Global Warming - Another Denial of God

http://www.globalwarming.org/science.php

Once upon a time, people believed in God/Gods, and attributed unfortunate circumstances to it/them. The weather was a particularly common fact of life that was attributed to it/them. As science has improved, and we have gained a greater understanding of the mechanics of the way the world works, we came to control more and more of the world around us. Of course, this didn't start with the age of science. Irrigation was important to early societies in order to regulate water flow to their crops, basically an attempt to control drought (flooding of course was another problem).

But in the modern world, there is definitely a bias against a belief in god. Acts of God still exist in insurance policies though (at least as far as I know).

What seems interesting to me is that VERY often in the modern world, bad things that would have been considered Acts of God in the past (drought, earthquake, global warming) are invariably tied to actions of Western Civilization, and very little of the good that Western Civilization has brought to the world is seen as being positive. When bad things happen, people seem to be looking to blame Western Civilization, and most particularly, the United States.

Now, this isn't to say that I don't believe that there are quite real problems caused by modern society. We could also find ways to more efficiently use our resources, even as they do exist. Also, our responses to disaster's around the world could probably be better managed, the United Nations seems to be a terrible manager for such events, but they are what we've got.

As we come to understand our world better and better, the idea of "Act of God" will certainly have to change. Lightning strikes were acts of god, but then lightning rods came into the equation, and they became manageable events.

For now, I just don't follow the theories of global warming enough to accept them as good science. The globe is warming up, that is a measureable observation. Human activity is almost certainly affecting the general weather patterns of the world. However, it seems just as likely that our activity is delaying a warming trend in the world as opposed to speeding it up. Here's my theory. Blacktop on roads and houses (roofing tar) absorbs more heat rather than reflecting it back into the atmosphere, thus resulting in net atmospheric cooling when compared to the amount of heat energy reflected into the atmosphere by native flora.

I would love to see some testable, observable data that fits a theory of global warming (particularly when it comes to Greenhouse gasses). One thing that is clear from complex systems is that they tend to move towards a state of equilibrium. Equilibrium doesn't mean nothing is going on of course, but overall, it means that things are probably pretty dull. The sky isn't falling, and the proper course of action to take has to be evaluated based on a variety of criteria. For now, I think that the weather around the globe still falls under the purview of unknown forces, aka God.