May 27^th

Cal Thomas today tells us that he skipped the commencement speaker’s address when he graduated from The American University in Washington D.C. From the content of Cal’s column he probably skipped a number of classes on the way to his graduation ceremony as well. His angst is about the poor Coast Guard graduates who had to listen to President Obama address them on the ramifications of climate change. But at least they aren’t obliged to read the claptrap he puts in his column

President Obama pointed out in his address that the byproducts of climate change, severe drought for example, has led to instability in Nigeria and an opening for the terrorist group Boko Haram. Now Cal joyously confronts us with a State Department spokesperson saying that lack of jobs is what turns people into terrorists but President Obama claims it was the drought and crop failure. This Cal sees as a discrepancy and it allows him to crow, “Which is it?” Cal fails to understand that events can have multiple causes and, unfortunately, that’s not all he fails to understand.

He tells us that, “No amount of evidence will dissuade a climate change cultist that he is wrong but for students who might Google the topic for a term paper let’s try.” And the first thing he Googles is Marc Morano’s climatedepot.com, a sub-set of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFAST). Cal tells us that Marc Morano runs this outfit. (That might be news to the CEO, David Rothbard.) This committee is funded by the Koch Bros. and the oil industry and its highest paid employee ($150,000/annum) is Marc Morano.

 Morano is a publicity guy; he has no training whatsoever in climate science but that’s just fine with Cal Thomas because Cal has no training in this area either. This does not keep either of them from citing the fringe of climatologists who find that there is a buck to be made from the oil and coal industries for those with agreeable opinions. Thomas cites Remote Sensing Systems as claiming that, “Since December 1996 there has been no global warming at all….” This is a very legitimate climate outfit but nowhere on their website can I find any such quote. There are other quotes aplenty but Cal apparently has not read them. Here is Carl Mears an RSS scientist commenting on the “denialists.” “Does this slow-down in the warming mean that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is no longer valid?  The short answer is ‘no.’” The denialists like to assume that the cause for the model/observation discrepancy is some kind of problem with the fundamental model physics, and they pooh-pooh any other sort of explanation.  This leads them to conclude, very likely erroneously, that the long-term sensitivity of the climate is much less than is currently thought.”

Then Thomas turns to a truly reliable source on California’s climate, Carly Fiorina. Carly tells us that (1) California has suffered from droughts for centuries and (2) this water problem is entirely the liberals’ fault for not building more dams. Why more nearly empty reservoirs would help California Carly doesn’t say, and not saying is most unusual for Carly Fiorina.