Ian Bushfield - August 21st, 2008 in Commentary 0 votes Vote Up! Vote Down!

When an article is entitled “Heretic in the religion of global warming in our society” you have to expect a decent bit of global warming denialism. The issue with this specific article is how it paints the issue.  Charles Jenkins, a member of the Frederick Board of County Commissioners, works very hard to make himself sound very scientific and properly sceptical, while at the same time, painting the IPCC and global warming scientists to be close-minded environmentalists pushing an agenda.

The first issue comes in the bringing up of the name John Christy, a dissenter from the IPCC.  The first thing you notice when you start investigating Christy is he makes a lot of claims, a lot more than most scientists typically do.  Christy’s famous for misrepresenting satellite data to claim that there has been no global increase in temperature since 1979. It was a basic algebraic mistake that turned out to be the reason Christy had mistaken his data (a good reason not to believe someone just because they’re a Nobel Laureaute). Correcting for the mistake all the data falls into place – global warming is happening, and its very likely our fault.

Jenkins continues by claiming that despite incredible growth in China and India in the past decade, “there has been no global warming since 1998.” However, when we take a longer average and actually look at data the way scientists do we do see an overall trend of increased global temperatures.

Jenkins finishes his arguments with some more claims about natural cycles due to solar activity, however, again he’s one step behind the real science.

The difficult thing in dealing with pseudo-science, especially with people who are good peddlers, is that it sounds really scientific at times.  I mean Jenkins has a Nobel laureaute and an obscure geophysicist with an unheard of but plausible idea.  Unfortunately, this is a geophysicist who believes the world will be in an ice age within 10 years, and a Nobel laureaute who has lost the ability to do basic algebra.

Jenkins finishes off saying:

Ms. Phillips can call me ignorant when it comes to the environment. It’s a fairly common tactic to call names when your argument can’t be won. Nor do I accept her comments that I have no interest in making our planet a better place for my children or future generations.

Such moralistic supremacy is all too common from zealots, regardless of their cause.

As for my behavior as an elected official, if you’re looking for a lemming you won’t find one here.

I would have to agree with Ms. Philips here Jenkins, you are ignorant, you prevent good science from moving forward, and you are likely a blight on your office and constituency.

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Tags: global warming, pseudo-science, skepticism