Climate Change and Other Sure Things

Climate Change and Other Sure Things

The View from the Middle

Let me start out by admitting that I am a climate change agnostic.  I don’t doubt that our climate is changing.  I just doubt that we understand why, and we are far from certain that man is responsible.  If you are like me, some people will try to strip you of your right to that opinion.  They will tell you that everyone agrees with them and no one thinks as you do.  You must be wrong.  But science and society have been absolutely cocksure before and yet turned out to be dead wrong.

In the mid 19^th century, French mathematician Urbain LeVerrier was absolutely convinced that there was another planet in our solar system orbiting the sun inside of Mercury.  He published his findings in 1843 and persuaded the world of the existence of the planet Vulcan.  There were even Vulcan sightings by established astronomers based on LeVerrier’s confident theory.  Then Einstein came along and proved that Vulcan was – well, not so much.

Blood letting was established science for almost 2,000 years in Europe with support by great names like Hippocrates and Galen, and was actually still being used by some physicians as late as the early 1900’s.  The geocentric universe (earth is the center and the sun rotates around it) was absolute science until Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler set the world straight in the mid 1500’s. 

The point is, when people tell you that they are absolutely positive about anything, especially future events, it’s OK to be a little skeptical.  For example, five years ago, Al Gore assured us that the polar ice cap would be totally gone in five years.   That would be now, right?  Let me check – oops it’s still there.

In 2005 the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) predicted that by 2010 we would have 50 million climate refugees displaced by rising sea levels, desertification and shrinking water supplies.  When asked recently what happened to their predictions, they denied making them.  When reporters documented their projections, the UNEP simply moved the goal post to 2020.  Nifty strategy.

When a climate change fanatic lectures you and uses Al Gore as a source, feel free to be suspicious.  Al has already made millions off of the green-mania movement.  He is now 50 times wealthier than he was as Vice President and he is positioned to make billions by selling carbon offsets through his LLP – Generation Investment Management (GIM).  It’s safe to say he has “a vested interest.”

Even scientists need to be thoroughly questioned and checked.  Francis Bacon, famous philosopher and scientist, identified four categories of “false knowledge”.  The first he called ”Idols of the Tribe”, which suggested that human nature causes man to exaggerate and even distort their findings to support things they believe in.  He said, “these imaginings…are mingled with the facts” until fact and fiction become inseparable. 

This describes the scientists who have created models to predict the impact of Global Warming.  They fall in love with their models and will do almost anything to defend them.  We should hold these models up to scrutiny and diligently check their accuracy.  Do they really predict how the climate will change?

A group of science purists at the Journal Nature Climate Change took a look at 117 of these latest predictions and found that 114 or 97.4% were wrong, over estimating global temperature changes.  This shows that these scientists are more in love with their models than with the search for truth.

No matter what truth is, climate is a slow moving dynamic.  No matter what Al Gore says, the polar ice cap will not be gone in five years and New York will not be under water by 2020.  There is much evidence that our world is in a warm period, but there is also evidence that we have been through this cycle several times over thousands of years when man clearly was not the cause.  Are we about to begin to cool off anyway?  This may explain the 17-year pause we have just experienced where we have seen no change in global temperatures.

Should we be good stewards of God’s planet?  Absolutely! Should we continue to do research to get to the truth about climate change?  Sure!  We need to manage our resources and diligently work to eliminate pollution on our planet.  We could also do the world a favor and convince China and India to join us. 

We should not, however, panic and spend trillions of dollars to line the pockets of the "Al Gores" of the world just to find out that the climate will continue to change no matter what we do.  Remember, the plan is to borrow those trillions and add it to the tab our children will have to pay.