“Why bad news and bad news only? Don’t the very reporters and staffers at InsideClimate News want to add optimism to their professional lives? Or is climate alarmism just a day job, a 9-to-5 gig, after which the real world comes into focus?”
“What would happen if some intrepid reporter or story gatherer broke the mold and reported on global lukewarming or on the benefits of CO2? What would his or her boss say? What would the head of fundraising say? What would the donors say?”
I read InsideClimate News (ICN) daily. And I am perplexed to see a nonprofit writing/information organization claiming the mantle of “clear,” “objective,” “independent,” and “non-partisan” dish up 100% climate alarmism and ad hominem argument against critics of the same. One would think that voluntary transactions between consenting adults, the ebb and flow of science, and skepticism against intellectual and political elites would be enough to investigate such topics as:
“Today’s reserve and resource estimates should be considered a minimum, not a maximum. By the end of the forecast period, reserves could be the same or higher depending on technological developments, capital availability, public policies, and commodity price levels.”
“The implication for business decision-making and public-policy analysis is that ‘depletable’ is not an operative concept for the world oil market, as it might be for an individual well, field, or geographical section…. [T]he concept of a nonrenewable resource is a heuristic, pedagogical device—an ideal type—not a principle that entrepreneurs can turn into profits and government officials can parlay into enlightened intervention.”
This essay, published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in the November 1999 issue of The Freeman, was subtitled, “Today’s Reserve and Resource Estimates Should Be Considered a Minimum.”…
…“… we don’t have a first-principles theory that tells us what we have to get right in order to have an accurate projection [of anthropogenic climate change]…. This is sort of an emergent knowledge base. So, that’s the translation of this last statement, ‘To date, a set of diagnostics and performance metrics that can strongly reduce uncertainties in global climate sensitivity,’ a la projections, ‘has yet to be identified’.” (p. 89)
“… if the [temperature] hiatus is still going on as of the sixth IPCC report, that report is going to have a large burden on its shoulders walking in the door, because recent literature has shown that the chances of having a hiatus 18 of 20 years are vanishingly small.” (p. 92)
– William Collins, Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.