The strength that always finds a way

George Will eviscerates the power-driven faith that has replaced more open-ended and thoughtful science that would be global warming scientific and policy discussions in today's column.

Blinded by Science

"The global warming industry, like Alexander in the famous children's story, is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Actually, a bad three months, which began Nov. 19 with the publication of e-mails indicating attempts by scientists to massage data and suppress dissent in order to strengthen 'evidence' of global warming.

But there already supposedly was a broad, deep and unassailable consensus. Strange.

Next came the failure of The World's Last -- We Really, Really Mean It -- Chance, aka the Copenhagen climate change summit. It was a nullity, and since then things have been getting worse for those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.

In 2007, before the economic downturn began enforcing seriousness and discouraging grandstanding, seven Western U.S. states (and four Canadian provinces) decided to fix the planet on their own. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger intoned, 'We cannot wait for the United States government to get its act together on the environment.' The 11 jurisdictions formed what is now called the Western Climate Initiative to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, starting in 2012.

Or not. Arizona's Gov. Jan Brewer recently suspended her state's participation in what has not yet begun, and some Utah legislators are reportedly considering a similar action. She worries, sensibly, that it would impose costs on businesses and consumers. She also ordered reconsideration of Arizona's strict vehicle emission rules, modeled on incorrigible California's, lest they raise the cost of new cars.

Last week, BP America, ConocoPhillips and Caterpillar, three early members of the 31-member U.S. Climate Action Partnership, said: Oh, never mind. They withdrew from USCAP. It is a coalition of corporations and global warming alarm groups that was formed in 2007 when carbon rationing legislation seemed inevitable and collaboration with the rationers seemed prudent. A spokesman for Conoco said: 'We need to spend time addressing the issues that impact our shareholders and consumers.' What a concept.

Global warming skeptics, too, have erred. They have said there has been no statistically significant warming for 10 years. Phil Jones, former director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit, source of the leaked documents, admits it has been 15 years. Small wonder that support for radical remedial action, sacrificing wealth and freedom to combat warming, is melting faster than the Himalayan glaciers that an IPCC report asserted, without serious scientific support, could disappear by 2035.

Jones also says that if during what is called the Medieval Warm Period (circa 800-1300) global temperatures may have been warmer than today's, that would change the debate. Indeed it would. It would complicate the task of indicting contemporary civilization for today's supposedly unprecedented temperatures.

Last week, Todd Stern, America's Special Envoy for Climate Change -- yes, there is one; and people wonder where to begin cutting government -- warned that those interested in 'undermining action on climate change' will seize on 'whatever tidbit they can find.' Tidbits like specious science, and the absence of warming?

It is tempting to say, only half in jest, that Stern's portfolio violates the First Amendment, which forbids government from undertaking the establishment of religion. A religion is what the faith in catastrophic man-made global warming has become. It is now a tissue of assertions impervious to evidence, assertions which everything, including a historic blizzard, supposedly confirms and nothing, not even the absence of warming, can falsify."

The numbers I've seen seems to indicate that the planet has warmed in the last century. Those numbers could most certainly be wrong, which should come into question as much as anything else if this is an honest scientific endeavor. The big claim that George has very powerfully poked holes into for the last few years is whether moderate warming actually means catastrophic scenarios. And this is where the real rub is, as far as I'm concerned, at least.

People get so wrapped up in their talk in politics that they, more often than not, lose track of whether what they're saying is true by more rigorous empirical standards. That's true in life, as well, by the way. It's just a fact for the whole damned race, is the truth.

And that standard is one that can survive even the most unreasonable of dissent.

The only people who have to worry about dissent are the only people who have ever worried about dissent. The people who were wrong. Or the people who may be right but are too afraid to let people question if they are wrong.

The people who have always coveted power, especially power in lieu of reason.

People who are afraid. People whose minds and hearts are too weak to allow others to disagree and choose differently. People who are afraid they do not have the right stuff.

I'm one of those people. Learning to be stronger in the face of my fear. Perhaps that describes all of us.

If we genuinely want things to get better, that is.

That's the strength that always finds a way. The more genuine strength of greater wisdom. Of heart and mind.

And that strength is the only honest path of progress that humanity will ever know.