I’d like to thank the Competitive Enterprise Institute for publishing such an unintentionally informative and amusing newsletter. Rarely has the anti-scientific nature of global warming denial been so well stated in a mere two sentences:

A scientist who says that the atmosphere is warming, and cites certain physical processes, is still a scientist. A scientist who argues that people must take certain acts to avoid disaster has become a priest.

In other words, “A doctor who diagnoses your diabetes using medical tests is still a doctor. A doctor who tells you to exercise, change your diet, monitor glucose levels, and/or take insulin to avoid acute complications has become a priest.”

What’s funny about this is that nonscientist deniers have no trouble whatsoever offering their absurd “scientific conclusions” that the climate isn’t changing, the earth isn’t warming, it’s all sunspots, blah, blah, blah, but then attack scientists for offering serious scientific and technological judgments about the solution to global warming. The amazing thing is that even non-deniers like Roger Pielke push this mantra.

But I digress. The author of this gem, “The New Environmental Priesthood,” is CEI’s Director of Projects and Analysis, Iain Murray. Murray is well known for his many over-the-top denier claims (see here and here), but he has probably never made a more inaccurate statement in his life than in his discussion of the infamous “Inhofe 400″:
Read more

One of the many reasons why the Lieberman-Warner (and Boxer substitute) bill dropped dead on the Senate floor was costs — costs to the economy and costs to households already burdened by rising food and record-high gas prices. A post-mortem in Time observed the floor’s action was rampant with “economic fear mongering.”

The Time article (which Joe blogged on earlier) goes into more detail about how delay tactics and the Republican messaging on economic costs dominated the bill’s presence. Simple messages are always more successful than complex messages, and while the overall message (slow global warming) is pretty clear, good legislation will be indescribably complicated (the devil is in the details).

How to deal with global warming and high energy costs is a question that will not go away. What leaked out of the Senate last week demonstrated that, as does an on-going debate in Britain (on how to address ‘fuel poverty’).

Read more