Global (Warming) Shenanigans

Today Yahoo! News and Reuters team up for an all-to-easy-to-mock article about the menace of global warming and the Kyoto treaty. The article is fairly balanced between both sides of the global warming debate, with a few erroneous jabs thrown in to remind you that the world will be destroyed by man and global warming. My favorite quote is this, which pretty much sums up the entire theory of global warming:

"Imagine a pot of boiling water on the stove. If I turn up the heat I can't say that each bubble is from the extra heat," said Mike MacCracken, chief scientist for climate change programs at the Climate Institute, a Washington think-tank.

"But there are more bubbles and they're larger," he said, adding it was best to act now rather than risk disaster.

This is perfect! Indeed, if the temperature of the Earth has risen just over 1 degree over the past 140 or so years, and at the same time greater amounts and more severe weather disturbances have occurred (which is untrue - I'll link to that later on) then you cannot equate the weather changes to the temperature change! Isn't that how the entire theory is flawed? To continue with the same metaphor - what if someone else beyond our control was in charge of the temperature of the water, and we could only observe the amount and size of the bubbles for about 20 seconds out of the, oh, 400-500 hours the pot was boiling...

Another mockery of global warming:

World surface temperatures have risen by 0.6 degrees centigrade (1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) since the late 1800's when the Industrial Revolution started in Europe.

For those of you interested in global warming theory, you may see this date for the beginning of man-made global climate change - the late 1800's and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. However, it would be prudent to point out that the Industrial Revolution began closer to 1750, and the reason the connection between global warming and that time frame is made is to attribute climate change to industrialization, when in reality that time frame is necessary because accurate average global temperatures where not available before 1860. (The newly retired folks at the Diplomad explain this ridiculousness much better than me.)

Don't assume global warming to be a fact - it's not. Even I thought that the human race was slowly cooking itself to death until a college meteorology class set me straight. There are an enormous amount of factors that influence global climate and not all are understood (or even fully known.) Global climate change and trends are even more difficult to evaluate and prove - for all we know, the temperature of the Earth would be doing the exact same things now even if we weren't here.

And finally, if you need more encouragement to remember that global warming is a theory (and weak theory at that) go here and here to see reports from the Hoover Institution. Read them all.