Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City grasped the mantle of dumbest of the dumb from the arms of Debbie Wasserman Schultz by saying two particular things in one paragraph: he is supporting Barack Obama, and it is because Mr. Obama cares about global warming.

Reeling from the Tropical Behemoth Storm Sandy, the mayor gave up the ghost of reason…for what? A special-order Obamaphone and a seat on the fifty-yard line when Iran sends rockets into Israel?

On the science, this is as dumb as it gets. Watts Up With That has a nice rebuttal, including mention of more powerful storm surges in hurricanes of three hundred or more years ago. Unless the Industrial Revolution started a lot earlier than anyone knows, the thesis of global warming causation of Sandy is utter bunk.

On the issues of science, liberals rarely say anything but that they are committed to good science, even as they ignore the actual requirements of the scientific method in their decisions. For example, on climate threats, they assure you they are right, even though there are studies that support concluding that human CO₂ emissions are fairly benign. Is the heat retention that man-made CO₂ emissions can cause really a dangerous climate threat? Why is not the degree-or-so warming of the atmosphere that even doubling CO₂ would cause this century beneficial, since CO₂ increases crop growth? Yet the president’s own science adviser has suggested that people who question whether man-made warming is a huge, dangerous worldwide threat are heretics and in need of punishment. Does that kind of thought and reaction give you confidence in the wisdom and intelligence of the leaders of our nation today?

The idea that man-made emissions threaten catastrophe is unproven. In fact, the marked changes predicted by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) simply are not occurring in the time, degree, or manner foreseen.

In simple terms, a scientific theory of how things work is plausible only as long as its predictions are always correct. Although billions of dollars are spent on sophisticated computer programs that simulate how the alarmists think the climate and weather work, these very computer programs fail to be right. They predict that a warming of the troposphere must be taking place, but radiosonde and other data do not find the heat where it “must be.” These same computer programs utterly fail to predict future climate conditions (i.e., known present conditions) when fed the known past decades of data. Thus, an elementary necessary condition for a hypothesis to be valid — namely, that its predictions actually occur — is missing. But the Democrats are in total denial of these serious faults in their thought. In fact, their platform makes an absolute commitment on the issue:

We know that global climate change is one of the biggest threats of this generation – an economic, environmental, and national security catastrophe in the making. We affirm the science of climate change, commit to significantly reducing the pollution that causes climate change, and know we have to meet this challenge by driving smart policies that lead to greater growth in clean energy generation and result in a range of economic and social benefits.

The Republican platform is balanced and non-committal; they clearly do not think that controlling carbon dioxide under current EPA rules makes sense. Mr. Romney has an inquiring attitude, while Mr. Obama is totally committed to carbon control. Not only is Mr. Obama’s policy misguided on the need, but it is sure to cripple our country.

Mr. Sheldon is an attorney in private practice in Chicago, where he concentrates on environmental law issues. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School and a registered Republican. The views stated are his own and not made on behalf of any client or firm.