Horner III: modeling and marketing Global Warming

More from Christopher Horner's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism...

I'm dividing this review into four parts: some lovely quotes on global cooling; his discussion of global warming and cooling; "the debate" including the tactics of those in the "consensus" view (below); and the political and economic responses.

On the public "debate", Horner opens with:

Greens are persuasive in their passion...really believe in what they preach-- at least in their cause if not the claims....The greens have one great weakness: they are wrong both in the economics and science of most every issue they now pursue (p. 14-15).

Examples?

Stephen Schneider: To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest (p. 40).

2006 Greenpeace press release (prematurely released): "In the 20 years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]." (p. 43)

Al Gore: I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous [global warming] is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are (p. 209).

Horner spends all of ch. 10 blowing up Gore-- and devotes an entire section [p. 120-131] to the "Hockey Stick" model debacle. About all of this, Horner concludes:

The easiest job in the world would be "director of research" for an alarmist environmental group, given their propensity for simply making things up...Greens are remarkably hard-wired to turn every conceivably relevant occurrence into proof of their current alarm (p. 40).

I think this is changing now, but Horner argues that "Debate and dissent are intolerable: No honest person could disagree with the catastrophists; therefore, dissenters must be dishonest" (p. 4). Beyond that, he quotes author Mark Lynas and 60 Minutes reporter Scott Pelley who both compared Global Warming deniers to Holocaust deniers (p. 35).

Part of this was in amassing a large body to make up the undeniable consensus. Here's Richard Lindzen:

"Why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise?...Apparently, when it comes to global warming, any scientist's agreement will do. The answer most certainly lies in politics." (p. 93)

The other side has matched this bogus approach to public advocacy. But clearly the GW'ers fired the first (bunch of) shots.

Horner quotes Dyson who said that only one climate model predicts El Nino before noting that climate models are "essential tools for understanding climate [but] they are not yet adequate tools for predicting change" (p. 113).

And from Horner (p. 233-234): The global cooling alarmists in the 1970s loved to cite one positive feedback loop: as things got cooler, more snow and ice would cover the planet, reflecting more of the sun's rays (thus absorbing less), causing the surface and the water to cool even more. Thus, cooling leads to more cooling. Today, they tell us that warming leads to more warming. Except for [some] who argue that warming leads to a new ice age. The alarmist consensus is that a little bit of warming will cause something disastrous.

It's interesting that lefties envision and have tremendous faith in dynamic environmental models (at least those that fit within their worldview)-- and static economic models (e.g., in failing to imagine the impact of regulation, bailouts, tax policy, etc.).