Given the current 'atmosphere' of the climate science debate I decided to apply the standards used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change to determine, beyond any reasonable scientific doubt, if God really exists.

I personally think that there is a better explanation for anthropologic warming than CO2 but this should be a good exercise none the less.

In order to help eliminate debate on the issue of climate change and move forward with active (and expensive) CO2 mitigation strategies the IPCC developed the following rule:

"In this Summary for Policymakers the following levels of confidence have been used to express expert judgments on the correctness of the underlying science: very high confidence at least a 9 out of 10 chance of being correct; high confidence about an 8 out of 10 chance of being correct."

This is the rule that allows the IPCC to state (and the media to report) unequivocal scientific evidence of man caused global warming and subsequent dire consequences. So since we can now abandon scientific method in favor of 90% consensus let's take a look at another hot topic: The existence of God.

A Google search turned up this helpful site that shows 84% of the world's population is 'religious' leaving 16% of the world's population as 'nonreligious'. The author further states that, of the 16% that are nonreligious, half of these, or around 8%, are 'theists' believing in at least one god but we will ignore this group for the sake of this discussion and focus on the 84% number.

Alright, 84% is pretty good but that only gets us up to 'high confidence' by the IPCC standards; and although the media outlets are happy to report 'high confidence' from the scientific community as rote fact; I suspect we'll need to dig a bit more in our quest to prove God.

Since we have 6 points to make up to get us into the 'very high confidence' range we will need to consider factors that could affect the percentages to bring us up to par with the IPCC's high standards. One thing we can do is adjust the populations for bias. Since our population is the whole world irregardless of any influence except that which would also be applied to the environmental science community at large I would say our population could be used as the baseline.

A reasonable assessment of the environmental scientific community, however, reveals a potential bias that could help bridge the 6% gap. First we must consider what drives someone in the first place to be an environmental scientist. Certainly a love and appreciation for nature would be high on the list and although this is a laudable trait it would need to figure into our calculation of bias in the population at large. And what of the educational and life experiences of these well intended scientists?

Rationally we would expect an attitude toward protecting Mother Earth to be reinforced rather than dispelled during the course of an environmental science curriculum written and taught by others of a similar calling. Given this, their colleagues in the environmental science community are also unlikely to deviate from environmental science doctrine. As a teacher might consider education most important and a policeman might consider law enforcement most important; so too the environmental scientist considers his calling to be most important.

But back to the 6%. If the IPCC agrees that 90% consensus of an obviously biased population is science, then where does 84% in a relatively unbiased random population of believers in God rank? It would seem we need only to calculate a small 6% bias in the population of those called to the field of environmental science to bridge the gap and make the existence of God, science; on par with anthropologic global warming.

Science proves the existence of God? Now that's news.