New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman today ridiculed the idea that Eastern blizzards proved that climate change was "a hoax and, therefore, we need not bother with all this girly-man stuff like renewable energy, solar panels and carbon taxes. Just drill, baby, drill." Friedman said the lampooning had arrived at a point where serious debate on the issue might not be possible.
Friedman noted that some climate scientists might have made erroneous assumptions, and he suggested the climate-science community "should convene its top experts--from places like NASA, America's national laboratories, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, the California Institute of Technology and the U.K. Met Office Hadley Centre--and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it 'What We Know,' summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes."
Such an effort also should include a "summary of all the errors and wild exaggerations made by the climate skeptics--and where they get their funding. It is time the climate scientists stopped just playing defense."
