The SS Global Warming Is On the Verge of Sinking

The Turning of the Tide?

David Siegel is a convert to global warming scepticism. He is one of the lefty-cool set.  After extensive secondary source research he has concluded that global warming is a charade perpetrated upon the masses by an elite few.  He has written a very well reasoned and presented piece laying out his reasons for his paradigm shift from global warming advocate to principled sceptic.  

The entire essay is worth a calm, reflective read.  You can access it here.

If you want the short version, his concluding remarks provide an effective summary of his entire article:

I’m still vegan. I still want to help people, animals, and the environment. I’m still a Democrat. But I now believe that Al Gore, the United Nations, and many trusted institutions are Goliath — crisscrossing the globe in private jets selling the Chicken-Little climate narrative at any cost — and the Davids are the lone scientists and bloggers who are just trying to uncover the facts.

Changing your mind this much is like getting a tattoo removed, but I feel like I’m seeing more clearly. The earth is warming, but not quickly, not much, and not lately.  I guess the main thing that convinced me to doubt Al Gore & the IPCC is the number of PhD scientists who have changed their views and become more vocal about the science. There are too many peer-reviewed papers debunking the claims of the IPCC, and they just keep coming and coming. Even Mike Hulme has said, “It is possible that the institutional innovation that has been the I.P.C.C. has run its course.”

The second thing was realizing that, even if it were all true, we’re wasting our money and energy on decarbonization. If people like Bjorn Lomborg realize that the IPCC narrative is probably wrong, then we could start setting priorities guided by experiments, evidence, and efficacy.

Finally, I keep in mind that skeptics have nothing to prove. They are trying — as Richard Feynman would if he were alive today — to disprove the claims made by people who should welcome the scrutiny. Yes, some skeptics are too extreme and have their own agenda. But the very essence of science is at stake. In the skeptic movement, I see people asking hard questions, challenging the status-quo, downloading the data, and changing their minds when they get new information.

I expect  some personal backlash for writing this (it’s already happened), and of course I am not paid by and have no financial interest in either side of the debate. I wrote this in my spare time while trying to find clients to consult for (you’ll find more of my writing here). I sympathize with people who have lost their jobs, can’t get their research funded, have had papers rejected, have been investigated, accounts hacked, and harassed — it’s really happening, and it’s costing all of us dearly.

Understanding this gives us hope — by using the money and effort we are currently dedicating to reducing carbon emissions, we can have a huge impact today and tomorrow. So let’s get on with it: there are hundreds of things more important than decarbonizing and not a moment to lose.