Debunking the climate change consensus – part 1

Earth's changing climate is a critical issue and poses the risk of significant environmental, social and economic disruptions around the globe. While natural sources of climate variability are significant, multiple lines of evidence indicate that human influences have had an increasingly dominant effect on global climate warming observed since the mid-twentieth century.

That is a little better in that at least they are speaking about problematic climate change, but the statement is really self evident. Of course, “changing climate is a critical issue and poses the risk of significant environmental, social and economic disruptions.” That has always been the case—witness how the Viking settlements in Greenland were wiped out by the return of cold conditions in the 14th century. Or the Ancestral Puebloans who were forced to abandon their settlements when the American Southwest faced a series of droughts between 1275 and 1300 CE.

The list of societies that failed because they didn’t adapt successfully to climate change is extensive: The Akkadian Empire of 4,200 years ago collapsed due to a prolonged drought which led to widespread famine. The Mayan Civilization’s cities declined around 900 CE when they faced severe droughts. The Khmer Empire in Southeast Asia also declined when they suffered from unpredictable monsoons and prolonged droughts between the 13th and 15th centuries.

The message of history is simple adapt to climate change or die!

And the messages NASA boosts from the Geological Society of America, the Joint Statement of International Academies, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Global Change Research Program are all essentially the same: human activities are the main cause of recent climate change. While many scientists who research the causes of climate change disagree (which will be the subject of part 2 in this series), so what?

In the final analysis, the reliance on consensus to determine what is real in science is simply a logical fallacy anyways. A show of hands, even from experts in the field, does not decide the validity of scientific hypotheses. The award-winning American author and filmmaker Dr. Michael Crichton put it well in his January 17, 2003 lecture presented at the California Institute of Technology:

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world… The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.

Dr. Christopher Essex, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario sums up how we should approach climate change:

Stop being afraid. I think that is the single most important thing. Stop being afraid and start thinking.

And thinking leads us to ask, if our climate is so sensitive to humanity’s emissions then why has the 50% rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations the past 140 years led to temperature changes too small to even be unnoticeable in a single human lifetime? If man-made climate change is causing increasing extreme weather records, then why were there no extreme weather records set on a state-wide basis in 2024, while in 1936, 27 records were set, records that still stand today? If polar bears are in such grave danger due to man-made, or any other kind of, climate change, then why are there five times as many bears now as there were in the mid-20th century? And why didn’t the bears go extinct during the Holocene Optimum 8,000 - 5,000 years ago when studies have indicated that summer temperatures in parts of the Arctic were 2–3°C warmer than now?

Climate activists clearly regard a thinking and questioning public a Pandora’s Box they must keep the lid firmly on. Which is precisely why we must not be intimidated by spurious claims of consensus. Think for ourselves and rip the lid off the box by asking the questions that reveal the climate change scare for what it really is—an unscientific hoax that is impoverishing the world for no benefit.