Reduced to its core, science is empirical: a researcher creates a hypothesis and then gathers data to test it. The data either support the hypothesis, or they show it to be incorrect, requiring revision or even abandonment. This is what distinguishes science from faith: faith requires belief, often in the face of contradictory evidence. Science, on the other hand, at its best looks objectively at the data and is not just willing but happy to concede the hypothesis is wrong, since each testing brings one closer to the truth. The difference in reaction to evidence that goes against the hypothesis is what distinguishes a scientist (or, indeed, any reasonable person) from a True Believer.
This is the crossroads at which the global warming advocates find themselves: a growing mountain of evidence is showing that their cherished hypothesis --that climate change is caused by Man and that we must take drastic action to stop it-- is wrong. Now a recent study has show that their most powerful argument, temperature data published by the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, is deeply flawed because of an undetected Y2K bug that showed temperatures steadily increasing at the end of the last century, with 1998 being the hottest year.
Well, guess what? The hottest year wasn't 1998: it was 1934. This makes a complete hash of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, since it postulated that the situation has to be getting worse -- not that the high point was over 70 years ago. Even worse from the point of view of the acolytes of the Goracle, the discovery of this error cuts the legs out from under their argument that global warming is scientifically proven, because their assertion rested on this very data.
And this isn't the only body-blow to the theory of anthropogenic climate change. The Astute Blogger reported on a Finnish study that looked at tree-ring data from the last 7,000 years that showed current temperature trends are well within normal variations. There have been alternating warming and cooling periods at least since the end of the last Ice Age, and our current time isn't even the warmest. Climate change activists regularly dismiss evidence from ice cores, sediment samples, and even the historical record that shows the Earth's climate has regularly fluctuated in a series of cycles. And don't bother asking them why Mars is getting warmer.
If anthropogenic global warming zealots were reasonable people, this would be the end of the frantic calls to regulate the world's economies, indeed, all human activity "NOW, before it's too late." They would look honestly and closely at the data and admit that much more research is needed. But they don't. This is an article of faith for members of the Church of Global Warming, and they have heard the Word of the Goracle. Inconvenient truths are to be ignored, competing hypotheses dismissed, and those who question the holy writ denounced as "deniers." Opposition to the theory of man-caused climate change doesn't rise from an honest urge to seek the truth, but an ideological campaign desperate to obscure the environmental crisis toward which we're heading.
Talk about projection.
As the evidence against man-caused global warming grows, I wonder if global warming True Believers will have the courage to admit the weaknesses in their theories, or will they continue chanting hymns to Al Gore until the temple comes crashing down around them?
LINKS: More at Daily Tech, Ecotality blog, and Little Green Footballs.
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