The Deniers

Speaking Index

Delivered 13 June 2007

Project 3 in the Communication and Leadershop Program manual comes under the head Get to the Point. The goals are to ensure the beginning, body, and conclusion reinforce the purpose, project sincerity and conviction, control nervousness, and strive not to use notes. Sorry guys, I actually read my speeches.

There are those that maintain that the Holocaust never took place, that the crimes of Hitler's regime were simply made up. We call these people Holocaust Deniers. During the last decade, there has been much discussion about anthropogenic global warming, but there are those who don't believe it is taking place. Until recently, these have been called the Skeptics, but it's getting uglier now. We're starting to see these people labeled as Deniers. But the skeptics don't deserve that label. Indeed, the facts are still on their side. Or perhaps I should say "Our Side". I am one of them.

The current conventional wisdom says that, as humans burn fuels and put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the Greenhouse Effect is warming the entire planet, that this is a bad thing, and that governments should spring into action to ban or heavily tax those activities because doing so will stop the warming. All of this is supported by constant repetition and reference to the consensus of the scientific community.

Well, lets stop right there. When you hear someone support a position with the scientific consensus, you're listening to someone doesn't know how science works. First, there is rarely a consensus among scientists, although it's common for one hypothesis to be widely held. Second, the universe couldn't care less how many scientists, if any, get it right. If every scientist on earth agreed that fire was caused by phlogiston, it would mean nothing. Third, when it actually matters, the scientific consensus is normally wrong. For example, when Priestley and Lavoisier identified oxygen and demonstrated it's role, they did so in the face of scientific consensus that said it was phlogiston that allowed matter to burn.

This is so important that I'm going to repeat it. One, there is no consensus, only a majority busily issuing press releases for each other. Two, it doesn't matter what the majority of scientists think, science isn't decided by vote. Three, when it matters, what passes for consensus is normally wrong.

The next major point is the role of law in all of this. Murder and theft are bad things, and when it's clear that something is bad for the community government must step in. When government does step in, it should only do things that will actually help. In the case of global warming, we are seeing a rush to create a wide range of controls over your behavior to stop this frightful threat, without first demonstrating that it's happening, that it's a threat, or that government action can do anything about it.

In a nutshell, the skeptics, deniers if you insist, are saying if you don't understand what's wrong, don't try to fix it. If you do, you are sure to break something else.

Here are the four points I think we need established before we invoke the awesome power of the state to meddle in our daily lives:

1. The planet is on a warming trend.

2. There is a proven causal relationship between specific human activities and that warming.

3. That there is a right temperature and that returning to that temperature is an improvement.

4. That the actions required by law can actually have an effect.

Let me fill in some detail

1. Is the planet on a warming trend? We don't know. There appears to be some warming over the last several decades, but if you look over the last 12,000 years it's been pretty stable. It's still not as warm as it was in the 11th century, when Greenland was green and a major dairy producer, but far warmer than the middle of the 17th century when the Hudson River routinely froze over on both sides of Manhattan. Temperatures have oscillated throughout history, the change we've seen in our lifetime is probably part of the normal variation rather than a new trend.

2. Is there a causal relationship between specific human activities, meaning the release of carbon dioxide, and the warming we're seeing? We don't know. We do know that temperatures and atmospheric CO2 seem to track, we just don't know the relationship. There is a greenhouse effect, life could never have developed on this planet without it. On the other hand, most chemical reactions are accelerated by heat. Decomposing wood laying on the forest floor releases its carbon content as carbon dioxide. Raise the temperature by ten degrees Celsius and the rate of this change will double. When it's cold, folks stay in watching television. Raise the temperature and you'll find the same folks playing volleyball, breathing heavily and putting more CO2 in the air. Does the chicken cause the egg, or does the egg cause the chicken?

Even if more carbon dioxide did, in the short term, increase temperature, the ecosystem acts to restore balance. The surface warms up, more water evaporates, clouds form, and more of the incoming solar energy is reflected into space.

3. Is there a right temperature? We don't know. My grandfather was an admirable person, as was his wife. I suspect that your grandparents were good people too. Somehow the temperatures they experienced have become enshrined as the temperatures at which the planet should be maintained. We're suckers for the good old days. No matter what a paragon Joe T. Van Horn was, his blessed memory is not proof that the climate of his era is the right climate for my daughter's era.

There are a lot of people on this planet, in a lot of different circumstances. Some will benefit from colder weather, some will benefit from warmer. Do we know enough to come up with an answer for the whole planet? Take, for example, the Florida Chambers of Commerce. They have a strong interest in cooling the planet. If it's cold in Brooklyn, the tourists will flock to Miami's beaches in the winter. If the planet warms up too much, the tourists won't get cold enough to head south and Miami will be underwater anyway. But millions of people further north will need less heat to survive the winter.

Note that rising levels of CO2 and rising temperatures both lead to higher crop production, which means more food at lower prices. I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

4. Will the proposed actions have the desired effect? We don't know. In fact we can't know. Until we prove that the current patterns are hurting things, we certainly can't show that changing those patterns will turn around a trend that we don't know is actually happening.

We are hearing a constant barrage relating to climate trends, and it's not just in the last decade. When I was in high school, those who worried about these things were pretty much in agreement that the next ice age was just around the corner, although nobody claimed it would happen immediately. Even today, some solar experts are of the opinion that cyclical changes in the sun will lead to a fairly dramatic cooling period, starting in the next five years.

But most of what we're hearing isn't new data. Most of it is the same people recycling the same press releases until the public believes the conventional wisdom because they've heard it so many times. We need to be skeptics. We need to look at who is telling us these tales of global warming. Is it climatologists? Experts on the sun? Or is it activists and politicians? And whoever is saying it, we need to ask if what they are saying is logical and supported by fact. Is it new information? Does it actually support the idea that global warming is the most serious threat to planet earth? Just having a lot of folks repeat the same conclusion on television does not make it true.

When you hear that atmospheric warming on Mars has closely matched that of the earth, does it make it more or less likely that burning coal is the cause of global warming? Clearly less. When another study shows that warming on Uranus matches the pattern of Earth and Mars, although several years behind, does that change the logical picture? Not at all, actually, although the corroboration is comforting. If you then hear this repeated in five newspaper articles, three TV shows, two magazines, and a blog, does that make it more logically compelling? Not at all.

Listen closely. Evaluate what you hear. Be a skeptic. The future depends on logic, not repetition.