What’s Your “P” Temperature?

I am not a Global Warming denier, I am also not a Malthusian. The climate changes, the method matters little in my mind. Humanity seems to do well during warm periods and very poorly during cold periods. My guess is the lack of fur and our African ancestry probably provides us plenty of protection against warm weather but that the cold really ain’t our deal.

Accepting climate change and preparing to adapt is the best method for handling the inevitable changes our world goes through. Dunwich is lost to the sea. At the bottom of Lake Agassiz now lies Fargo, ND. There may even be some positive consequences to the present warming and I’m not the only one who thinks this way:

There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we’ve seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. The earth is always warming or cooling by as much as a few tenths of a degree a year; periods of constant average temperatures are rare. Looking back on the earth’s climate history, it’s apparent that there’s no such thing as an optimal temperature—a climate at which everything is just right. The current alarm rests on the false assumption not only that we live in a perfect world, temperaturewise, but also that our warming forecasts for the year 2040 are somehow more reliable than the weatherman’s forecast for next week.

Whenever dealing with a global warming alarmist, simply ask him what his “P” temperature is (or what his ideal global temperature would be) and then ask him what lengths he would be willing to go to maintain that P temperature; even if those lengths meant interfering with natural variations in climate. Eventually the answers become so complex and non-sensical that you can start laughing hysterically.

And before you alarmists say it, the author is not a big oil shill:

Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.