Global Warming and the "Preponderance of the Evidence"

Passionate global warming skeptic Alex C. writes:

Scientific evidence, facts, truth, and “global warming” is NOT a democratic activity where whoever has the most votes wins … There is only one truth at it is not up to a vote. When so much politics, money, and power are involved it is clear that left wing socialists or environmenalist extremists could care less about facts. It is becoming clear that man made CO2 has not caused global warming…Please avoid using majority rule to make decisions.

Again (and I swear this is true) my blogging software asked me to approve your comment — even though I’ve set it so as to let everything but the most obvious spam through uncensored. Apparently WordPress seems to think you’re an extremist!  🙂  Personally, I think you have your rights to your own opinions.

Having said that, let me tell this story. When I decided to enter the GW discussion a couple of years ago, I told a few friends about my concerns. “A 400 million year correlation between CO2 and global temperature doesn’t mean that CO2 increase causes temperature increase. What if temperature increase causes a CO2 increase? What if they’re both driven by a third parameter?” I asked.

My friends — each one — urged me to do my own investigation.

My response, which I would give again now, is simply this: I don’t have the hundreds of thousands of manhours to retrace all these scientists’ steps. I have to decide this for myself as I would if I were a judge hearing a civil case, i.e., trust in the veracity of the testimony of credible people, and base my decision (as I think you need to base yours) on the preponderance of the evidence.

What seems most credible here? That the vast majority of climatologists are leftists? That Marxist ideologies are shaping interpretation of enormous amounts of data in the halls of MIT, Cal Tech, and Scripps? Sorry, I don’t think so.

But you raise a good point. Will believing in the preponderance of the evidence in front of us always bring us the right answer? Of course not. It can fail us at any time, just as it did the people who believed the earth was flat 500 years ago.  But it’s the best that I — or anyone else — can do.