I always get a kick out of the claims of a true believer in whatever the current name for weather. They call me a “skeptic” or “heretic”, reinforcing my use of the term “true believer.” So far, they don’t demand I be burned at the stake, maybe that would produce too much carbon!

Both sides have scientific information on their side but ignore or make wild claims about the science they think supports the other side. But only one side, the true believers, claim the science is settled.

Science is never “settled,” new information changes it. After all, in the early 1400s settled science said the earth was flat, and in the 1970s it said we were due for another ice age by the year 2000 if we did not make drastic changes to our lifestyles. Sound familiar?

In 1975 while working on my first Masters

Degree I had to write a research paper on global cooling. The “settled” science then said our lifestyles had to change and we had to spend billions of other peoples’ money to avoid a new ice age, with glaciers covering half of the US by the year 2000. When that “settled” science didn’t work out too well for them they changed the name so it would fit any weather we had.

Closer to home for me right now, cancer research for the past 100 years has settled the question of why our bodies immune system does not fight off cancer. Science was “settled,” except for a few skeptics, that our immune system thought cancer was a normal body cell so did not attack it and nothi9ng could be done about that “fact.”

A few weeks ago, two research scientists, call them skeptics, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for their breakthrough research that found an enzyme in cancer cells fools our immune system into thinking the cancer is normal cells. They have been able to deactivate this enzyme in mice and the tumors were killed, offering new hope for a new cancer treatment that goes against 100 years of settled science.

My biggest problem with true believers is their claim that “common sense” demands the government spend billions of our tax money and we make drastic changes to our economy and lifestyles. The problem with using the term “common sense” tries to imply those that disagree are totally wrong, and any cost is worth it.

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said that efforts to stabilize levels of greenhouse-gas emissions would require investments of about $13 trillion in the next 12 years. It also noted that reducing emissions would reduce the rate of economic growth, costing much more in the long term. Just the cost of switching from carbon fuels to alternative energy sources would cost 44 trillion between now and 2050.

That report does not mention the problem of reliability of alternative energy, the more dangerous smaller vehicles, and lack of and inability to accomplish some goals. For some, a tiny tin can car may be fine, but if you hunt or fish, especially if you pull a boat or trailer, they do not work.

Some will say we have to make sacrifices, but they almost always want others to make those sacrifices. Every time I see celebrities and politicians with private yachts and jets say I need to cut back on my carbon use I can only shake my head. One cross Atlantic trip for them to attend a climate conference in their jet uses more carbon that I will in a lifetime of fishing and hunting using my truck and boat.

Just like they want to spend my money, they want us common folks to change our lifestyles while they live in luxury, changing nothing. And they demand we make those changes immediately, before their “settled science” changes.

Another “settled science” claim is low lying islands will be uninhabitable due to melting glaciers causing sea level rises. They say sea levels have risen about 8 inches in the past 150 years and are predicted to rise another sixteen to 48 inches in the next 100 years. But almost every example of this I could find says the islands are getting smaller due to sea level rise AND erosion.

A 2017 study by Duval and other looked at 111 islands “threatened” by sea level and erosion changes. Their study covered the past 50 years and found only nine that had actually gotten smaller. Fifteen had gotten bigger, with the vast majority not changing.

All this claim of change is based on computer models of our climate. But those models are only as good as the programmer writes them, and they depend on data input that can be manipulated. If you have a computer, you know how unreliable they can be. Auto spell correct is a computer model on your phone. How accurate is it?

I took a cruise up Glacier Bay National Park a few years ago. The naturalist told us the open water in the bay was 110 miles long. In 1764 when it was discovered it was covered by glaciers. They had retreated 110 miles in just over 250 years. And the fastest retreat took place from 1860 to 1870. I guess it was all those Civil War SUVs! There are 1045 glaciers in the bay and some of them are growing, not retreating. Why? They are not affected by climate change?

If our settled science is correct, our environment has always changed and probably always will. I have seen a lot of different weather in my 60 plus years outdoors, but climate changes very slowly, not fast enough for a person to see.

I have faith in human nature enough to know we adapt to climate change and thrive no matter what happens. And I see no sense in doing all the drastic, expensive changes to our lives because some computer models and true believers say its “common sense.”

Here we go again.

As soon as Hurricane Florence started looking like a major storm, the global warming fanatics started their usual mantra that their favorite belief would mean more, bigger, stronger, fatter, terrible hurricanes every year unless we immediately change our lifestyles and spend massive amounts of other peoples’ money.

Those true believers just make themselves look even more silly by such hyperbole but they do it every time. Remember Hurricane Katrina in 2005? Those exact same claims were made then. But there was not another major hurricane that hit the US for seven years, until Hurricane Sandy hit us in 2012. They again started their claims after Sandy.

Those fanatics claim folks like me are “skeptics,” and seem to want us treated like the Catholic church treated heretics in the middle ages. They say we must accept their version of science, but they ignore anything scientific that disagrees with their belief and condemn those that point this out.

A simple Google search shows hurricanes have actually decreased over the past 100 years, and that is with better observation and reporting availability. There are all kinds of data out there, interpreted in many different ways. But one chart, showing hurricanes striking the US by decade, shows fewer since 1950 than in any other time since 1850. Others show the same thing, with major hurricanes coming in groups, with four to six years between cycles.

Al Gore predicted Lower Manhattan would be under water by 2015. ABC “News” in 2008 repeated that claim and also said gas would cost more than $9 a gallon and milk $13 a gallon by 2015, all due to global warming.

In his doomsday movie “An Incontinent Truth,” Gore showed a glacier calving and used it to show how glaciers were rapidly retreating now due to global warming. I have been to that glacier in Glacier National Park and watched it calve. The naturalists on board told us that glacier had retreated 110 miles in the past 100 years, the fastest retreat taking place between 1860 and 1870. I guess it was all those civil war SUVs!

Last week the weather guessers said no chance of rain Sunday during the Flint River tournament at West Point. Around noon it poured so hard my bilge pumps came on. Another afternoon this past week
I took a picture of water flooding off my roof while looking at the “prediction” of zero chance of rain for at least the next six hours.

Yet those same folks that can’t look outside and tell if it is raining try to make us believe they can predict two tenths of a degree temperature increase 100 years from now.

I wish I still had the paper I had to write in 1975 for an Environmental Science class I took while working on my first Masters Degree. “Settled” science at that time proved we were entering a new ice age, due to man’s activities. The cure? You guessed it. Same as now, change our lifestyle drastically and spend lots of other people’s money.

I have seen a lot of weather changes over my life. But I have not lived long enough to see climate change, it takes place over thousands of years.

Hurricanes are destructive and dangerous. Weather can kill you. We should take its dangers seriously, but weather is a short-term event and it does change drastically day to day and year to year.

I will remain a climate change “skeptic.” I hope it does not reach the point where the true believers burn me at the stake for disagreeing with them.

Two trips last week indicated this winter is not going to be a warm one. I went to Jordan lake near Montgomery Alabama on Wednesday to get information for an Alabama Outdoor News article then went to Jackson on Friday for information for a Georgia Outdoor News article.

Wednesday was not terrible. I met Nate Johnson at 8:00 AM and, while waiting at the dock, debated if I needed my heaviest clothing. I was fairly comfortable standing on the dock in my jacket, but the wind was growing stronger so I decided to put my Cabellas Guidewear suit on. The weather guessers said the wind would be calm by 10:00 AM but I know better than trust their predictions.

The wind never calmed down, it just got stronger. And blowing across the 51-degree water made it feel even colder. And the fish did not bite. Nate has won several January tournaments there in the past with five bass weighing over 20 pounds total, but neither of us hooked a fish that day.

Our excuse was the water had come up over a foot and gone from very clear to stained almost overnight due to the heavy rains. And the water temperature dropped a couple of degrees due to the cold nights and wind. All those things can make fishing tough this time of year.

Friday I met Willie McMullen at Jackson at 7:30 and had no doubt I needed my Guidewear. Willie grew up on Jackson Lake and his father Wayne and uncle Ronnie McMullen were well known for their great catches on Jackson. Before he died a few years ago Wayne taught Willie everything he knew, starting him tournament fishing over 30 years ago when Willie was only nine years old.

Last weekend on New Years Eve Willie won a tournament at Jackson with five bass weighing almost 15 pounds. But once again the changing weather and lake level changed the fishing. He landed four bass in the seven hours we fished but I never had a bite. I was too busy taking notes and pictures to fish – that is my excuse and I am sticking with it.

To anyone other than a diehard bass fisherman, we were crazy to fish on a day when the high temperature was in the mid-30, it was cloudy and rainy and snow was in the forecast. But to me it was the perfect kind of day to fish this time of year. Low pressure and clouds often mean the bass bait good in the winter.

One Christmas this was proved to me at Clarks Hill. I got up that morning to find my boat parked at my mobile home at Raysville Boat Club covered with six inches of snow. I raked enough off the front deck to get to my trolling motor foot control and to stand without slipping down.

After putting the boat in I idled out to a point where I have caught fish in the past in January. The wind was howling as a cold front move in and the air temperature was in the low 30s. The water temperature was about 50 degrees.

For two hours, every time I dropped a spoon down it never got to the bottom. I landed hybrids, stripers, largemouth bass, white bass, white perch and crappie from that point. Since my live wells were frozen shut I just threw the fish in the snow in the bottom of the boat. When I went in I had to climb over the windshield to get to the drivers seat.

I quit fishing because as soon as the wind blew the cloud cover away and the pressure jumped up the fish stopped biting. I kept trying for about 30 minutes after the last bite but they were just gone.

Another Christmas the wind was blowing sleet sideways one morning. I tried to fish some points but it was just too cold and rough, so I idled behind an island where the bank dropped off fast into deep water and was covered with rocks. And best of all I was out of the wind.

Within a few minutes, I hooked and landed a bass weighing just over eight pounds on a Deep Wee R. After landing it I decided I had used up my luck and headed to the ramp and a warm mobile home.

Don’t let cold, windy, cloudy weather keep you home this winter.

I guess if the unusually warm weather on Christmas Day proves global warming, the weather this past weekend proves global cooling. Weather and climate change. Always have, always will.

In 1975 I was working on my first Masters Degree at West Georgia College and took a course titled “Environmental Science.” I had to write a report on the coming ice age. All the scientific “evidence” proved that half of the US would be covered by glaciers within the next 25 years.

To prevent this catastrophe US taxpayers had to ante up billions of dollars for changes. And we had to change our lifestyles to keep polar bears out of downtown Chicago. Just like the Italian scientists of his time told Christopher Columbus, the science was settled and they would not fund his trip because he would fall off the side of the flat earth.

I fish year-round and some winters water temperatures stay in the 50s. Other years lakes around here drop into the low 40s and I have seen Jackson lake with solid ice sheets in some covers and a thin layer of ice on parts of the main lake. I have also seen years when there were few days when fishing with only a light jacket was not enough.

I enjoy warm winters, it is much more fun fishing when you can actually feel your fingers holding a rod and reel, and when you don’t have to dip your rod into the water every cast to melt ice out of the guides. That was the way it was during the winter three years ago. I hope it does not get that cold this winter.