DELIBERATE DISHONESTY AMONG "SCIENTISTS"

"Last week, The New York Times delivered the worrisome news that a team of scientists has concluded that maximum hurricane winds will increase 6 percent by the 2080s, thanks to global warming. I was very upset to read that news, but not because I'm afraid my great-grandchildren will get blown away. My concern is what those scientists' work says about the state of climate science.

The researchers reached their conclusions using a series of climate models called General Circulation Models. They assumed that the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide-the main global warming gas-will increase by 1 percent per year, compounded yearly. That would warm the ocean, which would create slightly stronger storms. But there's a problem: Any atmospheric scientist who is worth his or her salt knows that atmospheric carbon dioxide is not increasing at that rate and has not been doing so for decades. And that makes a real difference in the modeling results. The increase has been about four-tenths of a percent per decade, averaged over the last 30 years - not 1 percent. Charitably, throw in another tenth of a percent because of other human "greenhouse" emissions (though the two major ones, chlorofluorocarbons and methane, are declining or holding steady). That means that the researchers' models are envisioning twice the actual increase in carbon dioxide as has been occurring for decades....

The reason that carbon dioxide is growing so slowly is because the world is gradually becoming more energy-efficient as its people become more affluent. That results in both a reduction in per-capita emissions and a reduction in the number of "capits" that are born, as rich folks have fewer kids. Among big countries, this trend started in the United States. It is now spreading globally as the enriching world buys more-efficient cars and power plants. This trend isn't going to change anytime soon. That means the growth rate in carbon dioxide over the next few decades is likely to be the same as the rate for the last few. Using the more realistic rate delays the time that hurricane winds will increase by 6 percent from the 2080s to the 2180s - 175 years from now. And it's pretty hard to speculate what impact humanity will have on nature over nearly two centuries in time.....

Because carbon dioxide increases have been bouncing around four-tenths of a percent per year for three decades, why do climate modelers insist on using the wrong number? It seems peculiar that people who have the equivalent of doctorates in applied physics (which is what climate science is) would somehow be perfectly happy to do something they know is wrong..... There are literally hundreds of scientific papers out there in which climate models use this wrong number. Each of those papers gets sent to three outside peer-reviewers. The fact that 1 percent continues to be used only means one thing: when it comes to global warming, hundreds of scientists must prefer convention to truth. But why? Is it because, when the real numbers are put in, there's no story for The New York Times to report?

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MORE FROM JANE GALT ON "SMART GROWTH"

On 4th I put up excerpts from two articles that attacked "smart growth" -- one of which was by "Jane Galt". She has since put up another big post on the subject -- from which I have pulled just a few excerpts. I agree with her that the "mixed use" ideas of smart growthers are sound. Mixed use is what happens naturally anyway. It's only planners who stop it. But the idea that there is any generally better alternative to car-based transport is just a dream.

The excerpts:

"Let me start by saying that I'm firmly behind many of the aims of smart growth, such as mixed-use zoning. I think the attempt to ensure that poor people can't come within 100 miles of you by restricting zoning to one-acre lot single-family homes is one of the more repulsive uses of the state. This is saying something, from someone who basically thinks that most uses of the state are pretty repulsive.

Where I depart from the smart-growth/new-urbanist is in rejecting the belief, which I think is hopelessly naive, that If You Zone it They Will Come. While I agree that there is more of a market for denser, old-style suburban living than is currently being satisfied, I do not believe that those consumers are a majority of home buyers.

And I strongly disagree with the Smart Growthers that you can have meaningful mass transit at population densities much lower than New York City's.....New York City is the only city in the US where mass transit accounts for the majority of commutes.... if you want a place where public transportation is really dominant, Manhattan is the only game in town. That should tell proponents of mass transit something about what kind of densities are really necessary to make public transportation work. My affiliation of the smart growth cause with city living is thus not ignorant accident; it's a deliberate rejection of the idea that you can have walkability without high density.

The libertarians are not passing laws preventing the old, young, or disabled from living in walkable areas (I am unfamiliar with the notion that someone can be "too poor to drive", and statistics on poor households indeed show that most of them have at least one car). They just aren't agitating for laws forcing everyone else to live in neighbourhoods most hospitable to the old, young, and disabled. We stand shoulder to shoulder with the smart-growth crowd on disabling the pernicious zoning practices that keep denser housing from being built--but they get in a snit because we won't help them pass laws keeping anything else from being erected".

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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