Chapter XXVII: Wherein the Faithful Don Quixote de la Craken Once More Mounted His Magnificent Steed and Sallied Forth to Battle the Wild Phantoms of Other Men's Imaginations
This is not a very coherent piece of work. It's rather hackish, actually. One finds not only deliberately misleading quotes, bad grammar, no sign of proofing--but also, poor organization, no clear thesis, no paraphrasable conclusion. Thus, from the outset, given these formal deficits, it does not appear that the authors expect a serious reception. They certainly do not deserve one.
Unfortunately, due to the irreducible complexity of this issue, both those who essentially agree with the IPCC reports and those who propose alternative interpretations of the scientific data have descended into oversimplified rhetoric when discussing climate change in the popular press. Oversimplification is also, to various degrees, falsification. An issue of this complexity is not susceptible to soundbites, nor to live debates, nor to superficial newspaper articles and editorials. All of these conduits transform the underlying information into mere rhetorical displays and political peacocking--yet, what pitiful percentage of the population could even attempt to understand the gross and scope of the climate system (including its feedback mechanisms), the scientific process, the national and international political machinations, the economic calculations, the technological realities and potentialities, the environmental risks, the response of pathogens, the social and psychological adaptations to the realities of all these things and to the images of all these things that actually settles in the mind of the common man?
But, now I must set off on my next adventure, before Sancho's island kingdom is deluged by the swollen oceans. Therefore, I commend you to the capable Senor Romm, who provides a more thorough and particularized response at this blog: http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/11/inhofe-morano-recycles-long-debunked-denier-talking-points-will-the-media-be-fooled-again/#more-4413
The author has the scientific and experiential qualifications necessary for analysis.
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