Assumes Facts Not In Evidence

One of the most troubling aspects of the on-going climate change debate (despite claims to the contrary, it's far from over) is the tendency of proponents of man-made warming to never move their arguments beyond presenting evidence of said warming, as if that alone was enough to win the day. I guarantee the first time the temps here in Minnesota reach the upper-nineties this summer, some local wag will dismissively say something along the lines "And some people still deny that there's global warming..." When would-be Vice Presidential candidate (don't laugh) Amy Klobuchar chats about climate change with Al Gore in the Senate, she recites one anecdote after another about dried-out ducks, early ice outs, and drowning penguins (okay, you can laugh at that).

99% of the discussion preaching on climate change is about what impact global warming is having now, how it will be thousands of times worse in the future (curiously enough, the positive impacts of warming are given scant attention), and what MUST DO NOW to prevent this impending catastrophe.

But, despite the way the debate is often framed, the central core of contention is not whether there is some warming occurring (there is disagreement about how much). It's whether that warming is caused by man-made CO2 emissions and, more precisely, how much of the warming is anthropogenic (a fancy word for man-made).

Is it 100% anthropogenic? 90% anthropogenic & 10% natural? 80-20? 70-30? 50-50? 20-80?

That is key question and, as Holman Jenkins points out in today's Wall Street Journal, one that has so far not been conclusively answered at all (sub req):

In any case, evidence of warming is not evidence of manmade warming.

It would surprise the public, and even the Supreme Court, to know how utterly the science of global warming offers no evidence whatsoever on the central proposition. What fills Mr. Gore's film, books, speeches and congressional testimony are scientific observations and quasi-scientific observations, all right. They concern polar bears, mosquitoes, hurricanes, ice packs and everything but whether humans cause global warming.

Some of this evidence may suggest, weakly or strongly, the existence of warming trends in particular parts of the world (such local trends, both cooling and warming, have been observed in many places and many times). More dubiously, some may indicate a generalized warming. But none offers any evidence that carbon dioxide is causing warming. Mr. Gore's method is the equivalent of trying to prove that Jack killed Jane by going on and on about how awful it was that Jane was killed.

Or in this case, how awful it was that those cute little penguins drowned.