"We Don't Know" Becomes "We Have Consensus" in Global Warming Debate

I was at a pool party yesterday and global warming became the hot topic. The group was pretty liberal, but in no way were they leading the parade on this subject. But even though they seemed to agree that there is still a bunch of questions to be answered, one of them said: "But according to articles I've read, scientists agree that 98% of the Al Gore movie is solid science." And so goes the MSM. They are convinced that New York and Florida will be under water, and that hurricanes are getting worse and worse.

Somewhere along the line, when the media and the other elites were polling scientists, they forgot to get this guys vote. Mr. Richard Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. And he isn't exactly a shrinking violet. He has made his opinion on this subject well known for about as long as it has been an issue.

So, here is a comprehensive article about his position. Here below are a few summary paragraphs if you don't have time to read the whole thing:

"A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended--at least not in terms of the actual science."

"When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim--in his defense--that scientists "don't know. . . . They just don't know."

So if scientists just don't know, why are we getting front page stories in Time Magazine that the apocolyse is upon us?