Global Warming Extremists Try To Shake Perry

Ronald Sass, a Professor of Natural Sciences at Rice University recently had an article published in the Houston Chronicle titled “Perry ignores best sources for climate-change advice." In this article he criticized Governor Perry for opposing legislative and regulatory action, based on mainstream science, to curb climate change.

The problem with this article and Sass's argument in general, lies with the notion of mainstream science. Mainstream science is what happens when a theory is proven well enough by the standards in place at the time to be palatable to those who possess knowledge of all the intricacies of the theory (scientists) and yet can be distilled so that it can be easily understood by all. Climate change theory cannot be a mainstream science because it is too complex. Its ramifications are too great and it is still just simply not fully understood.

A thousand years ago mainstream science said that the earth was the center of the universe, five hundred years ago mainstream science said that the earth was flat, and thirty years ago we were concerned with global cooling.

Richard Lindzen, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a leader in climate change research, said the following in response to the media's reaction to a report prepared by climate change experts for the white house,

But- and I cannot stress this enough- we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions.

Even with the disclaimers presented by leading experts that the data is still preliminary and not fully understood, someone has managed to dilute and package all this complex scientific data into little graphs and charts easily understood by the general public. This simplified and diluted data stating that global warming exists, and it will change the world as we know it has been pushed in favor of the highest bidder then proclaimed as holy by articulate voices and amplified a thousand-fold by popular media.

The fact of the matter is that the climate is always changing and it is usual for the climate to change. Two hundred years ago the Northern Hemisphere was much cooler while a thousand years ago the same region was much warmer. We do not yet have a clear understanding of what the problem is or how to solve it. We do know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas but water vapor is also a greenhouse gas and a much more potent one at that. Does that mean we should rid the atmosphere of water vapor? No! We also know that rising sea levels are bad, but will it rise as a result of melting ice caps or something else such as increased plant transpiration due to increased carbon dioxide or both or something completely different?

Ronald Sass suggests that the “Governor needs to seek the best scientists available” and goes on to suggest “calling on the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University for help” because “the entire faculty supports the mainstream view presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." This is exactly the wrong approach because the correct solution will only be determined if it is in line with the mainstream media and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as we have seen before, science does not favor the popular solutions, only the correct solutions. Governor Perry should seek advice from a variety of people, not only from scientists whose theory is supported by mainstream media because legislation and regulation affects us all!