Apologies of a Climate Scaremonger

Here is an article I encountered thanks to the Streisand Effect.  Forbes had posted an article from a long-time environmentalist, a true believer, who had doubts about the over-the-top tactics and claims made by his fellow environmentalists.  Apparently, the backlash was such that Forbes pulled the story and begged forgiveness.  Well, this I have to read.

Click this link to read the story for yourself.

The article is a preview of his book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All. Among his points are that we are not seeing a mass extinction, climate change is not making natural disasters worse, fires have declined over the last 17 years, carbon emissions are declining in most rich nations, wood fuel is worse for people than fossil fuel, and more.  An interesting point is that air pollution and carbon emissions diminish by moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium.  Nuclear plants are the most environmentally friendly.  Well, unless you're in Russia.

The most interesting thing is that his views were discouraged by fellow environmentalists.  Though he remains an environmentalist, he sees that climate alarmism is needlessly scaring people.  When AOC said the world would end in 12 years, that may provoke eye-rolling among some but terrifies youth.  Oddly, I recall when I was in elementary school, a student said the world was going to end in 1980.  Credulous as I was, I believed it.  The teacher didn't shoot down the idea.  Why hadn't my parents told me about this?  Looking back now, it's silly.  Imagine if I had marinated in such claims throughout my childhood.  That's what has happened to Greta Thunberg.

Be of good cheer.  The world is not ending any time soon.

No Warming Trend Continues

In 2005, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established 114 temperature monitoring stations in isolated locations throughout the contiguous 48 states.  Since they were established, there has been no warming.  The temperatures, at least in the United States, are static.  This is yet another data point to explain the change in terminology from Global Warming to Climate Change.  Climate Change is a much more flexible description, allowing virtually any weather pattern to be alarming and in need of more tax dollars.

 

Coincidentally, the Obamas have purchased a $15 million beachfront mansion on Martha's Vineyard.  Clearly, they are confident that rising sea levels aren't going to drown their new residence.

Phony Temperature Data

Yet again, an inquiry into the data that 'proves' global warming has shown falsified data.  This is an old story that really blew up when the East Anglia emails exposed the "trick" that allowed them to "Hide the decline" in temperatures.  You see, a flatline on global temperatures is a big problem for the Chicken Little crowd.  Panic, fear, and impending doom make for great sales pitches when requesting government funding.  Real science doesn't need to massage the data.  Real science appreciates critics because it forces the science to be more reliable, it doesn't try to silence them.

 

The Climate Crisis fear mongers act less like dispassionate scientists following the data where it leads and more like religious zealots who denounce skeptics as heretics.  This alone reveals the lack of honest science where climate change is involved.

Global Warming Hyperbole

Trump's action could push the Earth over the brink, to become like Venus, with a temperature of two hundred and fifty degrees, and raining sulphuric acid.

Stephen Hawking

 

Interesting.  This is coming from the most celebrated scientist of our era so let's not dismiss it out of hand.  Let's take a look at what is said by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).  I have never heard of that particular organization before right now but it was the first thing to come up when I searched Global Warming.  The NRDC indicates that "unless we curb global-warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could increase by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century."  The NRDC does not agree with Trump that climate change is a Chinese Hoax and would be put firmly in the climate-change-is-real camp.  Let's do the math with their presumed worst-case scenario of 'up to 10 degrees' in 100 years.  Okay, 10 degrees divided by 100 years gives us 1/10th of a degree a year.  Trump will be out of office in 4 or 8 years and can thus - worst case per NRDC - see 0.8 degrees of warming.  Okay, we are missing a piece.  What is the current average global temperature?  If it is 249.2 degrees, then I have to give the win to Hawking.  My Google search provided Atmos News, which says the average annual temperature from 1951 to 1980 was 57.2 degrees while 2015 saw an average temperature that was 1.8 degrees warmer (reportedly the hottest on record), which - if my math is correct - would be 59 degrees.  Even if NRDC's worst case scenario played out entirely within the Trump administration, that would only get us to 69 degrees, woefully short of Hawking's fear-mongering 250 degrees.

 

If the science is solid, it doesn't need to be sold with this sort of easily debunked hyperbole.  For a famed scientist to spout such obvious nonsense only damages the credibility of scientists.  There is so much junk science in the world today that it is much harder to trust any science.  Hawking is not helping that sad state of affairs.

Green Profiteer

As any regular reader knows, I'm a fan of Elon Musk.  He thinks big and somehow manages to achieve great things.  I am mostly interested in SpaceX but he is also noted for his Tesla cars, the proposed Hyperloop, and underground tunnels to relieve traffic gridlock.  He is now in the solar panel business thanks to a merger with Solar Roof.  He has big, transformative ideas.  However, he also spouts the gospel for global warming, referring to it as a 'crisis.'  It is interesting how a move away from fossil fuels would be immensely beneficial to a man who sells electric cars (Tesla), solar paneling, and alternative transportation systems (Hyperloop).  Everyone who can be scared away from fossil fuels becomes a lifelong customer for his products.  Does he really believe in man-made climate change or is he jumping on a useful hoax that will improve his profit margin?  Decades of predictions on the subject have failed to pan out but he remains a true believer?  Politicians always sell a tax increase or a government power grab by appending 'for the children' to the pitch.  Businesses now use 'sustainable' and 'green' in much the same way.

Concrete Costs for Uncertain Returns

President Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change today, citing that there were trillions in costs to the United States.  He pointed out that China, the top polluter, would be allowed to increase its share of pollution for another 13 years (gee, I wonder if that was a bribe to get them to sign?) but America has to start cutting immediately.  Let's see, we can increase pollution in China but not America and would like to build a new factory; where does that factory get built?  Like most global schemes, the goal is to pick America's pocket.  The US pays the largest share for maintaining the United Nations and the place votes against us on a regular basis.

The most outlandish attack was by billionaire Tom Steyer who accused Trump of a "traitorous act of war against the American people."  Oh, the hyperbole!  Forcing American taxpayers to subsidize the world's economies because of Al Gore's misleading movie and scores of climate models that have failed to predict the current state of the climate does not sound like treason against Americans.  In fact, it sounds more like putting American interests first.

 

The government that governs least, governs best.

Thomas Jefferson

 

International organizations are just another brick on the structure of global government, which will inevitably be oppressive as monopolies always are.  The powerful elites of the world truly hate that their citizens can vote with their feet and leave; global government will solve that.  However, selling the monopoly is always hard but years of trial balloons have come up with certain strategies to convince taxpayers to vote away their freedoms.  Global warming/climate change has been particularly effective.  If the uncooperative climate hadn't flat lined in the late 90s, it would be selling much better today.

How to Incite Skepticism

For years, it has been repeatedly stated that global warming... er... climate change is a fact.  Furthermore, the consensus of scientists agree that humanity is a significant factor in the warming... uh... climate change.  Those who have doubts are climate deniers (not unlike Holocaust deniers, if you didn't catch that clever branding technique).  Fine.  Okay.  You know what you don't do if you have a slam dunk case: you don't do this:

Exposed: How world leaders were duped into investing billions over manipulated global warming data

The article reveals how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration broke its own rules in order to provide a sensational report in time for the Paris Climate Conference in 2015.

Science, honest science, doesn't need to fudge the numbers.  Real science is not determined by consensus.  There was a consensus in opposition to Galileo.  There was a consensus in favor of a flat Earth model.  Shenanigans like this support the hoax theory much better than the anthropomorphic warming model.

2016: Hottest Year Ever!

I am not a climate scientist.  I studied history, economics, and Latin in college.  I dabbled a bit with political science and creative writing but never took a class even remotely related to climate science.  Despite all that, I hold that the "climate crisis" is a hoax.  Here are some interesting points:

1. When I was 10, the earth was heading toward an Ice Age.  As a family, we would watch 'In Search of' hosted by Spock.  I liked it because it had Spock.  This episode provided a dark glimpse of what the world might be like in a single lifetime.  If the scientists were wrong here, why are they right now?

 

2. 1816: The Year Without a Summer.  In the wake of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, so much debris was thrown into the atmosphere that the following year saw mass starvation from failing crops.  New England had severe frosts every month of summer.  Despite decades of pollution, humanity has been unable to duplicate the Year Without a Summer.

 

3. The Medieval Warm Period (950 to 1250) saw temperatures roughly equivalent to today.  The Vikings found Greenland to be habitable and transplanted their agricultural and pastoral lifestyle there for several centuries.  By 1400, the Greenland settlements were nearly gone and vanished soon thereafter because of the increasing cold.  Clearly, this warming was not anthropogenic.  Why is the current warming trend different from the Medieval Warm Period?

 

4. The Earth is currently in an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago.  An ice age is geologically defined as the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.  Because the ice sheets/glaciers have retreated for several millennia, the earth is experiencing an interglacial period.  This 10,000 year warming is not anthropogenic.  Why is the current - comparatively insignificant - warming different from that trend?

 

5. During the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the earth was 10 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.  There were no ice caps at the poles.  This was not anthropogenic.  Was 2016 hotter than an average year in the Mesozoic?  If not, is it really the Hottest Year Ever?

 

The earth has been much warmer and much colder than today.  The climate experienced these huge swings with no input from humans.  These variations have developed over millions of years.  Though these points may provide the layman some reason to doubt the ongoing panic about climate change, that isn't a reason to call it a hoax!

 

Like all living things, government wants to grow and prosper.  Studies that 'prove' that climate change is anthropogenic provide cover for government to expand its power and reach.  Taxes on pollution, regulations to make sure cars get more miles to the gallon, laws to make washing machines more energy efficient, and so on and so forth.  There is so much that government can do, provided there is a basis for it.  Thus, scientists who find that humanity is to blame and the problem could be solved by government intervention are handsomely funded.  Scientists who conclude that it is the sun - which governments have no legislative authority to control - are not funded.  Anthropogenic warming = funding.  Natural climate cycles = no funding.  Scientists are smart people and see the pattern.

Extreme Crackpot

Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist whose language theories are being overturned, has demonstrated that there are no limits to his crackpottery.  He has now declared that "The Republican Party Has Become the Most Dangerous Organization in World History."  Really?  This is because the Republican Party will not take global cooling... er... global warming... er... climate change as seriously as he thinks it needs to be taken.  Yes, that makes them more dangerous than the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  They are more dangerous than Nazis during WWII.  Can you say 'hyperbole,' Noam?

Here is the interesting thing.  Chomsky's work in his area of expertise is being undermined by evidence but EcoWatch thinks that his views on climate science - not his area of expertise - should be viewed as sacrosanct.  If you are a mathematician whose equations don't add up, it would be foolish to take your views on English Literature as gospel.

 

Having read a couple of Chomsky's books and several articles, it is clear that he hates America.  He has a gift for sounding utterly reasonable while saying unreasonable things.  When asked about any event in modern history, it inevitably turns out to be America's fault.

Welcome to the Apocalypse

When former Vice President Al Gore attended the Sundance Film Festival in January 2006 to premiere his propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, he declared that, unless drastic measures were taken regarding greenhouse gasses, the earth would reach a point of no return in ten years.  It has now been ten years.  The doom is now unavoidable.  The ice caps will melt shortly, the polar bears will drown, and NYC will sink into the Atlantic Ocean any second now.  Okay, just a few more seconds.  Hmm.  Well, the standard deviation of the ten year prediction must allow for leeway.

 

Obviously, the claim was just fear-mongering, an effort to convince the electorate to approve 'drastic measures' that would include more money and power to government.  The people didn't bite and now, ten years later, the scam is clearly revealed.  Of course, there will be an excuse.  Perhaps it has already been offered and I have missed it.  Gore's Frying Pan Earth notion has been replaced by Obama's more vague Climate Change.

 

This has been the modus operandi of the environmental movement since the first Earth Day in 1970.  Here is a list of some of those initial predictions.  Note that none of them came to pass.  The catastrophes scheduled for 1975 haves still not occurred even 40 years later.  Global cooling changed to global warming and now it is climate change.

 

If only the government could take more of our money and infringe further on our property rights and freedom, I'm sure the issue could be solved.

The Coming Ice Age... er... Global Warming... er... Climate Change!

In April of 1975, Newsweek published this story about The Cooling World.  Ominous signs portended likely famine because average temperatures were falling.  Dr. Murray Mitchell noted a half degree drop in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968.  Columbia University's George Kunda saw a large increase in snow cover.

 

In May of 1978, In Search of, the television show hosted by Leonard Nimoy, investigated The Coming Ice Age in this episode.  Several scientists (Dr. James Hayes, Dr. Chester Langway, Dr. Gifford Miller, Dr. Stephen Schneider) were consulted.  The glaciologist argued that Baffin Island in Canada was signaling the next ice age; ice didn't melt in the summer of 1972.  A severe winter across North America in 1976-77 showed just how close we were.  Buffalo, NY had 40 days straight of snow!  Dr. Miller suggested that the current warm period likely ended 3000 years ago.  The show concludes that, in as little as one lifetime, we could see ice sheets stretching into Kansas.  It was all very dire.

 

Then, in 1987, Dr. James Hansen of NASA testified before the Senate that Global Warming was going to ruin us.  Senator Al Gore seized upon this doomsayer's testimony and soon published a book, Earth in the Balance (1992).  Later, he wrote and starred in the Oscar winning movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which predicted doom from fossil fuels and the earth becoming an oven.  The polar bears are doomed!

 

In a space of less than 10 years, scientists had switched from an Ice Age to a heat wave.  With ice cores dating back scores of millennia and geologic weather data that stretches back hundreds of millions of years, somehow the predictions all turned on a dime.  How could all of those scientists in the 70s have been SO wrong?  Were they fired for incompetence?  Moreover, the predictions were now based on human activity, not natural cycles.  We can stop it, but only if we give government the power and money to rescue us from our folly.

 

Climate change is a government fundraiser, kind of like a school bake sale but scarier.  Scientists who are funded by government grants offer research that says government needs more power and money.  You scratch my back...  Climate change is a convenient lie; by the time the warming would have occurred, most of us will be dead.  However, in the present, government will have increased its authority and funding.

The Coming Mini Ice Age

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3156594/Is-mini-ICE-AGE-way-Scientists-warn-sun-sleep-2020-cause-temperatures-plummet.html

So how do you feel about that 'Global Warming' now?  Gee, maybe this explains the switch to Climate Change.  I wonder how it will turn out to be our fault that the sun is going to sleep.

More Doubts for Global Warming

I stumbled upon this interesting story:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

Why would the data be adjusted?  Who benefits?  Government is funding this research because the results of the research are that we need to give government more money and more power.  Governments aren't funding the 'climate deniers' because that isn't going to get more money and power for government.

Global Warming Hoax Revealed! Yet Again!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html

Who has been saying that it is a hoax so the government can coax more tax dollars out of your pocket?  And who has been cooking the numbers?  A government agency!  If your grants and awards depend on a continued warming trend, you will find a way to make sure the numbers show warming.  However, eventually the truth will out.  Of course, the truth has been out for years but there are so many who are willfully blind to the fact.  Once invested in a belief, it is very hard to let it go, regardless of the evidence.

Welcome to the Ice Age

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi

It is summer in the southern hemisphere.  Shouldn't the ice have melted?  It is entertaining that a ship out to talk about global warming should get stuck in ice.  Poetic justice.  It reminds me of the Global Warming hearing that was canceled last March because of a snow storm.  If this sort of thing persists for a few more years, the climate change lobby will start saying we are headed for a man-made ice age and only new government regulations and taxes can save us.

 

Then there is this:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/12/31/record-cold-temperatures/4264237/

 

Records only go back to the 1880s and this is only the first time in 20 years that lows outnumbered highs but it is an interesting point on the graph.  The climate is on a cycle measured in centuries or even millennia, not decades.

The Earth on Fire

All this cold weather is a clear sign of global warming.  Here's an interesting link:

http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/2013-one-of-the-ten-coldest-years-in-us-history-with-the-largest-drop-in-temperature/

Read the comments too.  There is a lively debate that offers counterpoints from those who still believe in "climate change."  One commenter had a question that I have asked for years: What caused the warming that ended the glacial period 10,000 years ago?  Certainly wasn't man's use of carbon fuels.  Maybe warming and cooling is a natural cycle?

More Global Warming!

Heaviest December snowfall since 1953, first snow in Cairo in a century.  Darn this global warming!

http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-snow-israel-egypt-20131213,0,1691393.story#axzz2nMzV6vMp

And then there is this:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/10/coldest-temperature-recorded-earth-antarctica-guinness-book

Still, governments will fund studies that say governments need more taxpayer money to prevent the Earth from catching fire.

Interglacial Period

The current glacial age (i.e. ice age) began 2.6 million years ago when the Earth wobbled in its orbit around the sun.  Since then, the Earth has undergone glacial periods - where the ice expands from the poles - and interglacial periods - when the ice retreats back to the poles.  The current interglacial period began approximately 12 thousand years ago.  However, during that glacial period, sufficient water had been turned to ice so that the sea levels were 350 feet lower than today.  This meant that the English Channel was dry and crossable.  Siberia and Alaska were connected and allowed for cross-migration between North America and Asia.  The camel evolved in North America but migrated to Asia, where it still exists.  It died out here though its cousins - llamas and alpacas - still flourish in South America.  Of course, humans made their way to North America as well.  But the ice melted and the sea levels rose drastically.  What caused all that warming?  Not fossil fuels.

During the glacial periods, the ice has extended over much of Europe, the whole of Canada, all the Great Lakes and into the Midwest.  When there are no longer ice sheets covering the poles and Greenland, it will signal the end of the current ice age.  With that in mind, I came across the following:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/09/14/earth-gains-a-record-amount-of-sea-ice-in-2013-earth-has-gained-19000-manhattans-of-sea-ice-since-this-date-last-year-the-largest-increase-on-record/

Record ice growth of 19,000 Manhattan islands.  That's a lot of ice.  Hardly what you would expect during global warming.  The Earth has experience dramatic warming during the past 12,000 years, most of it long before mankind burned any fossil fuels.  Moreover, the Earth has been much warmer than it is today.  When dinosaurs roamed, the tropics extended as far north as North Dakota.  Looking at the geological record, the Earth is far more likely to go into another glacial period than to experience endless heat waves.  There is a reason that Al Gore talks of Climate Crisis rather than Global Warming now.

Global Warming Collapse

Here is a fascinating article that projects a coming mini-Ice Age, not unlike the one that followed the Medieval Warm Period.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/

 

I have long held that Global Warming/Climate Change is just a con to wriggle more tax dollars from the public.  Even if this article is 100% correct, it just means that the con will adjust.  In a few years time, governments in conjunction with climate scientists will declare a need for more government control to prevent Global Cooling.  Climate Change is about money and power, not science.  Al Gore has become immensely wealthy through his doom saying.  Government eagerly funds scientific endeavors that conclude more government taxation and regulation is necessary to save us from ourselves but, oddly, they don't fund those who say this is a natural process that need not be addressed.

Global Warming Alarmists vs. Reality

I have argued for many years that Global Warming is a hoax.  The goal of the hoax is to transfer more power and money to government - to save the planet, don't you know.  Climate scientists go along for the funding.  Note how government has little interest in funding scientist on the other side of the debate because that doesn't advance the need for more power/money to go to government.

 

It appears that reality is proving the skeptics right.  An article in the Australian notes that there has been a 20 year hiatus in global temperature rises.

"The global temperature standstill shows that climate models are diverging from observations," says David Whitehouse of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

"If we have not passed it already, we are on the threshold of global observations becoming incompatible with the consensus theory of climate change," he says.

Whitehouse argues that whatever has happened to make temperatures remain constant requires an explanation because the pause in temperature rise has occurred despite a sharp increase in global carbon emissions.

Here is the link to the whole article:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/twenty-year-hiatus-in-rising-temperatures-has-climate-scientists-puzzled/story-e6frg6z6-1226609140980