Global Warming Hysteria Continues Unabated
 | | How many congressmen and senators do you think will read the whole thing? (NOTE: the climate bill pictured is actually one from earlier in the year that is being replaced by Kerry-Boxer, but the approximate lengths of the two bills is the same) |
The first news story I saw this morning, upon turning on my computer, insists that statisticians reject the possibility of global cooling. Though the article never comes out an says it, the implication is that, since statisticians believe that global cooling is a myth, anthropogenic global warming must be true. I shrugged this off as a typical modern news story; it is hard to go a single day on the AP wire without coming across at least a dozen articles about climate change that either imply or implicitly state that mankind is at fault.
It's an especially shrill time, too. There's going to be a huge political summit in December where world leaders are going to wring their hands over a new climate treaty and make stern pronouncements that any nation opposed to such a treaty is worthy of the worst kind of scorn. At the same time, President Obama is weighing his chances of forcing the cap-and-trade issue even amongst such controversy over health care, and he's tested the waters by preemptively attacking anybody skeptical of manmade global warming (the direct quote from the president who swore to listen to all sides of every issue with an open mind is that opponents will "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change — claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary"). Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer have just introduced the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act," which is yet another 1000-page beast of legislation that few are likely to sift through while many will insist it is the most important legal document ever written and, if it isn't passed immediately, the world is going to come to an end the day after tomorrow.
The message from the political left and the international community is clear: if you are opposed to doing something about climate change, you are evil. The problem, as I've pointed out time and time and again, is that the science isn't nearly as overwhelmingly settled as these politicians, lobbyists, and pundits want you to believe. Additionally, even if there is a problem with industrial carbon dioxide emissions, big government and international intimidation are not the solution; we are moving towards a much greener economy using nothing but market forces, ingenuity, and capitalism. To radically restrict industry before it's ready while the economy is already teetering on the edge of further collapse is tantamount to national suicide, whereas allowing the system to run its natural course would result in an even greener and more prosperous economic future.
 | | Global temperatures sure were stable before the Industrial Revolution! |
Since this is what I believe, I am willing to admit the possibility that my own research into the subject has been tainted by confirmation bias. I disclaim that I am not a climate scientist and, though I have been researching this subject for at least a decade, I do not pretend to be an expert. The people who refuse to make these same disclaimers while self-righteously arguing that the science is settled and that all opposition is driven by greedy self-interest are the people who scare me. I have dilligently tried to maintain an open mind on the subject of manmade global warming and examine the evidence from a dispassionate point of view (and I've changed my mind on several points), but I fear that most of the politicians and eager echo-chamber constituents have not done the same.
There's no sense in arguing that the climate is stagnant; that would be silly. The climate is in a constant state of flux, and the Earth is always going to be in the middle of a trend toward hotter or colder temperatures. This is the nature of climate, and if you extrapolate the possible outcomes of excessive trending, the results will always be catastrophic. Geological history is full of examples of horrific climate, from an Earth that was almost completely covered in ice to an Earth that was so hot and dry that it nearly extinguished all life, even life in the oceans.
However, it is equally foolish to point to a climatic trend and imply that it proves anything. The climate was changing long before mankind started industrializing the world, and it will continue to change for the next few billion years. Granted, if you can come up with a startling correlation between a climatic trend and some theorized cause, it would be worth looking into; however, that makes several extremely dangerous assumptions.
The first is that correlation is the same as causation. While it is true that mathematical skill can be statistically linked to shoe size, it does not mean that every person with big feet is intelligent. In fact, the only way you can correlate shoe size and mathematical skill is to include infants and children in your sampling; they have very small feet and aren't able to do much long division. There could be a similarly spurious correlation when it comes to climate and carbon dioxide.
 | | The 600 year difference is accounted for by the length of time it takes the ocean to catch up to global surface temperatures |
One theory is that carbon dioxide levels influence global temperatures. Another theory is that global temperatures influence carbon dioxide levels. The Earth gets hotter, so more carbon dioxide is released from the ocean (the amounts of this carbon dioxide would ludicrously outweigh the output of human civilization), but carbon dioxide doesn't have any meaningful impact on temperature. If you ask most climate scientists (not politicians, lobbyists, journalists, or blog commenters, but actual climate scientists), they will tell you the second theory is far more likely than the first. Al Gore ignored this possibility in his documentary by refusing to acknowledge that carbon dioxide levels seemed to follow--not precede--temperature changes in the Greenland ice core samples (whether this was a conscious ommission or not, I do not know). There could even be other, more complex explanations, like for instance the possible existence of a third factor that is responsible for changing both global temperature and carbon dioxide levels.
The second dangerous assumption in correlating a climate trend with a theorized cause is the assumption that climate is only meaningfully influenced by a single factor. This is not only potentially misleading, but it is downright ridiculous. Even media alarmists are quick to explain away an apparent lull in rising global temperature as a result of a lower solar input into the climate equation. If it weren't for manmade carbon dioxide, the alarmists say, the Earth would be in the middle of a cooling trend (some people think we might be anyway) and that's why we aren't seeing the dramatic increase in temperature they predicted a decade ago. This argument reveals a huge hole in the anthropogenic global warming theory, because there are literally billions of factors that account for the climate and it is stupid to argue that there is only one (or even just two) of any relevance.
Volcanoes, plate techtonics, changing ocean currents, extrasolar radiation levels, the growing orbit of the moon, radical changes to marine bacteria, the growth and decline of ice sheets, the flux of the Earth's magnetic field, global cloud saturation, and even small-scale meteor showers have all been shown--along with much else--to have an impact on global climate, and yet the alarmists tell us to ignore all of that in favor of a relatively puny increase in carbon dioxide levels. A lot of people buy this because they have mental images of huge billowing clouds of industrial pollution while simultaneously having a very poor understanding of just how enormous the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth are or how many extremely prodigious sources of carbon dioxide there are in nature.
 | | We better take action now to stop this crazy trend! |
But the really scary part are the politicians who run with this idea and decide that immediate action must be taken by every government and citizen on the planet. It's another emergency that governments can use to gain more power and weaken the capitalistic systems that have birthed the modern world. They proclaim that the science is settled--despite the fact that it very clearly is not--and people believe them, especially if the believers and the politicians are of similar political mindsets. The inevitable result of the kind of actions these politicians are calling for would do severe damage to the already fragile global economy and severely hamper the modernization of the third world.
They are taking the dreams of a better Africa, for example, and shitting all over them, all in the name of an academic theory. It immediately brings to mind the DDT ban that wound up causing a huge increase in malaria and other diseases that Africa was on the verge of conquering. DDT, it turns out, might not be harmful to anything but disease-carrying insects (much of the early research into its toxicity in animals and humans has been revealed to have been faked), and yet it is still illegal to give it to those who need it most. Seriously, the way the entire world has been treating Africa is reprehensible, and despite the noble efforts of Bono and Hollywood, nothing has changed.
I am sick to death of hearing politicians tell us that immediate action is required, or else. I'm sick of the United Nations fabricating unanimity and strongarming the United States into giving up our sovereignty because our prosperity is destroying the world. I'm sick of all the stupid sheep-like masses who tell us to buy organic food and dim-ass lightbulbs because we should care about our carbon footprint. I'm sick of journalists who eagerly publish every ludicrous story about how global warming is going to cause massive beer shortages and male pattern baldness in the Wisconsin beaver rabbit while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge the existence of a single study that raises doubt on the anthropogenic climate change gospel. I'm sick of people not realizing how completely and utterly absurd this entire issue has become, and most of all, I'm tired of people abusing science in the name of politics.
-e. magill 10/27/2009
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