Sometimes, Woody Allen’s fantasy from Annie Hall actually happens:
I provide a lot of latitude here on my blog for people to disagree with me, call me names, and cast aspersion on my motives. That’s why I don’t generally read or respond to private emails that criticize what I do here. I don’t have time or inclination to do privately what I already engage publicly. I usually just hit delete.
But last night, while driving to a private dinner of speakers who are participating at a conference, one such email came in on the issue of global warming. I criticize global warming hysteria and not the question of whether and why we are warming itself. Nonetheless, here is what my correspondent wrote, who I will keep anonymous:
Wesley, Get a clue. Do you know absolutely nothing about science and the scientific method. The evidence that more carbon in the atmosphere causes climatic warming is irrefutable. Every year man puts 100 times the carbon into the atmosphere than the average year of volcanic activity. These figures are backed by U. S. and United Kingdom scientists. Google it and find the sources yourself. And you, sir, are backed up by your bare ass because your head is stuck in the sand or rather up your ass which is a constant 98.6 degrees F. Perhaps you should stick your head rather into the ice core research that has happened over the last 15-20 years and then say something as ignorant as your latest rant. Global Warming is backed up by way more than computer modeling. The modeling only is used to predict where we are heading, and guess what, idiot so far all the feedbacks are positive. For example, the Leptev Sea off the coast of Siberia contains 240 billion tons of methane frozen beneath its frozen surface, and guess what, as the Arctic ocean warms its melting is funneling that methane into the atmosphere at greater rates every year since first studied in 2007 by Natalia Shakova. Google up “Melting Methane” from Der Spiegal. Two hundred forty billion tons in methane is eleven times the methane presently in the atmosphere. Professor Shakova says only 4% of that methane is enough to accelerate the earth’s warming into a catastrophic event. May your great grandchildren curse your name as they fry in the atmosphere.
Nice. I like you too, sir.
Just before my finger hit “delete” the proverbial light bulb went off and I realized that in the car seat directly in front of me sat Lord Monckton himself, aka to GWH’s as Beelzebub. So, I asked him to respond. He read the mail and dictated to me as I thumbed on my Blackberry. Here is my reply email:
As fate would have it, I am in a SUV with Lord Monckton . I asked him to respond. (I kid you not.)Or to put it another way, as McLuhan said to the blowhard in Annie Hall, ” You know nothing of my work.” Ha!
“Yes, of course, adding heteroatomic molecules will cause some warming. The question however is how much warming a given increase in CO2 concentration would cause. Throughout the last 161 yrs, the fastest rate of global warming sustained for more than a decade was 0.16 C per decade. This rate occurred 3 times in the global record. From 1860 to 80, 1910 to 40, and 1976 to 2001. The average rate of warming which the IPCC predicts for next 9 decades is 2.4 times the previous maximum at 0.38 C per decade. That is, the increases would by now have to be happening if the projection were actually true. We’re just not seeing it, illustrating the misdirection that lies at the heart of alarmism. Go figure.”
