I may not be a tenured professor of Atmospheric Sciences, and I certainly lack the audacity to append a misleading Nobel Prize to my credentials, but I do know soft science when I see it. But, I can muster the fortitude to pit my amateurism against a trained professional in his chosen field, and for good reason. It’s true that climate alarmism is rampant; terms like ‘catastrophic’ abound. Yet, it has been a full decade since we’ve seen any warming at all.

It is too easy to dole out platitudes about climate modeling, the temperature of Venus, and 4 degrees of warming in the next century, but the fact of the matter is all too dubious – Planet Earth is now no warmer than it was in 1995. I wonder how Professor Schlesinger’s “simple mathematical climate model” feels about that. I wonder if Professor Schlesinger would have us believe that models, breaking down over a mere decade, can accurately forecast the next 90 years. These are reasonable questions which must be answered expeditiously by any objective scientist.

The objective scientist, then, must also demonstrate that climate anomaly is anthropogenic and reversible, and that such reversal is economically beneficial. Platitudes about carbon taxation smack of a priori conclusions and covert agenda. A reasonable man would demand extraordinary evidence before calling for a functional ban on industrialization. Then again, a reasonable man would also note significant cooling experienced in 2007 and adjust his hypothesis accordingly, rather than slavishly forcing a ‘green’ agenda.

I’m not saying Professor Schlesinger is an unreasonable man, only that he works in an unreasonable field. The climatologist shouting ‘global warming’ is of course a fixture of media, but I suggest he revisit the scientific method. I, on the other hand, will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of more data.