I don't believe the various claims of global warming. Some people do believe. I've discussed faith and belief before, and don't intend to talk about it too much here. Let me just say that blind faith and informed belief are quite different.
Supporters of global warming claim to have proof and the backing of most science professionals. Their 'sky is falling' credo has captured a huge public following, proof again that fear sells more newspapers. In reality, science professionals are as divided by the subject as Democrats and Republicans are about a presidential election, and for the same reasons - politics and money.
Grant money for science research goes first to researchers doing the most important, life saving work. If a researchers wants grant money, he or she must try and convince funding panels that their work is more important than everything else like it. Making a convincing argument that her or his project will help save the world brings in the cash.
Politics among science professionals is no less dramatic. On the line are prestigous academic jobs, government support, public recognition, and most important, scientific reputation. Sadly, the truth is sometimes ignored when the campaigning heats up. Big mouths and big egos can be bad for science.
The proof offered for global warming is 3-fold. First is an estimate of ancient weather by accessing ice cores and other paleo-climatology methods. By measuring atmospheric gasses left in very old layers of arctic ice scientists can estimate climate, and by measuring accretion layers they can estimate temperatures. However these estimates are affected by local conditions and thus don't reflect the state of the whole globe. Furthermore, conclusions drawn from these samples must be statistically derived because large changes would have erased the very evidence they're looking for. This leaves considerable room for error. Efforts continue to refine the science of pale-climatology, but I am quite sceptical of the precision of this proof.
The next proof is climate reconstruction of the last few hundred years. This takes into account evidence like amateur observations, tree ring studies, glacial and arctic ice melt rates. The problem is, of course, that the measurements recorded in a Revolutionary War journal lack the exactness needed. Tree rings are a good indicator of local climate, but like ice cores, fails to represent the whole globe. To me this data is more reliable than ancient ice cores, though room for error remains significant.
The last and most studied evidence are modern observations. Though you'd think there could be no disagreement on such exact data, it is here the controversy truly rages. There is plenty of information about the climate of the last century, but nobody knows what data actually affects climate change or how. The believers use computer models to predict the future climate disasters, with varying results. Even the very best models can't seem to predict recent observations, though believers claim the models will be correct over the long term. Skeptics claim believers 'cook the books' to get the best answer to support global warming. Sadly, there has been proof of just that recently.
To me the matter is clear; nobody knows yet. The media, knowing that bad news sells papers, reports the bad news about climate change more than the good. Politicians, always looking for a way to get attention, have blown the controversy out of proportion. And worse, the entire affair is giving birth to a religion of global doom, with prophets denouncing heretics.
The Earth warms and cools to a cycle of her own. Every 100,000 years comes a high CO2 and temperature period, for the last million years. The next temperature spike should have started a few thousand years ago, but was delayed for some reason. We are now in the middle of that next warming period. Have we made it worse than it might have been? Possibly, but only in a very small way. Or was the delay an onset of a cooling cycle and Mankind's actions saved us from a mini-iceage?
I don't know. What I DO know is something kindergarten taught me - if someone runs around yelling that the sky is falling, they're probably wrong.
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