The IPCC says that the increase in average global temperature is very likely (more than 90% likely) due to a human activity-caused increase in greenhouse gases.
In other words, that global warming is increased by human activities.
Should we put our trust in the IPCC report?
The IPCC is an grouping formed by the United Nations. It comprises 2500+ scientific expert reviewers, 850+ contributing authors and 450+ lead authors from 130 countries over the past 6 years.
So these scientists are gathered by the IPCC to look at the issue of global warming from all angles, and to objectively test the veracity of all arguments, both pro and con… Right? Well, not quite. (Btw, glance through my posts about the reliability of the United Nations.)
With these sort of credentials, it must be a sure case that global warming is increased by human activities. Right?
Well, let me put it this way. The ‘vast majority’ of scientists claim that evolution is real. Evolution is a fact. Evolution is proven. Although there are some (actually, many) who contend that evolution is merely a theory, not a proven fact, evolution supporters summarily dismiss them as quacks and religious nuts.
Despite the fact that fossils of transitional (halfway in-between species) life forms are practically nonexistent. Despite the fact that there remains no viable naturalistic explanation for how life was formed and can evolve complex organs. Despite the fact that evolution has never been observed…
Evolution is pushed at us as a ‘fact’. The minority who do not support it are denounced as mistaken fools. But is it really so?
Thus we have a mass majority of ‘expert’ scientists who loudly claim that evolution is a proven fact. The ordinary people going about their everyday lives believe it, in no small part thanks to school textbooks, the mass media and a general preference to not having a Creator that they can be held accountable to.
Compare that to the current public perception about global warming.
The IPCC is portrayed as a mass majority of ‘expert’ scientists who loudly claim that global warming caused by humans is a proven fact. The ordinary people going about their everyday lives believe it, in no small part thanks to Al Gore’s film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, panicky alarmism and the convenience of blaming local environmental problems on global warming.
Despite the fact that they use computer models to predict very complex things that have never been accurately predicted. Despite the fact that the climate has always been changing since long before humans invented industrial machines. Despite despite despite the fact that carbon dioxide forms a miniscule part of the atmosphere, that satellite temperature data contradicts the observations of ground stations, that many places including Antartica have actually been getting cooler in the past decades…
Human-caused global warming is pushed at us as a ‘fact’. The minority who do not support it are denounced as mistaken fools. But is it really so?
Is it all really so…
But let me be clear on this: Evolution and global warming are two completely separate issues. If one is proven or disproven, that doesn’t mean that the other is as well.
And if either is conclusively proven to me beyond reasonable doubt, then I will accept it as a fact and change my stance. That is my claim to objectivity and reasonableness. (Can evolutionists and global warming doomsayers say the same?)
The point I’m trying to make clear is simply this: Just because many people, or even a majority of scientists, say that something must be true… It doesn’t mean that it really is so.
And that is why I feel about global warming the same way I feel about evolution.
Compare also 100 Scientists Dissent Darwinism and 100 Scientists Dissent Global Warming.
Tags: climate change, consensus, Darwinism, evolution, global warming, hoax, junk science
THE SCOTTTCAST 
March 21, 07 at 5:50 pm
Scott just tot of something you could write about:
1. Why voting is importnat
2. Young Malaysians to vote
3. Pharisees and religious leaders at the time of Jesus Christ
– their teaching vs JC
-Thier lifestyle vs JC
March 21, 07 at 5:56 pm
`In other words, that global warming is increased by human activities.`
Can I say also that there´s an influence of the speed of human activity to the speed of global warming?
March 21, 07 at 7:11 pm
Global temperature IS rising, but global warming skeptics believe that it’s doing so on its own. Is is possible, even perhaps probable that human activities contribute to global warming. Industry, vehicles and so on release carbon dioxide and ozone-destroying chemicals.
However, you must realize 1) How huge the world and its atmosphere is, 2) Other factors contribute much more to global temperature fluctuations, such as water vapour and solar radiation, 3) The Earth’s temperature has been changing all on its own for millenia and is likely to do so whether we try to intervene (positively or negatively).
But I’m quite certain local climate conditions are greatly impacted by human activities. Deforestation strips away trees that absorb carbon dioxide, heat from the sun, polluting gases and rainwater. The result is heating up of surrounding areas, moreso when cities full of reflective glass, easily heated-up concrete and heat-emitting people and vehicles move in. One case in point is Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, which is noticeably less cool than it was a few decades ago. But this is different from global warming.
The controversy and debate on global warming mosty centres on how much human activity affects the global temperature, if at all. Because if we don’t have much impact on global climate, then it’s pointless to try and stop something as inevitable as climate change. We simply don’t have the knowledge and technology to do something so massive yet.
October 15, 07 at 10:11 pm
Separating global warming from evolution is important. Evolution by natural selection has an enormous body of evidence, ranging from fossils to radioactive decay to DNA to morphology to development. It is as firmly supported as anything ever gets in science. For decades folks have been trying to find where it does and does not apply without finding a single counter example. Like all science it is open to new findings, and has made significant predictions, all of which are confirmed.
Global warming due to man’s influence is an hypothesis that relies on a minimal body of information that is rapidly growing, but very confusing and inchoate. There is some evidence that the earth may be warming, but the subject is rather complex. How do you measure the temperature? Even the satellite data are inconclusive. And what other hypotheses exist that can explain the data – solar irradiation, cosmic rays, solar flares, sunspots, change in the earth’s albedo, rise of agriculture, impact of oceanic variations and currents, etc, etc. In order to conclude that global warming is due to man’s CO2 emissions one must eliminate, or at least quantify and demonstrate to be insignifcant, all of these other contributions. This has not been done, and maybe CANNOT be done.
For the moment global warming is a political issue that is perverting scientific debate. This is the real shame. Science works by developing an hypotheses, raising questions, collecting data to answer these questions, and then revising the hypothesis to explain the data. Our current discussion in the popular media is not science.
October 16, 07 at 12:29 am
Thanks for the comments Terry.
Would you mind very much sharing briefly what evidences of evolution convince you that it is a proven fact?
I know of many of the evidences usually quoted, and also the counter-arguments against them, and all in all I am not convinced that they conclusively prove evolution has happened over the ages. (I used to however, before I went to university.)
So I’d honestly like to hear from someone educated on the issue in its entirety, yet able to explain why he is convinced in a way that laypeople can understand.
October 16, 07 at 12:30 pm
I beg to differ that our current discussion in the media is not science. Science itself works by a social process. What is scientific today depends very much on what the scientific agrees it is, and also on who can gain the biggest amount of followers for their views. Media discussion is all part of the process.
March 5, 08 at 7:41 am
Ok Scott,
Just trying to use the evidence that a layperson can understand.
Have you ever noticed that dogs have “thumbs” partway up there front legs which are totally useless?
If you take an xray of a whale – as well as some snakes – you can see that they have a pelvis and the remnants of hind limbs.
Did you ever consider the fact that you have two totally useless nipples?
These facts are difficult if not impossible to explain in the “god intelligently designed everything in its present form” view.
They are very easy and quite logical from an evolutionary view.
There exists a huge amount of other evidence in fossils, genetics and other areas of science. Evolution is the most strongly supported science theories that there has ever been. In science, a theory is not a rough guess, like many seem to make it sound like. A theory in science is a very solid set of assertions that has withstood the test of many attempts to falsify it and also can be used to predict future results. Evolution has withstood all this (even more than most theories because so many have resisted it on religious grounds. It still amazes me that in 2008 that some people still haven’t accepted this despite the fact that there is more evidence than ever.
March 5, 08 at 8:38 am
But neither do these things explain how such complex structures were formed through random, incremental mutations (Irreducible Complexity). I am familiar with evolutionary theory.
And I have my own theological hypothesis that explains the abundance of useless and/or dangerous physical characteristics as Created without nullifying the intelligence of God.
Using superlatives like ‘the most strongly supported with the most facts’ is easily challengeable. One could champion relativity or quantum theory instead. Heck, even global warmists claim that their science is the most well proven!
And as this is a very old post, you may not have seen the updates on the evolution debates.
Commentors discuss the ‘proof’ of evolution with me, which seems to me convincing but still circumstantial – https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/please-cite-me-the-evidence-for-evolution-and-global-warming/
I conclude that, using the same standards that convince me Biblical history is true, I ought to accept that some claims of macroevolution are also true – https://scottthong.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/biblical-history-and-aspects-of-macro-evolution-are-highly-likely-to-be-true/