From Max to Wax - warm this

Looks like Henry Waxman's supercalifragilistic investigation squad has been hard at work, creating more unmitigated BS from our taxpayer dollars:

"The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming," the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said.

They've got some ominous-sounding emails, but the star of the report, former National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield, was not even interviewed by the panel. When asked about it, Max told ABC News he was never pressured or muzzled by anyone in Washington. Hey, perhaps Waxman should be investigated by the Hurricane Center.

Had they bothered talking to Max they'd eventually run across researcher Chris Landsea, a noted hurricane specialist still employed at Mayfield's former shop (and who has the perfect name, too). Landsea has long been on record as opposing the Kerry Emanuel study that says global warming leads to Katrina-like storms while simultaneously not refuting global warming itself.

That lack of consensus didn't stop sites like stopglobalwarming.org or fightglobalwarming.com (or Nobel winner Al Gore) from saying it did. Sounds like fodder for another investigation.

The crux of this matter revolves around government message control. It's something that's been touched on here several times, mainly back when James Hansen was speaking BS to power. The government simply cannot be at odds with itself when speaking formally to the press and public. Private and even most academic scientists generally speak for themselves. Probabilities are high this whole thing came to a boil because the liberal scientific community just does not approve of the current decider.

One last thing. It's always entertaining to note how different newspapers cover the same story. Industrious readers may care to scan this McClatchy article on the report, which pretty much ignores most of what Mayfield said, which seemed kind of important. Can this post actually use the initials BS three times? Yes it can.

MORE 12/12/07

Another media scaremongering story exposed.

MAGMA.. 12/13/07

First there was the story about the mysterious reversal of the Arctic Ocean current that went counter to theory. Now we find that Magma might be causing some of the melting of Greenland. Well. If it's occurring there, might it also be occurring on the sea floor? Geez, and if the earth is actually roasting itself from the inside out that certainly sounds MUCH more worrisome than a man-made cause, all things considered.

Al Gore and his UN lackeys are pressuring the world to act before it's too late. It's an emergency, akin to the blinking red light on the terrorist threat system. Perhaps what they really mean is "act to elect a Democrat president now before we're shown to be frauds by real world events later".

This is all fun and games, of course. The real key is our understanding--or lack thereof. We don't yet know enough about the global system and causes of planetary warming to know whether we can actually do anything about it. Certainly not enough to warrant jumping into a world-changing treaty under pressure from a politician.