Very often, when I talk to the public or the media about global warming (a low-frequency positive trend in global temperature in the last 120 years or so), they ask me the unfortunate question if I “believe” in global warming.
And I say “unfortunate” because when we are dealing with a scientific problem “believing” has no place. In science, we either prove or disprove.
We “believe” only when we cannot possibly prove a truth. For example, we may “believe” in reincarnation or an afterlife but we cannot prove either.
One may argue that when we are dealing with a scientific problem, such as global warming, for which we cannot obtain unquestionable experimental confirmation as to what is causing it (for the simple reason that we cannot repeat this experiment; we only have one realization of climate evolution), we may form an opinion based on the existing scientific evidence in hand, current knowledge, possible theories and hypotheses.
But we should be skeptical of claims that the science of a complicated and unpredictable system is settled.
Nobody argues that the temperature of the planet is not increasing in the last 120 years or so. Yes, the temperature is increasing overall. But there are a lot of questions regarding why that is.
In the current state of affairs regarding global warming, opinion is divided into two major factions.
A large portion of climate scientists argues that most, if not all of the recent warming, is due to anthropogenic effects, which originate largely from carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
Another portion is on the other extreme: Those who argue that humans have nothing to do with global warming and that all this fuss is a conspiracy to bring the industrial world down.
The latter group calls the former group “the catastrophists” or “the alarmists,” whereas the former group calls the latter group “the deniers.”
This childish division is complemented by another group, the “skeptics,” which includes those like me who question the extreme beliefs and try to look at all scientific evidence before we form an opinion (by the way, the former group also considers skeptics to be deniers).
In the realm of deniers, skeptics, and believers, science has been compromised. I usually don’t bother with pseudo-scientists, media, and ignorant people abusing the freedom of the Internet by writing and posting nonsense comments.
But I have grown wary of what is going on with the debate on the overblown and misdirected issue of global warming — a case in point is “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd saying he will no longer give time to global warming “deniers” and also that the “science is settled.” (SEE ALSO: Chuck Todd Gets Schooled By Climatologist)
The fact that scientists who show results not aligned with the mainstream are labeled deniers is the backward mentality.
We don’t live in the medieval times when Galileo had to admit to something that he knew was wrong to save his life. Science is all about proving, not believing.
In that regard, I am a skeptic not just about global warming but also about many other aspects of science.
All scientists should be skeptics. Climate is too complicated to attribute its variability to one cause. We first need to understand the natural climate variability (which we clearly don’t; I can debate anybody on this issue).
Only then we can assess the magnitude and reasons for climate change. Science would have never advanced if it were not for the skeptics.
All model projections made for the 21st century failed to predict the slowdown of the planet’s warming despite the fact that carbon dioxide emissions kept on increasing.
Science is never settled. If science were settled, then we should pack things up and go home.
My research over the years is focused on climate variability and climate dynamics. It is my educated opinion that many forces have shaped global temperature variation.
Human activity, the oceans, extraterrestrial forces (solar activity and cosmic rays) and other factors are all in the mix.
It may very well be that human activity is the primary reason, but having no strong evidence of the actual percent effect of these three major players, I will attribute 1/3 to each one of them.
Two final points. First, all the interactions of humans with the environment are part of our technological evolution. During this evolution, we could not go directly from living in the dark ages to clean energy technology.
There was no other way but to use fossil fuels and other pollution-producing agents. Is this enough to ruin the planet by altering the climate system, a system that has undergone major changes throughout the ages?
Second, while we should try our best to take care of our planet, global warming is not the only urgent planetary emergency.
Overpopulation, poverty, infectious diseases and the effect of globalization in spreading them, the water crisis, energy and food availability and safety, political instability and terrorism, the global economy, even cybersecurity, are far more urgent problems with potentially catastrophic results for humanity.
• Anastasios Tsonis is an emeritus distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of more than 130 peer-reviewed papers and nine books.
Read more at Washington Times
Liberal idiots stranded in their homes because they were dumb enough to beleive all this Global Warming/Climate Change poppycock they threw away al their warm coats and snow shovels because they were stupid enough to beleive all of this malarkey from Greenpeace/NRDC,EDF AND Al Gore AS WELL AS Leonardo DiCaprio and Laurie David they also cut off their fossil fuels to keep thei home warming and their shivering in their homes
I couldn’t agree with you more. The more recent term is “lukewarmers”. I have not met many extreme deniers. Most just don’t think man’s contribution is the control knob. I don’t debate alarmists because they can’t explain past events like the little ice age, the medieval max, the Roman warming, the decrease in temp. from roughly the 1950’s till the 70’s, etc. In fact they actually “deny” that these events even happened. They say they were regional. They claim that the cooling from the 50’s to the 70’s didn’t even occur claiming GISS adjustments show only warming etc. Funny, believing climatologists at the time were worried about an ice age, but they couldn’t read temperatures correctly. If a “peer reviewed” paper is found to counter alarmist claims, the authors are attacked over funding sources, their intelligence, their conclusions, their associations, etc. I learned that the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huff Post are the new science journals, never to be questioned. Now the media tries to suppress research they don’t agree with. Carl Sagan once said that the suppression of facts may be acceptable in politics and religion but it is not the road to knowledge and has no place in science.
Some who have posted comments on this site have tried to belittle “luke-warmers”.
It’s capitulating to the global warming conspiracy. Both sides are guilty of shouting.
My take on human carbon dioxide emissions is that there’s very little downside. It’s not worth going back to doing laundry on the rocks by a stream. I do not accept the notion that warmer is bad. That would imply that colder is good.
What the environmentalists try to tell us is that we should not behave like animals, selfishly.
This is how the Left wants us to behave. Humans are superior, so we should defer to the weaker species. America is strong and privileged, therefore it should make sacrifices to the United Nations.
All the while they ignore the fact that China is a runaway train. They praise it instead.
“Hey, Xi. We think the Chinese are Third World losers, so we’ll give you a pass on the carbon dioxide thing. Are you OK with that? Thought so.”
Noting that Galileo was persicuted for daring to point out that the Sun and Not the Earth was the center of the Universe and it was Pope John/Paul II that granted him a Pardon and today we are seeing the persicution of Climate Change/Global Warming Skeptics because the Global Warming/Climate Change nuts don’t skeptics rejecting their GAIA poppycock
Mr. Sun is at the centre of the solar system. “Center of the Universe” is colloquial.