Lately we’ve been having some cold weather. And it’s not just here in Starkville – snow was observed in all 50 states last week.
Unfortunately, some people can’t just enjoy the snow. They have to bring politics into everything. Surely a week of cold weather proves that global warming is all a big hoax, right?
Come on, people. Learn the difference in climate and weather.
The weather is what’s going on today, or at a specific time, while “climate” refers to long-term averages. Global warming, or climate change, as it is more accurately labeled, refers to average temperatures rising all over the world.
Obviously, temperatures are not constant, so there will always be some variability from day to day. Sometimes we’ll have colder days or warmer days. Making conclusions from a single day or week is completely invalid.
On the other hand, looking at global averages tells a different story. NASA, the NOAA, the World Meteorological Association and all kinds of national weather organizations in other countries have all concluded that 2009 tied for the second-warmest year on record (after 2005), and 2000-09 was the warmest decade on record.
But for some reason, some people can’t accept that. They try to claim that a large percentage of scientists don’t believe it.
Actually, no major scientific body in the entire world has taken a position that refutes the scientific consensus. The closest is a non-committal stance from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a group with a direct financial stake in people’s use of fossil fuels. And even they aren’t disingenuous enough to deny the overwhelming evidence.
Also, the number of articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals since 1993 that refute the idea that human activity plays a significant role in global climate is zero.
Don’t you think if there were a significant movement of scientists who don’t believe human activity can influence the climate, there would more than that? Does anyone honestly believe there is some kind of massive global conspiracy to silence every single dissenting scientist?
Sure, you may find examples of individual scientists who hold a dissenting view, but if their beliefs had any legitimacy, they wouldn’t just be random lone wildcards. I’ll take them seriously when they get a single article into a scientific journal.
It’s no different than the occasional scientist who believes the Earth is only 6,000 years old or a historian who denies that the Holocaust happened.
But what about the Oregon Petition? This document, which can be found online at petitionproject.org, claims to have gathered more than 31,000 signatures of scientists who disagree with the consensus on climate change.
Turns out the vast majority of signers of that petition are engineers, doctors, veterinarians, mathematicians and other non-climatologists. According to its own Web site, only 39 (that’s 0.12 percent) of the signatories are climatologists, and it doesn’t even say how many of those have Ph.D.s (since a bachelor’s degree is all that’s necessary to sign the petition).
So the next time someone mentions the Oregon Petition as evidence that a large number of scientists don’t believe in climate change, inform him or her that it’s a fraud.
The problem is not that people like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will outright lie and claim temperatures are falling, when no scientific body supports their outrageous claims. The problem is that their legion of sheep blindly believes them.
And this what gets me. The evidence is one-sided. There is very little debate among scientists that human activity is the primary cause of the warming over the past century.
However, polls show that only around 50 percent of Americans believe it. Why the disconnect? Have Hannity and Limbaugh really pulled the wool over so many people’s eyes? Is it just because people don’t like Al Gore? (For the record, Gore is a politician and not a scientist, and if he makes a factual error in a speech or movie, it does not invalidate the research done by actual scientists. It just means he’s no expert.)
Admittedly, I’m no expert in climatology. I’m going to assume most reading this aren’t either. So all we can do is defer to the experts, who are pretty one-sided on the issue.
It’s frustrating, because I know a number of intelligent, logical people here at MSU who, even if their political views don’t line up with mine, always make the effort to be well-read and reasonable, but on this one issue, they wildly diverge from scientific thought. It really makes no sense to me. The evidence is pretty clear.
Harry Nelson is the opinion editor of The Reflector. He can be contacted at [email protected].