Jumping on the Global Warming Bandwagon

Global warming concerns me. It probably doesn’t concern me for the reasons you might think, though. What concerns me about global warming is that not many people are challenging it. Let me clarify at the beginning—I am not saying that the earth is not heating up, or that we should not treat the environment responsibly. I am saying that in the last six months, it seems that everyone has decided that global warming is here, its destruction will be complete in nature, and we are directly responsible for all of it.

There are a few questions I have about global warming that not many people seem to be asking. First, how do we know what temperature the earth is supposed to be? The standard scientific view says that the earth is 14 billion years old. We have accurate temperature data for certain parts of the world for the last 150 years. By evaluating ice-core samples, scientists have a pretty good idea of the temperatures for the last 1,000 years. This means that we have empirical temperature data for roughly 7.14x10^-6% of all earth’s history. It seems odd to me that one could take such a small data sample and make such large claims with it. Besides, I recall learning about ice ages and heat waves that happened long before humans appeared. How is the current warming trend different?

Second, the environment is dynamic, with a multitude of factors at work. How can we be so sure that man-made carbon dioxide is the root cause an impending catastrophe? Carbon dioxide is just one piece of the environmental pie. I am not suggesting that it plays no role whatsoever, but there is no guarantee that if we all stopped driving cars, the earth would suddenly revert to “normalcy” (whatever that is).

Third, computer models predicting future temperature changes vary widely. For that matter, the five-day weather forecast isn’t always accurate. Why do we put so much stock in them? Is it because it’s technology (which, of course, is always good) used by scientists (who, of course, are always correct and unbiased)? Where have our critical-thinking skills gone?

I am afraid that our society has yet again succumbed to the tyranny of the present. As Ann Coulter stated a few years ago, “For many people, history started this morning.” Never mind that twenty years ago the feared global ice age never happened (I am just old enough to remember this). Never mind that Y2K was a dud. “This time, we mean it!”

Again, let me stress that I am not advocating mistreating our planet. If we can take better care of things down here, then by all means, let’s do it! But I fear that we are blindly following the latest cultural craze, which may or may not turn out to be true. (If it turns out to be false in twenty years, I guarantee that no one will admit to having believed it—it will be forgotten and abandoned without a second thought.) We should be critical of global warming, not because of a lack of concern for the environment, but because history’s past failures demand it of us.