Wednesday, April 1, 2009

More balderdash from Obama

President Obama recently:

I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating.

If you look at the flooding that’s going on right now in North Dakota and you say to yourself, ‘If you see an increase of 2 degrees, what does that do, in terms of the situation there?’ that indicates the degree to which we have to take this seriously.


I am really only interested in the first two sentences of that quote. I left the rest of the quotation there to demonstrate how technically obtuse the man is.

Point 1.
I actually think the science around climate change is real. It is potentially devastating.

What I, and hundreds of scientists (which I am not) around the world are in dispute about is the fallibility of the scientific conclusions surrounding climate change, not the actual science itself. Of course the science is real - regardless of which side of the climate change fence you happen to be. What does Obama think the scientists have been doing? Playing tiddlywinks?

Point 2: "It is potentially devastating."

Here I am arguing a point of syntax, not science.

If the science around climate change is "real" - and the President would like us to infer from that statement that only the doomsayers are to be believed - then something that is "real" cannot be "potentially" devastating. Rather, it would be 'absolute.'

What is also 'absolute' is the fact that Obama needs to gets his facts straight and his logic engaged before he speaks, less he continue to invoke one of my favourite pieces of Latin: "Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses."

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