Inexcusable Austin/Singer/Lindzen Letter

The denialist sites are all over this  open letter signed by a bunch of physicists and emeriti including Singer and Lindzen. My comments are in green.

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

Obviously. But by whom?

You have recently received an Open Letter from the Woods Hole Research Center, exhorting you to act quickly to avoid global disaster. The letter purports to be from independent scientists, but that Center is the former den of the President's science advisor, John Holdren, and is far from independent. This is the same science advisor who has given us predictions of “almost certain” thermonuclear war or eco-catastrophe by the year 2000, and many other forecasts of doom that somehow never seem to arrive on time.

Great! Let's keep up the good work of avoiding the various pitfalls, then, shall we?

The facts are:

The sky is not falling; the Earth has been cooling for ten years, without help. The present cooling was NOT predicted by the alarmists' computer models, and has come as an embarrassment to them.

Shameless bastards. These are Ph.D.s; they should understand the possibility of cherrypicking from a noisy record. The earth is not cooling in any way that isn't just an argumentative artifice.

The finest meteorologists in the world cannot predict the weather two weeks in advance, let alone the climate for the rest of the century. Can Al Gore? Can John Holdren? 

Weather is not climate. Can Lindzen really have sunk to the point that he is willing to sign this? 

We are flooded with claims that the evidence is clear, that the debate is closed, that we must act immediately, etc, but in fact

THERE IS NO SUCH EVIDENCE; IT DOESN'T EXIST.

That is news to most of us. What is all this evidence-shaped stuff in the journals, then, anyway?

The proposed legislation would cripple the US economy, 

How do you know? It's those infallible economic models isn't it?

putting us at a disadvantage compared to our competitors. 

Why? Is the US so decadent by now that we can't compete on energy technology? I think we should be future oriented, not become one of those declining societies holding on to a vanishing past.

For such drastic action, it is only prudent to demand genuine proof that it is needed, not just computer projections, and not false claims about the state of the science.

What do you mean by "genuine"? Would ANYTHING satisfy you?

SCIENCE IS GUIDED BY PROOF, NOT CONSENSUS

Consensus is a key mechanism for the advancement of science. That is how it works. 

And proof? Well, here's a funny thing. Science NEVER PROVES ANYTHING ABOUT NATURE! You can only prove things ABOUT MODELS OF NATURE. And models, well, either they are fit for purpose or they aren't. 

I am absolutely stunned that a bunch of Ph.D. scientists are promoting this essentially ignorant idea of what science is. Even if climatology really is bathwater...

This is nothing short of treachery toward science. Every one of these people must know that science is not about proof. This one has me absolutely slack-jawed. I understand polemicists undermining science in the name of their pet cause. For scientists to join them is very strange.  

Finally, climate alarmism pays well. Alarmists are rolling in wealth from the billions of dollars floating around for the taking, and being taken. 

Hey, George Soros, where's my check, dammit? 

It is always instructive to follow the money.

Something I can agree with at last. Follow the damned money.

Really, the opposition gets more shameless each year than you could even have imagined the year before.