Global Warming Doesn’t Work

I’m not saying that global warming isn’t real. I’m not going to argue that it isn’t important.

What I’m saying is that global warming fails miserably as a basis for policy. It fails as an argument for or against any issue. Greens should just stop bringing up global warming–it is the dead albatross of the environmental movement.

Check out the reddit submission “How Not To Measure Temperature.” The basic premise is that the rising temperature data is flawed because the conditions around the individual sampling points are either flawed, constantly changing, or both. These two graphs sum up the argument:

The basic argument is good. But, does that discount global warming? No. Neither does the article “Yes, the Ocean Has Warmed; No, It’s Not ‘Global Warming’,” by Robert E. Stevenson.

But both highlight how easy it is to call the credibility of global warming into question. Global warming is a large, complex issue and therefore involves large, complex science.

And large complex science inevitably contains some errors, some assumptions, and any number of guesses. That doesn’t make it bad science. If the model works, the model works. You refine the errors and omissions out of it over time.

But something as huge as global climate will never reach a level of refinement that a determined antagonist can’t find places to poke holes in it, and make it appear bogus.

That’s why people pushing for change need to drop global warming as a reason for change. People won’t buy it.

It’s not that people are stupid. The whole “Save the Earth” movement suffers from the same kind of implied superiority that born-again Christians and vegans suffer from. Oh, they can be pleasant people, and they make all kinds of claims that they aren’t feeling superior, but you can hear their inner thoughts: “You’re going to hell, you know,” or “Anyone who eats meat is a barbarian,” (respectively).

That kind of perceived attitude of superiority–whether it’s real or not–leads people to want to disagree with whatever they’re being told. And along comes all these problems with the model being used to justify the calls for change. It’s an easy sell.

And global warming isn’t even needed for justifying change. All of the changes that people use global warming to support can be supported by less vulnerable ideas. Don’t argue that the U.S. should reduce its oil consumption to reduce global warming. Argue that we should do it to keep us out of stupid wars in the Middle East. Argue that with China’s growing need for fossil fuels it’s only a matter of time before the U.S. comes into conflict with China–while the French, those smug bastards, sit around sipping wine and snickering at us because they invested in nuclear power.

Let it go. Dump global warming as the cornerstone of the need for change. It doesn’t sell.