Darkness and Doom

Apocalypse and Gloom.

It is amazing how political and religious beliefs can lead us into dark alleys.

Alarmists are depressing.

It reminds me of the old joke about the Jewish man who reads the Arab newspapers all the time. “Why do you do that”, asks his friend. “Because”, said the Jewish man, “in the Israeli press all you read about are scud missile attacks and suicide bombings in the marketplace. In the Arab papers you read about how Jews own all the banks and control the world. The news is so much better.”

It is so much better to be a CAGW skeptic. The climate realists tell us how CO2 helps increase crop yields, severe weather isn’t getting worse, deaths due to extreme weather are way down, sea levels are not accelerating, there is no hot spot (pdf) and temperatures have leveled off. This is great news. It is hard to understand why alarmists are still so alarmed.

Perhaps they are alarmed at the realization that Mother Nature is not behaving in a depressing fashion and they find that depressing because they will have to admit that they were wrong and that untold resources have been wasted pursuing policies to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. Now that is depressing. Mother Nature is doing what she has always done. We can sympathize and can thank them for helping to advance the understanding of how our climate really works. Bad theories show us where the dark alleys reside. Can they take solace in that contribution?