An interlocutor goes, I read your previous blog and I get the sense the main thrust of your argument is you hate the rhetorical style of the Climate Change advocates. If they toned down their . . . hatred for the denier -- nay, skeptics, you would be more inclined to agree or accept what they have to say?

Me: It is not about the rhetorical or their arguments alone. There are particular points with which I take issue.

• For a start,‘Climate Change’. Of course, there is change, given how the current rhetoric and their argument goes, one need not subscribe to Heraclitus in order to accept that change in the climate is happening. The real question that needs asking is is there sufficient gross changes in the climate happening, that may prove -- no, simpler and less loaded word, be adverse to us? On this point, there is a begging to make a prediction based upon assumed notions of current trends. There are better predictions about the (stock) market than about the weather. Need not remind you, lest not confuse causation with correlation.

• Second point is the question Is the ‘climate change’ a direct consequence of humankind activities or a cyclic natural phenomena? We cannot answer this question in a proper scientific way because there is no experiment that we can setup to yield a possible falsifiable answer. More specific, we do not have access to a twin earth on which to test whatever supposed effects are creating this ‘climate change’. Of course, we want to resist comparisons with Venus or Mars because either suggesting there were ancient beings on said planets who caused their run-away greenhouse situation or this frightening prospect of ‘climate change’ is more of a natural phenomena.

Interlocutor: I think you are ignoring the data that we do have and that points certainly changes in the climate and environment.

Me: Well, of course. There is no refuting data that points toward this notion of ‘climate change’ but much of that data is based upon computer models. Programmed simulations on possible future weather patterns.

Ok, let’s minus out the data from the computer models. And let us suppose we can subtract out the bias interpretations on the raw statistical data from weather tracking. All that data does not tell us much. Methods for measuring the oceans’s temperature has improved in the last half century which does not compared to how such info for gathered way back when in, say, 1652. In other words, our methods today are a far sight better than 1982. We have better data and lots more of it but that does not tell us anything about when there were no humans, let alone just before the Industrial Revolution.

But data alone is not science.

Science is experimentation that tests a hypothesis.

Interlocutor: But what about the ice bores from Antartica and such?

Me: That tells us very little in the grand scope of geological time. Such evidence tells us about one specific geographic spot during an approximate time period; does not tell us about the global as a whole.

Interlocutor: Well . . . uh, you must admit it is better to error on the right side of history and work toward renewable resources instead of producing deadly pollutants from using these fossil fuels.

Me: An aside, I have trouble with that phrasing, ‘right side of history’. But that is distraction from my real response. Look, whether fossil fuels sources are harmful or not, eventually, we will run out and there will be nothing left. That is a fact. I agree that I prefer us to switch away from using fossil fuels now rather than later.

I am bias toward my ten years old self. I dreamt of a world in which nuclear power was the sole and dominate source of power/energy. Seeing how France and the UK are efficient, secure, and successful in their use and management of nuclear power, I would hope that the world switch to nuclear.

Upon later reflection, nuclear may not be the best option everywhere, leaving aside the benefits of the newer tech that improves on efficiency, less waste, and security, sometimes there are better options. For example, I learned that Canada will ready to sell hydro-electric power to the New England states, no need to build nuclear power plants. (Only the tussle of politics prevents motion toward that option.)