Search Results

I have posted many times about my skepticism of the hyped man-made global warming (AGW) claims. One of my posts about the connection of the sun and other natural phenomena to climate change managed to become the topic of discussion in a couple of publications and in various internet postings among the global warming crowd. My skepticism is not to be seen as an outright denial of the possibility, just doubts that even the likelihood has been shown at this point. My approach can be summarized with a series of questions:

1. What evidence is there of any global warming (as compared to local warming here and there)?

2. How has that evidence been obtained (changes in the measures or in the conditions under which the measurements were procured; satellite measurements of exactly what; computer models based on what)?

3. If there is global warming, how much is there?

4. How much of this is due to natural cycles (short-term in decades; medium-term in centuries; long-term) possibly connected to identifiable natural events (sun spots, cosmic rays, ocean current temperatures, volcanoes that actually are more likely to produce cooling)?

5. If it is significant, how much of this could plausibly be controlled by changes in human habits?

6. What damage would such global warming do, in contrast to the benefits to be gained from less global cold (Bjorn Lomborg’s rational analysis)?

7. Continuing with Lomborg, what would be the cost of reducing such warming compared to adjusting to it (still considering the benefits that might come with global warming)?

8. What would be the best strategy for achieving those reductions or adjustments, government controls or private innovations?

This is not the approach of a flat-earther, as AGW proponents often like to portray those who question what the media and the scientists feeding at the government grant trough have loudly hyped as “settled science.” I am not a scientist, and I rely on scientists to provide the answers. But I also know history, and I have lived long enough to learn a thing or two about human nature. I know, then, that scientists are not superior human beings free from the baser urges, and I know that science can be (and has been and is still) manipulated towards a politically-correct and economically-advantageous end. The more a supposedly value-free scientific idea is hysterically propounded and skeptics told not to question it, the less it sounds like science and the more it sounds suspiciously like dogma.

With that all in mind, I have been intensely gratified by the recent events that have shattered the wall that AGW defenders built around an increasingly corrupted academic-scientific-media-governmental “climate change” complex, something far more dangerous to liberty and prosperity than the old military-industrial complex of Leftist paranoia. The reluctant Joshua whose horn brought down that wall is none other than Professor Philip Jones, the man at the center of “Climategate.”

This is the extremely revealing interview Jones gave the BBC recently.

This Wall Street Journal article describes some of the unfortunate sequence of events that have shaken the enviros: “First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.” The “environmental pressure group” is the World Wildlife Fund, which is at the bottom of many questionable studies and publications that have been lapped up by the enviro-political fusion that pervades the UN and many national and transnational organizations. Other environmental “disasters” supposedly connected to global warming that aren’t turning out are disappearing Arctic ice, melting Antarctic ice shelves, and increasingly violent hurricanes.

RIght Side News has a thorough analysis of the interview. Some of the conclusions:

Nonetheless, in the interview Jones:

1. admitted that he did not believe that “the debate on climate change is over” and that he didn’t “believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this;”
2. admitted that there was no statistically significant difference between rates of warming from 1860-1880 and 1910-1940 and the rate from 1975-1998, though he and other DAGW believers had for years said the rate in the last period was unprecedented and therefore couldn’t be natural but must be manmade;
3. admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for the last 15 years;
4. admitted that natural influences could have contributed to the 1975-1998 warming (significantly mentioning only the sun and volcanoes–the latter a brief cooling factor–and completely omitting reference to ocean circulations…which have been demonstrated to have strong effect on global temperature);
5. admitted that the Medieval Warm Period might well have been as warm as the Current Warm Period (1975-present), or warmer, and that if it was “then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.”

In short, he is repudiating, qualifying, or throwing doubts on just about everything that he and his allies have declared to be unassailable truth and settled science for the last decade and more. That would be the same settled science that was used to push Cap-and-Tax legislation by the Obama administration and the jobs-killing emissions limits law in California.

Continuing with the theme of skepticism about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, a few additional posts:

This article reveals that solar winds are at a 50-year low. Some climate scientists believe that the subsidence of such winds increases the volume of cosmic rays that strike Earth, which then causes increased cloud cover and cooling. The change in solar winds (and sunspots) has coincided with a drop in Earth’s temperature over the last several years. Fear is that this will continue and lead to prolonged global cooling.

This article reviews the geopolitics of global warming and considers the economic lunacy at the core of Western governments’ environmentalist-driven policies (if those governments actually plan to live up to those commitments, something the Europeans failed to do regarding their obligations under the Kyoto Accords).

“Now for the other planet, the one the rest of us live on. Here all the accepted measures of global temperatures show that their trend has been downwards since 2002, declining at a rate that averages to about 0.25 degree per decade. Yet such a fall was predicted by none of those 25 computer models on which the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the rest of the Great and the Good rely for their theory of runaway global warming. Their computers are programmed to assume that as CO2 goes up, temperatures inevitably follow. But the graph below, where the variation of global temperatures from a 30-year mean is plotted against CO2 levels, shows the two lines clearly diverging, contrary to the theory. In this century, temperatures have fallen as CO2 has risen.

“Furthermore, the Arctic ice has failed to disappear, as can be seen from the Crysophere Today website: it is now not far off its 30-year mean. Al Gore’s polar bears have failed to drown. The ice in the Antarctic is actually way above its 30-year average.”

Hmm.

This article by a leading Australian climate scientist challenges the claim that increased atmospheric carbon leads to a greenhouse effect and causes global warming. He once believed that, but changed his mind when no scientific evidence for that hypothesis was discovered.

“But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”

Hmm.

This article examines the lack of evidence between global warming and hurricane frequency or intensity. Indeed, there is some suggestion that warming would reduce storm intensity, though the evidence is inconclusive. In addition to the studies cited in the link, it actually makes sense that warming, which is most likely to occur in temperate latitudes and at higher atmospheric levels (as well as during the night and in winter, i.e., a general tempering of extremes) will reduce temperature differentials between regions and within air masses that help produce violent storms.

This article demonstrates the link between sunspot activity and climate on Earth. The recent unusual warming period of the 1990s coincided with sunspot activity that was at a 1000-year high. Since then, sunspots have diminished (and sometimes disappeared) and the Earth has cooled.

“The last time the sun was this quiet for an extended period was between 1645 and 1715, a period astronomers call the “Maunder Minimum”. During those 70 years, the face of the Sun was nearly blank of sunspots, or solar storms, and broke away from its normal 11-year cycle. At the same time, Europe was dealing with extreme cold and the Thames River in London froze solid. They even held winter fairs on the ice. Glaciers also advanced in the Alps and the northern sea ice expanded. By the early 19th Century, for reasons no one understands, the sun returned to its familiar 11-year sunspot cycle and things began to slowly warm up on the planet.”

At least some scientists are concerned that this marks the beginning of a longer cold cycle for the sun, though others see this as just part of the regular 11-year solar cycle.

This article presents similar observations about sunspots and climate from a Harvard astrophysicist. Even if sunspot activity returns and global temperatures increase from their current lows, this should tell us that the .1% variations in solar energy output have far more effect on Earth’s climate than soccer moms driving SUVs. A rational thinker would understand that, especially if he or she has some understanding of the limits of human influence. But the global warming boosters have this unbounded hubris that it is humans who control nature, and that human activity can terminally despoil the planet as well as cause its salvation. Conservatives tend to be more skeptical of such claims.

I am a global warming skeptic. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Some time I’ll post in much more detail. Still, whatever the cause, if there is a moderate global warming of the scope most global warming supporters see over the next century, this will increase the overall agricultural productivity through more extensive geographic availability of cropland and the extended growing season. Global warming has historically, as far as we know, been accompanied in the broad temperate zones by population growth and higher standards of living. On the other hand, global cooling has been associated with population loss, economic difficulties, pestilence, and starvation. So, I am much more concerned about global cooling than warming. And, no, global warming true believers, you don’t get to blame global cooling on global warming by someone’s Chevy Suburban, as some of you have tried to do. No double-dipping.

This cannot be good news, if this theory is correct. The absence of these sunspots is alarming. I have read about the cosmic ray/sunspot/cloud formation interaction theory before. It sounded persuasive to me, someone who is fascinated by scientific explanations, but not a scientist himself (unless you count the series of geology courses I took in college, sort of like Obama considering his college international relations major as experience in foreign affairs). I have also read that scientists are closely watching this to see whether the sun will get active soon. If I recollect, the concern was that if the sun does not get active soon, within the next year or so, a significant cooling cycle is imminent, based on historic data. I am hearing reports that this year is well on the way to being the coolest in a number of years, and that warming has stalled over the last ten years. I can attest that the last several years have been unusually cool in the summer in my neck of the woods, with foggy July and August mornings. It’s called “June gloom,” not July or August gloom for a reason. And, of course, we had that humdinger of a winter (for Southern California) a couple of years ago that froze all my newly-planted tropical landscape plants. I remember seeing frozen patches of water on a shaded sidewalk at 3 in the afternoon. I realize that is only “weather,” but at some point persistently cooler weather over a period of years is as much evidence of climate change as persistently warmer weather is said to be. 

If this comes to pass, we should only hope that we puny humans can rev our SUVs enough to counteract the sun and prevent a mini ice age. Oh, but the good news, the silver lining behind all those clouds causing the cooling, would be that with an ice age, the “oceans finally will begin to fall” just as Obama has promised will happen in his administration. Hmm, maybe he knows something. Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall the 415 feet that the oceans’ surface was lower during the last ice age because so much water was stored in the mile-deep glaciers covering a large chunk of the landscape.

I have not yet posted on the whole global warming controversy.  But then here comes this article about global warming—on Jupiter!  And it’s not just a degree or two over a hundred years.  Instead, it’s 18 degrees in a few years.  Those Jovians must be driving really big SUVs.  But Al Gore and the Governator will set them straight about some inconvenient truths and how Jupiter is in the balance.

Of course, if there is global warming on Jupiter, there must be on other planets, too.  Well, Venus’s surface is hundreds of degrees hot, so warming is water under the bridge, so to speak.  But, lo and behold, now comes evidence of global warming on the Red Planet.  The Martian ice caps are shrinking significantly and temperatures are higher than several decades ago.  Those Martian polar bears must be in a panic.  But at least we know what causes it—human activity.

I really enjoy climate and weather forecasters’ lack of a sense of the absurd.  I recently heard a prediction about the current hurricane season.  The forecast boldly predicted that the number of hurricanes would be between near-normal and above average.  Given that the past two seasons have been well-below normal in storms, and given that predicting an extreme year would be, well, extreme, the forecast covers the likely gamut.

Now comes this report from a Bush critic who has changed his mind about the impact of global warming on hurricanes.  He believes that, rather than intensifying such storms, global warming will reduce their ferocity.  Others disagree and argue for storm intensification.  Many of the hurricane researchers also disagree, but that is because they don’t believe in a connection between global warming and hurricane cycles.  So much for scientific “consensus.”

Or, the whole thing could go away.  Perhaps global warming will take a breather, or the Earth (or parts of it) will even cool.  I’m just glad that, unlike the researchers, those eminent scientists Al Gore, Arnold, and some of my colleagues are convinced.  I know I can trust their scientific expertise.