Krugman and the ‘war on facts’

Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon notes with interest Keynesian commissar Paul Krugman’s latest jeremiad on conservatives and climate change.

Krugman, like everyone else, declares the climate debate over by noting that 2014 was, according to NASA, the warmest year since 1880 by a margin of about two-hundredths of a degree. Or, as the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson disingenuously writes: “the hottest year in recorded history.”

Krugman is angry that conservatives don’t agree with him on climate change, despite all the evidence, such as the fact that last year was slightly warmer than the next warmest year in the 134 years (out of 4,500,000,000) for which we have data. …

… But here’s the thing about Krugman’s (and ever other liberal pundit’s) “evidence” about the headline-friendly “hottest year on record” that Republicans are endangering humanity by “denying.” It is based on a significant amount of uncertainty. As NASA’s own report acknowledges: “Numerically, our best estimate for the global temperature of 2014 puts it slightly above (by 0.01C) that of the next warmest year (2010) but by much less than the margin of uncertainty.” [emphasis added]

“Therefore,” the report continues, “it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year… the Earth’s average temperature for the past decade has changed very little.” [emphasis added again]

In a way, Krugman is proving his own point about members of his own side. Liberal pundits won’t let a little scientific uncertainty get in the way of their gloomy prognostications about global warming. It certainly won’t stop Eugene Robinson from declaring last year the warmest in “recorded history,” which dates back much earlier than 1880, but sounds much scarier. No dogma here. Just the facts.

If Republicans were more clever, they could talk about climate change the way President Obama talks about everything, by trolling the more extreme, dogmatic elements of the left’s climate hysteria, and highlighting the absurdity of those who claim to understand something as infinitely complex as the climate with absolute certainty.