Sunday, September 16, 2007

Global Warming

The political forces advocating Global Warming have succeeded in paralyzing rational thought. Once again, many people are rushing to a confused state of distorted common sense whereby we'll be taxed and starved for a perceived threat of global disaster.

Don't get me wrong - I want to believe in Global Warming. I want to believe that our disastrous record of pollution, waste, and carelessness are leading to some wayward, irreversible path to self-distruction.

But the science is there, and it's non-conclusive. And in fact many scientific facts are played down, politicizing and energized by a group of "true believers" who've blinded themselves to anything that contraindicates their belief.

I find arguments that "carbon emissions of all kinds are extremely dangerous" to be a bit laughable. Animals, swamps, and volcanoes are enormous generators of so-called "carbon emissions" and yet the world has so far survived.

Again, Hansen and Schmidt, of the famous NASA report on global warming, have been thoroughly debunked with their incredible oversight of a Y2k bug in their data, and completely ignoring solar radiation in their findings. A layman blogger, Steve McIntyre, was apparently the only person to audit the data produced by NASA and found the resulting mistakes.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II.

So much for the scientific process!

So, perhaps we should turn to a more reliable key indicator of Global Warming, Peira or Pirata. The decreasing population of sea-born pirata is ample evidence that we're not merely distorting the scientific record - but completely overlooking valuable trends.



Shocking, isn't it.

4 comments:

Mark Zuniga said...

I myself am willing to accept the propositions that:
(1) Carbon dioxide retains heat (and "air" with greater levels of carbon dioxide will retain more heat than otherwise);
(2) Humanity is producing more carbon dioxide than can be naturally absorbed; and therefore
(3) human activity is or will cause the earth to retain more heat than it otherwise would.

I've actually not heard anyone argue against the first two points, and the third follows from the first two.

I think the debate ought to be centered on the level of effect. There's no claim of scientific certainty over effect. At best, you have computer models which were unable to predict the existence of Hurricane Humberto.

Frankly, malaria and scores of other health concerns are a greater threat to humanity. That's where our resources need to be aimed.

Mark Zuniga said...

btw, love the chart

Convivialdingo said...

Heh.. yeah, the chart is cool :)

I somewhat wonder about #2 myself...

Besides that - even if there is a major problem I doubt we'll be burning the oil so freely 20 years from now anyway. There's strong proof that we're hitting "peak oil" sometime in the next 20 years - if not sooner.

I have a strong suspicion that governments are eager to find something to tax.

Johnny Ong said...

its hard to limit global warming unless all govts are firm in their decisions once and for all. some govts are in favour of certain substances being banned while some, with some interests in the same substance, decided against the ban..... so how can it work

God's hands have to take control of the situation