Climate science has reached the point that plate tectonics reached 30 years ago. It is the basic view of the vast majority of working scientists that human-induced climate change is real. There is a real diversity of informed opinion on how important climate change is going to be to various things that affect humans, and there is a diversity of opinion on how to address this problem, but the debate over human-induced climate change is over.

Ken Caldeira (via azspot)

False.

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

Strassel: The Climate Change Climate Change - WSJ.com (via bellatoris)

READ THE WHOLE THING.

It is well established that climate change is occurring (though you can debate the effect of humans in this process) and that anything we can do to help our environment is a good thing, but at what cost? The Democrats in the House have effectively passed the largest tax increase in history with this bill which has some great potential to put America at a disadvantage in the global marketplace. Any wise business will take its business elsewhere when faced with our newly imposed system, so we now need to pressure other countries such as India and China to enact similar policies or else we will see these nations conquering the global market in the future. This cannot be a unilateral movement or America will pay the price.

Another trouble with the passage of this bill is the way in which it was passed. There is no possible way that our representatives were given the proper amount of time to fully understand what they were voting on. The bill was a 1,200 page document and the legislators were joking about how none of them had actually fully read it! This is not good governing! It is understandable for citizens not to know the full extent of a law, but when the people that are passing these bills don’t know what they are voting on that is when our government is not doing a good job.

Clean Energy Act: What does it mean for the future of America? (via bellatoris)

Michael Crichton is turning in his grave. This bill is proof that Democrats are more interested in demagoguery and partisan politics than in science and the economy.

Finally, and most important—we can’t predict the future, but we can know the present. In the time we have been talking, 2,000 people have died in the third world. A child is orphaned by AIDS every 7 seconds. Fifty people die of waterborne disease every minute. This does not have to happen. We allow it. What is wrong with us that we ignore this human misery and focus on events a hundred years from now? What must we do to awaken this phenomenally rich, spoiled and self-centered society to the issues of the wider world? The global crisis is not 100 years from now—it is right now. We should be addressing it. But we are not. Instead, we cling to the reactionary and antihuman doctrines of outdated environmentalism and turn our backs to the cries of the dying and the starving and the diseased of our shared world.

The fact is if we required the same standard of information from climate scientists that we do from drug companies, the whole debate on global warming would be long over. We wouldn’t be talking about it. We need mechanisms to insure a much, much higher standard of reliability in information in the future.

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. […] In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. And furthermore, the consensus of scientists has frequently been wrong.