OK, micadelic has been at it again. Because I don’t blog all that much, I’m taking it out to the main page.

First, the soft ball:

And Michael, you should know that science is not based on “consensus, it’s based on facts. Politics are based on consensus and that’s exactly what this global warming scam is, politics. Socialists looking for another reason to tax the rich and give to the government.

This is, of course, completely wrong. As I’ve written about elsewhere, theories don’t become facts, facts become theories. A fact in science is something like “We measured the temperature at time t and it was 64.3 degrees”. That is a fact. Theories, even fantastically successful ones, like the universal theory of gravitation, are never considered facts by scientists. Science is absolutely about consensus, peer review, repeatability of results and all sorts of messy social constructs. Still, it is unbelievably successful, which is why your cell phone works and a billion other little miracles you now take for granted.

As to your point, yes, there will always be disagreements. No theory is accepted by everyone. There are people, some kooks and some not, who still argue with the universal theory of gravitation. The number of scientist who don’t accept gravity is tiny and the number of scientists who don’t accept human causes of global climate change is tiny. If you want to “listen to the science”, on the issue of global climate change, the only rational uneducated opinion is that human beings are influencing Earth’s climate, in a way that may be dangerous.

I just don’t fucking understand what is so hard to understand about that. We have billions of people, billions of cars, millions of smokestacks belching forth crap, what the fuck is so mysterious about human causes of global climate change? It is fucking obvious.

Now the harder one:

So, let’s sum this up: Here we have a major American politician who is calling for policies that would impose huge costs on society but appears to be profiting handsomely himself; who is leading an extravagant lifestyle while demanding sacrifices from ordinary people; and who is calling on the media to suppress the views of those with whom he disagrees, while at the same time urging more government regulation in the name of “fairness” to his partisan and ideological allies.

First of all, I can’t take all of this as fact without researching it and I haven’t had time. My point on Al Gore was simple: he is rich. Rich people use more resources than not-rich people. To compare the energy used by Al Gore’s mansion with the average home in Tennessee is dumb. Compare him to other millionaires and I bet he is not above average. Go run the math on Rupert Murdoch and get back to me.

On the issue of carbon credits, I think being conscious of and paying money to offset carbon release is better than not being conscious of and not making payments to offset it. That’s obvious. Again, go report on what Rupert Murdoch or Rush Limbaugh do to offset their carbon. I’ll tell you what they do: nothing. So Al Gore is already doing more than your average rich Rightie.

Is Gore profiting off of his movie and book? I suspect he is. Is the global climate change issue “good” for Al Gore? It probably is. Is he some tool who is making up a fake crisis to line his pockets? Of course not. That is the mistake the Right always makes on this issue: they attribute to the Left the same shallow, money-grubbing motivations that they are used to on the Right.

The notion that the Left is manufacturing this global climate change business for monetary reasons is completely, fucking insane.

I’m not a huge fan of Al Gore and I can believe that he is imperfect. But this whole story started because a the Right reported an absolute baseless hatchet job, comparing him to the average Tennessean, an area which does suffer from poverty, and that is obvious political bullshit designed to discredit global climate change, which has growing acceptance by the experts who study it, in spite of the fact that we all wish it wasn’t true.

The Right is completely politically motivated on this issue, they don’t even try to understand the science (go to the GCDIS for example, and read up a bit) and their newest tactic is also their oldest: character assassination, and it should be obvious to everyone.