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There is a difference between skepticism and denial,
except when the topic is anthropogenic global
warming.
Then if you're skeptical, you're in
denial,
and you must be on the payroll of Big Oil.
To clarify anthropogenic
comes from Greek roots,
and means human-caused.
Global warming
means
a rise in the earth's average temperature, leading to the
shrinkage of glaciers, a rise in sea level, hotter summers,
etc.
The theory holds that humans have, in the past century
or two, produced greenhouse gases
which trap more of
the sun's radiant energy in our atmosphere, thus causing
the planet to be warmer than it would otherwise. There are
several such gases, among them water vapor, but the main
culprit is carbon dioxide.
Just about everything we burn is a compound of carbon and hydrogen, and when they unite with oxygen, they give off energy while producing water vapor and carbon dioxide. Plants consume carbon dioxide and solar energy, and produce carbon compounds that we can eat or burn for energy.
What perturbs this cycle now is fossil fuels
like
coal and oil, whose combustion may be producing more carbon
dioxide than the cycle can handle. Thus the increased
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which seems to correlate
with rising temperatures. But carbon dioxide can come from
other sources, like undersea volcanoes and animal
respiration, so it's difficult to be precise.
Further, correlation is not causation. The rooster's crowing does not make the sun rise. So while the theory of anthropogenic global warming is plausible, there's no way to prove it short of finding several earth-like planets and varying their carbon-dioxide levels, then watching the results. That's an unlikely experiment.
Oh, but there's the recent report of the International Panel on Climate Change, wherein more than 600 scientists from more than 40 countries all agreed that there is anthropogenic climate change.
But you can have near unanimity among scientists on a given topic, and still be wrong. If you had surveyed geologists a century ago, about 100 percent would have agreed that earth's continents had been fixed in place since the earth cooled.
In 1912, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener
proposed a theory of continental drift.
Most
geologists though he was crazy, but over time it became the
modern theory of plate tectonics.
Nearly every physicist of the 19th century believed in
luminiferous ether
-- a postulated substance that
filled the universe and provided a medium for the
vibrations of electro-magnetic radiation. They also
believed that time proceeded at the same rate under all
circumstances, that the dimensions of an object would not
change with its velocity, and that energy could come in as
small a quantity as you might desire. Then came quantum
mechanics and the special and general theories of
relativity, and those theories are the foundations of
modern physics.
We don't have to go that far back. In grade school, I
learned about the marvels of modern science, among them
DDT, a chemical which would soon eliminate insect-borne
disease from our planet with no adverse side-effects. Then
came Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring,
as well as
the discovery of resistant mosquitoes. We're a lot more
careful about pesticides these days, and few if any
scientists promote any chemical as a panacea.
Another memory from grade school concerns swamps. Back
then, the science textbooks assured us they were nothing
but useless breeding grounds for pestilence. Today we call
those swamps wetlands,
and we protect them, rather
than fill them.
So to say that a vast majority of scientists agree on something doesn't make it true, whether it's luminiferous ether or anthropogenic global warming. The scientific process means our understandings will change as a result of experiment, criticism, discussion and analysis. Anthropogenic global warming may be our best explanation at the moment, but that doesn't mean it's true, and it should be questioned and criticized, not taken on faith.
In the meantime, the things we're supposed to do to combat global warming -- reduce emissions, use more renewable energy like wind and solar, improve efficiency, grow more food close to home, walk more and drive less -- are all things that would make us a more prosperous, secure and healthy society.
In other words, they're things we should do anyway, whether global warming results from our emissions or variations in solar radiation. So why can't we just do them?
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