Three years ago, sitting on a beach in beautiful Northern Michigan with friends and family, I made a prediction: All of this talk of “global warming” would be dropped within a decade.

Everyone was taken aback by my statement, ironically by which, I was taken aback. It was as if I was the first person they’d heard that didn’t accept global warming as reality. After all, “the debate is over”, isn’t it? Everyone knows the planet is heating up and unless we stop what we’re doing, we’re in big trouble, don’t they?

Did I make this statement because I’m an expert in global climatology? No. I made this statement from an understanding of several key principles, from which one may observe a phenomena and make sound predictions.

The nature of mass movements

Charles Mackay said that men go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one. I have always been weary of jumping on the majority bandwagon, because I have adopted as a principle the idea that mass movements are usually based on lies and deceit. They are an assault on individual sovereignty, another of my closely held principles.

Fear as a motivator

Mass movements always have something to be afraid of, because nothing motivates people like fear. It is the most basal of all our instincts, prompting our fight-or-flee mechanisms to incite us to action. Whenever you see a mass movement appealing to your fear, ask questions.

There’s always another doomsday

Throughout the history of mankind, there have always been prophecies of doom and destruction. A casual study of doomsday theories will reveal that many predictions have been made, and many have had their time come and go – while the world keeps turning and people keep going about their business. So when I heard the global warming hysteria, my question is “what makes this doomsday more legitimate than all the others?”

An understanding of the theory of variation

My years of study in statistics have taught me that all things vary, and that people are prone to see trends where there are none. Worse yet, those with a cause will often exploit ignorance of variation by manipulating the data to tell the story they want to tell. When presented with a “trend” calling me to alert, my first question is always to understand the frame, the data in its proper context. The manipulators often take a few points in a series, assume a trend, apply algorithms, and paint a picture that tells the story they want to tell. When I first saw the famous “hockey stick” graph, my antennae twitched.

Junk Science

In my odyssey stage of life, I took a keen interest in science as a means to understand the world we live in. I became intrigued with the scientific method and how it contributed to the growth of knowledge. With a solid understanding of scientific method, one can quickly spot junk science, which is not science at all but lies told under the guise of being “science.” When I heard the statement “the debate is over” I knew I was in the realm of junk science – “the debate is over” is antithetical to science. By the very definition of the scientific method, the debate is never over, and anyone who claims otherwise is practicing dogmatism, not science. It took me five minutes of research on the Internet to learn that dissenting scientists were out there, and that they were being muzzled, bullied, and scorned by the global warming adherents. Big red flag.

Government’s role and follow the money

Anytime government is involved, be suspicious. Vast sums of taxpayer money are funneled to global warming research. Follow the money to find out who benefits, and understand their motivation. When academics employ junk science to promote a message the government wants broadcast to the masses in exchange for huge government grants and favors, while dissenting researchers are shut out by the establishment and get their government funding pulled…

Your meter should be pinned.

I was wrong in my prediction. It will take less than a decade for global warming to disappear from the debate. I should have predicted a shorter timeline based on the power of the Internet to inform and expose propaganda and junk science. Be aware, however, that global warming will not be debunked in the mainstream media. It will fade into the background as the next Big Scare takes the stage, and the masses will be fretting over another doomsday.

If the reader gets one thing from this web log, I wish it would be this: Beware of mass movements.
