Be Careful Jumping to Conclusions

Chuck Gaidica was a local weatherman in Detroit for years. I always liked him; he seemed sincere and honest about forecasting. One thing I recall him saying in an interview about ten years ago was that after 5 to 7 days, all bets were off about the weather. We simply couldn't know with any certainty what would happen after that. 

That sounds about right to me. Generally, the forecasters can't go very far into the future, and we've all known times where they were wrong about the next 24 hours, let alone next week. Even with science, we can't predict the future, especially the far future, with any reliability. And that's one of the main reasons I'm skeptical of the value, and the inherent fear involved, with issues of climate change.

We don't know how much snow we're going to get next Monday but we know Miami will be underwater in the year 2100. Bah and humbug. Yes, we might be able to take decent guesses about the coming days, weeks, or even months. But knowing for sure, with anywhere near complete accuracy? Color me skeptical. Especially considering that so many models, so much 'science' is based on mere human thought and action. It is after all human beings making up the various catastrophic scenarios for our future based on the data they feed into the algorithm they have chosen and developed. Human thought being human thought, that means guesswork will enter in the equation. Bias will too, even if unintentional. I can't help wonder how many scientists (many of whom are directly or indirectly paid by a government somewhere) are actually superimposing their belief on the endeavor. And I haven't even addressed the issue of presumption: they claim that simply because one thing has happened one way it will continue to act in exactly that way into eternity. That's an assertion fraught with peril, particularly when you're asking for trillions of dollars which will keep you, erstwhile scientist, in the driver's seat about my life, and the lives of millions of others, born and yet to be born.

I'm not saying that future climactic catastrophe isn't in the cards. But knowing that nature is resilient and men fallible, I simply don't believe the crisis all that foreboding.