Peggy Noonan: If Global Warming Is Real, Blame The Scientists

[CatWoman]

batshit crazy bitch:

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan asks why all the top scientists can’t get together and decide if global warming is real:

During the past week’s heat wave–it hit 100 degrees in New York City Monday–I got thinking, again, of how sad and frustrating it is that the world’s greatest scientists cannot gather, discuss the question of global warming, pore over all the data from every angle, study meteorological patterns and temperature histories, and come to a believable conclusion on these questions: Is global warming real or not? If it is real, is it necessarily dangerous?

Actually, Ms. Noonan, that’s already happened. It’s called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which involves thousands of scientists from over 120 countries who develop detailed reports on climate change. Their most recent report (from 2001) was reviewed by more than 1,000 top experts, including so-called “climate skeptics” and representatives from industry. Here’s what they concluded:

There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.

The IPCC predicts that global warming will increase temperatures worldwide between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit between 1990 and 2100 if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gases. This amount of warming, according to the IPCC, could raise sea levels by as much as three feet. That’s extraordinarily dangerous.

Noonan also laments that, if global warming is real, scientists won’t tell us what we need to do in response. Actually, they’ve done that too. Here’s Noonan’s big finish:

If global warming is real, and if it is new, and if it is caused not by nature and her cycles but man and his rapacity, and if it in fact endangers mankind, scientists will probably one day blame The People for doing nothing.

But I think The People will have a greater claim to blame the scientists, for refusing to be honest, for operating in cliques and holding to ideologies. For failing to be trustworthy.

Actually, the blame should go to people like Peggy Noonan who give our leaders the political cover to do nothing in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/07/20/blame-the-scientists/

[tinfoil tiaras]

1. Umm...according to An Inconvenient Truth

all accredited peer-reviewed scientists agree that global warming is a very real and present danger. There isn't one peer reviewed scientist/scientific journal that disagrees with this assessment. The only people who disagree are ignorant fucktards.

[redqueen]

2. GRRRRRR

that editorial page isn't fit to line birdcages!

[CatWoman]

4. ROFL

Look at this from the comments section:

Peggy Noonan deserves the points of a thousand lightsticks up her ass.

Comment by e_five — July 20, 2006 @ 11:19 am

:rofl:

[redqueen]

20. aahaahahahahahaha

:7

Thanks! I missed those... I could use the humor!

[Kikosexy2]

3. Piggy Noonan...

shouldn't comment on such matters...even Ms. Piggy sounds more intellectual on Sesame Street than Piggy Noonan....

[progdonkey]

6. Miss Piggy was never on Sesame Street... :-)

Kermit was the only crossover.

Ah, the things you learn from West Wing. ;)

[azurnoir]

5. Must the Neo's

approach everything from either the "librul ideology clique" or "he who smelt it dealt it" angle?

[progdonkey]

7. and if that man really killed his wife, blame the police...

for gathering the evidence that proved it.

[Fleshdancer]

8. Scientist conspiracies and fantasies of Bush breastfeeding soldiers...

This woman is a nut. Not as bad as Coulter, but still crazy.

[Bill McBlueState]

9. it's stunning, really

I'm not sure how she could be any less cognisant of the nature of scientists and the purpose of science.

• Scientists obsessively communicate with one another, ridicule theories that don't work, and converge on ones that do work. These gatherings of the world's greatest climatologists that Noonan is pining for happen all the time. They're called "conferences," and scientists love going to conferences because they get to travel, get out of the office for a while, and their grants pay for them.
  
  
• It's actually not the job of scientists to set policy. Scientists collect and analyze the data (they do the science), and politicians use these findings to set policy. Even the very words "scientist" and "politician" suggest those roles.

If governments aren't responding the right way to the climate crisis -- which virtually all climatologists agree exists -- it's not the scientists' fault.

[Johonny]

10. this is pretty much what I thought would happen

In the end the messengers will get blamed instead of the people with the power to actually do something.

[Javaman]

11. miss moron noonan, will be one of the many people to

vanish during the die off. And not a moment to soon.

I envision a day, where I'll be tending to my "victory" garden (more like survival garden), harvesting honey from my apiary, and picking fruit from my trees and a hungry and stupid noonan will stumble up to me, malnourished and beg for food. I will gladly give her some, but the moment she starts yammering about not being warned, I take the food away and kick her out on her ass.

Yes, some people are truly that stupid and I expect we will see alot more of them as things get worse.

It will be very interesting to see what becomes of the many repukes that survive. I'm figuring, even the diehard nuts will suddenly see the light in their last moment of panic. Then there's the others that will, just diehard.

[kskiska]

12. Why can't all the religious leaders get together

and give us proof once and for all that God really exists.

[DELUSIONAL]

13. Did she escape from the nut house -- AGAIN?

[Dudley_DUright]

14. Hate to say we told you so Peggy,

but we told you so. The whole WSJ editorial staff should win a collective Darwin award http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/ for global stupidity.

[CatWoman]

16. see response number 4

:rofl:

[twiterpatted]

15. She is the President of the 23 percent club, isn't she?

Stunning,

These people are completely out of there minds!
Nowhere does the phrase "batshit crazy" apply so aptly as here, in response to her article.

She has completely lost her mind.

The kicker is that she actually believes what she is writing is in relation to reality, thus offering further proof of her insanity.

[Algorem]

17. if the bushes are still real(ly in power) blame their evil little munsch-

kin minions like Piggy Nooner.

[karlrschneider]

18. A handful of "scientists" disavow GW (hm, coincidence)...most of whom

are tied to energy corporations. Yet another coincidence.
:eyes:

[EstimatedProphet]

19. That's patently fucking stupid

The Peggy Noonans of the world have gone out of their way to deny the evidence, and the Amocos of the world have gone out of their way to fund scientists specifically to prove that global warming doesn't exist. So they work overtime to provide contrary evidence, then say the questioin is invalid because they have contrary evidence that they made up?!?

The results are too drastic to ignore if global warming is real (which, by the way, it is). the people aren't going to be blaming scientists, because most of them will be dead. Maybe Noonan thinks she will be insulated from the results, but she won't be insulated from the survivors.

[Gloria]

21. OH, I rue the day I could have had her head stuck into the

toilet at RHS, but didn't.....

[bloom]

22. The Wall Street Journal really has no credibility

when it comes to (informed) opinions - at least. It's pretty pathetic.


And yet - all these business type people will read that and think - yeah - Peggy Noonan must know what she's talking about. :eyes:

[nosmokes]

23. Unreal. Even the Pentagon sees Global Warming as a Major Threat

to security in the future.

[donco6]

24. What she's really saying is . . .

until ALL scientists EVERYWHERE agree on the human influence of GW, then we're free to do as we please - and if it turns out to be true, then it's all their fault for not coming to this exhaustive consensus.

Which is all bullshit, of course. It's just a slightly more sophisticated way to divert the blame from Bush, who has - at every turn - blocked information gathered by govt sources, obfuscated information that's available, shut down libraries, defunded research, blacklisted govt researchers, etc, etc.

But she doesn't deal with that, huh?