You know who else must be baffled, are all the good Democrats and
progressives who have been telling us we're 'anti-science' for pointing out this fact.
It turns out that I'm not a 'global warming denier' after all, but that overall warming really did stop after 1998, as I've been saying to derisive laughter for years. They may call it a mere time-out, but it raises questions which should be discussed more openly among, and by, the scientific community, so that a more informed public discussion can take place. One can accept the principles of the greenhouse effect, but still believe the system is more complex than we yet understand, and that caution should guide us before we re-make the world's economy based on carbon emissions.
My thing has always been that while climate models are undependable, the biggest thing driving temperatures on Earth is most likely the
GIANT BALL OF FIRE IN THE SKY! As Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus says of AGW and global warming alarmism, "The politicians have been searching for such a beautiful idea for decades, and they finally found (it)." The virtue they were seeking is the power to command more centralized power, more government, more regulations, more taxes, and fewer individual freedoms. (Hmm, sounds like...oh, never mind.) Klaus watches from the East as the EU seeks to crowd out democracy by what he calls post-democracy, "where there is no democratic accountabiity, and the decisions are made by politicians, appointed by politicians, not elected by citizens in free elections." (For more of Europe's reasonable President,
watch here.)
Because it's a crisis, you see. I call that the vanity of the now.
Don't worry, Al Gore is already rich. On the other hand, 800 million Africans live on less than a dollar per year, and fossil fuels could help to improve their world far more quickly than solar power, or anything else 'green' at this time. And that's the point, really. They say we cannot wait to make radical changes... so the world's poor will have to wait longer before progress through development and expanding capitalism can help them help themselves.
That's the dirty secret of Global warming and the entire Al Gore enterprise, 1.6 billion people alive in the world today have no electricity, a third of those in Africa alone, and rainbow-colored windmills ain't gonna get it to them. Those people are not interested in our putting the brakes on clean coal, nuclear power, more oil, etc. The only people truly invested in our doing all that are those who seek centralized power and control over the huddled masses. Because they know better, apparently, even though what they know seems to change every few years.