View From a Height

The wall surrounding global warming is beginning to crumble, and not a moment too soon. The American Physical Society noting that:

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S concerning that conclusion.

The APS declaration confers immediate cerdibility on global warming skepticism, and should act as an immediate brake on the rush to devote tens of trillions of dollars to fixing a problem we may not even be causing. It should also signal governments that they should no longer be one-sided in their grant policies, but should be funding skeptical research along with accepted dogma. We still can't pinpoint the causes of climate change, and grants aimed at finding that out, in accordance with actual scientific methdology, would be money well spent.

Likewise, David Evans who, "wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia's compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector," now writes that there really is no hard evidence that man-made carbon dioide caused the now-ceased warming:

But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

...

There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

Though he is, I think, too sanguine about the political effects of being wrong:

The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.

Possible, but the great political strength of the modern environmental movement has been the casting of the movement in religious terms, complete with dogma, doctrine, priests, absolution, detailed regulation of personal behavior, and even indulgences. Pair that with the well-known benefits of hiding the costs while pointing directly at the benefits, and you have a movement that might well be able to survive even economic catastrophe, if left to metastasize any longer.

The wall of media silence concerning our ignorance of the causes of climate change is starting to come apart thanks to the presence of scientists committed to the scientific method. Whether they outnumber those committed to research grants from an intransigent federal bureaucracy, and whether science-by-science is enough to overcome science-by-press-conference, are yet to be seen.

(Hat Tip: Powerline)