There are a lot of reasons the deniers and skeptics turn to. Some feel it is ’power grab,’ some ‘follow the money’, some worry about ‘black UN helicopters’ and some don’t see the consistency or validity of the science. I only want to comment on the last reason. When I look at the publicly proclaimed science I see several possible tests. (1) Since the models used do extrapolation then the historic line that they are extrapolating must match what we know to be historically true. (2) The event that the models predict must justify the alarm claimed by the proponent. (3) The modeling and experiments related to the theory must be independently verified.
Global warming fails all three tests. (1) The data that has been used to drive the predictions does not include the temperature dip for the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period. (2) The advocates' historic temperature data was derived from the proxy, ‘tree ring spacing’, and is therefore limited to about 1000 years of history. There are other proxies, for example ice cores. They show a 5000 year temperature history and in that 5000 years there are 3 other warm periods that each lasted about 150 years, started abruptly like the current one and each ended abruptly. They are spaced about 1000 years apart and this one is about on schedule. With that perspective it’s hard to see why this one is unique or should be alarming. (3) As the scandals of last year illustrate, data and models are not ever openly shared so there can be no independent verification.