Just like the “Pet Rock” fad of the 1970’s, “man-made global warming” is now officially part of pop culture past. It rode off into the warm sunset along with Al Gore’s relevance and Rosy O’Donnell’s television career. I look forward to a future episode of “VH1’s I love the New Millennium” where they gather a bunch of comedians to time warp back to 2008 and cleverly lampoon all the environmental religious left folks who scared school children into thinking the world was going to end in the name of man-made global warming.
I received word a few hours shy of publishing this column today that man-made global warming was attempting to make a comeback. This time, however, it has a brand new PR team behind it, and will now go by the name “climate change”.
Growing up in the shadow of Berkeley, I have crossed paths with many people over the years that practice environmental based religions like climate change. Even though I am what you would call a “climate change agnostic”, I believe everyone should have the protected freedom to pursue his or her own brand of personal spiritual enlightenment.
My problem with the church of climate change began when the religious left started blurring the lines between personal conservation and public policy. When climate change suddenly transitioned from a personal religious belief to a full-blown bureaucratic state controlled tool to create new taxes and increase the size of government. A “big brother” that wants to monitor your home thermostat and mandate how you run your business.
The environmental religious left in this country has become everything they detest about the Christian religious right. And more.
Comments
Are you sure you ever grew up, Steven?
I find articles like yours simply amusing - if it wasn't about misguiding people who seek the truth and have a right to know the truth.
Now, nothing is as further from being a religion as science is. This is because science is based on facts and proof only. Every article published in a scientific journal undergoes scrutinising scientific audit before being released. No proof, no scientific publication and no ‘whatsoever’ thesis. And the scientific thesis of climate change is sufficiently sound to make us highly confident that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming far beyond the 'natural variations' during the last centuries. And these vast and already visible climate changes have been assessed (yes, again by scientist of many subjects all over the world) over and over again and there is overwhelming agreement that the impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change are very serious indeed. I really don't understand why these facts are so notoriously ignored by journalists of your kind. No, it's not all conspiracy, its proven science from independent scientists all over the world. Actually there is no need to disprove any of you arguments 'Why Anthropogenic Caused Climate Change is a Lie' because you didn't give any! But the truth is out there, please stop ignoring it. Like science also policy must stop acting in a religious manner. There are no Conservatives and Democrats when people in the tropics will feel the severity of climate change the first. Sea levels will rise and the storm severity will increase due to climate change in the coming years. Our task is to reduce the impacts to our very best abilities by accepting scientific facts and acting on it. This is neither about policy nor about selling stories - this is human lives at risk!
Rainman: Learn to write grammatically before you lecture anyone on facts. And try extending your reading to the factual articles that do expose the global warming hoax.
Yes, of course. Climate change is a religion, not logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
Never mind the nice straw man you set up about environmentalists "detesting" religious Christians. Way to rile up your base.
@MWLX Sorry for not being gramatically correct all the time but English is not my native language, just another language I speak. Your personal attack (grammar) reminds me actually of an saying in the law: If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts and law are against you, attack the prosecution. And that describes very much what's going here. I am a meteorologist for some years and I do know the physics behind the facts. Where did you get your 'knowledge' from? I still haven't heard any argument why Climate Change is a hoax? Give me an arguement and I will proof you wrong. With scientific facts/reality. I listen?
Rainman wrote:
>And the scientific thesis of climate change is sufficiently sound to make us highly confident that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming far beyond the 'natural variations' during the last centuries. And these vast and already visible climate changes have been assessed (yes, again by scientist of many subjects all over the world) over and over again and there is overwhelming agreement that the impacts of anthropogenic induced climate change are very serious indeed.
Well... Rainman, I am a physicist (Ph.D. from Stanford) who has followed the global-climate modeling efforts for several decades (I’m old enough to remember when the fear was global cooling, rather than global warming).
No, there really, really is not "overwhelming agreement" that the consequences of anthropogenic global warming are "very serious indeed."
I suspect you have not really looked into the scientific research for yourself.
Yes, anthropogenic CO2 is most likely making the climate at least a teeny bit warmer than it would otherwise be.
But the key question is: how much warmer?
To answer that question we need good global climate models, and the models are not in fact very good -- primarily because climate science is fiendishly complicated. The physics of cloud formation alone is enough to give any physicist nightmares! The response of the biosphere to increaded CO2 and higher temperatures (both of which tend to increase plant and phtosynthesizing microbe growth that will absorb CO2), the variations in wind and oceanic circulation due to climate change, etc. -- all of this is complex at a level as so far to escape human understanding.
Similar points can be made about the difficulty of analyzing empirical data on rises in sea level, average global temperature, etc.
It is time for those of us who are scientifically literate to start exposing the lies. Yes, we are probably increasing global temperature over what it otherwise would be at least a teeny bit. No, we do not know how much. No, we have no proof at all that anthropogenic global warming will end in disaster.
Those who claim otherwise are motivated by religion, not science.
Let’s stop the lying.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
Hi Dave,
Thanks for taking the time and entering the discussion.
To my background, I have a master in meteorology and work as climate change analyst for a leading energy company. As such I have indeed looked into the science of climate change and continue doing so on a daily basis. This is how I came across this article in the first place.
However, I still haven't heard a single argument why the IPCC climate predictions are 'lies'.
It seems to me you accept the fact that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and our dispute is only about the severity of the climate change induced impacts. First of all 'teeny' is not a very scientific term and I challenge you to tell me how much anthropogenic climate change you consider being 'teeny' and more importantly how much 'teeny' change does it take to have a major effect on our day-to-day living (well, it already has!).
When you dispute that there is overwhelming evidence for ongoing severe climate change you argue with the unreliability of global circulation models (GCMs). In fact climate models are now able to reproduce past & present changes in the global climate rather well. And it doesn't take to completely understand every single process (like cloud growth but indeed there are endless processes) to model the combined effects which make the climate. If this was the case, there would be no modelling at all as there are always at least tiny subatomic processes not explained by modern physics but nevertheless all these processes take part of the overall modelled (!) process. At the end of the day, every model is an approximation of reality and a model can only be judged by its ability to withstand refutation of its basic principles and to being in agreement with reality/observations. And the current accuracy of GCMs makes GCMs a reliable guide to the direction of future climate change.
Often climate change critics also use the ocean heat content (OHC) argument to 'proof' the IPCC findings wrong. I'm just waiting that someone brings this up as it's a classic example of overambitious scientists using biased data to argue a point before realising and admitting that the data was indeed biased. Despite this being known the legend of ‘OHC proofs GCMs wrong’ is still out there. Is it so hard to 'think again'?
I (have to) read all these articles pro and contra climate change and I would hope you do the same: don't just listen what one side has to say and condemn the other side. That would be religion.
And the religious part comes at a later point in time: Praying for YOU not being as severely affected by climate change impacts as for instance the people in developing countries.
This could be your Judgement Day...
Rainman wrote to me:
> And it doesn't take to completely understand every single process (like cloud growth but indeed there are endless processes) to model the combined effects which make the climate.
That statement really does suggest that you are not scientifically competent.
You added:
> If this was the case, there would be no modelling at all as there are always at least tiny subatomic processes not explained by modern physics but nevertheless all these processes take part of the overall modelled (!) process.
Indeed. But any scientifically literate person understands that quark physics is not particularly relevant to climate change but that cloud formation is. You know that.
You also wrote:
>It seems to me you accept the fact that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and our dispute is only about the severity of the climate change induced impacts. First of all 'teeny' is not a very scientific term and I challenge you to tell me how much anthropogenic climate change you consider being 'teeny' and more importantly how much 'teeny' change does it take to have a major effect on our day-to-day living (well, it already has!).
You are not telling the truth.
You have no convincing evidence that there “already has” been a “major effect on our day-to-day living” from anthropogenic climate change.
You also know as well as I of the political games that were played in the IPCC, etc. Sadly, all of this has become not science, but politics (and environmentalist religion).
I know that these are blunt statements, but they are true.
And I did not define “teeny” for the simple and obvious reason that I was making the point, that, while human CO2 production probably has made the climate warmer than what it otherwise would have been, we simply do not know how much more.
I intentionally chose the vague word “teeny” to emphasize strongly how vague our understanding of the matter is.
I can no more give a scientific definition of “teeny” than you can provide scientific evidence for the actual magnitude of anthropogenic global warming. That was precisely my point.
You also wrote:
> Often climate change critics also use the ocean heat content (OHC) argument to 'proof' the IPCC findings wrong. I'm just waiting that someone brings this up as it's a classic example of overambitious scientists using biased data to argue a point before realising and admitting that the data was indeed biased.
The problem, as you well know, is that there are a half-dozen scientific points such as this that could be raised. The GCMs have fluttered hither and yon, with numerous “fudge factors” and special effects being adjusted to try to model the empirical data.
That is not good science.
I doubt frankly that you received a good scientific education at a good university or you would know this. My Ph.D. is from Stanford. Where is your master’s from and, indeed, why not give us all your actual name as I have done so we can look into your background and judge your real level of expertise?
Let me suggest a simple way of telling who knows what they are talking about on all this.
As you know, the earth has gone through numerous Ice Ages in the last million years.
Empirical evidence indicates that those Ice Ages correlate with various features of the earth’s orbit and rotation – precession of the equinoxes, variations in orbital eccentricity, etc.: this is the so-called Milankovich theory.
However, it has been very difficult to see how these celestial-mechanical causes manage to result in the observed climate effects.
Any GCM truly able to predict the climate effects of anthropogenic CO2 should also be able to explain the Ice Ages.
So, where is such a theory?
Where is the GCM that accurately and convincingly explains how the Milankovich forcing produced the Ice Ages?
Show my that GCM, show me the evidence that the scientific community agrees that this GCM truly and accurately explains the Ice Ages (including such features as the “Younger Dryas” event, the “Little Ice Age” of the early modern era, etc.) and I will concede your point.
We both know you can’t.
And we both know that a scientific theory that cannot even explain past observations is of zero value in predicting the future.
Do I think you are lying, Rainman? Let’s just say that your religious faith (and perhaps the self-interest involved in your job!) is a powerful motive indeed.
To any non-scientist reading this: climate change is worthy of serious scientific research. Unfortunately, such research is not being offered by people like Rainman or by the environmentalist sooth-sayers in the mass media who are simply lying about the relevant science.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
This is interesting. The guy who works for the energy company supports the argument global warming. Rainman, how does your company benefit or not benefit if the poltical establishment supports human made global warming or if it does indeed taking place? It is also interesting how arguments against Rainman's position attack Rainman. Who at the universities is publishing papers debunking man made climate change and approximately what percentage of the total number of researchers publishing on this subject do they represent. Answers tike "tiny" or "most" are OK since I have limited scietnific educaTION AND MY grammar is atrocios.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!