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Many Disagree With Global Warming Consensus

There has been a general tendency toward melting glaciers over the last few decades, presumably an unprecedented event in the history of the world, and presumably inextricably linked to human industrial activity of the last few centuries. As some of those glaciers melt, however, they are giving clues to historical precedents for warmer temperatures in the past, long before human industrialization or even rapid population growth.

Otzi the iceman, a famous find of human remains dated from 3,300 BC, was so well preserved that scientists were able to determine what his last meal was, and also, interestingly, that he is the first known human to be infected with Lyme Disease. Many artifacts have been recovered in different places indicating summer farming in the high mountains, as well as remains of ancient forests thousands of years old. It appears that receding glaciers is not a new phenomenon.

This entire set of findings brings into question the previously-unquestionable assumption that human activity is the only possible cause of global warming. There is, surely, a lot of science involved in the controversy, and a lot of it is good and valid, but data can be interpreted in many ways. The consensus, we are told, has declared that global warming is unprecedented, it is dangerous, it is due to human activities, and only government regulation of the global economy can save us from certain destruction. There are, in fact, many scientists who strongly dissent from that so-called consensus.

In a recent conversation, I suggested one of them, Dr. John Cristy, from the University of Alabama at Huntsville, and the response was that he was not taken seriously. So, the state climatologist for Alabama, the recipient of an award from NASA for scientific excellence, a distinguished professor and chair of the department, a pioneer in the field of satellite temperature records, a published and oft-cited researcher, and a contributor to IPCC is someone not to be taken seriously. Seriously?

If you look at where the consensus nonsense came from, you will find that such consensus does not agree with the cataclysmic predictions that it is typically associated with. What the 97% actually agree on is that there is some warming of the earth, no matter how small it is, and human activities are likely to have some effect on it, no matter how small the effect. That’s it. The catastrophists are actually a relatively small but vocal portion of the total.

Scientists, every single one of them, are human beings, with all of their biases, preconceptions, and prejudices. Scientific model builders, every single one of them, whether for climate, COVID-19, or anything else, build such models using assumptions about the way the world works and about what will happen in the future. Though they may have access to the best information and the latest techniques, the models’ assumptions bake in the biases of the builder, necessarily. No model builder ever has a crystal ball to peer into the future. Thus, all model builders should be very modest about what they produce, especially when it involves sweeping policies affecting millions of people, and everyone else should look on them only as tools, another limited input into the decision making process. Models themselves are not science. They are only hypotheses about the future, which can be tested with evidence available only in the future.

For those who are interested in actual evidence, the receding glaciers hold a very different story from what we are continually told. Glaciers have receded in the past, temperatures have been as warm or warmer in the past when human activity couldn’t have influenced them, and the climate changes, constantly, with or without our help. Scientists should use that evidence to evaluate their prior biases.

Dan McLaughlin is the author of “Compassion and Truth-Why Good Intentions Don’t Equal Good Results.” Follow him at daniel-mclaughlin.com.

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