Global Warming

When we discuss global warming here, we (predictably) get a range of reactions, including the comments of the deniers, like this one:

NASA has stated that ALL the planets in our solar system are heating up. I would say that this definitely points to the Sun as the source…. I do not think that humans are responsible for any global warming.

I respect the opinion of all readers here, but let me take a moment and present my own viewpoint, which goes back to numerous suggestions I received from friends when I became interested in the subject.  They’d ask, “Craig, why don’t you do your own independent research of global warming?”

Well, I’ll tell you why not. There are millions of man-hours of work that have gone into this subject over the last 40 years. I cannot begin to think of how I would organize my own research project independent of the work of these people.

As in so many areas, whether I like it or not, I’m simply going to have to trust the conclusions that are echoed by the vast majority of objective scientists who have made the study of this subject their life’s work. That’s the only reason I believe in the theory. It’s not that I want to believe, or I somehow like the theory.

Call me a rube or a patsy, but when I come out of an interview in which a senior fellow at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography has presented to me the results of terabytes of data gleaned from four decades of experiments performed at thousands of locations around the globe, I find this stuff compelling. If that makes me appear gullible, I don’t know what to say.

I guess it’s a matter of humility. I’m good at certain things, but atmospheric research isn’t one of them. I have plenty of independent viewpoints on things that are matters of opinion: music (I love Chopin), art (I’m into French impressionism), and politics (don’t get me started). But it doesn’t make sense to me to hold a viewpoint on a matter of fact that doesn’t square with accepted science.