Of course we all have read and heard ad nausea about the global warming scare – I mean climate change, or whatever the latest fad might be. The tone has always been “consensus” which, to anyone with a scientific background knows, is not science. It was consensus for hundreds of years that the ocean went out a ways from the land where monsters lived and sunk the boats, and the universe, or what was the universe at that time, revolved around the earth. And the old method of leech bleeding of sick people: infections; bleed ‘em….fever; bleed 'em…anemia; bleed 'em. How’d that one work out? Bleed someone who is low on blood. The point is, science by consensus is dangerous. But what is much more dangerous is when consensus is faked. A group of scientists of all sorts calling themselves “Popular Technology” looked at many of the names of this 97% shouted by the stay up late senators and the internet scare mongers. Immediately they found a dozen or so climatologists who were known not to be alarmists. When contacted, these scientists were surprised, and frankly angry, that their words and studies had been taken out of context. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) purposely took their papers and included them into the bucket of global warming alarmists. I suspect this goes far beyond what Popular Technology found on the surface of the UN climate “scare.”

The other overreaching theme is “the science is settled.” This statement alone defies the very foundation of the scientific method. No science is ever settled. Case in point: We all remember Otzi, the Iceman found in the Alps in 1991. Examination of his body, the tools and clothing around him showed that the archaeology was dead wrong. The material he had with him and the tattoos on his body were all 2,000 years earlier than the science had all agreed upon for a hundred years. Science changes constantly with technology. Watson and Crick discovered the essence of life, the DNA strand, 60 years ago. Now we are using this in all sorts of ways, including the ability to even map the entire genome of a person. I graduated from high school in 1968, and went to college in the late 1980s. One of the filler courses I took was a geology class. One day we reached the chapter on plate tectonics. I was dumbfounded. The last I knew of the earth was pretty much what Jules Vern saw in his Journey to the Center of the Earth. Plate tectonics came about after I was out of high school.

Science constantly changes and is never, never settled. If you hear someone say or read about someone saying, “The science is settled,” you are hearing a journalist or a dishonest scientist seeking more grants.

Climate change may just be happening; in fact, it probably is, just as is has been changing for about 4 billion years – the time some estimate the earth has been around, and frankly, that timeframe may also change. Remember, science is never settled. Climate in the modern era – and by modern era I mean the last 50,000 years – has changed back and forth dozens of times, often very quickly. An example would be mammoth remains with spring flowers in their mouths as they froze to death to be found 10,000 years later.

Should we take care of the planet? Of course. Clean up after yourself, and that goes for companies also. Even those of us who know the global warming scare is blown out of proportion and for lack of a better description, a hoax, also have children and grandchildren. We want them growing up in a clean safe world. But a clean safe world that is not run by those who would control their lives and the choices. And control being the keyword in the climate change alarmism. Control the energy, control their lives – period.