October 17, 2010
The science of climate skepticism
It almost never appears in mainstream publications and rarely in scientific journals. So Warren Meyer at Forbes .com has taken it upon himself to summarize the scientific case by skeptics of climate warming/change/disruption/cooling or whatever it is this week:
It is important to begin by emphasizing that few skeptics doubt or deny that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas or that it and other greenhouse gasses (water vapor being the most important) help to warm the surface of the Earth. Further, few skeptics deny that man is probably contributing to higher CO2 levels through his burning of fossil fuels, though remember we are talking about a maximum total change in atmospheric CO2 concentration due to man of about 0.01% over the last 100 years.What skeptics deny is the catastrophe, the notion that man's incremental contributions to CO2 levels will create catastrophic warming and wildly adverse climate changes. To understand the skeptic's position requires understanding something about the alarmists' case that is seldom discussed in the press: the theory of catastrophic man-made global warming is actually comprised of two separate, linked theories, of which only the first is frequently discussed in the media.[...]Our global temperature measurements over the last one hundred years show about 0.7C of warming since the early 1900s, though this increase has been anything but linear. Skeptics argue that, like a police department that locks on a single suspect early in a crime investigation and fails to adequately investigate any other suspects, many climate scientists locked in early on to CO2 as the primary culprit for this warming, to the exclusion of many other possible causes.
What is refreshing about this piece is that it acknowledges some of the science done by climate researchers that is probably correct. Why can't the climate alarmists grant skeptics the same acknowledgment? Because any crack in the edifice holding up climate change would cause the entire rickety structure to come crashing down as we saw with the email scandal in East Anglia. As with any religion, questioning an article of faith just isn't done. You must be a true believer or be placed outside the circle.
This is why attacks on skeptics are so over the top and out of control. Mr. Meyer's measured, calm and convincing case stands in stark contrast to the alarmist's hysterical denunciations.