David Marks and Al Gore don’t disagree on everything.

The Manteca resident and engineer is co-founder of the local chapter of the Tea Party Patriots. Marks might not see eye-to-eye politically with the former vice president but they are on common ground when it comes to certain aspects of climate change – specifically the effects of deforestation and the large ocean garbage gyres that continue to grow.

But as his presentation Thursday night to the group proved, that’s about as far as the common ground extends.

Over the course of roughly half-an-hour Marks explained out why he believes that “global warming” and the “science” that supports it – specifically that runaway levels of carbon dioxide are responsible for a pending worldwide crisis – is both flawed and misleading.

Noting that climate change is altogether a different animal from what Gore and other sources are sounding the alarm over, Marks said that the only “inconvenient truth” is that their theories don’t stand up to the laws of thermodynamics or the basic laws that govern how gas operates.

“You don’t use statistics and information to prove a point. You use it to find out what is really happening,” Marks said. “I can make statistics say anything that I want them to. That’s not using them the way that they’re intended.”

Marks pointed out that if the models used by Gore and other proponents were correct, the heat alone would have already killed everybody on earth. The amount of heat trapped would create an “out-of-control” oven-like effect that would have already had disastrous effects.

Marks said in the academic world where answers are sought, the theory, data and science must drive the conclusion – the conclusion can’t drive the science and the data, which is what he contends has happened with the global warming movement.

It’s complicated, containing a lot of equations and mathematics and physics that can all be used, Marks said, to prove that the data has been manipulated into backing up the findings of global warming alarmists.

Among those findings is the greenhouse effect that supposedly proves that the globe is heating up the same way that a greenhouse does. Marks says that an experiment undertaken by an independent scientist proved that a greenhouse’s temperature is actually caused by a lack of convection – the transfer of heat from one place to another. Something as simple as a breeze or an open window, he said, could serve as that catalyst.

So where does this fit into the world of local politics? Back in 2006 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law Assembly Bill 32 – also known as the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 – which is decried by opponents for the subsequent creation of the “cap and trade” program by the California Air Resources Board that will place a limit on statewide greenhouse emissions.

In a nutshell, the program requires businesses that produce greenhouse gases to mitigate them either directly or by “buying” into other projects that do.

“Our leaders do not care what the ramifications are nor do they care to apply a technical understanding to the issues they are legislating,” Marks said in his presentation. “Instead they seek out these experts who propose junk science to support their personal agendas instead of seeking the truth, no matter where it leads.”