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Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:00 AM

Obama's early stumbles

Readers ask, Camille dishes: On Democratic woes, the Weather Underground, Kanye West, Freud, alleged gay genes and "the long sleep."

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  • Wednesday, January 14, 2009 03:17 PM

    A lie by any other name, would still be false

    Deliberate ignorance in the face of evidence means you're lying to yourself, as well as us. Lying need not be a conscious decision, plenty of people do it semi-consciously.

    The evidence is clear that:

    1. Before industrialization, until now, or in about 100 years, we have increased CO2 in the atmosphere by nearly a third.

    2. With CO2 and the sun inevitably comes warming.

    3. The amount we are putting in the atmosphere is larger than natural sources can absorb.

    The reason the Heartland Institute and other so-called think tanks are not scientific organizations is quite simple. They don't make reliable predictions. That's what scientists do, first and foremost. Theories aren't gauged by how cleverly you can retro-fit the data, but by how clever your predictions are, given the data.

    To take Greenland ice cores as an example, we've been studying them so long that we can predict how large they will be in a given year, to within a high degree of accuracy. We can predict how much CO2 will be trapped inside, and how much pollen will be trapped inside, and many other factors as well, using actual science.

    The Heartland Institute doesn't do anything of the sort. Their idea of science is to make lazy, ill-informed criticisms of real scientists, and yell about how no one takes valuable research time to refute their ignorant rants.

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