Climate Change
(aka Global Warming)
I want to start by saying that I really like Planet Earth. I have lived here for my entire life and it is the only planet I know very much about. I would never do anything to harm it, nor would I advocate any idea that might provoke others to harm it in any way. So when I see scientific truths being misrepresented, which have the effect of harming the Earth’s future in support of a political agenda, it bothers me greatly.
Addressing a subject as complicated as this one could well be framed with a few basic questions, to wit:
Question. Is the climate changing?[weaver_showhide]
Answer. Of course, it continues to change unpredictably, as it has been changing for 4 Billion years.
The most recent half-million or so years have seen seven significant ups and downs, but since they have not been periodic, there is no way to use them to predict future ones. Scientists have some ideas, but those are purely theoretical.
There is no reason to think those changes will stop anytime soon.
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Question. Is the climate warming or cooling?[weaver_showhide]
Answer. Yesterday, it was warming, but regardless of what you see on TV, no one knows which way it will be going tomorrow. Remember that the “natural” components of the changes are not periodic, so any predictions are all pure WAGs – maybe SWAGs, but WAGs nonetheless.
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Question. Is it being affected by human occupation?[weaver_showhide]
Answer. Almost certainly it is, but no scientist or journalist or politition knows by how much or even in which direction – whether aiding or countering what very well could be a current natural cooling segment.
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Question. Why don’t scientists know more about this stuff?[weaver_showhide]
Answer. Scientists know a lot, but there is far more that they don’t know. They know about the past but absolutely nothing about the future.
All they can do is extrapolate history into predictions, and that can be a dangerous game.
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Question. What can we do to stop the change?[weaver_showhide]
Answer. Absolutely nothing!
All we can do is accept the reality and get busy preparing for it.
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Almost all of my formal training has been in the hard sciences – Chemistry, Physics, Electronics, Optical Systems, etc., and having worked with engineers and scientists throughout my entire career, hearing the so-called Climate Science community regurgitate the same tired arguments year after year is a source of extreme disappointment for me.
Those who are satisfied with the current Sky-Is-Falling TV/Internet rhetoric would be well advised to discontinue reading beyond this paragraph and turn the TV back on.
Those curious about what the REAL scientific community thinks are invited to read on, beginning with this Dean Edell Perspective . The following brief interview would be an excellent place to start, and there is value in the perspective of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bjorn Lomborg, or the lady scientist who blew the whistle on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology for fudging the data.