They Blinded Me With Science, Climate Change Edition

One day a group of friends were talking about climate change in the cafeteria. Ralph said, “There is growing concern and evidence that scientific data, from which global warming theories emerged, has been manipulated, enhanced or deleted.” Larry nodded and responded, “The data does not support the premise that carbon dioxide emissions are playing a significant role in the world temperature variations. The temperature of the Earth has been changing over centuries with warmer and colder periods throughout history.” Dana agreed, saying,“I do not believe that CO2 is a cause of global warming.”

Chip was more emphatic. “One word,” he said, “Bunk. It's built off of corrupt data and a corrupt NASA program. It's bunk. It's fallacy. There is absolutely no substantial evidence to prove that there is global warming.” And Dan agreed: “I think it’s all baloney. It’s all baloney. I think it’s just some scheme….I just don’t believe it, I just don’t believe it. You know, I’m a scientist, I’m a surgeon, I’ve done scientific research papers, there’s a lot of skepticism.”

From his seat at the next table, Chuck muttered, “I think we ought to take Al Gore, put him on an iceberg, and put him way out there.”

Randy took a sip of his drink, and started to wax philosophical. “The greatest impact on our climate clearly is the sun,” he said, “and we have very little impact on the sun and how much energy and temperature the sun is sending to the earth. We have seen clearly over thousands of years that at different times more energy has come through and different times less energy has come through, and that variation has impacted climate change. Over the thousands of years that’s been recorded we’ve had both colder times and warmer times. It happens to be that we’ve recently come out of a warmer time and now actually we’re headed in to a little bit of a colder time. The impact of the sun is much different than impact that we could have had.” Ben nodded and offered his terse agreement, saying, “Our planet has warmed and cooled from the beginning of time.”

Paul spoke up: “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.” And he had a lot more to say about science: “All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior…You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”

Jim shifted the conversation back. “I think that the science is inconclusive on this,” he said. “What the science says is that temperatures peaked out globally in 1998. So we’ve gone for 10 plus years where the temperatures have gone down….I personally believe that the solar flares are more responsible for climatic cycles than anything that human beings do and our lunar, our rovers on Mars have indicated that there has been a slight warming in the atmosphere of Mars and that certainly was not caused by the internal combustion engine.”

Sandy wanted to know, “Does the so-called danger posed to the economy by not acting to reduce what some may call man-made effects on climate change outweigh the economic costs to the country?”

Finally Todd concluded for the group, saying, “This whole thing strikes me if it weren’t so serious as being a comedy you know. I mean, we just went from winter to spring. In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways? What a dumb idea….Some of the models said that we’re going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that.…”

Then the whole gang got up to attend their next meeting of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology.