10/19/2002

don't discount empirical evidence

The icecap on Kilimanjaro, at the border of Kenya and Tanzania near the equator, seen in 1912.The summit, photographed in 2000

If perfect is the enemy of good, then sometimes proof is the enemy of action. Empirical evidence is not enough to prove causation from correlation, but there is a point at which the common-sense filter simply has to apply.

Fact: The ice cap on Mount Kilimanjaro formed 11,000 years ago.

Fact: the ice fields at the summit have shrunk by 80% in the last century.

Prediction: the snow cap will be gone in one or two decades.

Twenty years from now, I will look back at this archived blog entry, and show it to the idiotarians who still insist that global warming is a liberal fable.

UPDATE: Note that those people who simply have doubts about some of the science, but who don't dismiss all evidence of warming out of hand, are not who I am labeling idiotarians.

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