The column in question is basically a series of fallacious arguments from someone opposing the considered opinions of thousands of scientists. Now opposing the considered opinion of the scientific community in itself is not a sin, but Guzy’s problem is that he doesn’t even bother to look at evidence and instead bases his argument entirely on his “gut feeling” and lazy arguments against imaginary straw people who are somehow less informed than he is.
Consider his first straw man argument. Apparently, in Guzy’s world, the people who argue that global warming is real all believe, “that humankind was born into some kind of pristine cradle ideally suited to its survival — a sort of secular Garden of Eden.” Uhhhh, I certainly don’t know any people who actually hold that view. And, of course, the internets are a magical place where you can actually link to other people’s work, so if Guzy is talking to a real person then he should do us the favor of linking to someone who actually held such a silly belief. But of course, even if there are in fact some people who hold this belief, I can guarantee that most of the experts who work on the issue don’t.
Furthermore, the claim that global warming is real and is a result of human activity is entirely independent of the view that we live in an “ideal” climate. One can believe the former without believing about the later, and vice versa. Yet Guzy pretends to be arguing against global warming when he is really arguing against a straw man who holds the later view.
Likewise, his points that (1) “The geological record tells a story of violent extremes,” (2)”About 11,000 years ago, the last great ice age came to an abrupt end,” and (3) “A thousand years ago, the Vikings were farming in Greenland during a period known as the Medieval Warming Period” are all largely irrelevant. No one, absolutely no one, denies that the climate can change in the absence of human activity. But that says nothing at all about whether human activity can and does affect the climate. Obviously, lots of things affect the climate, and the claim has always been that human activity is one of those things. Guzy’s argument is the equivalent of saying that because fish die even when there’s no pollution, pollution must not be harmful to fish.
Finally, towards the end of the column, Guzy does present a couple things that, if true, could actually be considered to address the issue. But of course both are not really true, or at the very least are misleading. The first is this: “
Another fact: 1998 was the warmest year in more than a half century. Question: If growing concentrations of CO2 cause direct, linear increases in temperature as global warming alarmists suggest, why has every successive year been significantly cooler?”
A quick glance at the chart here shows how misleading this claim is. Yes, 1998 was an anomaly, but the trend clearly shows that temperatures are getting warmer, and the years after 1998 are much warmer than the years before.
Second, Guzy claims that
“If climatic forecasting models are reliable, they should also be able to retro-cast. That is, they should be able to analyze the meteorological data from, say, 1975 and from that, determine what the weather was like in 1995. Every time this has been tried, the models had to be “tweaked” throughout the process to keep them from straying badly off course.”
Well, so what? Computer models were tweaked during the process of being trained to beat humans in chess. Does that mean that computers can’t beat people in chess? What’s important is that the models are able to run a full simulation from start to finish based on the parameters given and reach the correct conclusion, and this has been done many times.
And Guzy, apparently uncomfortable discussing issues of substance, decides in the last paragraph to return to his favorite form of argument: attacking straw men. He writes,
“Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for promoting awareness of climate change. Yasser Arafat won the same award for his work on the Israeli-Palestinian Accords. Question: If Gore’s prize establishes man-made global warming as an indisputable scientific fact, does this mean that there’s peace in the Middle East?”
No, Mr. Guzy, it sure doesn’t. And the fact that you write a weekly column apparently doesn’t mean that you know or even will bother to take the time to learn what you’re talking about.