Science or Pseudo-Science?

Al Gore needs a high school Science lesson.

I recently heard a news clip on one of the cable networks (no NBC affiliate) where Al Gore said that Global Warming was like Gravity...it’s here.

Well, the inventor of the internet needs a science lesson, much like one I would teach to a 9th grade class. Science is a body of knowledge based on the application of the scientific method. That method involves procedures that have been in place for a couple of centuries.

First, based on observation, you make an hypothesis (best guess). Then, second, you design an experiment that you hope will confirm or fail to confirm your hypothesis. If your experiment confirms your hypothesis, you submit your work to the scientific community for confirmation. Then, only if your hypothesis is confirmed by numerous duplications of your results, your hypothesis may be accepted as a theory.

Theories are not scientific law or fact. Theories must be subject to prolonged investigation by members of the scientific community. They must be able to reproduce your results repeatedly, and infallibly, for a theory to become law or scientific fact.

There is still a Theory of Evolution and a Theory of Global Warming Caused by Man. These theories are not the same as scientific law....like The Law of Gravity or Boyle’s Law (gases - mass, temperature and pressure). That the globe is warming is a fact in the short term...and 100-150 years is very short term with respect to the Earth’s climate. That man’s carbon emissions have increased as the globe's temperature has increased since the Industrial Revolution is only a correlation to global warming. But, a correlation is not the same as a cause and effect relationship.  Show me the data and the cause and effect relationship and I might agrees it's a theory, but not a law.  If you prohibit publication of studies that disprove your hypothesis I suspect your scientific hypothesis is not even worthy of Theory status.

And so, VP Gore, your proclamation that Global Warming is equivalent to The Law of Gravity is almost as ludicrous as your claim to have invented the internet. My 9th Grade students would have known better.

That is not to say that we should not be actively pursuing every single alternative energy source that our collective minds can conceive.  Fossil fuels are a limited resource and the pollution of our habitat is not a good thing.  I support immediate energy independence through the exploitation of our own fossil fuel resources in the immediate future with a heavy emphasis on developing alternative sources of energy in the near future.