The "Skeptics": On Climate Change Deniers and Creationists

I'm going to start this blog entry off with some statistics about climate change.:

Climate change is happening. All around us. GCM simulations and multiple lines of evidence point to a warming trend on planet Earth. This warming is directly related to human-generated greenhouse gases over natural climate variations. Here is some evidence that points to human cause over natural cause from the textbook Global Climate Change: Convergence of Disciplines by Arnold J. Bloom:

1. A number of recent analyses indicate that the rise in the global average surface temperature since 1987 is predominately associated with changes in anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols and that the contribution of changes in solar electromagnetic radiation to this temperature trend is negligible. Changes in solar radiation from 1750 to 2005 account for a warming force of only 0.12 (ranging from 0.06 to 0.30) watts per square meter, whereas human activities account for 1.7 (ranging from 0.6 to 2.4) watts per square meter.

2. Global nighttime minimum temperatures show a greater increase than daytime maximum temperatures. One would expect the reverse if changes in solar electromagnetic radiation were driving global warming. Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases enhance back radiation of electromagnetic energy from the atmosphere to the surface during the night. 

3. Temperatures in the lower stratosphere - the region of the atmosphere that extends from 10 km to 22 km above Earth's surface temperatures are rising. Again this is consistent with higher concentrations of greenhouse gases retaining more energy near Earth's surface. Stratospheric and surface temperatures would rise at similar rates if changes in solar electromagnetic radiation were driving global warming. 

4. A portion of the measured rise in global temperatures may derive from an "urban heat island" effect, whereby many weather stations that were once in a rural setting are now surrounded by asphalt. Nonetheless, measurements from sea-based weather stations indicate that Earth's oceans have warmed during the last century in a manner that parallels the warming of landmasses. The global warming observed during the past 50 years amounts to about 0.9 degree C over land and 0.4 degree C over oceans (IPCC 2007c), whereas urbanization near weather stations can account for about a 0.03 degree C temperature rise over land and a negligible temperature rise over the oceans during this period. Therefore, an urban heat island effect around weather stations does not seem to commensurate with the global warming that has occurred. 

5. Jet airplanes flying at high altitudes generate contrails. These behave like clouds in that they reflect incoming solar radiation and decrease daytime temperature maximums but absorb long-wave radiation from Earth's surface and increase nighttime temperature minimums; they therefore have the potential to diminish temperature differentials between day and night. Commercial air traffic was shut down in the United States for three days after the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001. During that interval, day-night temperature differentials in the continental United States jumped by 1.8 degree C above those during the 3-day periods immediately before or after this episode. (Travis et al. 2002) This change was significantly greater than any observed for similar intervals during the preceding 30 years. Moreover, the change in day-night differentials during the shutdown was twice as large in the regions of the United States where contrails are normally most abundant. These results highlight the extent to which human activities can effect regional surface temperatures. 

These various pieces of evidence dispel many, if not most, of the issues raised by SKEPTICS who do not believe in global warming or who believe that it derives from variation in natural forcing factors. Over 75% of climate scientists agree that Earth is significantly warmer today than it has been in many centuries and that human-generated greenhouse gases have been the major driving force for this warming (Bray and von Storch 2008; Lichter 2008; Doran and Zimmerman 2009). Although uncertainties remain as to the extent of the warming and the relative contributions of each factor, the accumulation of additional data is steadily diminishing these uncertainties and is pointing directly at human activities. 

I want you to notice the word I put in all CAPS in the section above. It's the word: SKEPTIC. Who are these climate change skeptics, these global warming deniers? Who are these people that can nearly drown in all this data, all these climate models, all this evidence of human-caused climate change and still think the jury is out on human-caused climate change? Who are these skeptics who need much more evidence. There is always a "missing piece" of evidence with these people. If only we had these pieces of data we could THEN maybe say humans are having a direct effect on the climate. If only we had this specific missing link we could then see that humans came from lower level primates in the evolutionary chain. Where's the crockoduck?! (Half crocodile, half duck) These are the same people, asking for ridiculously impossible "evidence". "Evidence" that shows their clear ignorance in both climate science and biology. For the most part, the creationists, the I.Ders are the global warming skeptics. They are one and the same. Make no bones about it, these people are devoid of proper scientific understanding. They do not know what they are talking about.

The interesting thing is that the same people who are so "skeptical" (even in the face of sound evidence) of human-caused climate change are the same people that are so eager to accept an "alternative" biological "theory" to evolution with not a shred of evidence to support it. So we see these people for what they really are.: P.R. people for a religious, corporate, or political agenda. They can try to hide behind the lie of being a "skeptic". I mean, isn't being a skeptic a great thing?! Isn't it what I've been preaching about since I started this blog? Isn't a skeptic someone who is thinking scientifically about the world? Yes. But these global warming deniers are not actual skeptics.

A Christian (someone I grew up with) once argued that us "pro-evolutionists" that usually lean towards liberal politics always preach social acceptance of all lifestyles (LBGT: Lesbian, Bi-sexual, gay, transgender) yet when it comes to science education only seem to think there is one game in town in biology - Evolution. I wrote a quick blog entry about this previously, on this virus-meme of "fair and balanced" Fox News philosophy running a amok in our American culture. It is laughable to think this "accepting of all theories" or "all theories should be treated as equal" in the sciences should be taken seriously. This is absurd. That isn't the way science works. Science isn't a democracy. It follows the evidence no matter if it conflicts with anything else. And theories with the most sound evidence stick.

The problem is government with the global warming deniers. They are almost solely Republicans which means they tout "Big government is evil." Government is broken. Government can't run anything. The problem is always the government. The government wants to control everything you do - Only Democrat-elected government, mind you! When George W. Bush was in office they loved big government then.  Big government only destroys free markets and business with all it's regulations. As usual, in reality things aren't so black and white. There is a kernel of truth to this line of thinking, however there is also a time and a place for regulation. I, personally am pro-cap and trade or any regulations that will effectively help curb climate change because I am convinced its happening based on solid evidence. Some of which I presented at the beginning of this blog post. I also think the E.P.A. is a good thing. I know the conservatives among us would love to live in a concrete world with no wild ecosystems, covered in concrete and smog clouds, just as long as jobs were being created. Jobs always matter more then the natural environment. Don't ever forget this! I am of course being facetious, but when talking to citizens of this country that think this way it's hard not to see a dystopian future for planet earth. Ice caps? Melt them all. Natural rain forests - cut 'em all down. Drill baby drill. Just keep creating jobs!

Even if this line of thinking is correct and the government is completely suffocating free enterprise due to it's hopefully upcoming carbon emission regulations does it ultimately matter? I prefer to live on a planet where hundreds of thousands of people don't die due to flooding, famine, or drought. I want to keep our coastlines above water. I don't want to see Bangladesh disappear to the ocean. I don't want to see the ice caps completely melt away. If you live in Australia, you may want to move in the next few decades, because it's about to become too hot for all things living. Global warming is an absolute risk to the entire world's economy, not to mention our national security (that should get MOST Republicans on board right there! One would think.) Science doesn't always give us the results that we FEEL are right. We have to make tough, terrible, uncomfortable choices sometimes. Choices that may really hurt the economy if need be for the survival of future generations. The typical Fox News Republican will tell you they are so concerned about this national debt President Obama is inflating with each new year of his presidency, but in the same breath will deny global warming and laugh at the doomsday predictions. Isn't it strange how they can care about our children's financial future but not their actual future (their very real threat to surviving at all).

I'll close with a few links that may help shed some light and "turn up the heat" (oh, bad pun) on this topic. It's become a joke to me to even have to address this notion of an "alternative scientific theory" in biology to evolution. For anyone with even the most elementary understanding of biology, genetics, paleontology, and geology there is no other scientific theory that rivals evolution. Those that even mention Intelligent Design as "an alternative" to evolution are 100% religious which should tell us something instantly about the motives of such "scientific theory". All these religious people that may be reading this blog about evolution being completely true with disgust don't understand science doesn't align itself to what "feels right to you" it doesn't align itself to what "your holy book says". Science is a working tool that constantly self-corrects itself and evolves to take us where the evidence leads. Unbiased and unaffected by philosophies or religious beliefs. It take a re-wiring of your brain. You have to start to understand how to use reason, skepticism, and logic as tools to test this natural world. Once you grasp the importance of this and can apply it, Intelligent Design will be as funny and silly to you as it is to me. Try it. Here's some links:

Meanwhile we have Republican Representative Paul Broun saying evolution and big bang theory are all lies from the devil:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBy3MbP4WDo

His biology theory of choice: Creationism. *which is not an actual valid scientific theory. Not a single scientific paper has been published on this. How can it be a scientific theory when it hasn't even been peer-reviewed by other scientists? Lawrence Krauss correctly characterizes creationists here: (mentioning Marco Rubio - *Also a global warming denier)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTedvV6oZjo

Facts of evolution - Common descent is a fact (every living thing on earth is related to every other living thing on earth: geneologically and genetically) All modern organisms have descended from one original species. Changes within a species occur while species as a whole come and go.

Here's an excellent video on the facts of evolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7tQIB4UdiY

It has often confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known: but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. 

- Charles Darwin

Could Our World Have Been Created By a Hacker?

I did not write this. This is the Interlude from the book Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt

Where did our universe come from? Doesn't its sheer existence point to an ultimate creative force at play? This question, when posed by a religious believer to an atheist, generally elicits one of two responses. First, the atheist might say, if you do postulate such a "creative force", you'd better be prepared to postulate another one to explain its existence, and then another one behind that, and so forth. In other words, you end up in an infinite regress. The second atheist response is to say that even if there were an ultimate creative force, there is no reason to think of it as God-like. Why should the First Cause be an infinitely wise and good being, let alone one that is minutely concerned with our inner thoughts and sex lives? Why should it even have a mind?

The idea that our cosmos was somehow "made" by an intelligent being might seem to be a primitive one, if not downright nutty. But before dismissing it entirely, I thought it would be interesting to consult Andrei Linde, who has done more than any other scientist to explain how our cosmos got going. Linde is a Russian physicist who immigrated to the United States in 1990 and who now teaches at Standford University. While still a young man in Moscow, he came up with a novel theory of the Big Bang that answered three vexing question: What banged? Why did it bang? And what was going on before it banged? Linde's theory called "chaotic inflation," explained the overall shape of space and formation of galaxies. It also predicted the exact pattern of background radiation left over from the Big Bang that the COBE satellite observed in the 1990s.

Among the curious implications of Linde's theory, one of the most striking is that "it doesn't take all that much to create a universe." Resources on a cosmic scale are not required, nor are supernatural powers. It might even be possible for someone in a civilization not much more advanced than ours to cook up a universe in a laboratory. Which leads to an arresting thought: Could that be how "our" universe came into being?

Linde is a handsome, heavy-set man with a full head of silver hair. Among his colleagues he is legendary for his ability to perform acrobatics and baffling sleights of hand, even while a little squiffy. 

"When I invented the theory of chaotic inflation, I found that the only thing you needed to get a universe like our started is a hundred-thousandth of a gram of matter," Linde told me in his Russian-accented English. "That's enough to create a small chunk of vacuum that blows up into billions and billions of galaxies we see around us. It looks like cheating, but that's how the inflation theory works - all the matter in the universe gets created from the negative energy of the gravitational field. So what's to stop us from creating a universe in a lab? We would be like gods!"

Linde, it should be said, is known for his puckishly gloomy manner, and the preceding words were laced with irony. But he assured me that this cosmogenesis-on-a-lab-bench scenario was feasible, at least in principle.

"There are some gaps in my proof," he conceded. "But what I have shown - and Alan Guth [a codeveloper of inflation theory] and others who have looked at this matter have come to the same conclusion - is that we can't rule out the possibility that our own universe was created by someone in another universe who just felt like doing it."

It struck me that there was a hitch in this scheme. If you started a Big Band in a lab, wouldn't the baby universe you created expand into your own world, killing people and crushing buildings and so forth?

Linde assured me that there was no such danger. "The new universe would expand into itself," he said. "It's space would be so curved that it would look as tiny as an elementary particle to its creator. In fact, it might end up disappearing from his own world altogether."

But why bother making a universe if it's going to slip away from you, the way Eurydice slipped from the grasp of Orpheus? Wouldn't you want to have some quasi-divine power over how your creation unfolded, some way of monitoring it and making sure the creatures that evolved therein turned out well? Linde's creator seemed very much like the deist concept of God favored by Voltaire and America's founding fathers - a being who set our universe in motion but then took no further interest in it or its creatures.

"You've got a point," Linde said, emitting a slight snuffle of amusement. "At first I imagined that the creator might be able to send information into the new universe - to teach its creatures how to behave, to help them discover what the laws of nature are, and so forth. Then I started thinking. The inflation theory says that a baby universe blows up like a balloon in the tiniest fraction of a second. Suppose the creator tried to write something on the surface of the balloon, like "PLEASE REMEMBER THAT I MADE YOU." The inflationary expansion would make this message exponentially huge. The creatures in the new universe, living in a tiny corner of one letter, would never be able to read the whole message."

But then Linde thought of another channel of communication between creator and creation - the only one possible, as far as he could tell. The creator, by manipulating the cosmic seed in the right way, would have the power to ordain certain physical parameters of the universe he ushers into being. He could determine, for example, what the numerical ratio of the electron's mass to the proton's will be. Such numbers, called the constants of nature, look utterly arbitrary to us: there is no apparent reason why they should take the value they do rather then some other value (Why, for instance, is the strength of gravity in our universe determined by a number with the digits "6673"?) But the creator, by fixing certain values for these constraints, could write a subtle message into the very structure of the universe. And, as Linde pointed out with evident relish, such a message would be legible only to physicists.

Was he joking?

"You might take this as a joke," he said. "But perhaps it is not entirely absurd. It may furnish the explanation for why the world we live in is so weird so far from perfect. On the evidence, our universe wasn't created by a divine being. It was created by a physicist hacker!"

From a philosophical perspective, Linde's little story underscores the danger of assuming that the creative force being our universe, if there is one, must correspond to the traditional image of God: omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely benevolent, and so on. Even if the cause of our universe is an intelligent being, it could well be a painfully incompetent and fallible one, the kind that might flub the cosmogenic task by producing a thoroughly mediocre creation. Of course, orthodox believers can always respond to a scenario like Linde's by saying, "Okay, but who created the physicist hacker?" Let's hope it's not hackers all the way up.

The God of the Deist-Theist Gap. (A Quick Thought)

If you are a relatively new atheist like myself who grew up in a Christian home all your life, you may have the same addiction I have of watching god debates on YouTube. William Lane Craig vs. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins vs. John Lennox. Christopher Hitchens vs. Dinesh D'souza. Atheist vs. Theist. Have you noticed a trend in all of these debates? It's always a debate on the existence of God. The new atheists say there is no extraordinary evidence to prove the extraordinary claim of a god while the theists say that the cosmos is too ordered and sophisticated to not have been created by a deity.

However, what you can rarely find on YouTube is a debate between an atheist and theist that deals with specifics of the particular religion these theists adhere to. Why is it you can never find a debate online where the theist is specifically trying to prove Catholicism, or Islam, or Mormonism as the "correct" theism? The best a theist can do is argue for deism with divine command theory or the cosmological argument. These C.S. Lewis-style weak philosophical tricks have faulty premises and are riddled with confirmation bias from the start. What you won't see is a theist trying to prove Jesus was God's only Son and that he died on a cross and rose from the dead, and walked on water, and other miracles claimed in the Bible. Their "proof" ultimately stems from "the Bible said it is so" thus it is so. The ever popular - "God Said It. I Believe It. That Settles It." Of course this is a faulty way of building a theory of anything. This is not proof. Even historical proof. Assuming we all do not believe in Zeus, or unicorns, or Atlantis but these things were written down in ancient texts too. Why the special treatment for the ancient texts that make up the Bible? Why you ask? Because they say they are true and special and divinely inspired. Circular reasoning always gives you the answer you desire from the start. There couldn't be anything more unscientific than this way of thinking.

Another thing you don't see as often online are debates between various religions. It's not as often you see a Muslim debating an Evangelical or a Scientologist debating a Mormon. Why is that exactly? As an atheists how comical would this be? I would enjoy watching a debate where one sides magic underwear and golden tablets trumps the other sides e-meter and galactic alien overlord. I'm still awaiting Scientology Vs. Mormonism: The Musical, Matt Stone and Trey Parker! That would be the funniest musical of all time. The second funniest would be the Book of Mormon of course.

Logic, science, and reason has knocked religion down to its knees. It's exposed it for what it is: man-made. It's conjured up. It is still used for controlling populations. It's been said that "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Theists can debate atheists on the grounds of deism but not theism and certainly not a specific brand of theism: Christianity, Mormonism, Catholicism, Scientology, Islam, Judaism, etc. Once we get into the specifics we see the supernatural nonsense and the wild tales said to be true. We are exposed to what makes otherwise intelligent people believe the most outlandish things like walking on water, talking donkeys, living inside a fish, and mounds of scientific claims such as a man of god stopping the sun (?), a worldwide flood, god creating light before creating the stars and other Biblical claims that fly in direct opposition to what we know to be scientifically true.

Some may say I'm picking on the "most extreme" fundamentalists of each type of religion. The religious faithful all don't reeeally believe everything literally, but just focus in on the moral teachings of the Bible (please don't get me started on morality. There are more appalling immoral examples in the Bible said to be moral than there are scientifically inaccuracies claiming to be actual events.) I get this attitude a lot when I debate Evangelicals who want to have it both ways. They have somehow created this dualistic nature in their mind where they can be a Bible literalist but then laugh it off and point to William Lane Craig "intelligent-sounding" philosophical deist arguments. Maybe some of you other atheists out there know what I'm talking about. Some theists may say I am singling out only the holy book literalists. While this is true, it is deceptive to allude to this notion that this is a fringe minority of the religious followers on this planet. A gallup poll shows that one-third of all Americans think that the Bible is literally true:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/27682/onethird-americans-believe-bible-literally-true.aspx

We all know on which side the followers of Islam, Mormonism, and Scientology would fall on this poll. So there you have it - it's clearly not the fringe. We have all seen the polls where nearly half of all Americans do not accept evolution as a valid scientific theory, but in the same breath have said they think Intelligent Design is a sound biological theory.

And here's another thought:

How often do you see these theists living by the standards laid out in their holy books? In some minds believers may think - "just do you're best and God will sort it out in the end when I die". The most important thing is that one believe in a god in the first place. A person MUST be a theist at least. This is where most of the arguments trend with these debates from theists. It's just deism. Nothing more. Once of course, you press them on these rules and regulations laid out as laws in the Bible that must be followed you will get a litany of excuses ranging from well, that's the Old Testament so those laws don't count. *Well at least some of those laws don't count. 10 commandments still do, and let's cherry pick some others. Often you will get the educated "holy book expert" theologian that will snobbishly laugh quietly at your attempt (as an atheist) to make sense of the Bible on your own. We, as mere ignorant atheists in 2013, can't dream of understanding the complex web of incoherent ramblings from ancient bronze age desert dwellers. This requires another "spiritual expert": A theologian who has a doctorate in studying these ancient texts. Sometimes I consider getting a PhD in theology as an atheist just so I can shut these pompous pricks up. I would still consider it nonsense. I would treat the Bible as someone like Daniel Dennett does - A natural Phenomenon. That's it. Natural. A natural pieced together book in this natural world in which we live written by human beings naturally.

In conclusion I think I speak for most atheists obsessed with YouTube debates on god when I say I really want to see a debate with a Christian or Muslim or Scientologist or Mormon where we don't just debate if God exists, but we move from deism down to your specific religion. We can even start with the premise that there "is a god". We atheists can grant you that. Now prove to us that your specific version of God and what he wants of us is the correct version. Go! Any takers? (or are the only people that read this blog agnostic or atheists?)