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Global Warming: You should be steamed!

When I was a kid growing up in South Florida I knew one thing--if Dr. Neil Frank was on our television, there was a hurricane coming.  As the director of the National Hurricane Center he would guide us through our every brush with tropical fury.  So when his name showed up attached to this topic--an article he wrote this week on Climategate and Global Warming--I took notice.  Read the article here.

If you're not familiar with Climategate, his second paragraph does a great job explaining it.  Note particularly the sentence, "Among the more troubling revelations were data adjustments enhancing the perception that man is causing global warming through the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other atmospheric greenhouse gases."  Uh oh.  Busted.

Dr. Frank's article gives a great scientific overview of the debate in layman's terms.  I'm not the most scientific of thinkers.  I'm one of those skeptics, however.  A pretty ardent one.  Here are my top three (very simple and almost completely non-scientific) reasons for doubting:

1) The Industry of Alarm.  I've noticed one very consistent pattern over the last thirty years--we Americans are moved by alarm.  Think back with me over just the last decade.  Three letters for you: Y2K.  Does anyone else remember the near panic with which the year 2000 was approached?  I knew people who believed "the experts" who predicted an end to food availability and travel.  I knew people who stored a warehouse full of dried foods, built a grain silo, and even armed themselves with weapons (because some experts warned chaos would result, and people would be breaking into one another's homes in search of food).  Here's my point: A whole industry of "Y2K Compliance Experts" sprung up.  They were on every talk show, writing books and articles--they were everywhere.  And they were being paid.  Handsomely.  A little fear equals a lot of money.  Where are those Y2K Compliance Experts today? 

Step forward to the days right after the attack of 9/11.  Do you remember those days?  Fear.  Money!  A pool of Urban Anti-Terrorism experts sprang to fame.  Every talk show.  Every magazine.  There were personal anti-terror kits you could buy--a gas mask, duct tape to seal your windows and doors, adreneline needles, etc.  What?  Somebody shipped some anthrax to the Capital?  Anthrax!  You may just find it in your breakfast cereal one day!  Better buy this expert's new book before you buy your next box of Captain Crunch!  It's life and death!  Where are those Urban Anti-Terrorism experts today?

It happens often in Christianity.  Nothing moves the faithful to give like fear.  Madam Madeline O'dead-and-in-the-ground is out to take God out of society.  Better write a big check to the ministry that is out to stop her.  You'll be cowering in the dark singing "This Little Light of Mine" under your breath, if you don't.

Politics, too.  Has anyone else noticed that we've moved beyond disagreeing with "the other party" in our country to alleging that they are secretly and selfishly plotting to ruin the entire world?  Appears to me that we're not giving to fund good ideas anymore, so we're being urged to give--because life and liberty hangs in the balance. 

The Industry of Alarm.  Surprise!  Someone says man's excesses is ruining the planet--sounds scary--sounds profitable.  What?  Al Gore is out in front?  PERFECT!  Anybody have Bruce Springsteen's number? How about Leonardo diCaprio?  Someone get Katie Couric on the phone!

2. I concur with Dr. Frank: "Climate models are grossly overpredicting future warming from rising concentrations of carbon dioxide. We are being told that numerical models that cannot make accurate 5- to 10-day forecasts can be simplified and run forward for 100 years with results so reliable you can impose an economic disaster on the U.S. and the world."

Uh huh, and amen.  Please.  I cannot be the only one who laughs at constantly fluctuating weather models that cover our next 48 hours.  By the way, my friends in New Hampshire, how did you like that 8-12 inches of snow we were promised for Sunday morning? 

3. History.  I've admitted I'm not a very scientifically minded guy.  I'm more of a history guy, myself.  Having said that, I do recognize that there is more sound science on the skeptical side of global warming than the Global Warming crowd wants me to believe.  Much of it has to do with history.  Cooling and warming trends, patterns, eras and ages--all of it seems entirely consistent to a growing number of scientists.  Dr. Frank's article speaks of how those folks are being silenced. 

Let me conclude with some more of Dr. Frank's words: "Over the last decade Earth's temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?"

It was a decade ago that Al Gore told me polar bears would be forced to adapt to the tropics in my lifetime.  Ah, I'm not so fond of polar bears.  Besides, I live where it's cold and almost everybody here dreams of moving to the tropics.  Has anyone asked polar bears what they really think?

So what do you think?  You a believer or a skeptic (on Global Warming)?

Comments

[Mark Ellison]

I'm a total skeptic. I'm also in Florida. It was 27º this morning. They're saying it may sleet or even snow in parts of Florida this Saturday morning. Sometimes the best weather forecast is to simply put your head out the window and look for yourself.

[Burke Rentz]

When it comes to global warming, I am a skeptic. It really gets under my skin when proponents are spewing there warnings and it is eleven degrees outside! The two ironies are the recent cooling of the earth and that weather models can't predict 100 days much less a hundred years (how many hurricanes were there this past year?), both of which the article above articulates. I'm all for conservation but not at the destruction of my own country; which will in turn have dire consequenses for some of the impoverished folks of the world that we support via government and personal contributions. Does anyone recall what happened to food prices, here and in hunger relief efforts world-wide, when an increase in ethonal in gasoline was mandated to reduce carbon emissions?