Hiding in the Backwaters Just one more blog on the net.

An Inconvenient Truth

One of the trailers shown prior to "Another Gay Movie" was for "An Inconvenient Truth", which reminded me of a post at Coyote Blog a friend pointed me two a few weeks a go, but which I didn't have time to finish reading. Overworked as I am right now, I'm just this morning getting around to finishing it.

Titled, "A Skeptics Primer for 'An Inconvenient Truth'," Mr. Meyer, a.k.a. Coyote, outlines several problems with current climate "science." If you think the scare quotes unjustified, read the post. The first issue raised is the fact that the most oft quoted scientist by global warming advocates refused to release his data or his methods for review.(1) Any rational human being and anyone who dares to call herself a scientist should be saying, "Excuse me? Aren't review and repeatability among the foundational tenants of science?" Apparently not in the climate "science" community.

That single fact alone is enough to make any honest human being view any claims based on that research as suspect, but it gets better. After Congressional subpoena, Mann, the scientist in question, grudgingly released his data and methods. We now learn that his data for cataloging climate change over the centuries was based on one, single tree. Any statisticians out there? Several statisticians have apparently come forward and debunked Mann, et.al.'s statistical models, one claiming you could run random noise through his model and get the same output.(1) I have to wonder to which inconvenient truth the title of Al Gore's film is referring.

Also interesting is a link in Coyote's post to a USA Today article. Coyote's issue with the article is the graph which purports to give us the world climate for the last 2000 years to four decimal places of accuracy. So in the year 600, there were instruments sensitive enough to record a shift of 1/10,000 of a degree. Uh huh. A common statistical boondoggle is to give highly precise numbers where such precision is not reasonable to infer from the data. Greater precision implies greater accuracy, but unless the data you start with was that precise, you can't confer that precision on your results.

What caught my interest was the focus of the article of the plight of California wine growers. Grapes are quite sensitive to climate, at least grapes that produce drinkable wine. This explains why wine producing areas of the world are limited to very specific locales. Should the current warming trend continue, California wine country may no longer be able to produce wine. (2) Now, that would indeed be catastrophic for owners of vineyards and the economies that have built up around them. On a global scale, however, I don't see the problem. If it's too warm to grow grapes in California, then somewhere it was previously too cool will be the new wine country.

So it seems that all the doomsday predictions about climate change are more about preserving the status quo than anything else. One of the scenario's spun by Al Gore in the trailer is the polar ice caps melting and putting most of Calcutta and a large part of Florida under water. "Imagine 100s of millions of refugees." Well, if the polar ice cap melted completely tomorrow, that could be a problem. If, on the other hand, the ocean levels rise slowly over a span of several years, a much more likely scenario, people will simply move. If the worst thing that happens to New York is the Trade Center Memorial will be underwater, some enterprising entrepreneur will bring in glass bottom boats, or, more likely, we'll just build a sea wall to keep the water out. Can you say New Orleans?

The only constant in the Universe is change. It seems a human imperative to try to create stasis. It is an endeavor at which we have never succeeded. Indeed our survival as a species is due to our adaptability. I'm not saying we shouldn't be paying attention to the change in climate. I'm not saying it won't create hardship for humanity, some more than others. I do think that running half-assed into policies designed to prevent something we haven't even discovered the cause for seems...ill-conceived. If we want to do something to mitigate the effects of global warming, fine. But let's make our plans based on science not wishful thinking.