Global warming?

Steve Milloy takes another swing at the Kyoto protocol and global climate change in general. Part of the problem is that global warming enthusiasts seem able to attribute anything to human activity.

The British newspaper The Independent, for example, reported in its Nov. 30 article about the Nature study that “the real evidence does point to a possible one degree Centigrade cooling over the next two decades.” But the newspaper reported in another same-day article that, “the [record hot] summer of 2003 was triggered by global warming caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.” Such contradictory reporting casually ignores the reality that greenhouse gas emissions can’t simultaneously cool and warm Europe.

As I've been saying about ID/IOT, an "explanation" that can explain anything explains nothing.

Also, just how much of a difference can humans make on climate?

A more sober reality, though, is that whatever slight impact humans might have on the climate, it is too small to measure – a point made in a study just published by Swiss researchers in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews (November 2005). The study reviewed prior efforts to reconstruct global temperatures of the last 1,000 years. It concluded that natural temperature variations over the last millenium may have been so significant that they would "result in a redistribution of weight towards the role of natural factors in [causing] temperature changes, thereby relatively devaluing the impact of [manmade] emissions and affecting future predicted [global climate] scenarios."

Let's stipulate that the world is, in fact, warming. At some point, the relevant question is, do we want to spend our money on something that makes devout environmentalists feel good and noble, or do we want to spend it on something that actually works?