Warmal Globing

The Lighter Side of Global Warming

Sure doesn’t look good!!

The End Of The World

As you hopefully know, scientists, politicians, and the mainstream media have a poor record at predicting global disasters.  I grew up in the 1970’s and lay awake at night, worried about the impending ice age.  Time and Newsweek were predicting famine due to the freezing of arable land.  And so I wonder, how does anybody take those same people seriously now?

Laypersons tend to give scientists way too much credit.  I learned a great deal while earning my PhD, but some of the most interesting things that I learned had little to do with my research into brain chemistry.  Prior to grad school I had an image of scientists working in loose collaboration, chipping away at the mysteries and pushing our knowledge forward.  But I learned that I was wrong.  The situation is not that there is work to be done, and therefore scientists doing the work.  Rather, there are scientists out there, trained with PhDs and looking for work, who come up with project after project until the money runs out… and then rush to another source of money as fast as they can.   Scientists don’t exist to do research;  Research exists to serve scientists.  This is an important distinction, and is clear to anyone who has spent time running his/her own laboratory.

Sources of funding are finite, and often associated with a cause.  If I wanted money to prove that fibromyalgia is an imaginary illness, I would not seek funding from the American Fibromyalgia Support Society (if there is such a group).  If I want to research the negative effects religion has on children, I will not ask for money from the American Baptist Society.  And if I have a PhD in Biology and want to study weather phenomena, I am not going to ask for money to disprove global warming.  Not in today’s climate—no pun intended.  There is a great deal of money vested in the idea that the earth is overheating.  And anyone who tries to spoil the party will overwhelmingly be portrayed as half-baked.

By now you likely have a sense of my own feelings on the topic.  But I would like to keep an open mind, and you should too, like any good scientist.  Those scientists out there who are writing grant proposals related to global warming just because that is where all the current money is— and who are afraid to write or publish data to the contrary because of fear… Shame on you!  If the Emperor has no clothes, quit complementing his or her attire. 

I am enough of a whore to go ‘mainstream’ with page one.  I may be paranoid, but perhaps the web crawlers are programmed to disregard warming heretics.  And so, I bring you the news:

The situation is made even more bizarre when one realizes that those trusted to keep us informed (the esteemed New York Times, e.g.) have warned of similar fates throughout the past two centuries.   We were warned about the end of life as we knew it, because of impending warming disasters (in the early 1900’s), cooling disasters (in the mid 1900’s), and warming disasters again (now). We have plenty of experts spouting on the television who warned of cooling disasters in the 70’s, and who warn of overheating now.  And they said the same thing that their counterparts said in 1975:  I was wrong then, but I am right now.

I must have a better memory than the average politician, reporter, or newscaster, because I remember reading about, and fearing, global cooling back in the 1970’s. If you are still reading this web page—- a big deal, knowing the ‘bounce rates’ for most web readers these days— I encourage you to at least view the next page, before letting the media narrative resume control of your brain.  Below, I go into details about why humans tend to make these mistakes… but if you are in a hurry, skip to the punch line!

For a scientist with an open mind, ‘reversion to the mean’ has always been a foregone conclusion.  But for that to happen, we need TIME—- and there is always risk that a charismatic, inexperienced leader will come along and destroy the world economy before ‘time’ makes even the most clueless Nobel Prize Winners aware of reality Remember when Nobel prizes were based on truth, not on political infatuations?!

2013 Update! 

See page two—  it used to have jokes about global warming, but now the joke IS the story!   You couldn’t make this stuff up...