Faith-Based Science 1: Anthropogenic Global Warming
By Joe Mariani (06/19/06)
Anthropogenic global warming is still the favorite myth of the hip Liberal crowd these days, despite holes in AGW theory through which one could drive an SUV. Because studies have shown a one-degree rise in the global mean temperature over the last 150 years, the Left feels justified in demanding that our (meaning primarily American) technology and industry be virtually decimated. A particularly warm or cool year can alter the mean out of proportion. Such a hot spike occurred in 1997, for instance, and all successive years have all been cooler. Yet we rarely hear the global warming alarmists mention this or other facts that might dampen the hysteria they need to push their agenda.
The one-degree rise in global mean temperature is not only within the normal statistical variation for temperatures, but is also far from abnormal. The only constant upon which we can depend is change. More dramatic temperature changes -- in both directions -- can be seen in estimated historical temperature readings going back over 600 million years. The Earth, in fact, is only just emerging from a depression in global mean temperature known as the Little Ice Age. Temperatures began to fall around the world in the 15th century, and began to rise again in the middle of the 19th. Those who insist that a one-degree increase in global temperature since then is either unprecedented or cause for panic are indulging in bad science to "prove" a viewpoint they've already decided must be true.
Alarmists like former Vice President Al Gore point to high carbon dioxide levels as "proof" that the Earth is doomed. (Plants, which are flourishing on the increased CO2, might disagree.) However, as Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified before Canada's Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, CO2 data alone does not indicate an emergency. "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Temperature and CO2 levels for the past 400,000 years shown side by side indicate that increases in global mean temperature actually precede a corresponding rise in the CO2 level. In other words, we've most likely already experienced the temperature increase to which the current CO2 level increase is related.
Carbon dioxide is far from being the only determining factor in the global temperature. Those who consider only CO2 levels when discussing climate change completely ignore the effects of sulfur dioxide and aerosols (both of which have a cooling effect on the climate), water vapor, methane, land usage, albedo (the amount of sunlight reflected back into space) and dozens of other factors whose impact on global temperature is still not completely understood, like solar output.
According to Sami Solanki, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, "The sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently -- in the last 100 to 150 years." This brightening just happens to correspond to the temperature rise that marked the ending of the Little Ice Age. Other studies indicate that solar radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade at least since the late 1970's. "This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change," said Richard Willson, a Columbia University researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Since the satellite technology used to monitor the Sun's radiation has only been available since the late 1970's, we cannot yet determine the time frame of the increased radiation. Mukul Sharma, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth, has linked the 100,000-year global warming/cooling cycle to a similar cycle in the Sun's magnetic field. In other words, not enough research has been done to support the conclusions that have been declared hard, cold fact by the AGW alarmists. How can a responsible person simply ignore the Sun's effect on the Earth's global temperature, especially when Mars, Saturn's moon Triton and even Pluto have shown signs of recent global warming?
We are told that there is a "consensus among scientists" that humans are responsible for the coming destruction. The problem is that most of those "scientists" are not climate change cause experts, but climate change impact experts. In other words, they study the effects of climate change, not its cause -- and climate change research brings in big money these days. Science is not a democratic endeavor in which one can vote on the facts. If it were, the Earth would actually have been flat during the Middle Ages.
The mainstream media does little to report the truth of the matter. For example, Time magazine recently ran a cover article warning readers to "Be Worried, Be Very Worried" about global warming. The related articles are nothing more than the worst sort of fear-mongering hysteria, showcasing assumptions as facts, hysterics as experts and accusations as research. "The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame... Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us." At no point, for instance, does the magazine interview or even mention the 17,800 scientists who signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's rejection of the claims made by AGW hysterics. That's what passes for journalism today in what was once a reputable magazine.
Whether a one-degree increase in temperature over a 150-year period coinciding with increased solar output is even significant, or indicative of future trends, should be open for debate. Instead, proponents of the "faith-based science" of anthropogenic global warming have effectively closed the case even as research uncovers new, often conflicting information. We know from the available data that the Earth's temperature has risen and fallen on its own since long before humans existed to interfere. Even if we are contributing to the current cycle, how do the alarmists propose we "freeze" global warming, so to speak? Even if global warming was entirely due to human influence (which it's demonstrably not) how do they propose we deal with it -- kill off 90% of the human species and retreat to the caves? How would that help stop the eventual, inevitable, entirely natural changes in the Earth's climate?
Global warming hysteria is merely anti-Western, anti-capitalist political activism masquerading as science. The aim of its proponents, aside from the gullible college crowd that might actually swallow such unproven conclusions uncritically, is to use fear to take power. Let's not be foolish enough to destroy ourselves without a thorough examination of their claims.
http://guardian.blogdrive.com/archive/cm-06_cy-2006_m-06_d-18_y-2006_o-0.html
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