The Political Pseudoscience of Global Warming
Who is (mostly) at fault? At the top of the list would be the environmental “green” groups and organizations which have wide reaching influence into both national and world politics. Partisan politics can then be used, both actively and passively, to deliver the message (propaganda) to the public via the media. Next in line are the actual scientists who perpetuate the myth of global warming. Many of these researchers have sold their collective souls to those political factions that support global warming in return for a career of funded research, monetary bonuses ($$), and in some casesâÂ?¦fame. It’s quite sad really, in that science, a discipline(s) once held in high esteem for its integrity in the way that it operated, has become just another casualty, or is some cases – tool, of the political process.
In the past, science tried to hold itself above the level where outright deceit could, or would, be used in order further itself. Science, historically, has taken care of itself with a system of checks and balances that tried to hold those doing the research to complete (or nearly so) objectivity. Today, much of science, or just its ideas, are bought and sold like any commodityâÂ?¦to the highest bidder! However, the bidder in many of these cases often has much more to offer than just money: They can offer influence over many of the world’s political processes and, in some cases, even power over entire nations themselves. Science, at least as far as the climate research goes, has sold out!
The GW community has very much been in the high profile news for the last 10 to 20 years, trying to sell itself to the world. As of late, they have increased their visibility even more, due to the possibility of losing big time support and money as the United States (US) refused to back the Kyoto Accord (KA) in 2005. It has become clear that some of the GW groups now want power over the political process and to control those who control much of the money. There are others associated with GW, sleazy types who don’t necessarily even believe in GW, who just want to use this “system” to their capitalistic advantage by selling of GW snake oil in the form of dire consequences (death and destruction). Still others want to use climate change as a means of finding a way to redistribute wealth from the industrialized West to the
Third World
countries�and make a buck to two in the process. As it turns out, the Kyoto Accord is just the right tool for implementing many of these actions. Ironically though, even if the Kyoto Accord was fully implemented (which is impossible anyway) including the , it would do nothing to help the environment as a whole since other large polluting countries such as and are not targeted (this alone should raise red flags as to the political motivations).
The issue of course is whether or not the GW group offers an objective assessment of the issue, although we can already guess that it doesn’t. Hopefully most of you are reasonably skeptical in the first place when confronted with this subject, although Time Magazine says that 85% of you do believe in anthropogenic global warming. Of you 85% out there, have you: a. Done your own research into the GW issue and arrived at this conclusion on your own?; b. Taken GW on faith that the media, politicians, and/or scientists are telling you the truth?; c. Been scared into believing it by television shows, motion pictures, and/or news articles that depict the dire circumstances of global warming?; or, d. Went outside, broke a sweat and thought to yourself, “It must be due to global warming.” If your answer was anything other than “a.” your in trouble (although I might cut you some slack for answering “d.“âÂ?¦at least you were doing something other than taking someone’s word for it). I can tell you that from a professional standpoint (from one who is an atmospheric scientist and works with many other earth scientists with wide ranging backgrounds) that the majority of my peers that I work with DO NOT believe in Anthropogenic global warming as a cold hard fact! As a matter of fact, a good portion of these scientists are actually staunch disbelievers. So, be especially wary of statements that include the word “consensus” in them (such as “The consensus of scientists believeâÂ?¦blah, blah, blah”) as they are often not true, but are also quite hard to disprove. I am proud not to be part of this consensus, however because I am a scientist (and in particular an atmospheric scientist) I am always automatically included in the “consensus!” It’s maddening really.
Then there the issue of the term “global warming.” This label or title has now become a “catch all” for nearly anything that happens or is going to happen with the climate. What we are really talking about, however, is man-made (anthropogenic) global warming and not warming relating to natural variation in the global climatological temperature. And to be even more specific, we are talking about increased warming brought about by a man-made increase in greenhouse gases, andnot very localized warming brought about increased populations or areal extent of our cities – “the heat island effect.” Often as not, the GW community will not differentiate between these different classifications of GW and will use any data associated with any of those definitions, as long as it gives the illusion of that the world is warmingâÂ?¦in a bad way.
To get a better idea of what’s going on with the climate and let cooler heads prevail, let’s think about Earth’s historical climate for a few minutes. First of all, I’m going to state right up front that the climate is ALWAYS changing! Climate is dynamic, not static. The Earth’s climate is ALWAYS warming or cooling globally, regionally, or locally relative to some period of time or point on EarthâÂ?¦ALWAYS! Ok, now that we have that out of the way, let’s go back in time a bit and trace some climate changes over the years. During most of the last billion or so years, the Earth has not had any permanent ice caps, which infers that ice, on both the northern and southern hemispheres, comes and goes. That’s because that’s what the climate does bestâÂ?¦change! At times, however, large areas of the Earth have been covered with vast sheets of ice – these are the periods of maximum glaciation. In just the past 2 to 3 million years, the blink of any eye geologically, the temperature of the Earth has heated up or cooled down significantly around 20 times (And again, these are statistically significant temperature changes…not the shorter term changes the can occur locally, regionally or globally on time scales usually less than a few thousand years!). Those glaciation (cooling) periods have averaged about 100,000 years each, interrupted by warm periods that have lasted about 10,000 years, give or take. As a matter of fact, the last one of these major cooling periods ended just about 10,000 years ago, so we may be turning the corner sometime soon (in geologic terms), back to ice age conditions. And let me tell you, a cold frozen Earth is a helluva lot scarier than a hot one (ever try to a grow crop on a glacier?). At any rate, the Earth was a lot colder 10,000 years ago than it is now, and we’ve essentially been warming (with a few breaks) ever sinceâÂ?¦non-anthropogenically.
Going back about 15,000 years, the last glaciation reached its peak with huge glaciers and ice sheets covering a lot of real-estate. In North America for example, the region from New England, west across the Great Lakes region, and over the high plains of the
Dakotas
, was all under thick ice sheets hundreds of meters in depth. With all that ice present, the average temperature of the Earth’s surface was estimated to have been about 6 degrees Celsius colder than it is now and sea level height was figured to be nearly a hundred meters lower than it is now! (*The word “estimated” in the previous sentence is something to keep in mind in relation to all research into the subject of global warming. Comparisons are often literally drawn between a recent, set of data points and data that had been “estimated” from the past by a wide variety of “proxy” means. The bottom line is – take the “estimated” numbers for what they areâÂ?¦estimations, and NOT for their literal quantitative value.)
Moving ahead to the most recent period of significant global warming, between 15, 000 and 4,000 years ago, the massive glacial sheets of ice melted and subsequently the sea levels began to rise (duh). By about 7,500 years ago, the last of the great North American ice sheets disappeared from . Of particular interest concerning the overall climatologic record, is that the climate changes themselves were generally quite unsteady from one place to another, with different regions being affected at a different rate. The fact that there is warming and it is global is obvious, but at best very unbalanced, and not related to any industrial doings of man during this time period�unless you count breathing.
From around 6,000 years ago, near the peak of current warming, temperatures were about 3 deg C warmer than they are now and the oceans were some 10 feet higher. Then from about 2, 000 BC (4,000 years ago) and for nearly next 3,000 years (1,000 years ago), “global cooling” raised its ugly head with glaciers returning to the higher elevation of the mountains in both Europe and North America, the average (estimated global) surface temperature was around a full degree colder than they are now, and sea levels lowered to near the present day height. Exact causes of the cooling?âÂ?¦unknown. This period was then followed by a relatively short intense warming period up to around 1500 AD (500 years ago), as average estimated global surface temperatures rose to around 5 degrees warmer than today. This period was quickly followed by what is known today as the “Little Ice Age.” During this period, mountain glaciers again advanced nearly as far as they had been in the last major “ice age” some 10,000 years previous. The estimated global surface temperature during the “Little Ice Age” averaged about a degree to a degree and a half colder than temperatures are today. Again, the exact cause is unknown.
On an even shorter (most recent) temporal scale we have; “global warming” occurring between 1880 and 1940; “Global Cooling” between 1940 and the mid 1970s; and then from mid the 1970s to present day, back to “global warming!” Anybody see a pattern here?
Generally, the climate tends towards profound cycles with cycles within cycles within those pronounced cycles – and all of this being shaken occasionally by the odd cataclysmic event. As a matter of fact, those “cataclysmic” events that drive abrupt changes in the climate are most likely to occur from Earth – Sun interactions having to do with the periodic change in the Sun’s intensity, the Earth’s orbital path, the Earths’ axis wobble, etc.; other cosmic catastrophes such as meteor, asteroid, or comet collisions; or the Earth’s own volcanic activity. It’s interesting that for the time period between 1880 and the mid 1970s, exact causes for both warming and cooling are unknown, however, for the period between the mid 70s and today, it is definitely anthropogenic global warming! You have got to be kidding!
You have to tip your hat off to “them” – really! The global warming community is very adept at over dramatizing anything and everything that can be linked to their cause. For much of the past 10 to 20 years, the Global Warmers (GWers) of the world were reasonably content in handing out their apocalyptic forecasts for a hundred or more years into the futureâÂ?¦pretty much saying, “It’s coming.” However, in the past few years, and in particular by 2005 (a year that turned out to be active on both the hurricane front in addition to being the “warmest year on record,”), the slogan has become, “It’s here!” Also, the deciding not to support
Kyoto
in 2005 (as well as a few other rational countries) spurred the GWers into thinking “So what do we do now to turn thinking our way, once and for all?” Today, instead of talking about the dark future that lay ahead of all of us, the GWers have kicked it up a notch and started taking credit for all current (and some past) weather disasters and climate anomalies as a direct consequence of anthropogenic global warming!
In 2005, for example, Hurricane Katrina pushed ashore near
Buras, Louisiana
on the morning of August 29, 2005. The hurricane came in as a Category 3 storm (sustained winds of 111 – 130 mph) and was a local, regional, and national nightmare, but high profile and political enough for both the media and the GWers to latch on to. Katrina, of course, was touted for days before landfall in the media as becoming and maintaining itself as a category 5 storm (sustained winds of more than 155 mph)âÂ?¦due to very warm sea surface temperatures possibly related to global warming. It didn’t come in as a category 5, but the media did not relate much of the fact that the hurricane had lost some of its intensity prior to landfall. The ironic part is, that it wasn’t so much the direct wind strength of the storm that was so devastating to
New Orleans
(whether it was a 130mph or 155 mph), it was the large storm surge and copious amounts of rain that caused the majority of the problems. Simply,
Lake
Ponchatrain
overtopped, followed by the breach of several important leviesâÂ?¦and well, you know the rest. Actually, the REAL irony lay in the fact that it wasn’t really the rain, wind, storm surge, or even global warming that brought enormous destruction to the city of New Orleans, it was all due to stupidity and ignorance on the part of the city itself and the state it resides in.
New Orleans
was lucky that the destruction was not much worse and it’s not inconceivable that the same thing could happen this yearâÂ?¦and next yearâÂ?¦and the year after that. They are, after all, located in part of “hurricane alley” along the Gulf coast. Bottom line: If you want to live near the warm waters of the Gulf or the
Atlantic
, you have to expect hurricanes from time to time! But know how to heed warnings and take care of yourself and family before the storm strikes. And afterward, don’t bring partisan politics into the situation, as it just delays action while everybody points fingers. But, I digress.
Katrina was just one of the tropical cyclones in 2005 that added to a growing list of named storms which eventually led to the year being tagged as “the record year for named tropical storms in the
Atlantic
Basin
.” Although, again, the media often left out the “
Atlantic
Basin
” part. Of course the situation begged for an answer to the question, “Why so many tropical storms and hurricanes this year?” And, naturally, the global warming community rode to the rescue, taking full blame for this nastiest of years! And once again the motto changed from “It’s going to happen” to, “It’s happening now!” Who else in their right mind would do this…accept full blame for such a disastrous situation, unless it was to their advantage (except terrorists)? The fact that it came at a time when they were losing some momentum didn’t hurt either. Talk about a bonanza for those trying to mine (and make up) support for global warming.
Let’s look at a few statistics just for fun. These stats will deal with tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms) since they often seem to be taken as one of the “indicators” for global warming (proxy). I broke the Earth “globally” into five different geographic regions of tropical cyclone (TC) production; Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, Central Pacific, Western Pacific, and Southern Hemisphere. I selected the most recent 35 year period between 1970 and 2004 and calculated the average annual number of tropical cyclones of tropical storm intensity or greater (i.e. sustained winds greater than or equal to 39 mph) for each decade as well as the 35 year average. I selected this time period due to the fact that much has been made of the “extreme” and/or “unusual” weather and climate directly related to global warming since 1970 (when we started out last micro-warming period). Let’s see what we can see.
Average Annual TCs by decade 1970-1979 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2004 35yr. Annual Average
Atlantic
Basin
9.5 9.3 11.0 14.6 10.6
Northeastern Pacific 15.0 18.6 14.7 14.4 15.6
North Central Pacific 3.0 3.8 3.1 2.6 3.2
Northwestern Pacific 25.9 26.0 28.3 25.8 26.6
Southern Hemisphere 32.9 27.8 29.1 25.0 29.2
Now, what’s interesting from this simple statistical analysis? For one thing, notice the last five years between 2000 and 2004. This is suppose to be a time of maximum warming over the last 30 to 40 years, yet with the exception of the Atlantic basin, all the rest of the regions are well below the 35 year annual average. This is one of those great “tricks” that is often used to sway supportâÂ?¦conveniently leave out data or statistics that support the opposition. This trick is particularly easy to do when dealing with a relatively complicated issue. It’s not really lying, but it’s the next best thing. The climate is, or is made to look, quite complicated, so just imagine how easy it is to hide the truth when a few more variables are thrown into the mix. That’s what the GW group is counting onâÂ?¦ignorance or ambivalence and confusion. One of the things to take away from this diatribe: Do not take anything (and I mean ANYTHING) related to global warming at face valueâÂ?¦no matter how good it looks or sounds. And, the more “PC” it is, the more skeptical you should be.
Look at these rather simple tropical cyclone statistics one more time. If I was to turn the relationship around and look only at the southern hemisphere (instead of just the
Atlantic
Basin
), I could conclude that there must be global cooling going on since there has been somewhat of a downward trend in tropical cyclone production over the last 35 years. I could draw all sorts of conclusions from this data that doesn’t support GW. And, no matter how I manipulate it, I cannot think of anyway that I could conclude that global warming, anthropogenic or natural, was necessarily occurring according to the data. In other words, there is NO direct, statistically significant, correlation between this set of numbers and global warming!
The GW clan uses the news media and science to their (manipulative) advantage and this can be quite dangerous. Interesting that both news reporting and science are supposed to be objectively driven disciplines, but in the wrong handsâÂ?¦well, you know. Global warming is now actively and aggressively marketed using mainly scare tactics. A primary means of grabbing us by our collective throats (and at times – wallets) is to inundate us with gruesome or spectacular visual images of death and destruction brought on as “a consequence” of man made global warming. The stories have infiltrated every newspaper, TV network, and online news outlet. There have been several made for television motion pictures, docu-dramas for many of the cable science channels, and even one relatively ‘big hit’ disaster motion picture that went to the big screenâÂ?¦all based on the GW half truth pseudo-science. At the 2006 Annual Academy Awards, for example, there was a period during the evening when a mosaic of film snippets concerning “social commentary” aired following a build up of just how important these films were to all of us in the way that they changed the way we thought after viewing these motion pictures. Many great films were given their five seconds in the lime light, like – “To Kill a Mockingbird“, “In the Heat of the Night“, and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” to name but a few. Somehow, in the middle of this montage, the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” was included among the other real and socially significant classic films. Who’s kidding who here? Somebody had to have paid someone, or cashed in on a favor with the Academy, in deciding to take that opportunity to pump up the global warming agenda on both a national as well as a world wide level. How insulting to all the other films, on both an artistic as well as a social level.
The problem is that I, as a fervent opponent to anthropogenic global warming, have no great marketability! I have no larger than life disaster to communicate to the worldâÂ?¦nothing to dazzle the average person with. It’s funny, but even in the most benign of weather years, tens of thousands of people will die due to weather related phenomena. But, apparently, this is not enough and like everything else these days, the numbers of the dead must climb and the method by which they die must be ever more spectacular! And so global warming has stepped in and accepted the challengeâÂ?¦by forecasting a future apocalypse of biblical proportions! They market this coming “judgment day” much in the same way motion picture studios market movies or publishers market books…publicity!…anyway they can get it and at any cost! About as close as I can get to maybe interesting you, or at the very least increasing your level of skepticism, may be to use the word “conspiracy” associated with global warming. I used the word in the titleâÂ?¦and you’re reading it, aren’t you?
The GW community does a great job at covering all the bases, or CYA, depending on how you think of it. Because the climate does change constantly, it can often not be counted on not to cooperate when you need it toâÂ?¦like when you need a nice long heat wave in the summer over a particular region, or a warmer than usual winter somewhere else. Or, what happens when, at the most inappropriate time, the weather actually turns colder? Well, GW takes care of this by opening its arms and embracing all the possibilitiesâÂ?¦something like this: If warming occurs – it’s (obviously) global warming. If regionalized cooling occurs – it’s due to global warming (by disruption of the thermohaline circulation, for example). If a full blown Ice age results – again, it’s due to global warming (essentially, global warming has screwed up the Earth’s climate so badly by this point, that the Earth is retaliating!). How can you lose, since it doesn’t seem to matter what the weather or climate is doing. As it happens, this leaves us with a relatively new catch phraseâÂ?¦”global change“, which will, more and more, take the place of “global warming” since global change is all encompassing. Bottom line, no matter what the outcome, whether it be hot, whether it be coldâÂ?¦global warming (change) is to blame – which is to say, “Man” is to blame.
A word or two about the statement that, “Global warming will produce more severe weather events of greater intensity.” To be blunt, this is BS (you know, “Bad Supposition”)! While it’s true that tropical cyclones (hurricanes, tropical storms, etc.) are driven to some extent by warm sea surface temperatures, warm atmospheric environments (hence the term “tropical”) and relatively weak upper level wind shear (tropical cyclones are basically big heat engines), storm systems north (south) of the tropics and over land are not of that same type. As a matter of fact these “extra-tropical” systems and the local storms that they produce are largely driven by physical differences between air masses and relatively strong upper level wind shear. Take away or reduce a characteristic of one of the physical differences, such as temperature, and you start to diminish the strength of the boundary that separates the air masses and helps to force storms in the first place. So, while a globally averaged warmer Earth may be conducive to more tropical storm activity (most of which takes place over the oceans where most people don not live), it would not be beneficial in producing more intense storms over most land masses. In truth, however, what I just stated was over simplified, as there are many, many feedback mechanisms built into the Earth’s weather/climate system that would play a partâÂ?¦changing the scenario constantly. “Constantly changing”âÂ?¦climate in a nutshell!
Let’s take a closer look at some severe weather numbers over the past four very warm years. Of course, when we talk about severe weather, the tornado is always a favoriteâÂ?¦especially with the media (ratings, you know). The Weather Channel (TWC) sends reporters all around the during severe weather season, to try a bring arm chair chasing to the masses. The rest of the year, TWC has their “Storm Stories” series that they run ad nauseum, for those who didn’t get enough during the real season. The CBS television network over the past couple of years has taken the subjects of both global warming and tornadoes and come up with the made for television disaster films “Category 6: Day of Destruction“, and its sequel “Category 7: The End of the World.” Even now, the Discovery Channel is airing a group of docudramas that highlight what can go wrong in the physical world (worst case scenario) under the most extreme conditions, called “Perfect Disaster.” One of the episodes, called “Super Tornado,” concerns itself with the subject of what conditions would be necessary to essentially form an”F6″ tornado followed by what would happen if the monster storm rolled through
Dallas, Texas
. Of course, they alluded to global change/warming as the possible culprit for breeding such a dire storm in the first place.
Dallas
has been hit by powerful tornadoes beforeâÂ?¦and will again, so this is not some kind of epiphany. These are essentially badly acted “movies of the week” and not good science documentaries (more like “mocumentaries” in this case).
(*There really isn’t an official “F6” tornado scale. If there was, it would cover wind speeds greater than or equal to 319 mph. Actually, there has been an “official” move to the new and improved “Enhanced F-Scale (EF scale)” that tops out at an EF5, with winds greater than 200 mph.*)
Here’s a look at a few tornado statistics that cover the last four “warming” years in the :
2002 – 942 tornadoes
2003 – 1376 tornadoes
2004 – 1819 tornadoes
2005 – around 1200 (preliminary).
Above anything else, the first thing that jumps out at you is the variability of the number of tornadoes over the last four yearsâÂ?¦years supposedly the warmest on record! There is a range of 877 in just these four years! Looking a little closer at the 2005 tornado season, and comparing it to the 30 year average of 1033 tornadoes, 1200 hundred tornadoes, for the warmest year ever on record (2005), sounds, wellâÂ?¦slightly above averageâÂ?¦and that’s all. And, if you compare this to the 10 year average of 1271 tornadoes, 2005 drops to slightly less than average. (The 10 year average is probably closer to the actual average than the 30 year average since the number of people – chasers, spotters, media reporters, etc. – has grown so much over the past 30 years, thereby greatly increasing the likelihood that a tornado will be spotted and verified in the first place.) Why such a low number in 2002, which was, by the way, the third all time “warmest” behind 2005 and 1998. (FYI: The year 1998 had 1254 tornadoes reportedâÂ?¦about average). Mull some of this information over and see if you can draw any convincing conclusions related to global warming.
The Earth as a system, which includes both weather (short term) and climate (long term), is continually, at least in geologic terms, being pushed one way or another externally by the system in which it resides – the solar system. The Sun continually presses the Earth on a relative subtle level as it goes through its own short and long term intensity changes or cycles. Astronomical events such as an Earth-asteroid or Earth-comet collisions can be a major cause of external catastrophic results, while tectonic movement along plates and faults and/or volcanic eruptions may provide the cataclysmic event that initiates from the inside. Taken as a whole, these types of interactions and events are the true climate shakers/makers/changers – the stuff extinctions are made of. When viewed from this perspective, the proved human contribution to climate change is nothing more than a mole hill on a mountain (and that may even be an exaggeration).
Speaking of extinctions; just in the past few weeks a study was passed on to the news media stating, “âÂ?¦a quarter of the world’s species would be committed to extinction by 2050 as a result of global warming.” Now this is truly an unbelievable statement based on mathematical models of biodiversity, which are based on mathematical models of global warming, which are based on guesses perpetuated through the global warming propaganda grapevine (and even at bestâÂ?¦ “estimations” of parameters by proxy measurements). Why did this group of Canadian and US scientists come out with this absurd statement now? To ride the spectacular, yet destructive, interest wave being generated by global warming and to latch on to some of that funding! Just think about the variability within that statement in the first place, regardless of what it was based on. One fourth of the world’s species ranges somewhere between 1.25 million and 25 million and this is based on the current “estimate”, by experts, for the total number of species (most undiscovered) being somewhere between 5 and 100 million. Now, the differences within each of these ranges alone, the current “guesstimate,” is greater than one order of magnitude! And if you don’t know the total number of species out there in the first place (and therefore what kind of species they are) how can you make a blanket statement about the number of possible extinctions! Obviously, the majority of species of life (of which we have yet to fin apparently) are pretty good at hiding from, or eluding, us! Once againâÂ?¦absurd! And by the way, extinction happens! It’s a natural thingâÂ?¦it’s part of the evolutionary process! Life evolves, or it dies outâÂ?¦it’s that simple. It would be interesting to know how many new species evolve as some species die out.
It’s quite upsetting to be associated with a group of people (scientists) who have essentially sown and grown a myth, and sold their souls to a certain extent, in order to perpetuate their own careers or political programs based on bad science and poor models. You know what they say about modelsâÂ?¦ “What you want in, what you want out.” Or better yet, “Crap in, crap out.” The only real certainty lies well within the true past of the Earth itselfâÂ?¦that is, what has already happened can’t be changed. However, along the same line, history does repeat and so do global changes on EarthâÂ?¦and they are natural. The Earth is always trying to reach equilibrium and so bounces back and forth between warming and cooling scenariosâÂ?¦trying desperately to reach that magic average global mean temperatureâÂ?¦which it never quite will! Along this line, and something you should keep in mind, is that looking back through our geologic/climate history tells us that we will shortly (at least in geological terms) be headed back into an ice age. So I say, enjoy the warmth while you can, because a long winters night is on the way and for the Global Warmers out there, hell is going to freeze over.
So where are we in all this confusion concerning global warming? Here are some dos and don’ts. First of all, when looking into the global change problem, remain skeptical, but optimistic (that global warming isn’t going to reduce you to a cinder any time soon). Be passionate but don’t blindly take any one side on faith (religion?) or because of politics. What you want is the truth, or at least as close as you can get. Just look at the plain old, relatively recent, surface temperature data that has been used to determine whether or not we are warming. This historical data goes back to the early 1800s for some cities like New York (however the data grid across the globe was quite coarse at that time), however, many more new or small towns are only well represented in the last 50 or so years (but, the global data coverage today is much better than it was 150 to 200 years ago). Even more recently we have satellite coverage of the earth using the infrared wavelengths that can be a good approximation of the temperature at the surface of the Earth (that is, as long as there are no clouds above the point(s) in question). Microwave sensors aboard the satellites can also give a decent approximation of the temperatures of the ocean surface (not over land) even through cloudsâÂ?¦but, the data has relatively coarse temporal resolution, as the polar orbiting satellites that take these measurements only fly over a give region a few times a day. Now, ask questionsâÂ?¦lots of them! How do you take the Earth’s temperature – past, present and future? How have the methods used to take the Earth’s temperature changed over the years (how have thermometers changed)? How are biases corrected between methods, equipment, and from place to place and time to time? How is the “heat island” effect corrected for? Is the correction for the heat island effect enough? How are these more current measurements and analyses correlated to the past tens of thousands of years and how were those temperature averages estimated (by proxy in most cases)? How are historical temperature analyses that are based solely on proxy measurements used in finding the average global temperature at a given point in time? What are the proxy measurements in the first place and how well to they work? How do you know? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It can easily be seen how many different areas of this research could introduce a wide variety of errors into an already error ridden field of study. And to use this data to run models that predict future climateâÂ?¦unbelievable!
Ok, so we are going through a warming phase in our historyâÂ?¦so what! Answer these questionsâÂ?¦you’ll be a better person for it: What are the good points of global warming, if anyâÂ?¦or are they all bad? Could the good points out weigh the bad points? Which would be worse in the long runâÂ?¦global warming or global cooling? The most interesting part in answering these questions is that I found in most of the cases that there would be a net benefit of a warming atmosphere (including health and associated economics, convenience, quality of life, food/plant growth, etc.). Warming, natural or man made, would affect the higher latitudes more than the lower (relatively warmer in than in , for example), affect the colder months more than the warm ones (depends on which hemisphere you live in), and influence the daily low temperature more that the high. Again, this is if/when and for whatever reason warming may happen. As a matter of fact, the most re-occurring incidence of a specific “something bad” happening was tied to the rising sea level. Of course, the amount of the rise depends on the amount of warming (and the particular researcher), but at recent(current) to slightly elevated rates, this projects out to possibly another 8 to 16 inches higher by the year 2100. Even if it were to work out to be two, three or four times this amount, it comes down to some loss of some beach front property by the top one percent of the wage earners in the US. If you want to save that houseâÂ?¦put it on stilts or build a dike around it!
From a personal and professional stand point, I believe what is going on now with the climate is perfectly within the limits of (historical) natural variability. But, this then raises the questionâÂ?¦how do you measure something like historic natural variability in the first place and then how do you quantify it so that today’s data and analyses can be compared to it? We are talking about comparing and fitting one variability (recent short term) with another (long term) to make conclusions in order to forecast the future! This is perhaps the main paradox that controls the big picture of global warming, and yet is one of the primary topics that the global warming community doesn’t talk aboutâÂ?¦forecasting future variability and knowing what the limits are. It almost sounds insane. Who in the hell ever said that the climate “âÂ?¦would, or should, always remain the same under any or all circumstances?” No climate expert of any worth whatsoever would dare say thisâÂ?¦however, it doesn’t seem to keep them from implying this. There are so many questions concerning the integrity of anthropogenic global warming and yet no compelling answers to those questions or evidence to support it. Global warming as it turns out is just a con, scam, or at best an illusion, that functions with lots of smoke screens, idle threats, and “hot air.” Don’t let GW fool you too!
