Category Archives: Global Warming

The Left’s Lack of Independent Thought – And They Don’t Believe in Science

I’ve recently been engaging in climate science, the settled nature of it and the implications it has on politics.

For me, my take remains the same:

CO2 is a green house gas
Man contributes to increasing levels of CO2
Green house gases contribute to a warming world

Man has warmed the world more than it otherwise would have.

I am not convinced of catastrophic global warming.   Neither are 97% of the world’s scientists.  In fact, the IPCC itself states:

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Most skeptics I know and read are of the same position.  We agree that the world is warming, that man is contributing but doubt the degree and future catastrophic consequences – the science isn’t in.

You would think such a position could easily be mainstream.  Admitting past actions and waiting for the science to come in on future actions.  But we’re dealing with the Left here, a group of people completely unhinged from reality.  For evidence, ask yourself, given that climate science  is complex and that we admit to not knowing all there is to know, look at two groups of people.

One group is made up of a population totally and completely in lock step.  Not one member of the group doubts the group thought and not one member votes against this group thought.

The second group is made up of diverse opinions.  There is debate.  There is an element of open mindedness.  Politicians in this second group do not vote in a block.

The first group are made up of folks on the left – they claim they believe in science.  They don’t.  They believe in the near religion of man made catastrophic global warming.  The second group is made up of those on the right.

We believe in science.

As evidence of this fact, we were given a demonstration this week:

In the latest sign of what some see as growing rigidity of thought among American liberals, new New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has been skewered online by readers of the paper for his first column. The subject of that column was a growing rigidity of thought among American liberals.

In a recognition of how serious the situation had become, executive editor Dean Baquet appeared on CNN’s Reliable Sources on Sunday morning, asking host Brian Stelter, “Didn’t we learn from this past election that our goal should be to understand different views?”

Apparently not. It’s unclear how many people have dropped their subscriptions over Stephens column, and how much of the outrage was amplified by social media. Either way, the anger is a sign of a deeper struggle on the American left over what, exactly, are the core values of the Democratic Party. There are many competitors: identity politics, wage equality, reproductive choice, renewable energy. Which are central, and which can be treated as ancillary concerns? Liberals are painfully, publicly asking themselves that question.

Liberals are cancelling their subscription to the New York Times becuase they are forced to share ideas in their safe space.

Tolerant left indeed.

Global Warming And Forest Fires

Forest Fire

Back to Philosophy in college.  If thing A causes thing B and we KNOW that thing A is true, then it follows that thing B must be true.

A=Global Warming
B=More Forest Fires

Doesn’t look good for Bambi and friends in our local forests:

<i>Forest experts generally agree that as climate change makes the world warmer and drier, wildfires will break out more often.</i>

But what if I told you that B=False:

Year Fires Acres Burned
2006         56,645.00          3,662,192.00
2007         45,907.00          1,842,596.00
2008         35,820.00          2,109,164.00
2009         47,466.00          1,891,224.00
2010         29,527.00          1,445,846.00
2011         35,722.00          4,728,327.00
2012         27,176.00          1,876,169.00
2013         21,729.00          1,351,576.00
2014         25,978.00              886,021.00
2015         27,590.00          2,048,899.00
2016         25,006.00          2,096,408.00

There is no increase in forest fires in the US.  The numbers above are Year to Date through 6/28.

2016 ranks 9th in the last 11 years in the number of fires and ranks 4th in acres burned – and it’s slowing down.

So, either Global Warming doesn’t cause more forest fires OR there is no Global Warming.

2015 Hurricane Season

Hurricane

President Obama has said that global warming is a threat:

“No challenge  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” said Obama in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

Indeed.

So what do we have to worry about as the tropical storm season quickly approaches North Carolina?  After all, global warming causes bigger and more powerful storms:

The hard truth is carbon pollution has built up in our atmosphere for decades now.  And even if we Americans do our part, the planet will slowly keep warming for some time to come.  The seas will slowly keep rising and storms will get more severe, based on the science.

Well, the predictions are in:

— The 2015 Atlantic hurricane season will be significantly less active than average, researchers at North Carolina State University said Monday.

Lian Xie, a professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at N.C. State, forecasts four to six named storms forming in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The average number of named storms since 1950 has been about 11.

Of the 2015 named storms, one to three may grow strong enough to become hurricanes, and only one may become a major hurricane, Xie said.

Not exactly consistent with the good president’s words.

Ahh, but…Mr. Obama used the phrase ‘based on science’.  What has the science been on the power of storms recently?

ACE.2015.04Down.  Way down.

A [climate] Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Climate Models

I’ll add one – Crap

Global Warming Truth

Global Warming

Global Warming – Climate Change And The Lie

Talk to liberal and let the topic move to global warming.  Or climate change.  Whatever, and then try to dispute their argument.  Immediately you’ll get hit with the fact that you don’t believe in science, that you’re a denier or a member of the flat earth society.

Serious.

Try it.

But then ask them what they mean when they make claims of “Global Warming” or “Climate Change”.  More than likely you’ll be met by nothing but blank stares and no satisfying answer.

The Earth Is Warming And Other Facts

If you can  begin to deconstruct the argument or debate to facts, the lens clarifies to a degree:

  1. The earth is warming
  2. CO2 is being added to the atmosphere
  3. Humans contribute to that addition
  4. CO2 is a greenhouse gas
  5. Greenhouse gases contribute to a warming planet

All this is true.  But so much is missing.  And so much of THAT is dismissed by alarmists.

Until now:

In 1971, as a PhD student in ecology I joined an activist group in a church basement in Vancouver Canada and sailed on a small boat across the Pacific to protest US Hydrogen bomb testing in Alaska. We became Greenpeace.

After 15 years in the top committee I had to leave as Greenpeace took a sharp turn to the political left, and began to adopt policies that I could not accept from my scientific perspective. Climate change was not an issue when I abandoned Greenpeace, but it certainly is now.

There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

“Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been “invented” as a construct within the IPCC report to express “expert judgment”, as determined by the IPCC contributors.

These judgments are based, almost entirely, on the results of sophisticated computer models designed to predict the future of global climate. As noted by many observers, including Dr. Freeman Dyson of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, a computer model is not a crystal ball. We may think it sophisticated, but we cannot predict the future with a computer model any more than we can make predictions with crystal balls, throwing bones, or by appealing to the Gods.

Perhaps the simplest way to expose the fallacy of “extreme certainty” is to look at the historical record. With the historical record, we do have some degree of certainty compared to predictions of the future. When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.

Today we remain locked in what is essentially still the Pleistocene Ice Age, with an average global temperature of 14.5oC. This compares with a low of about 12oC during the periods of maximum glaciation in this Ice Age to an average of 22oC during the Greenhouse Ages, which occurred over longer time periods prior to the most recent Ice Age. During the Greenhouse Ages, there was no ice on either pole and all the land was tropical and sub-tropical, from pole to pole. As recently as 5 million years ago the Canadian Arctic islands were completely forested. Today, we live in an unusually cold period in the history of life on earth and there is no reason to believe that a warmer climate would be anything but beneficial for humans and the majority of other species. There is ample reason to believe that a sharp cooling of the climate would bring disastrous results for human civilization.

Moving closer to the present day, it is instructive to study the record of average global temperature during the past 130 years. The IPCC states that humans are the dominant cause of warming “since the mid-20th century”, which is 1950. From 1910 to 1940 there was an increase in global average temperature of 0.5oC over that 30-year period. Then there was a 30-year “pause” until 1970. This was followed by an increase of 0.57oC during the 30-year period from 1970 to 2000. Since then there has been no increase, perhaps a slight decrease, in average global temperature. This in itself tends to negate the validity of the computer models, as CO2 emissions have continued to accelerate during this time.

The increase in temperature between 1910-1940 was virtually identical to the increase between 1970-2000. Yet the IPCC does not attribute the increase from 1910-1940 to “human influence.” They are clear in their belief that human emissions impact only the increase “since the mid-20th century”. Why does the IPCC believe that a virtually identical increase in temperature after 1950 is caused mainly by “human influence”, when it has no explanation for the nearly identical increase from 1910-1940?

It is important to recognize, in the face of dire predictions about a 2oC rise in global average temperature, that humans are a tropical species. We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing weather did not exist. The only reasons we can survive these cold climates are fire, clothing, and housing. It could be said that frost and ice are the enemies of life, except for those relatively few species that have evolved to adapt to freezing temperatures during this Pleistocene Ice Age. It is “extremely likely” that a warmer temperature than today’s would be far better than a cooler one.

I realize that my comments are contrary to much of the speculation about our climate that is bandied about today. However, I am confident that history will bear me out, both in terms of the futility of relying on computer models to predict the future, and the fact that warmer temperatures are better than colder temperatures for most species.

If we wish to preserve natural biodiversity, wildlife, and human well being, we should simultaneously plan for both warming and cooling, recognizing that cooling would be the most damaging of the two trends. We do not know whether the present pause in temperature will remain for some time, or whether it will go up or down at some time in the near future. What we do know with “extreme certainty” is that the climate is always changing, between pauses, and that we are not capable, with our limited knowledge, of predicting which way it will go next.

Indeed.

Global Warming And Forest Fires

Global Warming Polar Bear

Given the fact that we are experiencing Global Warming absent any warming in the last 15 years, it’s no surprise that “NPR Staff” totally missed this:

It has been a deadly year for the people who fight wildfires. In total, 32 people have lost their lives fighting fires in 2013; the highest number in nearly 20 years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Just one incident accounts for most of those deaths, the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona. In June, the blaze blasted through a firefighting crew known as the Granite Mountain Hotshots; .

As people move farther into wildland areas and climate change turns landscapes into tinder, experts say the wildfire danger around the country will likely only grow. But there may be a lesson to learn from how the U.S. stifled an earlier fire crisis in urban settings.

For the benefit of NPR Staff’s readers, here’s the stats:

Forest Fire Trend

Both the number of fires and of acres burnt are trending down.

You would think that information should have made it into the article.

 

Up Is Down – Democrats Object To Entitlement Programs That Incentivize Not Working

Welfare

Another example of how whacky this debate has gotten.  We actually have a democrat lecturing a republican on the tender mercies of government largess:

“Now we’re saying to federal employees: We’re going to pay you when this is all over with,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said minutes after the 407-to-0 House vote. “But right now, you just stay home … watch TV, play chess, whatever you’re going to do, because we won’t let you work.”

Truly remarkable.

By the way, the strategy is working:

The Senate is expected to OK it as well but adjourned Saturday without a vote. The Democrat-controlled chamber will not scheduled a vote until at least Monday afternoon, when members return to Washington.

Global Warming – Pause

Global Warming Polar Bear

Remember this?

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.

Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times.

Remarkably, this stunning low point was not even incorporated into the model runs of Professor Maslowski and his team, which used data sets from 1979 to 2004 to constrain their future projections.

“Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.

“So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”

Truly amazing.  Yet listen to this bullshit:

“My claim is that the global climate models underestimate the amount of heat delivered to the sea ice by oceanic advection,” Professor Maslowski said.

“The reason is that their low spatial resolution actually limits them from seeing important detailed factors.

“We use a high-resolution regional model for the Arctic Ocean and sea ice forced with realistic atmospheric data. This way, we get much more realistic forcing, from above by the atmosphere and from the bottom by the ocean.”

And survey says!

A chilly Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year – an increase of 60 per cent.

The rebound from 2012’s record low comes six years after the BBC reported that global warming would leave the Arctic ice-free in summer by 2013.

Instead, days before the annual autumn re-freeze is due to begin, an unbroken ice sheet more than half the size of Europe already stretches from the Canadian islands to Russia’s northern shores.

Oh my!

Now, just to be clear, we here don’t think that the addition of CO2, a known greenhouse gas, won’t lead to a warmer planet.  We just don’t buy into the alarmist’s doomsday.

Environments For Sale

Rain Forest

Scanning NPR the other day when I came across an article on Ecuador and their rain forests:

The government of Ecuador has abandoned a plan that would have kept part of the Amazonian rainforest off limits to oil drilling. The initiative was an unusual one: Ecuador was promising to keep the oil in the ground, but it wanted to be paid for doing so.

The oil sits under the Yasuni national park, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth — orchids, jaguars, monkeys, birds. To get to the corner of the park that holds the oil, you have to take a plane, then a motorboat, then paddle a canoe. “Even the sound of the motor will destroy the fragility of this place,” Ivonne A-Baki, who works for the Ecuadorian government, told me this year.

In 2007, the country’s president, Rafael Correa, told the world that Ecuador would leave the oil in the ground. But the country wanted to be paid half of what the oil was valued at, at the time. Ecuador wanted $3.6 billion.

Riiiight.

All kinds of governments are going to pay another nation to do nothing.  And what if Ecuador decides later, say in 10 years, that they really need that oil and drill anyway.

Anyway, an interesting fact is that the planet is getting greener:

Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, overdevelopment and ecosystem destruction.

And, ironically, it’s because we are burning fossil fuels:

The inescapable if unfashionable conclusion is that the human use of fossil fuels has been causing the greening of the planet in three separate ways: first, by displacing firewood as a fuel; second, by warming the climate; and third, by raising carbon dioxide levels, which raise plant growth rates.

 

 

 

Global Warming Exaggerations

The problem with the global warming debate and our hopes of arriving at anything resembling a cohesive policy is the fact that the whole issue is being framed by the far-left ideologues.  And that frame is a binary one.  On one hand, you can either be a complete denier.  No warming of the temperature anywhere due to human causes what-so-ever.  The other end of the spectrum; complete global warming alarmist.  The world is going to be massively impacted due to the massive warming caused by human activity.  And not only will this impact to our mother earth be massive, but it will be catastrophic to the human race.

There can be no middle ground.  There is no room for a moderating voice.  Only hot or cold.

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