Yeah, yeah, I know the drill. “Global Warming doesn’t mean warming. It can also mean cooling!”
You know what they call a “theory” that’s “proven” by pointing to any result from an experiment, not just the predicted result?
Not a valid theory.
(See:”Intelligent Design”)
In other words if you say (using the above example) that well-adapted features of life point to design, someone who understands science will say, “OK, then. If life is intelligently designed, we will not find poorly adapted features, which would be indicators of natural selection making do with whatever random crap mutation throws at it.” And, of course, we find endless reams of poorly “designed” aspects of life.However, ID advocates will shove these aside, claiming “Well, we don’t know what the Designer considers well-designed” or “Maybe these are well-designed, we just don’t know how.” (Amusingly, any gaps in the exact history of evolution are jumped on as “proof” of Divine Intervention.)
Likewise, when just about any weather (Too hot? Too cold? Too wet? Too dry? Too windy? Too calm?) is cited as “proof” of the predictions of global warming, the theory fails in the thing which defines a theory — being able to make useful predictions. “There’s going to be weather. Some of it will suck. But even the weather which doesn’t suck counts as proof.” is not a useful prediction.
(This has a lot in common with anti-trust laws, which criminalize charging more than your competitor (that’s gouging), charging less than your competitor (that’s dumping), and charging the same amount as your competitor (that’s collusion))
Is there some evidence average global temperatures are rising? Yes, it does seem so. Are the mechanisms behind this understood well enough to basically change all of human civilization and pretty much kill off a good ninety percent of the population? (Mostly poor foreigners, though, so we don’t have to worry much about that.) Haven’t convinced me yet.
Why kill off so many? Well, I admit it’s a number I mostly made up, but to truly create a “sustainable” world, if anthropocentric global warming is correct, we need to reduce our CO2 output to below the levels of the start of the Industrial Revolution — because we need to not only get back to the level that the environment can process over time, we need to produce less than that so that the excess can be absorbed.
Imagine you’ve got a pump that can clear one gallon of water a minute, and ten gallons of water a minute are flooding in. If you manage, after ten minutes, to get the flood down to one gallon a minute, you won’t get any deeper, but you’re still flooded. You need to have the incoming water be less than the pump’s capacity in order to start reducing the existing flood. In the case of CO2, if the “theory” is to be believed, the warming process began in the 19th century — which means we need to produce less CO2 than that, a lot less, to reduce atmospheric CO2 to “natural” levels in a reasonable timeframe. (Or find better carbon sinks).
So how does this lead to genocide? Well, first, you can’t support seven billion people on 18th century technology. Period. Second, we won’t go back to 18th century technology. We will stick to 21st century technology — for a very few people. The rich and powerful will not become Amish. If the choice is, say, one billion people living sustainably at 18th century levels, or fifty million people living sustainably at 21st century levels, I know which would be picked by those with the power to make the decisions.
If anthropogenic global warming is true, my advice to you is: Be one of the 50 million.