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I thought my reply was pretty clear. Where did I mention “feelings” in it? If the data show that the earth is getting warmer, what good does it do to deny this? We are Conservatives; we are supposed to deal with reality. Data is reality. Now, models are based on hypotheses about WHY the earth is warming; those are arguable. However, if you truly want to argue it, you must develop your own hypothesis about why the earth is getting warmer. You must work through the consequences of that hypothesis and make predictions about future climactic behavior based on it. If those predictions come true, well you have just developed a better model and it will be taken seriously. If not, back to the drawing board. That’s how science works. Of course, scientists are not immune to political influence; that’s why the models that are out there are the ones being worked upon. That’s why it’s incumbent upon Conservatives to not reject the premise, but rather work on alternative models of climate behavior.

I agree with Kerry’s logic insofar as to say that we should not deny the observations. It is hard to do climate science from a starting point of denying the observations, though. That’s why we should not do so. Why should recognizing that the world is warming, trying to figure out why, and trying to figure out what (if anything) to do about it be considered a liberal thing to do?

I just think bad science is much like bad speech. The remedy is not to shut it down, but to counter it with good science (or speech). It’s tough to do good science if your starting point is denial of the data.

Science has a pretty darn good track record of both increasing our basic understanding of the universe and of improving our standard of living by fostering technological advances. Why would you want to just reject science out of hand when you don’t like the results? That’s what the Soviets did, and it set their scientific programs back immeasurably. My thought is just to recognize the bad science (and the whole climate science community HAS become politicized so there is a rather large potential for bad science in it) and replace it with better science. We conservatives should play a role in that, but to do so we cannot deny basic observational data because we think it doesn’t fit our ideological position.