The science is settled, so shut up

Ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is real; the other three percent are unemployed.

Seriously, let's review some "facts" from the science.

First, the IPCC says that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (rise in global temperature caused by a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere) is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees C. Now, the participants in COP21 in Paris are delirious with joy that they have saved the earth by getting promises to limit CO2 emissions that will keep the temperature from rising more that 2.7 degrees. That's like telling a pilot that his navigation system says the airport is between 15 and 45 miles but that he should touch down in 27 miles.

Speaking of accuracy, the actions that will cost the billions (or trillions, no one knows) we're being asked to commit are based on forecasts by computer models. Are they accurate? Well, the difference between the current temperature anomaly and the model forecasts made just 20 years ago is skirting the confidence limit of the model forecast. What this means in technical terms is that if the model is valid, the probability of seeing what we're seeing should be less that 5%, or less than one chance in 20. But don't worry, folks; repeat after me: "The Science is Settled."

To make any sense of what we're talking about, we need to know what the recent past global temperatures were. Some preeminent labs are studying this and have published their estimates which everyone is using as a basis for current studies. A puzzling fact from this record is that the temperature anomaly has been statistically unchanged for about the past 18 years, what people call "the pause." Various theories have been put forward to explain the pause, twenty in number by one person's count. A group at NOAA has put forward the most startling, namely that the pause doesn't exist. They concluded this by rejiggering the temperature record. In other words, the scientists don't  even agree on the instrument record for the last twenty years.

But: The science is settled, so shut up.

Hillary was concerned about security

It is not true that Hillary Clinton chose to use a private email account while Secretary of State because she didn’t value security. The problem was that she valued security against Congressional committees over that against foreign enemies, and the scheme worked very well: Keeping complete control with the private server permitted her to discard everything she considered politically damaging before Congress could get their hands on it. The fact that she had to step on a few rules and possibly laws in the process was a small price to pay, and the current brouhaha will die down by election day. The only danger is that (as Jonah Goldberg put it) “another fetid cloud of Clintonism erupts” in the meantime.