Rising Tide of Global Warming Skepticism

Rising Tide of Global Warming Skepticism

by Mark Luedtke

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore writes of tackling man-made global warming: “When we do rise, it will fill our spirits and bind us together. Those who are now suffocating in cynicism and despair will be able to breathe freely. Those who are now suffering from a loss of meaning in their lives will find hope.” When we rise, “we will experience an epiphany as we discover that this crisis is not really about politics at all. It is a moral and spiritual challenge.”

Gore's invocation of spirituality is a religious assault on reason. But just like the Catholic Church was ultimately unable to stifle reason, science and debate, Gore and other prophets of the church of man-made global warming have failed to stop heretical climate scientists from injecting reason to the public debate.

Resisting the church is no easy task. The church of man-made global warming is big business. The United States government alone spends $4 billion a year on global warming research. Scientists like expensive SUVs like everybody else, and to win a piece of this multi-billion dollar pie, they have to bow to the church and propose research to study man-made global warming. Even prominent skeptical scientists warn their students to keep their skepticism to themselves or suffer professionally. As the Cato Institute reports, the result of scientists falling over themselves to get a piece of this huge pie is a rash of sloppy science.

But the reporting of this science is even sloppier. Newspaper and TV news programs, experiencing accelerating financial losses, look for sensational news stories to generate revenue. “Greenland Ice Cap to Disappear” sells a lot more papers than “Greenland's Ice Cap Changes Typical as Ever”. “Global Temperatures Rising at Unprecedented Rate” brings in a lot more viewers than “Global Temperature Variation Well Within Historical Norms”. The second headlines are accurate, but sensationalism, not accuracy, sells. The BBC has admitted its bias on global warming. Don't expect that kind of honesty from a major American news outlet.

The church of man-made global warming got a big boost by the natural disasters in the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005, but one of the reasons that skepticism is growing is the weather hasn't continued to cooperate with the church. The bad hurricane season forecast for 2006 never emerged. The church had to dump the term 'global warming' because the weather wouldn't cooperate. Record cold this winter and spring, record cold and snows in the Southern Hemisphere this June, and snow flurries in Wyoming also this June forced the church to adopt the new term 'climate change'. Now the church can claim any bad weather is evidence of man-made climate change.

Thousands of scientists working with funds that dwarf many industries have been searching for nearly 30 years for the holy grail of the church of man-made global warming: a theory of climate change that meets the observed data. So far, they've failed. Despite all the money, time, and expertise, they can't produce a climate model that is accurate when run backwards. That's cause for great skepticism in itself.

To cover up this failure, the church has promoted the idea of a scientific consensus that humans cause climate change, invoking the same standard used by the Catholic Church to imprison and threaten Galileo with excommunication because he bucked the consensus that Earth was the center of the universe. Politics is about consensus, and the church is about politics, but the public knows that science is about the scientific method and tested theories, not consensus.

And the politics of global warming is socialism, despite the overwhelming destructive consequences of central planning in the 20th century. Czech President Vaclav Klaus says that socialism powered by the church of man-made global warming is now more of a threat to freedom than communism. All proposed solutions to man-made global warming involve increasing socialism around the world, with Americans paying far and away the worst price. But if global warming was a tremendous man-made threat, nobody would suggest that China and India, the two most populous nations in the world, should be exempt from the Kyoto Treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions, yet they are.

Also, the public can tell this bogus consensus is no consensus at all. Al Gore predicts that sea levels will rise 20 feet by the end of the century. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that sea levels would rise by 4 to 35 inches. It downgraded its worst case to 23 inches in 2007. The IPCC can't agree with itself, let alone others, and even the New York Times told Gore to knock off the flagrant alarmism.

Gore scurries from honest debate, but he just produced a series of gas guzzling concerts around the world. By most accounts, even Gore's sermon from a planet-sized pulpit with loudspeakers failed to overwhelm. Skeptics recognize that Gore is amassing tremendous wealth by grandly preaching energy austerity then hopping on private jets with celebrity energy hogs.

At Gore's concert, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attempted to intimidate skeptics by claiming they should be charged with treason. Others have likened skeptics to Holocaust deniers and called for Nuremberg style trails. An increasingly skeptical public is overcoming these assaults on reason and empowering quality science and reasoned debate which will ultimately lead to better policy.