Healthy Skepticism

The problem is the collection of the “usual suspects.” I’m naturally skeptical of almost everything I hear, see or read these days. Whereas once I might have accepted pronouncements on face value, particularly if they seem consistent with independent observations, now I often look for ulterior motives. Is there a hidden agenda? Are the data being accurately presented? What’s going on?

So, I try to make sense of the global warming crisis. Last year I spent my first full summer in Texas since 1971 when I lived in San Antonio. It was a record-breaker—almost—in that we had forty-some days in a row over 100 degrees. But, it wasn’t a record, because the year was badly overshadowed by a sequence of quite a few more days of high temps more than thirty years ago. Yet, it seemed like it might be a first-hand view of the planetary crisis with worse to come.

Oh, sure, I remember being fascinated as a sixth-grader about the ice ages alternating over millennia with the semi-tropical bogs and rain forests that provided habitat for the dinosaurs. That would indicate to most folks that the planetary climate is cyclical. But, man is now here and we might be doing damage to screw up the normal cycles. Or, maybe not.

This year, the drought is long gone in north Texas and the water crisis is not about lack but about over-abundance. So much for the warming cycle in that regard. And, the temperature has yet to come within five degrees of the century mark even though we are in the middle of July. Time for some personal research—and mine will be worth as much as Sheryl Crow’s observation that the beach these days is much hotter than she recalls from thirty years ago.

I’ve started checking the year for the record high temperature each day that is reported on the weather page of the local fish-wrapper. If there is an accelerating trend, we should see the record dates clustering toward more recent years in the history of weather data documentation. I’d think we’d have some meaningful numbers if we saw that the record high temps were consistently within the last ten or twenty years. Today, for example, the record high was noted as occurring in 1980. That seems supportive.

But, in the last month, I’ve seen many more record high dates from 1911, 1913, 1935, 1951, 1947, etc. etc. Might that mean it was just as hot or hotter a hundred years ago? In many instances during periods without the broad use of the internal combustion engine? Why yes, I think it might! I know that is anecdotal and in no sense scientific, but it is at least as valid as the hysteria we saw last week at the global Live Earth concerts.

As record cold, snow, rain and wind were being demonstrated globally there was a gathering of “usual suspects” who were there to raise awareness and “Save the Planet!!!!!” But, the hysteria looked so much like a Leni Riefenstahl Nazi propaganda film. Shouting and posturing and chanting of slogans to indoctrinate and fire up the masses with the purity of their mission along with vilification of the current administration who somehow seems targeted for shouldering the entire blame for the problem—if indeed there is one.

Check the cast of characters. They seem to be the same folks that march in step with MoveOn.org and Michael Moore. Their motivation seems as focused on bringing socialism to government and tearing down the administration as saving the planet. The hypocrisy of flying hundreds of private jets to massive concert venues filled with energy consuming lights, air conditioning, water, trash, and whatnot so as to stop global warming seems obvious.

The hypocrisy is apologized away, however, by the purchase of “carbon offsets.” Why of course, we—the elite who know what you should know—can waste energy and pollute the planet profligately if we simply say we are offsetting our carbon footprint (whatever that means,) by planting some trees in the rain forest or recycling some trash in Indonesia. Or maybe not doing that, but simply say that we are doing it by sending some cash to a carbon offset fund somewhere which may or may not do anything at all that changes a thing in the environment.

Gimme a break. We’ve got divinity school drop out and Yale C-student Al Gore along with such intellectual giants as Madonna, Sean Penn, Bon Jovi, Rosie O’Donnell and who knows who all else providing us with sloganized science that somehow implies that we are destroying the planet by living comfortably and that they are the ones who know how to cure it by first ousting the administration and second by feeling guilty enough to drive a hybrid cracker-box car.

Sorry, the cast of characters and my own observations and the list of questioning scientists challenging the global warming assertions all lead me to believe that this isn’t about the environment at all but rather about personal aggrandizement for a few.