It's Hot - So What?

It is inevitable - there is a heat wave and someone starts claiming global warming. This time it was Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson. He writes:

It's odd how little we've heard lately from the skeptics who deny that climate change is real. What's the matter, people? Heat stroke?The Venus-like heat that much of the country has been suffering this summer is almost enough to make anybody a believer in global warming. Almost, but not quite: Honesty compels me to acknowledge that a few weeks of record-setting temperatures do not constitute proof of anything. Climate scientists have to analyze data covering decades and centuries to discern what's really going on.

Of course, the unusually heavy snowstorms that buried Washington and other East Coast cities this past winter didn't prove anything, either. But that didn't deter the climate skeptics from gloating. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and his family went so far as to build an igloo on Capitol Hill and label it "Al Gore's New Home." Care to apologize to the Nobel laureate, senator?

Actually, it was more like a few days of heat than a few weeks. Also, if you start looking at the temperature records for the 1930s, you see what a real heat wave was like. Our local weatherman showed the number of days over 90 degrees for the last couple of years and in the 1930s. While we have had a handful of hot days now, most of the summer had 90+ days in the 1930s.

But what about that snowstorm? Did it prove anything? After all, it was just another weather event.

But, and I pointed it out at the time, that was different. While it was just an isolated weather event, it was one that Al Gore said would never happen again because of warming that already happened. In science, that is called a prediction. When a prediction is proved to be false then your theory (in this case, global warming) has to be reevaluated.

In contrast, no one has predicted that we would stop having heat waves so an isolated heat wave is not as significant as a cold wave.

He also mentions that a panel exonerated the British Climate Research Unit (CRU) but failed to mention that the panel did not investigate the underlying science, only allegations of scientific malpractice.

Robinson closes with an important question:

It's time to end the silly "argument" over whether climate change is real. Here's a better question: Would it be more appropriate for humanity to spend, say, $1 trillion reducing carbon emissions, and thus save thousands or millions of lives that could be lost to drought or sea-level rise or whatever at the end of this century or the next, or to spend that money providing clean water in places such as Congo or Bangladesh, saving thousands or millions of lives right now?

This cuts to the heart of why the debate on climate change is not silly. Gore and others are taking worst case projections and asking for a total change of civilization based on it. If Gore is wrong or overstated the potential harm then we will have wasted money that could have done real good, right now.