Global Warming — Reality or Hoax?

When I decided to learn about the energy industry and the imperative to migrate away from fossil fuels a few years ago, a number of my friends urged me to conduct an independent and objective analysis on global warming.  But while I was flattered to have people in my life who accredited me with the skills necessary to perform such a task, I laughed the suggestion off. Imagine the amount of work associated with duplicating the terabytes of data and the thousands of man-hours that’s gone into their analysis.

But what do we know at this point? How honest is the analysis? Yesterday GreenPeace revealed:

…One of the world’s most prominent scientific figures to be skeptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1 million in the past decade by major U.S. oil and coal companies. The climate skeptic — Willie Soon — works as an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. Since 2001, he has received money from ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries along with Southern, one of the world’s largest coal-burning utility companies.

Are there manipulations of the “facts” in the other direction as well? There sure are allegations to that effect.

My conclusion on the subject, for what it’s worth:

1. The vast majority of climate scientists believe in the theory of human-caused global warming. Most of these people are super-academic Ph.D.-carrying “nerds” — not business people. It doesn’t seem credible – to me at least – that thousands of these people got together and decided to perpetrate a hoax on mankind.
2. If you’re looking for a financial incentive to fudge the data, you have to think that it’s less compelling to raise money for atmospheric research than it is to support the sale of trillions of dollars of oil and coal.