“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth…?”[1]
An
article on climate change in a recent paper was not news that is useful in resolving
debated matters, but merely propaganda.
Titled “Poll: 64% disapprove of Trump’s climate change views,” it
lacked a single, solitary, scientific fact in support of global warming (GW)
which might indicate the relative merits (or demerits) of either party in this contention. Instead the writers merely assume the
correctness of the GW position and, on the basis of assumptions, commit
the begging
the question fallacy by berating
deniers for their so-called “anti-scientific” worldviews.[1] In reality, nothing in this article pushing
the “climate-change” agenda indicates a commitment to scientific methodology
at a level which sharply distinguishes scientific findings from popular
opinions, a matter I will address in my closing paragraphs. To give but one hint here, the mere appeal to
scientific “authority” just because many “scientists say so” does
not qualify as a scientific fact when no vetted supporting evidence is
provided.
One
does not need to be an expert in climatology or even a scientist in another
field in order to evaluate the trustworthiness of “climate change” (CC) pronouncements. The relevant data behind this aspect of
CC rest not on obscurities that are confusing to non-specialists,[2]
but on substantial climatic events whose evidence, by their public
nature, cannot be swept away as if they didn’t happen. Scientific credibility is indeed wholly
compromised when unequivocal evidence is admitted only when it advances a
desired agenda.[3]
CCs’
first red flag entails the shifting of their banner term from “global warming”
to “climate change.” Notice that this alteration
disables the criteria by which evidence (was it by drought, or blizzard?) is
sought to confirm a cause to an ambiguous event. It also contradicts a core aspect of scientific
hypotheses[4]
which requires that they all be specific and falsifiable. Every scientist, irrespective of their
perspective on CC, should be expected to already know this.
The
second flag concerns their illegitimate omission of relevant data. The driving force behind CC alarmists isn’t
specifically the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, but their
allegation of human culpability behind retreating or dead[5]
glaciers, melting Arctic ice flows, rising sea levels, and the alleged elevated
extinction of animals[6]
because of human contribution to the eleva-tion of green-house gasses. In light of this charge, it is imperative to grasp
that around 18,000 years ago a vast portion of Canada lay under 2 vertical miles
of the Laurentian Continental Ice Sheet,[7]
while southward-extending “tongues” of that same mass, up to 3,000 feet thick, once
rested on top of what includes both today’s city of Seattle[8]
in the west and the Great Plains and Great Lakes regions to the east.[9] For the same reason, and correspondingly at the
same time, the land “bridge” extending between America and Asia (due to such a massive
accumulation of snows lowering the sea levels) permitted human travel between these
continents; that is, until the ice-age temperatures reversed upward and caused
the sea to re-flood that “bridge.”[10]
Both the (unknown) cause of that upturn
in temperature, and its result, were catastrophic.[11]
Yet the authors draw no implications at
all as to its bearing on the assertion that CC is human-caused.
[1] By A.P. writers Seth Borenstein, Nicholas Riccardi and
Hannah Fingerhut appearing in The Daily American. Somerset, PA,
9/14/2019, p. A 10.
[2] Of course details that are scientifically established
can have a vital bearing on climatology with respect to the question of our
contribution to climate change. On this
matter, however, it is reasonable for the general public to ask why we aren’t
hearing either hard facts or hard statistics.
In addition, the very fact of the “neglect” that I reference in my title
serves to heighten the question of the credibility of the evidence that CC
proponents do claim to have. After all, neglectful
research in one arena which we can perceive is a sure indication of bias in
another.
[3] Indeed the scientific spirit is so determined to
follow evidence where it leads that it seeks to disconfirm the hypothesis under
consideration.
[4] A hypothesis is a research plan for determining
whether or not the available evidence confirms or excludes one’s theory.
[6] www.climate-change-guide.com/extinction-of-species.html. ** On the other hand see American
Museum of Natural History. www.amnh.org/
dinosaurs-ancient-fossils/extinction. “The largest mass extinction event
happened around 250 million years ago when perhaps 95 percent of all species
went extinct [while an] … extinction that occurred 65 million years ago
wiped out some 50 percent of plants and animals.”
[9] “The Retreat Chronology of the Laurentide Ice Sheet
During the Last 10,000 Years and Implications for Deglacial Sea-Level Rise.” serc.carlton.edu/vignettes/collection/58451.html
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