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New Jersey environmental organizations are jumping all over Gov. Chris Christie's admission last week that he is skeptical about man's role in global warming (Scientists ask climate-doubter Christie to stay after class).
They scheduled a climate forum "to present the overwhelming scientific findings linking human activity and climate change" and they invited the governor and his staff to attend.
If you're planning to go, please note that the date and location have been changed to:
New Jersey Climate Change Science Forum
Noon, Tuesday, December 7
Committee Room 1, New Jersey Annex
Trenton, NJ
Speakers: Rutgers Professors Alan Robock, Jim Miller, and Paul Falkowski
Sponsors: Environment New Jersey, NJ Sierra Club, NJ Conservation Foundation, NY/NJ Baykeeper, and the NJ Highlands Coalition
A spokesman for Governor Christie says the state's chief executive has declined the invitation.
(You don't get to be governor by walking blind-eyed into media traps like this one).
The organizations say they subsequently offered the governor a private meeting to discuss climate-change science with the Rutgers scientists "at any that would convenient to the governor." So far, they've received no response.
We suspect the last polar ice cap could dissolve before that RSVP is returned.
With Mr. Christie's swelling national popularity among the Republican right and talk of a presidential run (not this time, but next) there's little political advantage for him to admit to being anything but skeptical about global warming.
After all, there is not a single Republican in the House or Senate's incoming class who admits to believing that the science supporting global warming is real.
Amazing, isn't it, how quickly public opinion can shift? How did this happen?
Share your thoughts in the comment box below. If you're worried about getting caught on the wrong political side of the argument, you can answer anonymously.
After all, there is not a single Republican in the House or Senate's incoming class who admits to believing that the science supporting global warming is real.
Amazing, isn't it, how quickly public opinion can shift? How did this happen?
Share your thoughts in the comment box below. If you're worried about getting caught on the wrong political side of the argument, you can answer anonymously.
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Frank sez:
ReplyDelete"We suspect the last polar ice cap could dissolve before that RSVP is returned."
Dissolve? In your haste, perhaps you meant "melt" . . . no?
Or, has one of the practicing professors of polemics you cited in your last post attacking the Governor for being a skeptic about certain climate change claims, discovered that ice and snow now dissolve?
This one: http://enviropoliticsblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/scientists-ask-climate-doubter-christie.html
"[T]he last polar ice cap?" Was there a first one that "dissolved?" And, I’m sure you could not have meant the Antarctic polar ice cap, which has actually been growing thicker over the past several years. And it is colder there too! You have read about that, right?
And finally . . . "RSVP." Since when has it been obligatory for a politician to politely respond to an invitation for an event created exclusively for the purpose of attacking him?
Whew! That was just one sentence, Frank. You are making this too easy!
I'll be back.
It seems to me that there is still time to invite a few other New Jersey-based scientists to participate in the "New Jersey Climate Change Science Forum."
ReplyDeleteAnd, given the fact that the forum is currently listing those who want to "keep the Governor after school" to lecture him about climate change maybe a good way to demonstrate real scientific rigor, and a little open-minded maturity to boot, would be to include some highly respected scientists who are skeptical about the so-called settled science status of this very young field of science.
For example, the organizers could invite Freeman J. Dyson of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, who, as I've noted elsewhere, is an eminent theoretical physicist and mathematician.
A recent New York Times magazine profile about him, focused skeptically on his long time climate change skepticism. Yet the author of the article, Nicholas Dawidoff, conceded:
"Among Dyson’s gifts is interpretive clarity, a penetrating ability to grasp the method and significance of what many kinds of scientists do. His thoughts about how science works appear in a series of lucid, elegant books for nonspecialists that have made him a trusted arbiter of ideas ranging far beyond physics."
What could be better in a public forum than to include a presentation by a man who has such universally recognized talents?
And, there is another eminent Princeton scientist well-known for his climate change skepticism who could be included. His name is Will Happer.
Will would be a fascinating addition to the "New Jersey Climate Change Science Forum" because he has had experience working in the federal government at the DOE, back during the Clinton Administration. In fact, he was politically forced out of the DOE by then-Vice President Al Gore because he would not bend to the global warming and climate change dogma being pushed by that Administration.
You and your readers can get an introduction to it in the article linked below, but it seems to me that nothing could substitute for the first hand account of a man who was politically attacked and driven out of his job for holding scientific views that did not comport with the dogma then being pushed by the Clinton Administration.
http://www.powermag.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/25/will-happer-we-need-more-co2/
Gosh, I wonder if this quote by Phil Jones of the CRU at East Anglia came up at the NJ forum today:
ReplyDelete"[T]he data on the Met Office’s and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years. …
Even Phil Jones, the CRU director at the centre of last year’s 'Climategate' leaked email scandal, was forced to admit in a little noticed BBC online interview that there has been 'no statistically significant warming' since 1995.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/there-has-been-no-statistically-significant-warming-since-1995/
Well, that would have stirred things up a bit, no?