Global Warming: Religion Class at the U

This brings me to another controversial topic. Yesterday, I had yet another tirade by a professor about Global Climate change., with all accompanying charts and Al Gore quotes, that have since been refuted by various sources, including the Physics for Future Presidents professor. Usually this professor is far more objective about his topics, but at the U, global climate change is becoming religion. So I begrudgingly sat through yet another sermon. Near the end of class, the sermon was wrapping up and one student raised his hand.

He said he wanted to dispute the data and presented some research to the opposite effect. He didn't wholeheartedly dispute the idea of global warming, however. Stumbling over his words, he tried as he might to express, at least, an unconvinced attitude towards the issue.

This is a good class and a good teacher, so my teacher wisely approached this situation as an opportunity to teach. We listened to a short lesson on the idea of "scientific uncertainty".

Now, during his sermon before, this same teacher had some trouble with his arguments in that citing one specific graphic, he showed a supposed correlation between global temperatures and CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, implying, as many have, that the CO2 is the cause and temperature is the effect. This is argued as either being a feedback loop with not discernible cause-effect relationship or more convincingly as temperature affecting CO2 concentrations- the anti-Gore argument. In fact, he taught us the Gore argument and then stated quite objectively that we actually do not know what these CO2 levels could do, we've never seen this before- a much more sound argument. This is the trouble Global Climate change proponents have with the theory.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded, and as we can only conclude- humans are having a direct effect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere. As to what this will cause, there are only theories, mostly doomsday in nature, and I see them mostly as some scientists, but mostly academics in other fields grabbing a very conservative conclusion and running away with it to all kinds of different places.

The final comment in the class was wise- "Even if these things don't happen, what is the harm in doing good for the environment. At the very least we've taken better car of our children." Amen.

My take: The only plausible argument is one in which we, as humans have a definite impact, and that it is very negative. For the climate, maybe. For our health, definitely yes. Therefore, make changes to our lifestyle. If not for ourselves, for our children and for the sake of the areas in which we live.