RIP Sen. Fred Thompson: Great man and global warming skeptic

One thought on “RIP Sen. Fred Thompson: Great man and global warming skeptic”

1. Let’ s not forget that the staffers running Sen. Thompson’s Web site in 2007 bought into the great preposterous bogosity about anthropoenic atmospheric CO2 having any statistically significant effect on the global climate.

   Though it’s not a wholly realistic expectation, especially in the federal government, the man in command is held “drop dead” responsible for the conduct of his subordinates

   Just as intelligent design is a threshold question between nonscience and conjectures, anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a threshold question between conjectures and hypotheses. AGW is a centuries-old conjecture elevated to an established belief by a little clique of quacks who proclaim themselves the Consensus on Climate, guardians of the vault of exclusive knowledge. Does this sound familiar? Is the Consensus patterned after the Council of Trent? As a matter of science, as opposed to a matter of belief, the AGW conjecture is gathering more contradictory evidence than supporting. The layman can test it and understand its failings by applying just the few principles outlined here.

   AGW fails the test because it is proclaimed by a consensus. Science places no value on such a vote. A unanimous opinion, much less a consensus, is insufficient. Science advances one scientist at a time, and we honor their names. It advances one model at a time. When the article gets around to saying ‘most scientists believe…,’ it’s time to go back to the comics section. Science relies instead on models that make factual predictions that are or might be validated.

   AGW fails on the first order scientific principles outlined here because it does not fit all the data. The consensus relies on models initialized after the start of the Industrial era, which then try to trace out a future climate. Science demands that a climate model reproduce the climate data first. These models don’t fit the first-, second-, or third-order events that characterize the history of Earth’s climate. They don’t reproduce the Ice Ages, the Glacial epochs, or even the rather recent Little Ice Age. The models don’t even have characteristics similar to these profound events, much less have the timing right. Since the start of the Industrial era, Earth has been warming in recovery from these three events. The consensus initializes its models to be in equilibrium, not warming.

   And there’s much, much more.

   Anthropogenic Global Warming is a crippled conjecture, doomed just by these principles of science never to advance to a hypothesis. Its fate would be sealed by a minimally scientifically literate public.

   — Jeff Glassman, “Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: The Basis of Rational Argument” (December 2007)