What's New Robert L. Park 5 Dec 09

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 4 Dec 09   Washington, DC

1.  CLIMATE CHANGE: WHICH SIDE IS BOB ON IN THE CLIMATE WAR?
I’m getting a lot of mail asking where I stand on climate change.  You’re 
entitled to know.   But first, I’ve gotta own up: I'm not a climate 
scientist.  I rely on information gathered and interpreted by other 
scientists, everybody does.  My source on climate is the Intergovernmental 
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established by the United Nations in 1988, 
soon after I began writing WN.  Along with most scientists, I concluded 
that anthropogenic warming is real and dangerous; 20 years later I still 
do.   If warming is caused by human activity, and we have taken no steps to 
modify our behavior, the result will be catastrophic.  A long-term solution 
calls for two changes throughout society: higher efficiency and lower 
fertility.  If warming turns out not to be caused by humans, we will still 
have left our progeny with a better world.  

2. CLIMATEGATE: WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAT DID THE HACKING?
Last week someone broke into the e-mail files of the Climate Research Unit 
at the University of East Anglia, and posted the results on the web for the 
world to see. The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily are 
having a field-day writing about "criminal conspiracy" and "scientific 
blacklisting."  There were a few embarrassing comments about global warming 
deniers in a mountain of e-mails.  I would hate to see some of my private e-
mails on the web.  The suffix was added to invite comparisons to the 
infamous break-in at the Watergate Hotel by Nixon's goons, but in this 
story the unnamed burglars are treated as heroes.   No one wrote even a 
line about what was probably the only criminal offense in this sordid 
affair: hacking into private files.  There are angry demands in Congress 
for an investigation of the affair.   So far the only effect has been to 
shift the focus away from bad news about rising oceans and stranded polar 
bears to climate scientists more interested in scoring points than 
advancing science.  All that's left is to figure out who paid for the break-
in.  That book has already been written.

3.  FUEL : THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YOU HAVEN’T READ.
When the ClimateGate story broke I immediately began digging through piles 
of paper on my desk to find my copy of "Doubt Is Their Product: How 
Industry's Assault on Science Threatens Your Health," a 2008 book by David 
Michaels, an epidemiologist at the George Washington University School of 
Public Health. When scientific evidence of a threat to public health 
becomes overwhelming, government intervention can still be delayed for 
years by simply manufacturing uncertainty. That's where of the global 
warming debate is right now.  The fossil fuel industry is doing a job on us.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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