I don't know. Honestly. I have friends who say global warming is real and it is "settled science". I have other friends who question whether it is or has been happening for the past two decades. And I have still other friends who say it may be happening, but it isn't caused by humans; and still others who say that even if it is happening, it is happening slowly and is best dealt with as it happens. I don't know.
Conrad Black is erudite and an excellent writer. In the middle of his recent column about global warming, he interjects:
Every sane person is opposed to the pollution of the environment and there is a practically universal consensus to reduce automobile exhaust emissions, ensure industrial smoke goes through scrubbers, and that all contaminated water is thoroughly treated before being returned to nature. Every serious person agrees that we must, as a species, show extreme vigilance in exercising man’s unique ability to tamper with and alter the environment. We are the stewards of the world and its environment and there are few who would dispute that until comparatively recently, we have not taken that responsibility very seriously. The Industrial Revolution had been thundering in Europe and North America for nearly a century, and in Japan for half a century, before even basic conservation, such as national parks, got its green foot in the public policy door.But there is no justification whatever for the self-punitive nonsense of the Paris climate accord, where the administration of president Barack Obama committed to garrote American industry with costs of tens of billions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions... [emphasis added]
Earlier in his column, Black asserts:
It is the third result that has occurred: unchanged world temperatures since 2000, apart from 2015-2016; then the temperature rose slightly after a heavy El Nino, and then receded again although world carbon emissions have increased moderately.
...no ice has been lost by Greenland, other than what melts every summer and then forms again, and water levels have not moved appreciably.
Really? I have some good friends who claim otherwise.
And I have no idea what to believe. I know some glaciers (e.g. the Athabasca Glacier) have retreated considerably, but I also know that one receding glacier does not necessarily reflect global warming or rising oceans.
What are the facts? Is it even possible to discuss or debate the facts of global warming? Or are our Baysian priors too tight on both sides for science to work?