What's Wrong with the Post

This is a perfect example of the complaint about the Washington Post I was making the other day. Instead of putting people on their Op-Ed page who actually have ideas, they give the space to celebrities whose names will generate buzz and readership. Case in point: Sarah Palin on global warming. Sarah Palin knows as much about climate change as I do about moose hunting. And this is the main article in the Opinion section, with a picture link that takes up a big part of the page.

"Climate-gate," as the e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia have become known, exposes a highly politicized scientific circle -- the same circle whose work underlies efforts at the Copenhagen climate change conference. The agenda-driven policies being pushed in Copenhagen won't change the weather, but they would change our economy for the worse. . . . . This scandal obviously calls into question the proposals being pushed in Copenhagen. I've always believed that policy should be based on sound science, not politics.

Well, glory be! Does she really now? Here is the science:

We have climate records of various kinds extending back 3 billion years, and they show a very strong association between high temperatures and high CO2 levels.

High temperatures are strongly associated with, among other things, high sea levels and increased storminess.

Burning fossil fuels pumps billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year.

More than a billion people live in areas that were under water during the Miocene Era, the last time CO2 concentrations were as high as they are now.

I have to say that I am not the least bit surprised by the sleazy behavior revealed in the climate-gate emails. We have known for years that climate change obsessives have been trying to keep their opponents out of the major journals, and it really is disturbing behavior. (This scandal is another case of what happens when people lie because they think it will do good.) I personally have no confidence in any of the various mathematical climate models. The thing is, you don't need a model to project a disturbing future; the simple facts on which everyone involved agrees, listed above, are reason enough to worry.

The Post should know better than to let Sarah Palin scandle-monger and muddle the facts in their newspaper.