during the remainder of this century.

If these are the reasons Gore wants to dramatically transform society, why should we trust him for a moment?