Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Can any good thing come out of Berkeley?

Well, if we're talking about the hard physical sciences, yes. A project called Berkeley Earth went back and reviewed the climate change data that's been disputed over so much these past few years, and confirmed the findings. Something as complicated and omni-directional as climate can't really be crammed into a four word headline, or a 500 word blog post, even if I were qualified, which I'm not. So, click here and get up to speed.

I will, however, repeat my frequently voiced attitude towards global warming. I'm politically inclined to be dismissive of global warming. The image of failed socialist wackademic revolucionarios re-inventing themselves as environmental activists, seeking to shut down the means of production that they failed to win state ownership of, fits my mental template of the Left pretty snugly.

But, as voracious a devourer of popular science as I've always been, I must also admit that there seems to be more than a little something to global warming. I'm a big believer in the power of aggregate knowledge. If independent findings in many different scientific fields point to the same conclusion, then you've gotta take that seriously, the political coattail riders notwithstanding.