Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has become a political and economic ideology, to the extent that the science has become secondary to a debate which is now so emotional it is bordering on the religious.
I have no idea whether AGW is real or is a threat, but its not for lack of trying. If you actually try to get to the bottom of the science, an honest investigation will find that the science is certainly not "settled" on the issue, and that there are many contradictory scientific findings and papers, not to mention huge and valid question marks about the historical data that has been used to draw conclusions in secondary sources as well as used in models, which are themselves questionable predictors of future climate change.
I find myself mistrusting the official line, for no other reason than that there seems to be a lot of contradictory data that has been "dumbed down" into a propaganda campaign for the masses. The central source of AGW policy, the IPCC, has been mired in ongoing revelations of inaccuracies and sensationalist exaggerations in their reporting, not to mention the massive problems with the CRU temperature record that had previously been considered the primary, most accurate temperature record.
I am not a "denier", however, I am a "questioner", as should anyone who aspires to independent thought. I will accept AGW as a theory when I see incontrovertible evidence of the process and there is no question mark over the data, or the motives of either side of the debate. Anything else, would be an act of blind faith, which seems to be what they want, and that makes me suspicious.
There is a common fallacious argument that we may as well accept AGW because there is no downside to climate change mitigation policy, while the potential for catastrophe if it is a valid theory is massive. This is simply not true, though, as the potential for human misery by unnecessarily holding back fossil fuel driven development is equally vast.
If climate change turns out to mean only a very slow change in sea levels and temperatures over centuries that mankind can easily adapt to, then does it really make sense to retard mankind's technological and economic development? Many AGW advocates seem to have a very romantic view of undeveloped rural society, not realising that it is actually a tough and brutal environment where you're lucky if you live to thirty. Just one factor of many, is the prevalence of respiratory disease and commensurate suffering in rural Africa because rural peasants have no choice but to burn wood and other fuels indoors for their cooking and heating requirements. This is because they have no access to electricity and it does not touch on all the other aspects of their lives that are immeasurably poorer as a result.
Electrification has become a pipe dream in much of Africa now because nobody will finance new coal powered stations, and there are no viable economical alternatives. It is an irony often omitted from the environmental lobby's propaganda, that the fastest way to stabilise population growth is to urbanize, electrify and educate a society and provide as much as infrastructure as possible. You don't need to have eight children when you know that all your kids will survive and you don't need to spend most of your day doing back breaking work to subsist on the land.
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