I’ll get to the wedgies in a moment.
The global climate change community (recall those balmy days when it was called global warming?) suffered a smack in the face the other day. Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Dr. Dr. Ivar Giaever, left the American Physical Society (APS) in protest of the APS’s rigid conclusion that global warming is occurring.
In 2007, the APS adopted an official position on global climate change in which it concluded: “The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.”
Well, I guess that’s it…nothing to see here, citizens. Please move on. This is settled science, after all.
In April 2010, the APS added a Climate Change Commentary to the 2007 statement which consisted of tortured logic to explain it (could they have been feeling the “heat” of the skeptics?). With regard to the incontrovertible evidence comment, the explanation offered to defend it was:
The evidence for global temperature rise over the last century is compelling. However, the word “incontrovertible” in the first sentence of the second paragraph of the 2007 APS statement is rarely used in science because by its very nature science questions prevailing ideas. The observational data indicate a global surface warming of 0.74 C (+/- 0.18 C) since the late 19th century. (Source: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html)
So let me see…scientists should not use words like incontrovertible, but they’ll grant themselves a rare exception because over the last 100 years of earth’s 4,540,000,000 years of existence the surface temperature has risen less than one degree Celsius?
No wonder Dr. Giaever left the APS. In his resignation email, he wrote the following:
In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim … is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.
Incontrovertible is a powerful word. It means irrefutable, incontestable, and indisputable. Sort of like the early church’s dogmatic belief that the earth was the center of our solar system, a belief Galileo challenged to his demise. I’ve heard it said the global warming community is like a religion. Now I know why.
Okay, the wedgies. In my research for this article I had to meander around several global warming advocacy sites, like Think Progress which is covering former Vice President Al Gore’s 24-hour marathon rant about global warming. I guess his search for ManBearPig hasn’t gone so well, so Gore is back to public tirades about dying polar bears. During my visits to some of these sites, it felt like I was intruding upon a reunion of people who all had received wedgies in high school. Seriously, I had to throw the Nerd Alert Flag on the field quite a few times.
I don’t know if the earth is warming or not. If it is, it sure seems like it’s not by much according to the data the APS uses. If it is warming at all, we still don’t know why. Even the APS acknowledges it could be man-made, or it could be by anthropogenic processes (no, I never got a wedgie in school). What I do know is that by keeping the dogma alive, the believers in the science community stand to rake in billions in research money, and Al Gore stands to profit from his green energy investments. The evidence for that is incontrovertible.
Mike Angley is the award-winning author of the thriller series, the Child Finder trilogy. He is a retired USAF Colonel and 25-year career Special Agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI). Follow him on Twitter: @MikeAngley, FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/mike.angley, and visit his website: www.mikeangley.com.