2 posts tagged “global warming”

After further contemplation, I think the biggest issue with the hyped-up, doomsday tales of impending global warming might be that it is the largely the result of faulty inductive reasoning. 

It is rather simple to take a few isolated pieces of data, string it up for general consumption at the level of made-for-TV "science", and portray a story of impending doom via global warming.  Really, its not terribly difficult to paint a completely inaccurate picture.  We've all heard how statistics can be misused to "prove" almost any point.

Well, the point I try to make isn't that global warming is impossible or that it isn't happening, per se.  The main point I wish to make may very well simply be a sort of warning about how faulty the inductive reasoning may prove to be.

It is hard to consider the current global warming myth to be part of "true science" when one has to arrive at such a general conclusion based on a few pieces of data and ignoring other relevant (but contradictory) data.

For example, pointing to rises in temperature in some places while ignoring others. 

Good science regarding climate should take into consideration many different facts, including the rise (or lack of rise) in ocean levels.  And let's not forget that we don't have very many years of reliable data.  We have roughly 150 years of temperature data that could be used, but to use data that is consistent and accurate, we have only a few decades.

Its rather humorous to hear supposed scientists discuss macro patterns of climate change with such limited data. 

Most people believe there was an ice age.  And then the earth got warmer.  The last I heard, this didn't happen over night.  This was change over a very considerable period of time.  Now we want to look at a few years of data that might suggest a rise in average temperature, and then build a whole set of predictions based on that limited data.

Its a preposterous idea.  And its very fautly inductive reasoning.

AND, plenty of facts seem to contradict the theories and predictions.

For global warming to be a plausible theory, it will require scientists to keep researching and let the data tell the story. Because deciding that global warming is a reality first, and then finding data to back the story up is an insult to human intelligence.

Please tell me I am not the only one who hasn't joined the Religion of Global Warming, a psuedo-scientific belief based on hyped up facts and a devitation from any commonly accepted methods of research.

I'm a friend of the environment, at least to an extent. 

And I think there are changes that need to be made. 

But I also think that it makes no sense to perpetuate as science, a theory that is mostly emotion and little fact.

I could go on and on about the reasons why current rhetoric about global warming is mostly myth, but for the time being I am curious if non-conformist thinking is becoming as rare as it seems.