Ignoble Nobel, part 2

I felt like rehashing my stance on Global Warming. My first post on the subject was this one, and I broke down the different Warming beliefs this way:

1. Global Warming is caused in large part by man, is a grave crisis, and man must act immediately to prevent disaster (Al Gore).
   
2. Global Warming is real, may be caused by man and could be problematic for the future.
   
3. There is no "Global Warming," aside from the normal cyclical changes in climate that have occurred many times in history.
   
4. There is no warming. There may even be cooling.

I stated then that #3 was closest to my personal belief. I feel comfortable with that viewpoint, and it is supported by people like Dr. William Gray, one of the most prominent hurricane forecasters in the world:

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."
...Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place. However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.
During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.
He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

Writer Mark Steyn weighs in on Gore's pseudo-religion:

A schoolkid in Ontario was complaining the other day that, whatever subject you do, you have to sit through Gore's movie: It turns up in biology class, in geography, in physics, in history, in English.
Whatever you're studying, it's all you need to know. It fulfils the same role in the schoolhouses of the guilt-ridden developed world that the Koran does in Pakistani madrassas. Gore's rise is as remorseless as those sea levels. I assumed Gore's clammy embrace would do for the environmental movement what his belated endorsement had done for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential candidacy: kill it stone dead. But governor Dean was constrained by actual humdrum prosaic vote tallies in Iowa and New Hampshire. The ecochondriacs, by contrast, seem happiest when they're most unmoored from reality.
That's where Gore comes in. No matter how you raise the stakes ("It might take another 30 Kyotos", says Jerry Mahlman of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research), Saint Al of the Ecopalypse can raise them higher. Climate change, he says, is the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced. Ever. And not just humankind, but alienkind, too. "We are," warns Gore, "altering the balance of energy between our planet and the rest of the universe".

It is interesting how anyone who questions liberal orthodoxy on Global Warming is labeled as anti-environment. It seems like anyone who swallows Belief #1 is anti-reality. Even if you think warming is caused by man, to act like we know EXACTLY what will cause it is absurd. It presumes a great deal more than we know. Want to know why this propaganda has reached such a level of acceptance? Dr. Gray has the answer:

It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong. But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants.

This illustrates the need for skepticism and a questioning mind. It is at the heart of real scientific discovery.