Global warming: Is the science settled?

I watched the Great Global Warming Scam doco on tv recently and the discussion that came after it.

The first point I noticed was a curious disclaimer by the presenter who told us that the programme did not necessarily represent the view of the channel. Why say that? Tv channels don’t usually preface their programmes with a denial of this sort.

It occurred to me that the “excuse me” was because man-made global warming believers are so fanatical that to even suggest that the idea may be flawed is to put yourself in the same league as Holocaust deniers – a connection that is frequently invoked in this debate.

Having watched the programme I am as bewildered as ever.

I do not believe in man-made global warming. I don’t disbelieve it either. It’s possible. It’s also possible that there are other explanations. There are just too many heavyweight scientists who have serious doubts for it to meet proof beyond reasonable doubt.

Please don’t pull the IPCC rabbit out of the hat . . . there is as much controversy about the scientific/political make-up of that body as there is over the subject itself.

And for sure do NOT quote An Inconvenient Truth to me. It’s maker is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Al Gore is a failed politician on the make, and what he most wants to make is money. I have not seen the film. Don’t need to. As soon as I saw a clip from it showing Pacific Islanders coming off an aeroplane in New Zealand being held out as “already island people are fleeing their homes under the threat of rising sea levels” I knew it was a crock. I challenge that crook to find me a single PI in this country who has come here because their home island is making like a submarine.

Go on Al, suck that up. If you can’t do it you are a liar, a cheat and a fraud.

So, from the perspective of an unbeliever, where are we with global warming?

Before we inflict significant economic harm on ourselves globally, before we wreck the jobs and businesses of millions of people worldwide, before we launch policies that have unintended consequences of a disastrous magnitude – look at world hunger/food prices v. biofuel as an example – it does seem to this sceptic that we need to have rock solid answers to two basic questions:

1: Is the planet actually getting warmer? The evidence suggests that it might be. It appears to me that the pro-warmers claim that in the last 50 years the planet has warmed significantly, and I use that word in its scientific sense. Ie, more than can be explained by random probability. Yet, we are also told that peak temperature was in 1998 and since then things have cooled down. If the latter fact is true are we certain beyond reasonable doubt that it will rise again and continue to rise?

2: If warming is occurring is it because of CO2, methane and other greenhouse gasses? As I apprehend it, the “science” here is not direct. Nobody has shown that the GHGs are demonstrably trapping solar warmth. The greenhouse effect is proposed as an explanation for two observed series of statistics: 1) Global temperatures have risen in the past 50 years and 2) In that same time there has been an explosion in industrial activity and fossil fuel consumption thus releasing CO2 stored by rain-forests millions of years ago.

But are these two series related?

When I was a laboratory technician at DSIR Grasslands Division, about three lifetimes ago, I remember the then director, the highly acclaimed Dr Peter Sears, giving a hilarious after dinner speech at a staff function in which he proved conclusively that the statistical rise in gin consumption was mirrored by a rise in curate’s salaries. His point to all us young scientists was that just because there is a statistical correlation there may not be a causal relationship.

So I ask this of the science fraternity: Have there been any experiments which prove that GHGs reflect heat back to the earth’s surface and that it is this reflected heat that is causing the earth’s surface to warm up?

I have tried to follow the debate on the web and in various blogs but every one of them ends up as a yes-it-is/no-it-isn’t slanging match. Surely, if there is that much disagreement the science can not be said to be settled.

We are certainly not at the same point as knowing, for instance, that the earth is an oblate spheroid, not a flat pancake (held up on the back of a giant turtle). Nor are we at the point that resolves the beginnings of the planet vis-à-vis the idea that it was made by some big old white guy up in the sky.

There are interesting parallels with the creation story and global warming. There are religious nutters who simply do not believe the scientific version of creation. The question, for me, remains open as to who are the nutters and who are the scientists in The Great Global Warming Schemozzle.

Perhaps we could start by getting answers to the two simple questions above.

David Morris writes a travel guide to New Zealand. Read it at http://New-Zealand-Travel-Guide.com. He also runs a rental car business called Downtown Rentals at http://New-Zealand-rental-cars.com.