Forecast Correct

Awhile back, I blogged about a prediction that a concerted effort to demagogue global warming would occur this summer. That post is worth rereading. Here's the gist of Jay Lehr's prediction.

In early May, newspapers across the country reported that a team of "adventurers" from Minnesota was setting off to "document climate change" at the North Pole.

According to newspaper reports, they aim to "draw [attention to] the gradual warming of Earth's climate" and "hope to convince skeptics, especially in the Bush administration, that global warming is real...."

In other words, this summer will bring a barrage of misinformation about the Earth's ice structures provided by non-scientists who make casual observations and then claim they know what caused the situations they are observing.

Now, via Drudge, comes a report that a team of intrepid U.S. senators has declared the scientific method dispensable. Instead, we are to defer to the expertise on the matter that they have developed through ... "anecdotes from Alaskans and residents of the Yukon Territory."

This is a truly ghastly article. I'll point out a few choice quotes.

(1) McCain, accompanied by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., spoke to villagers in Canada whose spruce trees are being attacked by the northward spread of spruce beetles. On Alaska's northern coast, they met Native Alaskans dealing with melting permafrost and coastal erosion.

(2) "If you can go to the Native people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, I just think you're not listening," [Senator Graham] said.

(3) McCain said the trip has been valuable for the accumulation of evidence that can be used to push the bill. Ultimately, he said, Americans will demand laws to decrease emissions, just as they demanded campaign financing reform.

(4) Graham couched the argument for climate change, as well as another major Alaska issue, petroleum drilling of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as a national security measure. Continued dependence on foreign fossil fuels makes America vulnerable, he said.

(5) "You just keep saying something no matter how untrue and unfactual it might be, over and over and over again, and try to drive the politics to meet your ideological or commercial agenda," she said. "That is a grave disservice to our country." [Indeed. --ed]

In the whole puffball piece was one sentence to the contrary: "Opponents of the legislation, including Sen. Ted Stevens R-Alaska, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, attribute warming to cyclical geophysical forces."

-- CAV

Crossposted to the Egosphere