glacial retreat (2)

Globe and Mail columnist Rex Murphy on climate change:

17 June 2000
"Great climate change may signal the advent of chaos, fundamental upheavals. You know, the usual apocalyptic derangements - planet goes to toast, reason dethroned, the dissolution of all order and pattern. David Suzuki has been telling us this for decades at least."

6 April 2002
"But despite years of 'warnings' of global warming, conferences and conventions hyping its imminence, it seems to me that we are as far away from that sunny utopia as ever."

28 September 2002
"A lot of scientists agreeing on something is not the same thing as a scientific consensus. Any sentence that begins 'A majority of the world's scientists agree . . .' is not reporting a scientific finding; it's announcing a preference. It's a poll. Real science doesn't do polls. ... When we hear of a consensus on global warming we are being told - covertly, but told nonetheless - that it isn't a scientific fact." [Replace "global warming" with "evolution" in this, and see if that makes any sense to you whatsoever.]

7 December 2002
"The science of climate control is still in short pants."

19 February 2006
"I think even people who support, vaguely, the idea of 'doing something' to stop global warming sense that the much touted 'scientific consensus' on the subject is more of a rhetorical boost for an imperfectly comprehended subject than an actual finding. We have no 'consensus' on any scientific law. It is either right or wrong - because Nature doesn't operate on a show of hands. And consensus in this context is the word that's reached for when 'fact' is unobtainable."

4 November 2006
"The science is not complete. The models are not perfect. … Most pernicious in this context is the attempt to declare, 'The debate is over.' It isn't over."

9 December 2006
"I also know there is no science of the future: We may decorate reports with graphs and charts, and conjure pages of the most exquisite and arcane equations, but the very best we can offer on climate a hundred years from now is a series of sophisticated and ever-ramifying probabilities that are themselves subject to a myriad of unforeseeable contingencies."

27 January 2007
"Global warming, I grow daily more aware, is a very promiscuous phenomenon. It gets credit for everything. The world wants its politicians to 'do something' about global warming. Most likely, alas, they will."

Ok, we're still waiting for evidence of retreat there.

glacial retreat (1)

Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente on climate change:

15 March 2005
"the science behind global warming isn't bulletproof after all. ... Some scientists say they've been urged to suppress their data for the good of the cause. Meantime, the climate skeptics - who include leading figures from Harvard and MIT, as well as dozens of Canadian scientists - are all but ignored in the mainstream media."

7 July 2005
"Global warming may or may not threaten our way of life a hundred years from now; no one really knows."

16 August 2005
"The consensus is a myth. Hundreds of scientists around the world think the jury is still out on many fundamental issues relating to climate change. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals have questioned the link between human activity and global warming."

8 December 2005
"Most news stories make at least a token effort to include a view or two from the other side. Not environment stories. That's because a lot of people who cover the environment don't believe there is another side. Who's right? How should I know? What I do know is, the media cherry-pick the climate news to fit their prophesies of doom, and never mind the contradictions."

12 September 2006
"Last week a clear-headed woman got up and said in public what no politician, not even Stephen Harper, is brave enough to say. Her message: We should stop pretending that we can prevent climate change. No matter what we do, global warming is inevitable."

27 January 2007
"If you're an average, concerned citizen, no one will blame you for being confused
or angry. The global-warming debate has become so shrill, so political and so polarized that it's impossible for even a reasonably well-informed person to figure out who or what to believe. Only one thing is for sure: Science isn't all that is driving this debate. Politics, ideology and scaremongering are too. Because I'm skeptical by nature, I've always discounted the environmental catastrophists. Their message is religious, not rational. But I've also spoken to enough brainy scientists to conclude that human activity is affecting the climate and that global warming is for real."