A Healthy Dose of Skepticism on Global Warming

College is the perfect place to question beliefs. There is one topic, however, that is attracting great attention at Trinity, but which students are not being urged to really think critically about. This issue is global warming. By assigning the book Field Notes from a Catastrophe, by Elizabeth Kolbert, to incoming freshmen, the school has asked them to think about what they can do to stop global warming, but it has ignored the bigger question-whether we can do anything to stop it at all. So, while I must give credit where it is due for choosing a book on global warming that is not as alarmist and sensationalist as many others, I also feel obligated to provide an opposing viewpoint. I may be derided and dismissed as a global warming "skeptic," as have many others. My question to you, the reader, is: since when is being skeptical a bad quality in higher learning?

Global warming believers accuse those scientists who are "skeptics" of being in the pay of the oil industry. It is true that this was the case for many of those opposed to the man-made global warming hypothesis in the 1990s. However, two developments have changed this. One, the oil and gas companies, facing more limited reserves of oil and legislation making them harder to access, have made an about-face. They now try to style themselves as "green," and they have cut off funding to skeptics. Two, the evidence against the man-made hypothesis gathered over the last 10 years has proven convincing enough that widely respected scientists are publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals that directly controvert the evidence as it was at the turn of the century, despite the vast disincentives to do so.

Much of this evidence suggests that the rapid increase in temperatures seen over the period from approximately 1970-2000 was the result of natural climate processes, and especially the result of natural variations in the sun's output. The 1990s, during which the global warming movement picked up momentum, was a period of unusually high solar activity. Many dubious models were put forth that projected fantastic increases in global temperature based on the rapid warming of the 1990s, models like that of the infamous "hockey stick" graph, displayed in An Inconvenient Truth and now utterly discredited.

However, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), while admitting the obvious, like the Earth not having warmed since 1998, continue to ostracize any who question their ultimate judgment, that man is warming the earth. Their computer modeling has been proven highly flawed by evidence, and yet they continue to insist that for a scientist to question it is for them to be relegated to quackery. The IPCC and the climatologist profession in general is now compromised by an addiction to the attention and funding this issue brings; just as damning an indictment as oil industry funding of skeptics was.

Yes, the majority of evidence still supports the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis. But that does not mean we should dismiss alternative data and hypotheses out of hand. Furthermore, it is now becoming apparent that the predominance of the man-made global warming viewpoint in the scientific literature is not because of the predominance of evidence, but because of a pervasive selection bias that has until very recently excluded all alternative viewpoints, and now merely excludes most.

As a former dues-paying member of the Sierra Club, I am confronted with the possibility that I am wrong, that man really is the primary cause of global warming. However, I still feel justified in writing this article for several reasons. One, the fad of global warming is distracting us from issues that are more important to the biosphere and the human race, especially soil and fresh water depletion, issues which are unfortunately more mundane and less marketable. Two, even if I am wrong and man is the cause of global warming, the costs of correcting this are so astronomically high as to be impractical. Any serious effort is not only likely to fail, as have the Kyoto Protocol targets in several nations already, including Canada, but are also likely to have a dramatic negative impact on the economy and on everyday life. Three, and most essential to this article, is that the dogma of global warming is becoming dangerous to the model of the scientific method and rationalism-in short, the man-made global warming movement is moving away from being based on science and is now becoming like a religion.

I share this opinion with several prominent scientists, including one IPCC member-turned-apostate, Dr. Kiminori Itoh, who stated that man-made global warming is "the worst scientific scandal in history . When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists," and Nobel Prize winner Ivar Giaever who said flat out, "Global warming has become a new religion."

Already, the movement is couched in religious terms, as those who support the man-made hypothesis are titled "believers," those who do not are deemed "skeptics." The fact that global warming believers accept these terms so willingly should set off an alarm bell. Indeed, we need only look to our cousins across the pond in the U.K. to see where we may be in only a few years if we continue to accept global warming dogma unquestioningly, and it is an unpalatable sight.

This past week The Times reported that in order to meet carbon dioxide reduction limits the UK will have to raise taxes on flights to "eventually reach a level that would put people off flying." The Government committee on climate justified this recommended level of taxation by stating that "increase in global temperatures is inevitable and that developed countries must pay for the consequences." This statement reflects more a sense of atonement for sins than practical action to curb climate change. This kind of thinking is much more akin to that based on faith than on reasoning. This is also the kind of thinking that led to the blind passage of the cap-and-trade scheme earlier this year by Congress, despite its massive cost during a dramatic recession.