The mainstream "consensus"
on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) says the atmospheric concentration of
carbon dioxide (CO2) remained stable for millions of years, until the
Industrial Revolution, when it went from 280 ppm in 1750 to 414.7 ppm in
2019. Environmentalists blame this on man's consumption of fossil
fuels, which has increased significantly since the early 1900s.
In support of the
"consensus" view, climate change researchers write: "[T]he
current CO2 concentration is unprecedented over the past 3 million years[.]
... [G]lobal temperature never exceeded the preindustrial value by more than
2°C during the Quaternary" (Willeit et al.,
2019). Environmentalists predict that, as anthropogenic
CO2 rises, there will be more and more natural disasters, threatening the
lives of millions of people around the world. These include more
frequent and severe hurricanes, widespread flooding, extreme heat waves, and
prolonged drought.
Belief in the dangers of AGW has led
to the emergence of "climate change science," an interdisciplinary
field that is very different from the natural sciences. Regular
scientists rely on objective, empirical methods to test
hypotheses. Climate change scientists, on the other hand, manipulate
data to fit preconceived beliefs; they are trained to ignore hypotheses
challenging the AGW status quo, no matter how plausible. In the
natural sciences, governments fund different avenues of research; in climate
change science, only AGW receives funding because it is "politically
correct." Climate change scientists are expected to uncover
positive correlations between anthropogenic CO2 and temperature; if they
cannot find one, it will have to be manufactured out of thin
air. Not only is there no research money for those seeking
alternative explanations of climate change, but any attempt at falsifying the
AGW hypothesis is considered heresy. Those who question the IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)'s findings are dismissed as cranks
challenging a well established scientific "consensus." Climate
change science has more in common with Lysenkoism than actual science.
Climate change scientists are not
above using ad hominem rhetoric to silence legitimate
debate. Geologists and other researchers who disagree with AGW are
dismissed as "climate deniers," even though no scientifically
literate person denies that climate always changes.
In 2008, NASA's James Hansen, whose
testimony before the U.S. Congress in 1988 began the AGW scare, demanded that
fossil fuel company CEOs be tried for "high crimes against humanity and
nature." Prosecution for thoughtcrime is apparently warranted
because of refusal to accept mainstream "consensus" on
AGW. In 2014, the pro-AGW documentary Merchants of Doubt smeared
noted American physicist Fred Singer as a "liar." Singer
threatened to sue the film director for libel.
In 2009, a server at the University
of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) was hacked, and thousands of emails
were leaked. These emails revealed a world seldom seen by the
public, where manipulation of data and willful suppression of evidence had
replaced scientific objectivity. Free from the glare of public
scrutiny, the CRU disregarded the scientific method in pursuit of a political
agenda.
The emails tell a tale of corruption
at the highest levels of academia. In one email, a climate change
scientist who had uncovered a decreasing trend in Northern Hemispheric
temperatures was told to "hide the decline" using "Mike's Nature trick." By
padding the trend with "instrumental" or thermometer data, the proxy
temperature record was adjusted to reflect mainstream
"consensus." In other emails, Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) requests were routinely evaded and incriminating emails hurriedly
deleted. Scientists who disagreed with the CRU were ridiculed and
bullied. The scandal, known as "Climategate," revealed a
conspiracy among scientists to feed biased information to the IPCC. In
the aftermath, the CRU's top scientists narrowly escaped criminal prosecution
because of a legal technicality.
In addition to its proponents'
questionable conduct, there are numerous problems with the evidence of
AGW. Environmental activists typically rely on scientific
"consensus" and the "hockey stick" graph to prove
it. Claims of overwhelming scientific "consensus" on AGW
are sourced from Cook, et al. (2013), a team of volunteers affiliated with
SkepticalScience.com, a pro-AGW website. The study supposedly found
that 97% of the scientific community endorses AGW. Re-analysis of
the data revealed significant bias and unrepresentative sample
sizes. Cook, et al. had excluded 75% of all papers discussing
climate change. Geologists have long known about climatic
fluctuations across geological and evolutionary timescales, but studies from
geology and other earth sciences were woefully undersampled. Cook
and his team of volunteers were taken to task for mistaking "a trend in
composition for a trend in endorsement" (Tol, 2014).
Michael Mann's iconic "hockey
stick" (1998), the centerpiece of the IPCC's case for AGW, ignited a
firestorm of controversy and debate in the early 2000s, thanks to the efforts
of Canadian researchers McIntyre and McKitrick. The original graph
showed Northern Hemispheric mean temperature increasing dramatically after the
early 1900s; this rising trend, when depicted graphically, resembled a
"hockey stick." McIntyre and McKitrick (2003) re-analyzed
Mann's data, concluding that it was "primarily an artefact of poor data
handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal
components." They also uncovered a late–15th century
"Medieval Warming Period," when temperatures were higher than they
are now.
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