Here is the second excerpt from an article by Jack Frampton called Science, Religion, Passion, Cohorts, and the Much-Heralded Doom of Planet Earth from the current (#21 June) issue of Winding Road and online auto mag. If you would like to read the whole thing all you have to do is “subscribe” by giving them your email address and downloading the 17Meg PDF file.
This ?discovery? begat the ?greenhouse effect? theory, which begat the whole Global Warming controversy.
Without asking just how reliable the Earth?s temperature gathering was 300 years ago, if one simply accepts that the one happened due to the other, again there is no scientific way to prove the theory.
It is clear that the Earth has gone through a series of warming and cooling cycles, from the heat and humidity of the dinosaur age to the Ice Age in a geological blink of an eye.
And though there are many theories about why one or the other happened, from volcanoes to smashing asteroids, nobody really knows.
In a court of law, the coincidence of warming and the Industrial Revolution?s CO2 would be termed circumstantial and perhaps inadmissible.
We read that there has been much concern in the Alps recently because they have had the warmest winter ?in 1300 years.? This is presented to us as more proof that the world is warming. It could prove instead that we?ve had a 1300-year cold snap. And if the Alps were really warmer 1300 years ago, a whole millennium before the Industrial Revolution and its CO2, what was the culprit then? Goat farts?
Another perfectly logical explanation for the Earth?s temperature fluctuations is solar activity, fluctuations in the energy radiated to Earth, which have warmed and cooled the planet.
Of course, CO2 aficionados poohpooh this suggestion as a theory with no scientific evidence. But, guys and gals, as we have demonstrated, you have no scientific evidence on your side either. Its either declare a draw, or its pistols at dawn.
So, class, let?s review. There are scientists and there is science. They are different.
Scientists are free to use any technology they want, but unless they can reproduce an outcome using the scientific method, it?s not science.
The Earth may or may not be warming long-term, but the Earth has seen this movie before.
And the sun, not CO2, may or may not be the largest influence on Earth?s climate, but nobody really knows.