The Global Warming Kerfuffle

I have been following the global warming debate for a long time even if until recently it has been rather one sided. In the 1990s I believed that the potential for global warming as a result of the greenhouse effect was a real concern. The science seemed to make sense and it was evident that eventually it would become a problem. I must confess I am no longer so sure; therefore I thought it might be fun to look at global warming from all angles and see what we find.

Working through this topic is not going to be easy. The amount of information and data is not trivial. Consider for a moment the concept of measuring global temperatures. How many data points do you need and where do you take your measurements. Since you can not take measurements everywhere all the time you are forced to take a sample. Suppose you decide to take temperature measurements every hour at a thousand different stations. Would that be representative of the entire planet? Most of the earth’s surface is ocean so should most of our temperature measurements be made above the oceans? What I am leading up to is that before you can make any statements about your measurements, you have to prove that the method you use to make the measurements is valid. Then you have to prove that those measurements are representative of the entire planet within a margin of error small enough to detect significant differences over time with some degree of confidence. There is also bias to consider but I think we can let that go for another day.

The alarmists like to point to anecdotal evidence such as melting polar ice and destructive storms like Katrina to support their position. They predicted a horrific Atlantic hurricane season last year that never materialized. It would be very convenient to state that the melting ice proves global warming is occurring and equally convenient to state that the failure to correctly predict the hurricane season last year proves otherwise.

However, this is science and not politics. You can’t pick and choose the data you like or dismiss predictions that fail to happen. Science is a tough game and saying that the issue is settled because you have more people on your side is ludicrous. In the late 1800s the idea that the atoms in compounds like sodium chloride would dissociate into ions when dissolved in water was considered absurd. And yet, the 1884 thesis making this statement won its author Svante August Arrhenius a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1903.

I generally admire a person who supports their position with passion even if I disagree with them. Do I disagree with the idea of global warming? No. Do I disagree with global warming alarmists like Al Gore? Absolutely yes. When these zealots covered their ears with their hands and went, “La la la la…” to drown out those who disagreed with them I changed sides. What Al Gore and his followers is selling is not science. Some have called it socialism hidden in a cloak of environmentalism and maybe that is true. But that is not the issue here. What we need to sort out is the science part of global warming with neither the politics nor the religious fervor of the global warming activists.
If it turns out there is a problem then we think it through and try to find a solution that is both effective and affordable.

At the end of this exercise I may find myself doing a 180º turn on this issue provided the numbers shake out that way. As Richard Feynman once said, “Nature can not be fooled”.