NerdWorld Report

Global Warming Fails the Smell Test

Originally published March 28, 2010
Republished May 5, 2024

The Global Warming Alarmist Movement (aka "Warm-mongers") seems like it is fading into an unpleasant and agonizing death. Just about every week or so there is a new revelation that a key claim about global warming was based on some article in the popular trade press and not on peer-reviewed science. Nevertheless, even beyond the apparent non-science behind many of the claims for anthropomorphic global warming, the nature of the purported effects of global warming should have raised skeptical eyebrows in any thoughtful person.

Before beginning a discussion of these points, however, let me state categorically that I am 100% certain that mankind has influenced the global climate... just as termites, wildebeests, mosquitoes, and any other species with a significant global biomass has. What exactly this effect is (cooling, warming, humidity, weather patterns, etc) is unknown, however. In fact, I would not be surprised if the effects are unknowable.

So why should we be skeptical of the claims made by global warm-mongers?

They claim the results of climate change will be uniformity disastrous.

The warm-mongers claim that the changes that are coming will lead to more hurricanes, tornados, droughts, and floods. In other words, any change in the weather will lead to weather that is worse for mankind. Under their reasoning, weather cannot improve! Any change in global climate has to be more than bad; it has to be disastrous. That implies that we currently are enjoying the best possible weather patterns in the history of the world.

But why does the weather have to get worse? Couldn't global warming (or as they call it now "global climate change") just as easily mean that the weather will become balmier, and that this may lead to increased rain, longer growing seasons, and increased crop yields rather than droughts and mass starvation? True, changes in weather may potentially lead to droughts in some areas that currently receive moderate rainfall, but it also should just as likely increase rainfalls in arid areas.

Generally warmer weather should, by my reasoning, enlarge the tropics and increase biodiversity. If anything, a slightly warmer planet should be more hospitable to life than a cooler planet. Of course, the Warm-mongers don't see it that way.

Weather is an incredibly complex phenomenon that is (almost?) impossible to model with any accuracy, yet the warm-mongers speak with 100% certainty about our climate's future.

We have great difficulty predicting what the weather will be like tomorrow, yet somehow we can state with absolute certainty what the overall global weather will be like in 100 years.

Global temperature rises are predicted by extremely sophisticated and complex computer models. However, the required sophistication of these models is enormous. If the computer models are truly accurate in predicting the future, they should be able to recreate the last few decades of weather if started with the conditions from 10 or 20 years ago. In other words, if given the conditions present in 1970, the computer models should be able to predict the climate we find in 2010. To my knowledge, these models fail miserably in this regard. In fact, one of the leading climate researchers at East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in the UK has admitted recently that there has been no statistical global warming over the past 10 years. Why didn't these super whiz-bang models predict that?

In addition to not accurately modeling the last 10 or 20 years of climate, to my knowledge, none of these models has explained the warming trend which began 18,000 years ago and erased the last ice age. As any geologist can tell you, the wall of ice was only about 150 miles north of my location in suburban Philadelphia. Has anyone adequately explained why the ice retreated and why the earth warmed?

And finally, weather is one of the classic examples of the mathematics of "chaos theory", an area of mathematics were accurate predictions of future events are inherently impossible. In a chaotic environment, even miniscule changes in what the mathematicians call "initial conditions" can lead to enormous changes in the results. It seems that none of the climate researchers has embraced the inherent limitations imposed by Chaos Theory.

Any skepticism expressed about global warming generates a response akin to the Spanish Inquisition. "Deniers" are the modern equivalent of McCarthy-era Hollywood blacklist.

What happened to healthy scientific debate? No science is ever "settled". (We are still testing aspects of Einstein's theory of general relativity!) To reject skeptics as knuckle-dragging Neanderthals is to subvert the "scientific method". Science has advanced through the ages due to skeptics who challenge the existing orthodoxy. History is replete with examples of heretics who challenged the "settled" science of the day and were eventually proven right. Galileo lived out his later years under house arrest because he told the world that some celestial bodies did not orbit the earth. Plate Tectonics was a radical idea 100 years ago. Good science demands skeptiscm; it does not discourage it.

Also interestingly, many of the basic data sets and analysis algorithms used by the warm-mongers have not been published in peer-reviewed journals. The essence of good science is to have other scientists independently duplicate one scientist's work. This is why Fleischmann and Pons' cold-fusion claims were quickly dismissed as either a fraud or error.

Why have the warm-mongers refused to reveal their base temperature data? Their refusal to do so indicates either their reasoning was sloppy (or faulty), or that it was actually fraudulent.

The "solution" to global warming is to destroy modern technological civilization by hyper-regulating our economy and essentially eliminating about 90% of power generating capacity (by eliminating fossil fuel usage)

The Warm-mongers give every indication that they have a strong ulterior motive in exaggerating global disaster: it gives them an opportunity to regulate economic activity and strongly discourages energy production. Carbon Dioxide, which some people might consider a fertilizer, but the EPA considers a pollutant, must be reduced even if it means dismantling about 90% of the world's fossil-fuel powered equipment. While the warm-mongers sing the praises of solar and wind energy, these two sources of energy are clearly incapable of meeting global needs economically.

If carbon dioxide induced warming were real, there are thousands of alternative methods of reducing the amount of CO₂ in the air. Many of these techniques would almost certainly be less disruptive to our lives than the draconian reduction in fossil fuel burning that the warm-mongers demand. If the warm-mongers were truly interested in averting a warming disaster, they would be interested in exploring all these alternatives. Sadly, even the most basic, readily available alternative to fossil fuel energy, nuclear power, is even more anathema to the alarmists than existing fossil fuels.

I suspect that the warm-mongers are starting to realize that their campaign is failing to convince the world that disaster is coming, and that only the elimination of fossil fuels and the intensive regulation of our lives will prevent it. Like any other politically motivated group, they are attempting to cut off debate and silence their critics in any way they can. This, of course, is the exact opposite of how they would behave if they had truly compelling "settled" science on their side.

Global warming fails the smell test. It might be real, but the existing evidence (including the evidence of the behavior of its proponents) leads the rational observer to take a very skeptical view of their claims. As the late astronomer, Carl Sagan used to say, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The warm-mongers have indeed made extraordinary claims about the coming disaster. They have not, however, provided extraordinary evidence to support those claims. Until they do so, the rational person should remain skeptical.

Global Warming Fails the Smell Test

Originally published March 28, 2010 Republished May 5, 2024

Originally published March 28, 2010
Republished May 5, 2024