St. Louis Temperatures are at Record Lows: Global Warming Strikes Again!
This Global Warming thing fits the definition of a pseudoscience to a T. A pseudoscience is something that can't be disproven, i.e. you can't set up an experiment to show that it's false.
Newton's second law is actual science: force = mass * acceleration. You can disprove this. You toss a bunch of masses at certain accelerations at each other, and measure their forces. If the force doesn't equal what it ought to, the law has been disproven*.
A wishing well would be an example pseudoscience. Let's say I have a wishing well, and I make the claim that if you drop money into the wishing well, and your heart is pure and your intentions are good, your wish will come true. I further add that the likelihood of your wish coming true increases with the amount of money you toss in there.
There would be no experiment that could disprove that my wishing well works. It's not enough for you to toss in a dollar, make a wish, and it doesn't come true. "Aha!" I would counter. "Your wish was selfish, and therefore your intentions were not good." Or, if your wish were purely altruistic, I could claim, "Well, sure your intentions were good, but your heart wasn't pure. What have you been up to, lately, hmm?"
So, that's about where we are with global warming. If it's hot outside, that's evidence for global warming. If it's cold outside, that's also evidence for global warming. I suppose the only thing that might disprove global warming would be if the temperature stays the same year after year. But it never does. There are always some years that are warmer or colder than others. And if it's supposedly a global phenomenon, you only have to point to one part of the globe that's having problems.
Remember back in August 2003, when a heat wave hit France and something like 15,000 elderly people died? And in September, once everyone got back from vacation, and carted all the bodies off, they started jumping up and down and screaming about how their blood was on Bush's hands for his failure to sign on to that Kyoto boondoggle?
I remember. I also remember that in St. Louis, that was the mildest summer on record. I believe for the entirety of August, the temperature didn't get above 95. It was just beautiful. It was like summer never happened, we just had a long, luxurious 7 month spring.
Somehow, nobody was talking about how nice things were in St. Louis, and how much we were loving life. All anyone wanted to do was point at Paris and say "See! This proves that global warming is real and that it's Chimpy Bushitler's fault!"
I'm not saying that there isn't something going on. It's entirely possible that man-made climate change is real, is happening, and we could be doing more about it. But when they can't even agree on something basic like whether global warming is supposed to make things warmer or colder, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that these people have no idea what they're talking about. And don't even get me started on the people blaming the tsunami on global warming.
Anyway, since we're now supposed to believe that any kind of bad weather is the fault of global warming, assumably any kind of good weather would also be because of global warming. If it's warm in the winter, it's because global warming heated up the atmosphere and made it pleasant. If it's cool in the summer, it's because global warming shut down the gulf stream, so we don't get all that overheated air from the Gulf of Mexico.
And if it's pleasant in the spring and fall, well, that's just how God intended things to be. Global warming doesn't get credit for that.
Just something to keep in mind.
* It actually has been disproven, but they've declared it "close enough for government work".
Just once I would like to see a Senator or Governor or the President of the US say "Good enough for government work" that would be funny.