Climate Change: Science or Religion

For anyone having a background in a “hard science” discipline such as physics, chemistry or biology, the current climate change (global warming) debate bears little resemblance to the kind of scientific debates one is accustomed to.  The typical scientific debate focuses on one or more of the basic components of the “scientific method”, i.e., observation, hypothesis, and testing.  Each of these components is subjected to intense scrutiny before a scientific fact can be established.  All dissenting opinions must be reconciled before the hypothesis is established as a fact.  A fact cannot be established simply by consensus or majority vote.  Yet, this is what the proponents of anthropogenic global warming are claiming.  They proclaim that the science has been settled by a consensus of scientific opinion, in spite of the fact that thousands of scientists have signed petitions disagreeing with that opinion.

The earth has been cycling through periods of warming and cooling for millions of years.  Humans have only been present for a relatively brief flicker of the recent history, apparently during a gradual upswing in global temperatures coming out of the last ice age.  The entire concept of a developing catastrophic surge in global warming is based on an interpretation of data represented by the “famous/infamous” hockey stick graph of global temperature change over the past 100 or so years and its projection into the future.  Without this representation, there is no reason to implicate a human role in causing climate change.  The entire argument for anthropogenic global warming is dependent on the hockey stick.

Presently, there are two extremely serious doubts about the validity of the “hockey stick” data.  The first was provided by two Canadian scientists, Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who demonstrated that any data put into the computer model used, even random data, produced the “hockey stick”, i.e., the computer model was flawed.  The second doubt has recently been revealed by the apparent “climategate” scandal.  Intentional selection and/or elimination of data to purposely produce a biased result represent the extreme limit of scientific dishonesty.

An honest scientific opinion would state that the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming is far from being settled.  In fact, as detailed in my book, “A Path To The Gold”, there are many unanswered objections to there being a significant anthropogenic component to climate change.  To take the opposite opinion and to deny the existence of scientifically valid opposition is more characteristic of religion than of science.