Disclaimer: I considered myself an ecologists, not by profession but in practice. I was born during the wake of “Silent Spring”, the ban on DDT, and Gary Snyder’s Thoreau-like retreat from society. During my middle school years, I may have been influenced by the animated TV show “Superfriends” subliminal subtext about taking care of our environment and I became enraged after learning about the horrible oil spill off the Brittany coastline and the oil-covered birds that suffered.  Perhaps, in part, this is why I refuse learning to drive automobiles. (If all cars were electric, perhaps, but not for environmental concerns but more out of science-fiction wish fulfillment.)

Ecology for me is about the harmonious balance between Man -- correction, Humans and Nature, or more specific Human’s non-dominating living in balance with other animals, plants, and lower lifeforms e.g. algae and coral.

My early practice was my own Thoreau-like kid scientist explorations of a lagoon estuary on the golf course near my childhood home.

Although given such a background, I remain a climate change denier -- correction, skeptic.

My first objection is I find the word choice of 'denier' problematic. Already, there is a bias setup in casting oppositional viewpoint in a negative light. Skeptic is more apropos. 'Climate change skeptic' is unbiased. I am skeptical about the politicization surrounding the issue purported to be global warming -- nay, “climate change”. Second, climate change is about man-made caused alterations on weather patterns. This too is problematic for being both unscientific assuming correlation equals causation and implications that man has the ability to destroy earth.

Ecology vs. Environment

Ecology is focus upon a specific region and how all living things interact within that environment.

Environment on the other hand concerns all ecosystems and the impact upon living and non-living.

The problems I have with the Environmental Movement are thus.

↳ The weather 

A large measure of climate change are hard claims about the weather. Even the best meteorologists cannot predict what the weather will be tomorrow, a week, or a month from today, let alone predict the weather years or centuries from now. The only thing known for certain is the seasonal trend: winters are cold, summers are hot.

↳ Problematic history of scientific claims

So back in the late 1970s, a Stephen Schneider was one of the many voices who cried about the oncoming Ice Age. Later, by the mid-80s, that changed to Global Warming.

OK, which is it? Will earth get colder or will she get warmer?

↳ Inconclusive evidence

We are bombarded by global warming/climate change propaganda so much that we have little awareness of the counter-position. There exists creditable climatologists who hold evidence to the contrary. The debate between the two sides has become political.

In the hard sciences of physics and chemistry, there is never debate about what is, only about competing theories that attempt at explaining why things are the way that they are. In climatology, the debate is focused upon the evidence and any theory is far from being substantiated.

Remember climate is about weather. Even now, predicting the weather is impossible. At best, we depend upon reoccurring patterns which follow an apparent cycle influenced in part by the earth's orbit and rotation.

↳ Unscientific Process: Data is not Science

I would not deny data showing evidence that there is a trend in the increase of global temperatures. But data alone is not science. Any interpretation is fallacy of induction. Science is the process by which a hypothesis about a reoccurring natural phenomena is tested against a control situation. The data, such as it is, is based largely upon computer models and contemporary air samples.

The Scientific Method is premised upon the idea that the most viable theory can resist attempts at disproving it. The way this is done in the Method is by comparing a control situation with experimental scenario. Testing any theory of climate behaviour is impossible. We do not have (access to) some twin earth upon which we can use as control. Climate is a global phenomenon not local. Independent of Chaos Theory, what happens in China might or might not effect what happens in sub-Sarah Africa and there is no way we can test that. We cannot isolate the climate of any particular geographic region in order to gauge external influences upon or net results from an imagined isolated atmosphere.

[Post archival edit: I know of some atmospheric physicists who use computer models to simulate climate behaviour of isolated regions.]

Let us suppose the evidence did favour the global warming prediction. There are two problems arising from accepting this premise: (1) proves nothing about cause, (2) data sample is too small.

Anyone may construct a theory with a favourable interpretation of the data but there is no way to test the theory. In the spirit of Popper, we have no twin earth upon which anyone can construct an experiment that can falsify the global-warming theory.

Now, to suggest that either Venus or Mars are remnants of such a similar global catastrophe posits two assumptions, either (a) what happened to Venus and Mars is natural phenomena which happens to like planets or (b) aliens: early Venusians or Martians caused their own destructions.

At best, we have data collected from less than two centuries, most of which is sketchy given the less than accurate instruments and lack of attention upon seeking particular wanted data. (Let's leave aside observer bias, i.e. cherry-picking selected data that supports a pet theory.) The earth has been around for billions of years -- without human presence; a couple of centuries of data and pet theoretical interpretations of geological sediment (from ice core bores) is such a tiny data sample to draw any conclusions. That alone is insufficient for making any declarations about causes and effects.

P.S. Let me quote Richard Feyman, from his commencement speech at CalTech 1974

It’s a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty—a kind of leaning over backwards.  For example, if you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid—not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you’ve eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked—to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them.  You must do the best you can—if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong—to explain it.  If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it.  There is also a more subtle problem.  When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

source: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

↳ Rhetoric

A well known tactic for persuading people is using fear e.g. former US Vice-President Al Gore’s cinematic doom & gloom “An Inconvenient Truth” does that in strong fashion. Not unlike the World War III apocalyptic forecasts from those coded anti-Reagan flicks, including the false future presented in the Terminator series. I sort of get doing that approach toward persuasion.

What is most underhanded is the rhetorical shift, the change from saying “global warming” to “climate change”. (Global Warming is the predicted and suggested fact while climate change is the effect of global warming.) [P.S. there is a pro-climate change DPhil atmospheric physicist / YouTube vlogger who defined the difference as the exact converse. *shurg*] Climate change is both vague and un-disprovable which makes for a clever argument. Whether earth cools or warms, drastic or minor, the upshot is change has occurred which falsely validates the “climate change” rhetoric. 'Climate change' is a vague description that raises questions: what type of change? Is the change steady or fluctuating? Is the change reversible, natural, or artificial? and many more questions.

Try this argument. I forecast that there will be an Economic Change. If we do nothing about this pending Economic Change, then we and future generations will not be well off to survive. Challenge: disprove what I claim is not the case.

Aside from the doomsayers e.g. Eldrich’s provably false fear of population explosion and Gore’s Convenient Lie, we have the opposite tact from Julian Simons and Bjon Lomborg with more pragmatic attitudes searching for meaningful actions rather than scare tactics and rhetoric.

Of course, in such discussion, the questions how and why arise.

Suggestions of CFCs produce holes in ozone and cow flatulence increase methane count to excessive carbon emissions from automobiles and waste byproducts such as from nuclear weapons manufacturing all skip the question central to the issue, what is causing said “climate change” i.e. Is it Man or Nature?

Ice Ages happen, occurring before humans were around and happening during Humankind’s infancy long before we were capable of extracting & exploiting the resources from ground as done today. Some scientists like comparing Venus’s current climate to what could happen on earth if humans are not careful enough in  preventing runaway greenhouse effect. What are they suggesting? Global Warming happening on Venus is either caused by neglectful, ancient, extinct Venusians? Or Global Warming is a natural process that happens on similar planets at some time during their existence, like Ice Ages?

And you want to suggest humans have the capacity to affect global change, then .  .  .

Hubris of mankind

A couple of paragraphs from Michael Critchon's Jurassic Park states the idea well.

You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity! Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time.

It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. Might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. You think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine.

When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. Hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.