Why Don't Conservatives Buy Global Warming?

Hi All!

I read a great piece by Mark Steyn which is just the latest example of the conservative view on the spectre of "Global Warming" which is so much in vogue with liberals.

It made me wonder anew, why it is that one political philosophy is pitted against another on an issue that should be simple scientific fact or not.

My short and sweet answer to the conservative/liberal dichotomy is to look at the personalities of the two sides.

Liberals are emotion-driven, worriers, gloomy naysayers, pessimists.

Conservatives are logical, sunny common-sense optimists.

Global Warming is not a proven scientific fact, and the scientific community is not of one conclusion regarding what is more properly termed "climate change."

Here is a snip from Steyn:

"As we say in the north country, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. And if you don't like the global weather, wait three decades. For the last century or so, the planet has gone through very teensy-weensy warming trends followed by very teensy-weensy cooling trends followed by very teensy-weensy warming trends, every 30 years or so. And, even when we're in a pattern of "global warming" or "global cooling," the phenomenon is not universally observed — i.e., it's not "global," or even very local. In the Antarctic, the small Palmer peninsula has got a little warmer but the main continent is colder. Up north, the western Arctic's a little warmer but the eastern Arctic's colder. So, if you're an eastern polar bear, you're in clover — metaphorically, I hasten to add. If you're a western polar bear, you'll be in clover literally in a year or two, according to Al Gore."

Here is another observation by MIT meterologist Richard Lindzen:

"I think it's mainly just like little kids locking themselves in dark closets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves. And there's a lot of confusion in this and, you know, at the heart of it, we're talking of a few tenths of a degree change in temperature. None of it in the last eight years, by the way. . . . [I]f there's anything that there is a consensus on, [it is that we] will do very little to affect climate. . . . And I think future generations are not going to blame us for anything except for being silly, for letting a few tenths of a degree panic us. And I think nobody is arguing about whether our climate is changing. It's always changing. Sea level has been rising since the end of the last ice age. The experts on it in the IPCC have freely acknowledged there's no strong evidence it's accelerating."

In Minnesota today, there is a warming trend happening right now. The lows are up to single digits below zero and the highs are in the single digits above zero. As long as the wind doesn't blow too hard, we're on our way to Spring.

Cheers!