The Five Stages of (Causing) Grief

(from http://cectic.com/079.html)

Deep Thought for the day: Woo hoo!

I’m on Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll, see his blog at Deep Thoughts. I was actually #503, so it’s not like I’m an internet pioneer or anything…

What I haven’t been able to figure out is how to get the javascript to work to get the dynamic blogroll displayed on my blog. Oh well…

I wish I’d seen this before my post of about 5 minutes ago…

From Newsweek, global warming deniers are well-funded and not going away…

Sometimes when you’re stumbling, you step in a pile of crap

Here’s a site I just StumbledUpon, Long Range Weather by Harris-Mann Climatology, another attempt to delude people about human-induced global warming.

First, let me introduce “climatologist” Cliff Harris. According to SpokesmanReview.com, “Harris is not a trained scientist – he studied insurance law in college…” and from TribTalk.com,

Harris is also a devout Christian and believes the Bible is loaded with clues on predicting the weather. “I do believe in a period of extreme global warming. That will be in the tribulation period. That’s when the real global warming will come in,” he said. “Those of us who are believers, we’re looking forward to it.”

Harris acknowledges that people are playing a role in polluting the atmosphere, but he thinks society would be better off devoting its limited resources on ending poverty, curing diseases or providing universal health care, rather than investing in costly forms of clean energy or curtailing business to reduce carbon dioxide. “I believe this planet is a breathing entity, made by God, to clean itself, adjust itself,” Harris said.

And his colleague, Randy Mann, a TV meteorologist. Again quoting from SpokesmanReview.com,

Mann also has doubts about the severity and cause of the earth’s changing climate…. “I’m not saying we’re right. We’re just trying to say there are other possibilities here,” said Mann, who holds a degree in geography. Mann said he believes humans are likely playing a role in the changing climate, but that it’s an exaggerated one.

Next, let’s look at their data. If you go to their page, you’ll see a graph (which I won’t reproduce here) which shows several ups and downs in global temperature during the past 4500 years. One question comes to mind immediately, where did they get their data? No hints about that, and this doesn’t look like any graph I’ve seen. The most scientific this graph gets is where they try to correlate the cold periods with volcanic eruptions, but their bias comes through when they chart the Hebrew Exodus from Egypt and the birth of Christ.

Ok, so we have two people with little qualifying expertise, providing a made-up chart as evidence suggesting that volcanic activity and solar “irradiation” are responsible for past climate changes.

To paraphrase Randy Mann, I am saying they’re wrong. Their qualifications are weak, their data appears made-up, and they’ve completely missed the crux of the problem: No one denies that past climate changes were the result of natural processes. The problem is that the current change is happening faster than ever before, and it’s caused by human activity. See gristmill, New Scientist or Lighter Footstep for more information.

What is it about climate change deniers, that so many seem to be Christians? Why are they so incapable of understanding  this issue? What arrogance makes them think they’re right and the vast majority of scientific experts are wrong? More importantly, why are so many of them taking this position? What do they gain by misleading Americans into believing there’s no problem?

To any global warming deniers, Christian or otherwise, who happen to read this, I challenge you to go read some real information about the issue, not the mis-information you’ve been reading so far. Learn about climate change and accept it for what it really is: the biggest challenge mankind has ever faced. Become a positive force, not a negative one. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

What Kind of Atheist Are You?

What kind of atheist are you?

You scored as a Scientific Atheist

These guys rule. I’m not one of them myself, although I play one online. They know the rules of debate, the Laws of Thermodynamics, and can explain evolution in fifty words or less. More concerned with how things ARE than how they should be, these are the people who will bring us into the future.

Scientific Atheist –> 92% Spiritual Atheist –> 58% Apathetic Atheist –> 50% Militant Atheist –> 33% Agnostic –> 33% Angry Atheist –> 33% Theist –> 0%

Take the quiz at http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=34703N