Date: November 26, 2013
From: Bob Tisdale
To: Lewis Black and George Clooney
Subject: Human-Induced Global Warming
Gentlemen:
First, let me congratulate and thank you for your efforts in disaster relief and other charities.
With that said, I’ve written to you both because a recent statement about climate change by George reminded me of a couple by Lewis.
At the Britannia Awards, in a response to what must’ve been a question about the recent typhoon that stuck the Philippines, George, you said in part:
If you have 99 percent of doctors who tell you ‘you are sick’ and 1 percent that says ‘you’re fine,’ you probably want to hang out with, check it up with the 99. You know what I mean?
Let me ask: Would you see a podiatrist or a proctologist for a sore throat?
The climate science community, under the direction of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), has only been tasked with determining whether manmade factors, primarily carbon dioxide, could be responsible for the recent bout of global warming, and what the future might bring if the real world responds to projected increases in manmade greenhouse gases in ways that are similar to climate models. They were not asked to determine if naturally caused, sunlight-fueled processes could have caused the global warming over the past 30 years, or to determine the contribution of those natural factors in the future—thus all of the scrambling by climate scientists who are now trying to explain the hiatus in global warming. Refer to the IPCC’s History webpage (my boldface):
Today the IPCC’s role is as defined in Principles Governing IPCC Work, “…to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation…”