Chemists Celebrate The Earth Day 2024 is on Monday, April 22, 2024: What would be the purpose of some scientists to falsify the concept that global warming is caused

Monday, April 22, 2024 is Chemists Celebrate The Earth Day 2024. CCED 2011 To celebrate, Chemists

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The notion that climate scientists either invented or exaggerated global warming is one that’s been rumbling around for quite some time. It’s often used as an argument to oppose the theory of global warming but it’s not something that has ever been substantiated – despite numerous requests for links to corroborating evidence.

It’s actually quite a bizarre claim given that global warming will be celebrating it’s 200th birthday in a few days. The first scientific connection to global warming dates from 1811 when the physicist and astronomer Simeon Denis Poisson speculated that atmospheric pollution led to increased temperatures.

In 1824 the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Fourier (a colleague of Poisson’s) put forward the notion that Earth's atmosphere was retaining heat. His published his findings in a work entitled “General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe and the Planetary Spaces”

In 1896 the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius was the first person to produce documented empirical evidence as to the existence of global warming, this was published in his paper "On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground" (carbonic acid being the chemical name of the time for carbon dioxide).

It’s sometimes claimed that scientists falsify the theory of global warming in order to receive funding. The problem with this argument is that any funding that is provided will be strictly controlled and in most cases will be monitored and audited by the funding body and / or their appointed auditors. Any deliberate misappropriation of funding would be a criminal offence for which the offender could be jailed. This has never happened.

The Virginia State Attorney – Ken Cuccinelli – embarked on something of a witch-hunt against the climate scientist Michael Mann and invoked the Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act claiming that Mann had misappropriated public funds. The Judge threw the case out.

I’m actually a climate scientist myself and I can assure you that it’s nothing to do with the money (I work in the private sector so there’s almost no public funding available). Anyone embarking on a climate science study course is well aware that they’re never going to become rich. If they were more concerned about money they would use their scientific background and work in petrochemicals or pharmaceuticals.

It’s also assumed that climate scientists do nothing other than study climate change. In reality, this makes up a small proportion of the workload and many scientists will go through their whole career without ever researching climate change.

The argument falls flat on it’s face yet again when you consider that companies with the most to lose from climate change being a reality – the oil and power companies – have their own in-house climate scientists and they are reporting exactly the same as those working in the public sector.

Furthermore, climate change is a multi-disciplinary subject and involves scientists from a wide spectrum including botanists, marine biologists, oceanographers, cosmologists, physicists, atmospheric chemists etc. It stretches credibility beyond all forms of reason to believe that such a huge number of people could be involved in a scam and not one person has ever spoken out.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the first warnings made to the US government about impending climate change came from research conducted by the US Army at the Camp Century base in Greenland. Are we also to believe that the military are also involved in some sort of global conspiracy?

PS – The psychological aspect of climate change can be found within the realms of the psychology of denial and the diffusion of responsibility. These conditions manifest themselves as a) a filter mechanism that inhibits the acceptance of conflicting ideas and opinions in order to maintain a delusion and b) the reluctance to become involved on the basis that someone else will deal with the problem.