J.D.Power: EVs Are Hype

I'm not doubting that Al Gore and hundreds of climate scientists believe that we humans are causing the earth to warm. Clearly they do. And they are entitled to their beliefs. As are you, and as am I. But for you and them to claim that they have proved scientifically that humans are causing the earth to warm is false. They have not. In fact, they cannot. There is no way to prove that theory scientifically. Climate models prove nothing. Don't believe me? Read a paper by Naomi Oreskes that argues quite persuasively that very point. courses.washington.edu/ess408/OreskesetalModels.pdf As does David Orrell in his book The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction (in Canada the book's called Apollo's Arrow). (Incidentally, both those people believe in man-made global warming.) There's nothing wrong with believing in man-made global warming. You do, and that's fine. But realize that you need to take it on faith. You have not proved, and cannot prove, it by science. As for me, I'm skeptical. And when people who personally profit from proclaiming that theory are the loudest voices (as do Al Gore and climate scientists), my skepticism increases. Even so, I think all six billion of us are having an impact on the earth. Even an impact on the climate (though I think our impact on the earth's temperature is small). So I'm all for limiting my own personal impact on the earth. How do I do that? My family lives in a modest house, much smaller than what we could afford. I quit my job ten years ago to work as a consultant from home. I started an electric car company a few years ago, and we are putting together our first "proof-of-concept" car. (Although I walk or bicycle for errands and haven't driven a car for a week.) Though I like to travel, I limit my trips -- I haven't flown for over a year. I live like a man-made global warming believer should live. Compare me to Al Gore. He lives like a prince off his climate Armageddon preaching. To me, Al Gore is a hypocrite. That he does not practice what he preaches speaks more loudly than his voice.

But we have proved the law of gravity. How? By using the scientific method. That is, you think of a hypothesis. You figure out a way to test your hypothesis. You perform the test. You report the results. If others can repeat the same test and get the same results, your hypothesis becomes accepted. By that logic, we proved Newtonian Physics. With global warming, the hypothesis is that by burning fossil fuels, making cement, and clearing land for agriculture, we are burdening the earth’s air with carbon dioxide. That is making the earth warmer. ... The problem is, how do you test that? What experiment do you conduct to verify your hypothesis? You can't. But equally true is that you cannot assume that something you have tested is absolutely true, either. Absolute truths are the domain of mathematics. What you can do is prove it demonstrably false, and thusfar that hasn't been done. Newtonian physics are a perfect example of this: they appear true and they test true, except that in the greater, quantum mechanical sense, they're completely not true at all: Newtonian physics comes unglued at the quantum level**. Is quantum mechanics not science because we have to model it, rather than witness it empirically? Most scientific theories aren't proven, nor are they ever considered proven. They're either further refined, or they're disproven entirely. Evolution is such a theory: we can't prove it, not directly, but we can refine our understanding of it, and it tests out under available evidence. Anthropogenic Global Climate Change is a lot like Evolution: because of the scale, we can't prove it empirically. But the evidence thusfar comes down on the balance of "It's probably happening", and what we are seeing is further refinements of the theory. What the inability to prove it true does not mean is that it's automatically false. This is where science differs from math (and from politics). Just because the theory changes and is refined does not mean that you can throw the baby out with the bathwater any more than we can throw Newtonian physics out because we've discovered quantum physics. It isn't a matter of reputation. Evolution was treated much the same way AGCC is being treated now, and it's because denialists have an unintention (or willful) misunderstanding of how science works. It's not a matter of faith on the part of the theory's proponents, it's a matter of accepting that the theory is true because sufficient proof doesn't exist to disprove it entirely (or force a change of scale). ** just as quantum mechanics does as things get bigger

No, Newtonian physics has been proven using the scientific method. As has much of the physics of electricity and magnetism. My son's high school advanced physics book has many equations that he and his classmates have verified themselves, in the lab. Similarly, much of what you might classify as evolution has been proven scientifically. You can use radiation to create random mutations in fruit flies, and see how helpful mutations propagate throughout later generations. Sure, some things about evolution cannot be proven by the scientific method. For instance, the hypothesis that human beings evolved by chance over billions of years from primordial muck. No way to prove or disprove it. Science centers on testable hypotheses. Faith is the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. Man-made global warming is faith, not science. Might be true. Might not. No way to know.