Obama's War on Reality

President Obama in his Inaugural Address yesterday:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

James Delingpole responds at The Telegraph blog:

Concerted global action so far to deal with the threat of climate change has resulted in: higher energy prices; more deaths from fuel poverty; more intrusive regulation; the destruction of rainforests and the squandering of agricultural land on biofuels; higher food prices; famine and food riots – as a result partly of the drive for biofuels; the entrenchment of corporatism and rent-seeking to the detriment of free markets; the ravaging of the countryside with ugly solar farms and even uglier wind turbines; the deaths of millions of birds and bats; the great recession. How any of this has in any way benefited either our children (who are going to find it far harder to find a job) or future generations is a complete mystery.

As for the idea that "science" ever has such a thing as an "overwhelming judgement": this would be news to Galileo, Newton, Einstein and indeed all the great scientists of history, all of whom made their names by advancing theories which completely overturned the "overwhelming judgement" of their contemporaries.

This graph found at Watt's Up With That shows that 2012 ranks 54th on extreme weather since 1910.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/21/2012-ranks-54th-in-extreme-weather-events/

Back to Delingpole:

Still, for all that, I applaud the President's chutzpah and ingenuity. If you want to expand the size of government as much as he obviously does, there's really no better way than to declare war on reality. Reality is a slippery foe; it has many heads – and no sooner have you cut off one than a thousand more grow in its place; it's everywhere, at all times, and there's no escaping it, meaning you have to mobilise unimaginably large resources if you are to have a hope of defeating it. Which, of course, you never will. Obama's glorious war on reality will be a war without end. Bad luck, America. (But you can't say I didn't warn you.…)

Read more here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100199161/obama-declares-war-on-reality/