{"id":1631,"date":"2017-03-16T08:42:39","date_gmt":"2017-03-16T12:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2017-03-16T08:42:39","modified_gmt":"2017-03-16T12:42:39","slug":"climate-change-fake-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html","title":{"rendered":"“Climate Change” and Fake Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

A left-leaning colleague of mine recently sent me a link to an article<\/a> that he found \u201cencouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

Evidently, General James \u201cMad Dog\u201d Mattis, President Trump\u2019s Secretary of Defense, believes that \u201cclimate change\u201d is both \u201creal\u201d and, according to the article, \u201ca threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon\u2019s assets everywhere [.]\u201d \u00a0In unpublished written testimony<\/a> that he gave during his confirmation hearing, Mattis remarked: \u201cClimate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change,\u201d then, is an issue of national security.<\/p>\n

Contrary to what those like my colleague think, that the President has within his administration people who pay lip service to \u201cclimate change\u201d is wholly unsurprising to many of us on this side of the political divide.\u00a0 This, however, makes it no less discouraging<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And when it comes from a distinguished General and the Secretary of Defense, it is not only discouraging, but concerning.<\/p>\n

Some thoughts:<\/p>\n

(1)It wasn\u2019t too long ago when it was \u201cglobal warming,\u201d not \u201cclimate change,\u201d that was all of the rage. There was no talk of \u201cclimate change.\u201d But then, practically overnight, \u201cglobal warming\u201d gave way to the latter.\u00a0 Why?<\/p>\n

The catalyst for this change of labels was the leaking of over 1,000 emails, computer code sets, and other documents from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU) back in November of 2009.\u00a0 The leaks revealed a network of corruption and fraud on the part of climate scientists.\u00a0 Such was the depths of the scandal that the event came to be known as \u201cClimategate<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much (but still not enough) has been written in detail about Climategate.\u00a0 The gist of it, however, is that climate scientists had been cooking their data in order support their preconceived conclusions. They had been guilty of practicing fake science in order to show both that global warming was a crisis and that anthropogenic<\/em> (\u201cman-made\u201d) global warming was occurring.<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobal warming\u201d was now tainted because of its association with Climategate.<\/p>\n

This was one reason that a name-change became imperative.\u00a0 There is, though, another.<\/p>\n

As I wrote<\/a> back in June of 2013, the \u201cexperts\u201d be damned, \u201cthe average person is much more disposed to trust his own senses than testimony that militates against it.\u00a0 And the average person can see that for all the hype over so-called global warming, in many parts of the country\u2014and the planet\u2014it still gets very, very cold.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, all too often, the actual weather that people experience seems to conflict with the notion that the planet is warming to a dangerous degree (or warming at all).<\/p>\n

So, because of its bad press and its clash with our everyday intuitions, its salespersons realized that they needed a new label, a brand name that, fake science scandals aside, no one could possibly deny.\u00a0 And how could anyone deny \u201cclimate change?\u201d\u00a0 Isn\u2019t everything in this world forever in flux?\u00a0 Is not the weather constantly changing?<\/p>\n

Moreover, \u201cclimate change\u201d is sufficiently malleable to immunize its merchants\u2019 claims against refutation.\u00a0 Yet if a claim is not falsifiable, it is not scientific.\u00a0 At any rate, real science doesn\u2019t and shouldn\u2019t need to resort to such rhetorical tricks as this.<\/p>\n

Rhetorical trickery is the stuff of, not science, but politics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(2) That global warming or climate change has become such a hotly contested issue should alone suffice to put the lie to the notion that it is an issue of science. So too should the fact that rational dialogue with true believers is impossible. Skeptics invariably encounter alarmism and are summarily dismissed as \u201cdeniers.\u201d<\/p>\n

To repeat, this is not science. It is politics.<\/p>\n

Note, it is not that dialogue over the possibility of global warming per se is impossible. But those who scream from the rooftops about \u201cglobal warming\u201d are never talking just about this. Their issue is anthropogenic<\/em>\u2014\u201cman-made\u201d\u2014global warming.<\/p>\n

In short, the claim is that, though the Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, human beings, who, geologically-speaking, constitute a species in its infancy, now threaten to burn it into oblivion\u2014unless the governments of the world unite to assume that much more control and power over the resources and lives of its citizens in order to avert Armageddon.<\/p>\n

The problem, here, is that there is no <\/em>evidence to substantiate the assertion that humans are frying the planet.\u00a0 In fact, even more modest claims about the causes, scope, and very reality of global warming haven\u2019t the evidence behind them that the claimants make.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the notion that there is catastrophic global warming.\u00a0 It is simply false<\/a>. The Earth has been undergoing warming and<\/em> cooling cycles for thousands of years.\u00a0 The warming that occurred over the span of the 20th<\/sup> century is \u201cwell within the natural variations recorded in the last millennium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since 2001, cooling <\/em>has been transpiring.<\/p>\n

As for CO2<\/sub> emissions, for which humans are blamed and which are supposedly responsible for ravaging the planet, FriendsofScience.org<\/a>, an organization of active and retired climate scientists dedicated to disentangling myth from fact, asserts bluntly that \u201cthere is no proof that CO2<\/sub>\u00a0 is the main driver of global warming<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scientists at Friends of Science back up their statement. \u201cAs measured in ice cores dated over many thousands of years, CO2<\/sub> levels move up and down AFTER the temperature has done so, and thus are the RESULT OF, NOT THE CAUSE of warming.\u201d They note that the work of geologists in sediments establishes the direction of causality from the Earth\u2019s rising temperature to the increase in CO2<\/sub> levels\u2014and not vice versa.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is solid evidence that, as temperatures move up and down naturally and cyclically through solar radiation, orbital and galactic influences, the warming surface layers of the earth\u2019s oceans expel more CO2<\/sub> as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGlobal warming\u201d or \u201cclimate change,\u201d whatever we decide to call it, is a political issue saturated in fake science.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A left-leaning colleague of mine recently sent me a link to an article that he found \u201cencouraging.\u201d Evidently, General James \u201cMad Dog\u201d Mattis, President Trump\u2019s Secretary of Defense, believes that \u201cclimate change\u201d is both \u201creal\u201d and, according to the article, \u201ca threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon\u2019s assets everywhere [.]\u201d \u00a0In unpublished written…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Climate Change" and Fake Science<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Climate Change" and Fake Science\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A left-leaning colleague of mine recently sent me a link to an article that he found \u201cencouraging.\u201d Evidently, General James \u201cMad Dog\u201d Mattis, President Trump\u2019s Secretary of Defense, believes that \u201cclimate change\u201d is both \u201creal\u201d and, according to the article, \u201ca threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon\u2019s assets everywhere [.]\u201d \u00a0In unpublished written…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-03-16T12:42:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jack Kerwick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"Climate Change\" and Fake Science","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"Climate Change\" and Fake Science","og_description":"A left-leaning colleague of mine recently sent me a link to an article that he found \u201cencouraging.\u201d Evidently, General James \u201cMad Dog\u201d Mattis, President Trump\u2019s Secretary of Defense, believes that \u201cclimate change\u201d is both \u201creal\u201d and, according to the article, \u201ca threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon\u2019s assets everywhere [.]\u201d \u00a0In unpublished written…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html","og_site_name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","article_published_time":"2017-03-16T12:42:39+00:00","author":"Jack Kerwick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html","name":"\"Climate Change\" and Fake Science","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website"},"datePublished":"2017-03-16T12:42:39+00:00","dateModified":"2017-03-16T12:42:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2017\/03\/climate-change-fake-science.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"“Climate Change” and Fake Science"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/","name":"At the Intersection of Faith and Culture","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jack Kerwick","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/#\/schema\/person\/6832222998cc14717ded1849531201c5","name":"Jack Kerwick","description":"I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University, a master's degree in philosophy from Baylor University, and a bachelor's degree in philosophy and religious studies from Wingate University. I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1632,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}