Originally Published: May 2008
http://www.lehighpatriot.com/issues/article.php?id=77
Apocalypses have always been cool. It’s just a fact of life. Would Will Smith be as cool as he is without his many apocalyptic thrillers such as Independence Day, Men In Black, and I Am Legend? I think not. The point is, if you are a group of people desperately in need of some popularity and attention, the best way to fix that is to start an apocalypse theory. It is with this fact in mind that our journey begins.
We will start with two groups of people who no one ever really paid attention to: climatologists and environmentalists. Climatologists have the difficult job of modeling and predicting the results of a system with no controllable variables. Environmentalists have the equally difficult job of convincing everyone around them to act with regards to possible future effects as opposed to definite immediate effects. Looking at what both groups are trying to do, it’s no wonder they’ve both been shunned in the past.
Environmentalists and climatologists are smart people, and they didn’t like the fact that no one was paying attention to them. Far off, in a remote forest in
Global Warming, GW for short, was a great kid. He was much cuter and warmer than all the other celebrity babies, and he was universally loved. But with Global Warming’s fame and fortune came the inevitable rise of its parents into the mainstream media spotlight. Climatologists shouted out the news that GW was the fulfillment of a prophecy which stated that as soon as a child was born out of two androgynous entities that a great heat wave would melt all ice, and force everyone to drink warm lemonade. Oh, all that ice melting would also flood the costal regions of the world, where 90 percent of the world’s population resides. Then, the Environmentalists appeared with their well-crafted answer of what everyone could do to prevent this prophecy that GW had brought with him. Finally, the whole world would be compelled to heed the predictions of the climatologists, and follow the environmentalist’s Ten Commandments. Their diabolical plan had worked.
The preceding story is obviously not real, but it does serve a very important purpose. The essence of the story is that the motives of the architects behind global warming need to be looked at. Sure, science is supposed to be above this. Science ought to be impartial and unbiased. But Scientists are human beings, and just like the rest of us, they are prone to pushing agendas without regarding the integrity of the claims behind their agenda. A perfect example of the attitude that is held by not all, but not just a handful of people in the global warming arena can be seen in the following quote of Stephen Schneider, the lead report author of the 2007 UN IPCC report on climate change:
“To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective and being honest.”
Look at it this way. If climatologists predicted that the world would be in good shape over the next 100 years and that everything would remain relatively stable, what do you think would happen to their funding? My guess is that their work would continue of course, but some funding would very likely be directed to many other branches of research. The problem with climatology is that it is not as precise, testable, or as promising as most other fields in science.
Global warming has been treated as a scientific fact. All three presidential candidates have talked about curbing emissions to reduce the warming, and a vast majority of the scientific community treats global warming as a fact. But sadly, nothing in science is a fact. All throughout history, science has had to update its theories. There was a time when spontaneous generation was an accepted scientific principle. The world was flat. The sun rotated around the earth. Light in space traveled through the ether. Just as we are sure that all of those ideas are wrong, we can be sure that there are scientific theories today that are blatantly false. This is why open discourse is needed on subjects, and those who challenge established ideas must be heard.
My rationale for questioning global warming mainly hinges upon how precise a science such as climatology can be. The main problem with climatology is that it is not testable. By that I mean that climatologists do not have at their disposal a way to control inputs and predict the results. Climate change models on computers mainly rely on historical data to predict future results. While this definitely has merits, it is impossible to test and verify data and relationships. You cannot state ideas as scientific fact when the only evidence is historical trends. History holds thousands of variables, and so while there may be a correlation, it does not necessarily mean dependence. Both variables could be dependent on a third variable, or on both a third and a fourth variable, and so on. That is why science designs experiments with only two variables.
Obviously, there is a scientific connection between emissions and the greenhouse effect. But in a system such as the earth where there are, again, thousands of variables, predicting the future is very difficult. In an article in 21st Century Science and Technology in 2004, Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski asserts that solar cycles are the main factor in determining climate. This makes sense to me. Surely no one can assert that solar cycles don’t have any affect on our climate. Dr. Jaworoski’s conclusion is that we are heading into the next ice age, and that “This disaster will be incomparably more calamitous than all the doomsday prophecies of the proponents of the man-made global warming hypothesis.” He cites a fair number of other scientific articles which also speak of another ice age approaching. Read his article, and then read a piece on global warming and you will have no idea what the temperature change will be over the next 100 years.
The conflict between these two ideas is what brings me to my final point. If we don’t know for sure which way we are headed, then why are we looking to radically curtail economic growth in the name of preventing global warming? Should we waste less, recycle more, and provide incentives to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases through innovation? Absolutely. The problem is, environmental activists don’t just want that. They want us to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, and even take more drastic measures. According to a 1999 study by two Yale economists, ratifying the Kyoto Protocol would result in an economic loss of $400,000,000,000 for the
That’s a lot of money for us to simply give up on in the name of preventing something that may or may not happen. Furthermore, we don’t even know what climate would be best for earth. Warmer weather could result in longer growing seasons, allowing for more food to be produced. More importantly though, eventually we will have another Ice Age like the one we had 14,000 years ago, which covered all of modern day
My point, basically, is this: global warming should not be blindly accepted as completely truthful, apocalyptic, and a need for action. Indeed, if it is true, and the most dangerous change in climate that we may face, then we should act. But for the reasons outlined here, as well as others that won’t quite fit into this article, I don’t believe that global warming is. Is the current warming trend going to continue? If it is, is this a bad thing? If it is, can we even hope to reverse it? If we can, is the damage prevented worth the costs? My answer to all of these questions is no, but I can understand the rationale behind answering yes to any of these. Look through these questions, do some research to find both sides of the issue, and then answer these four questions for yourself. But think about it, if you answer ‘No’ to any one of these questions, then you should not support the radical actions of all the remaining presidential candidates. We should care for the environment, but we cannot do this at the great expense posed by the current options. Giving Americans the time to come up with an innovative solution is a much more appropriate action given everything we truly know at this point. It is a shame that our next leader as President will not share this point of view.
Schneider quote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schneider
Jaworoski article: http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202004/Winter2003-4/global_warming.pdf
Kyoto Economic article: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/Kyoto.pdf
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