Unappealing Authorities Crumble

[Ubiquitous]

"Scientists are struggling to explain a slowdown in climate change that
has exposed gaps in their understanding and defies a rise in global
greenhouse gas emissions," Reuters reports:

Often focused on century-long trends, most climate models
failed to predict that the temperature rise would slow,
starting around 2000. Scientists are now intent on figuring
out the causes and determining whether the respite will be
brief or a more lasting phenomenon.

Getting this right is essential for the short and long-term
planning of governments and businesses ranging from energy
to construction, from agriculture to insurance. Many scientists
say they expect a revival of warming in coming years.

On a related note, today's New York Times features an op-ed titled "The
False Alarm Over U.S. Fertility." Its author, Derek Hoff, serves up
warmed over zero-population-growth propaganda:

There is a population crisis--not in America, but on a planet
that is rapidly losing its ecological integrity and facing a
new age of human-caused extinction. Neither the elderly nor
the world's rising middle class, who rationally choose to have
fewer children as their economies become less labor-intensive
and as women gain more control over their bodies and reproductive
choices, are to blame.

Hoff's piece is a response to two new books: one by Shannon O'Neil, which
urges more immigration to the U.S.; the other by Jonathan Last, who warns
of the perils of declining fertility.

What's interesting is that not long ago, both ZPG and global warmist
nonsense would have been treated as authoritative. Now both are on the
defensive. That's a sign of progress, if only intellectually.


--
"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a
problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have
an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is,
as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the
solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this
crisis."
� � � � -- Al Gore acknowledges exaggerating the dangers of "global
� � � � � �warming"