Unscientific Method: The Global Warming Debate
Lee Emmerich Jamison
I got an e-mail with an article from Dr. Timothy Ball, a Canadian meteorologist who does not believe in human-induced global warming. I read through the article and noted, as I often have recently, that the article spoke a lot of the psychology being applied to strong-arming the political process and stampeding the world's people toward drastic economic change. This is all well and good. Unfortunately it does not specifically refute the science on which the drivers of worldwide panic rest their case.
In short, this man's refutation, however much we may agree with his concerns, is nothing more than obfuscation.
Read the article referenced here:
Now, In answer to this article I have written a reply that is published here as an open letter:
Dr. Ball,
While I appreciate your position, and acknowledge that an intelligent person can disagree with the "prevailing" view, what I see you refuting is not specific facts of the arguments about Global warming but the powerful psychology being applied to the process. That there is an effort to stampede the ignorant into compliance is not even in question. There clearly is such an effort. That does not mean the phenomenon of global warming does not exist. Nor does it mean carbon dioxide is a minimal contributor.
What I want to see is something that would show me how the purported mechanism of CO2's activity would be negated. An example of this would be proof that CO2 had reached its I.R. saturation at some point in the past. It is possible for a radiant filter medium to reach saturation, that is to say that it is filtering out all of the radiant wavelengths it affects.
Look at the yellow stripes of a parking lot through the cobalt glass of an old Phillips Milk of Magnesia bottle. Lo and behold, those bright yellow stripes will be black. (Try it yourself. It's really quite startling.) If, like that, CO2 concentrations at some point in the past, say, in the 1960s had already achieved this level for both incoming and outgoing radiation no amount of additional CO2 could possibly warm the Earth further. Voila, you would have demolished a major tenet in the scientific argument for human-induced global warming..
So far no one has shown this kind of science to me.
I hear a lot of people yelling that we are being railroaded. We may be, but if you are refuting a mechanism in the scientific method the proper methodology is not to say "we are being railroaded, therefore the mechanism is false".
The mechanism of cooling for the post WWII to 1984 period could easily have been aerosols of sulfur compounds which have since been controlled to reduce acid rain. I am only fifty but I can see that skies in the region where I live are clearer than they were when I was in my teens.
I have also consulted with scientists who specialize in solar studies and they are adamant that solar variability is inadequate to account for the maginitude of the current warming. So, where is the science?
As a recent convert to believing that humans have become a major contributor to this issue I am highly dubious about the psychology being applied to bend the politics of environmental change. The economies of the West are being pressed to rapidly change the energy foundation of our entire society.
Such rapid change is a course with unimagined perils. All of the worst wars in history were precipitated by economic disputes, displacements, or depressions. The damage we can do by warming the Earth is nothing to compare with what we can do by incinerating and irradiating it as I have no doubt we will in a world war brought about by the economic damage from stampeding away from an economy founded in chemical energy sources.
Is there a rational way to change the economy of the world so that we produce less of all the gasses that might contribute to global warming? I certainly hope so. The panic-and-stampede method currently in vogue can only lead to calamity. It is a fool's errand foolishly pursued. That does not mean there is no issue for which we eventually must find answers!
If you wish to refute the science on which this information or dis-information campaign is founded, damn it, refute the SCIENCE.
