"Whenever I see that smiling face, I have to smile myself"
Lindzen: “Earth is never in equilibrium”. Denialist favorite Dr. Richard Lindzen has published an opinion piece in Fredericksburg, Va’s renowned Free Lance-Star and Anthony Watts wants you to know about it! I guess this is a close as it gets to peer-reviewed denialist science.
Here’s some samples of the Professor’s argument.
“we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day”. We shouldn’t worry about a permanent 2° rise I guess.
“no statistically significant warming for the past 14 years”. I guess Lindzen hasn’t got the bulletin on that boner yet…
“The interests of the environmental movement in acquiring more power, influence and donations are reasonably clear.” and “It is probably no accident that Al Gore himself is associated with such activities.” Ah, Gore Derangement Syndrome and conspiracy theories! Always good for a chuckle.
There’s similar misrepresentative bunk scattered throughout. He finishes with a sneer:
Finally, there are the well-meaning individuals who believe that in accepting the alarmist view of climate change, they are displaying intelligence and virtue. For them, psychic welfare is at stake.
Wott's Up With That? 
psychic welfare?
[Yes, that’s his actual statement. The implication is that “alarmists” are afraid they won’t be considered intelligent unless they (mindlessly) jump on the AGW bandwagon. This perception probably comes from the denialist egotism of considering themselves “strong-minded critical thinkers” able to see through popular bleating and to discern and defend the unpopular truth. This reflects the need of denialists to protect their own “psychic welfare”. – Ben]
Two degrees plus is nothing to worry about? Last I heard, the last glacial maximum was only six degrees less than now. But hey, we see ten degree swings every day, so nothing to worry about according to Lindzen. Clearly the ice ages never happened, they were just icey days, and those dumb Neanderthals were a bunch of big girls.
Was Lindzen abducted by aliens and reprogrammed?
From where I’m currently posting there was glacier 2 thousand feet tall about 10,000 years ago.. That’s when the wooly mammoths started driving SUV’s and burning coal to warm their caves… ever since then the glaciers have been in retreat…. giving way to the great lakes and canadian shield.
Global warming has been destroying the planet for millenniums :(
[And did those two thousand foot thick glaciers melt in a couple of decades? Thought not. – Ben]
Ummm, like Ben said.
It’s one of the overarching fallacies of the anti-science set — the notion that an effect can be brought about only by a single cause, and every cause have one and only one effect. Hence all warming must be caused by CO2 emissions, or none is.
Arrant nonsense.
Moving forward, I hope there’s someone out there keeping track of how many times this opinion piece by Lindzen will be cited as scientific evidence.
Just for fun I googled psychic welfare, and discovered that more than 12 months ago, New York City stopped the program of training welfare recipients as psychics, because city officials decided that there was no future in it :D
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/29/nyregion/new-york-drops-psychic-training-program.html?pagewanted=1
Hmmm…re my previous post, it was 9 years more than 12 months ago – lol.