[Today's post is by Jay A. Auxt, co-author of Global Warming and the Creator's Plan, newly published by Master Books.]
As an engineer, we need to be always working with real world science. In other words, the science and data used to design structures and apparatus needs to work in the real world. Although this seems like mere common sense, it is amazing how often science, for the sake of ideology, totally defies this logic. The concept of “extrapolation” is, perhaps, one of the most often abused techniques for those who would like to deceive. The book [Global Warming and the Creator's Plan] uses the example of two identical thermometers, one at the front door and one at the back door of the house.
“You have two laboratory-grade mercury thermometers, both in the shade, one on the front porch and one on the back porch. You notice that the one on the front porch reads 0.5 degrees higher than the one 50 feet away on the back porch. You want to go to town to pick up the mail and need to know how to dress. Town is nearly 3 miles away – 15,000 feet. You extrapolate this 0.5 degree difference from the front of your house to the rear of the house, 50 feet apart, to a town which is 15,000 feet away. Doing so, you come up with a downtown temperature of T=0.5 x 15,000 divided by 5o and get 150 degrees. Consequently, you can scientifically determine it is 150 degrees warmer in town than at your house!”
Obviously, insignificant errors can cause people to jump to enormously erroneous conclusions when extrapolating these minor errors over long periods of time, or in this case, over long distances.
Global warming is one prime example of this erroneous extrapolation process. Supposedly, over the past 100 years, the world temperature has increased 0.5 degrees. However, how do we know? Globally recognized standard temperatures were only established 40 years ago and the standard was changed in 1990! The variations in the global temperature measurements are greater than the supposed 0.5 degree increase. With what confidence can that data be extrapolated into the future? If engineers attempted to extrapolate uncertainties of strength of material data to this extent in structural designs, people could be killed!
[Editor's note: As Christians, we are certainly responsible for being good stewards of God's creation. The purpose of this book is not to encourage shirking our responsibilities, but to provide the information necessary to assist Christians in making environmental decisions in a sound and responsible manner.]
