Scientists demonstrate more fallacies of “manmade global warming”

Commentary by James Shott

It seems that every few weeks we hear or see some scientific data that seriously challenges the politically correct notion that the activities of man, burning fossil fuels for energy, are irreversibly and catastrophically damaging the Earth’s atmosphere and causing global temperatures to rise to dangerous levels.

There are two competing ideas about the last two decades of global temperatures: One says temperatures have plateaued for the last 18 years, but the other that says the rising temperature trend has continued through that period.

According to a CNS News story Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center (ESSC) at the University of Alabama/Huntsville, argues that there has been no global warming for at least the last 18 years, and bases that position on actual raw temperature data he and fellow University of Alabama/Huntsville professor and NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer collected from 14 instruments aboard various weather satellites.

However, in a story in The Washington Post, a group of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say that based upon their analysis of new surface temperature data and corrections to old data that NOAA knew were imperfect, there has been no break in global warming.

Some questions arise from these diametrically opposed opinions.
    •    Which of the two methods of measuring global temperature – surface temperatures, used by the NOAA team, or satellite observations, used by Drs. Christy and Spencer – is the most accurate? Or is some combination of the two, or some other method, more accurate?
    •    If trained scientists do not, cannot or will not agree on what the truth is about whether temperatures are rising or not, how can the rest of us understand climate changes?
    •    Since the outcome of its analysis confirmed NOAA’s previously held idea about global temperatures increasing, and in light of previous manipulation of data by some well-known scientists, should we be concerned about NOAA “correcting” data it “knew were imperfect?”

Just last month The Daily Caller reported on a paper stating that the global temperature change observed over the last hundred years or so is well within the natural variability of the last 8,000 years.

What this means is that even if the global temperature has risen as the global warming faction says, it shouldn’t be a cause for concern, since global temperatures have been in the current range before, and long before man started doing the things the global warming gang thinks are responsible for the increase.

The paper was written by Dr. Philip Lloyd, a South Africa-based physicist and climate researcher, who examined ice core-based temperature data going back 8 millennia. Dr. Lloyd is a former lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), the body that is perhaps the most honored authority for climate opinion, and an organization that supports manmade global warming.

The work of Dr. Lloyd, Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer is out of the mainstream of climate opinion, a mainstream that is shrinking, as more of its members question the “settled science” of rising global temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels, and recognize the failure of dozens of flawed climate models that predict warming that many scientists argue hasn’t occurred. More and more, this line of thinking appears more political than scientific.

One danger of politically influenced science is that some ideologically motivated government agency will use it as an excuse to impose draconian measures to achieve political goals, some of which are unachievable, and others that are dangerous to our economic system and well-being. Enter the Environmental Protection Agency, arguably the most harmful of the abundant federal bureaucracies that increasingly control our every word, thought and deed.

In its headlong effort to crush the economies of coal mining states and destroy businesses that rely in whole or in part on coal, the EPA has overdriven its headlights with a scheme that depends upon faking science.

The EPA attempted to impose a rule that mandates the use of so-called carbon capture and storage, where CO2 from burning coal would be injected underground instead of being released into the air. The agency was quite content to put this rule into effect, despite knowing that the method does not work.

“We submitted comments for the record explaining that EPA had made a mockery of the interagency review process, ignoring the government's own experts in order to push an ideological agenda,” the Energy and Environment Legal Institute’s Chris Horner said. Mr. Horner’s organization has forced the EPA to back down on imposing the rule, but a report by Inside EPA says that the White House may force the EPA to go to court and defend a process that it had to admit doesn’t work and is thereby legally indefensible.

Here is a multiple-choice question: Why would a federal agency attempt to impose a process on coal burning facilities that it knows doesn’t work?
   A. It believes it has unlimited power
   B. It cares little about the repercussions of its actions
   C. Its employees serve ideological and political masters instead of the American people
   D. All of the above

The EPA is upside-down.

Cross-posted from Observations

Credit where credit is due for human-caused climate change advocates

You have to admire the determination of those that persist in promoting the idea that what humans do as they live on the Earth is the proximate cause of severe damage to the environment. They believe that having evolved from living in caves to using the Earth’s riches to make electricity, fuel vehicles, and improve their lives, humans are slowly killing the planet.

It is certainly reasonable to investigate and discuss this idea, but the debate must be honest and any argument has to be supported by data, pure data, not manipulated data, and not just “friendly” data that is constructed in such a way as to support a particular point of view.

In this debate over whether human activities negatively affect the environment, talking points have replaced factual data, talking points carefully, and sometimes deceitfully constructed from the most favorable pieces that support the argument. We know this because the arguments don’t reason out, and also because some of these prominent scientists got caught with their hands in the cookie jar a few years ago.

But the manmade climate change faction is a stubborn lot and stick to the talking points no matter what other information may be circulating, and when new arguments come along, or when there is a spike in the discussion favoring the perspective contrary to theirs, they shift into high gear.

For example, talking points appeared, of all places, in the 2015 State of the Union message, when President Barack Obama presented faulty information as truth when he spoke to the nation. The President of the United States said, “2014 was the planet’s warmest year on record.”

Some data support this assertion, but even that data isn’t definitive. The supposed increase is just two-tenths of a degree Celsius, but is within NASA’s margin of error. And, the “record” at the top of which 2014 purportedly sits goes back only 135 years, a mere blink of the eye in the Earth’s long history. Essentially what this means is that at some point in that brief eye blink the temperature may have been higher than at any other time in that eye blink, or maybe not.

Playing havoc with the climate change faction is the Medieval Warm Period that ran from the 9^th century to the 14^th century. Some say it was actually warmer then than now, while others say it really was about the same as the mid 20^th century.

How did that happen? Did the Vikings burn fossil fuels in their factories, boats and land vehicles? If not, the Earth must have somehow managed to warm itself. And then it cooled itself, because after the Medieval Warm Period came the Little Ice Age when the Vikings must have abandoned the factories, gone back to sailing vessels and ox carts, and killed all the methane producing animals, causing 500 years of dramatic global cooling.

There are other warm periods further gumming up the argument: the Roman Warm Period of approximately 2,000 years ago, and the Minoan Warm Period of roughly 3,000 years ago.

An Associated Press story on Jan. 16, that might have been the impetus for the president’s dragging the subject into the State of the Union message, reported that 2014 was the hottest year on record, citing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

The AP has since clarified the story, noting that the case is much less certain than originally stated. The NASA press release upon which the AP story relied neglected to say that NASA put only a 38 percent certainty on the assertion that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880.

The human-caused climate change idea is fraught with problems going back decades. Back in 1970 and 1971 newspapers across the country predicted a coming ice age due to atmospheric pollution, and other catastrophes. More recently, the Hockey Stick Graph made with faulty data, and the Climate Research Unit’s email revelations, cast grave doubt on the conclusions about climate change.

Considering that the Little Ice Age started in the 14^th century and lasted 500 years until the 19^th century, if the warming period that followed lasts only as long as The Little Ice Age, which is not a long period for either a warming or cooling, it will continue until roughly the 24^th century, or between 2300 and 2400 AD. Therefore, should anyone be surprised if the climate is warming in 2015? We should, in fact, be very concerned if it isn’t warming.

Natural occurrences have produced alternate periods of warming and cooling for at least thousands of years, and all scientists agree on that. Earth should be warming now, given the brief time since the last cooling trend ended. Is the warming proceeding faster than before? Probably not. But if so, why? The sun? Man’s activities? Was it something else, like what happened in the Medieval Warm Period? Probably.

We don’t need to implement expensive and harmful measures that will make negligible changes if and until the evidence – reliable evidence, not manipulated evidence – is far more compelling than it is today. Perhaps what really needs to be investigated is the role of filthy lucre in this controversy.

Climate change: What 150 years of global warming has done to Earth

As we celebrated the beginning of spring last week, then had our hopes for an end to winter weather dashed by forecasts of snow this week, a new report on global warming/climate change came out.

This report tells us that while the last 16 years where no additional warming of the climate were recorded, the previous 150 years where warming did occur are more important. It also explained what that century and a half of warming has meant for life on the Earth.

Since 1970 environment watchers have made quite a few predictions of dire consequences to the planet caused by the activities of humans that have thrown the environment into chaos, among which are:

• By 1980 all of the important animal life in the sea will be extinct. 
• By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people.
• The world will be eleven degrees colder by the year 2000.
• By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching Earth by half.
• A general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000.
• Within a few years children just aren't going to know what snow is. Snowfall will be a very rare and exciting event.

Fortunately, none of those predictions has come true, but what has 150 years of warming done to the humans whose dangerous activities are said to be causing it?

Well, according to a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) by H. Sterling Burnett, this warming has been beneficial, not dangerous.

Over the last 150 years the Earth has warmed an average of 0.8 degrees Celsius, according to economist Richard Tol, an increase that has had a positive impact on the world’s economy. Dr. Tol, who holds doctorates in economics and environmental economics, and teaches at the University of Sussex and Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, says further that an additional rise of 2.2 degrees in temperature would continue to yield substantial benefits until at least 2080.

Mr. Burnett cites data from Dr. Tol showing that climate change has added 1.4 percent to global economic output over the last century, a figure that should rise to 1.5 percent by 2025. The increase in CO2 added 0.8 percent to GDP due to the boost it produced in agricultural production, and the warmer temperatures reduced the demand for heating, adding another 0.4 percent to GDP.

“With higher CO2 levels, plants thrive and become more efficient in their use of water,” the NCPA report states. “And because most of the warming has reduced low nighttime temperatures, the globe has seen fewer growth-stunting frost events, as well as longer growing seasons.”

Citing information from agronomist and geographer Craig Idso, the Stuart report asserts that improved plant growth over a 50-year period starting in 1961 totaled $3.2 trillion, and from today through 2050 increased CO2 will add $9.8 trillion to crop production.

And the greatest benefits in improved agricultural production have occurred in Africa, with one-third of that continent’s countries growing at 6 percent, and the poverty line dropping from 51 percent to 39 percent.

At the same time as this very positive information materializes, an assistant philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology has advocated putting some of those who oppose the manmade climate change theory in jail.

Lawrence Torcello’s stepping-off point came after an earthquake in Italy where six Italian scientists and a defense minister were subsequently sentenced to six years in prison because the official didn’t adequately warn the public following several minor tremors of the possibility, or likelihood, of a full-scale quake, which did occur, and the scientists failed to correct the official’s error.

“When it comes to global warming, much of the public remains in denial about a set of facts that the majority of scientists clearly agree on,” says the philosophy professor. “With such high stakes, an organized campaign funding misinformation ought to be considered criminally negligent.”

It’s quite a stretch to equate people failing to provide information about a likely imminent event with people who financially support the contrarian view of a popular but unproven scientific theory, the contrarian view of which is itself strongly supported by scientists.

Further thwarting the Torcello plan is the indisputable fact that the time between tremors and the earthquake they foreshadowed was a matter of hours, where any harm that might come to humans from opposing the radical prescriptions to combat climate change is years or decades in the future.

Applying the professor’s goofy idea to those who financially supported opposition to the dire predictions listed previously, we might have dozens in prison for being correct.

Liberals seem always to prefer shutting down dissent rather than having civil and productive discussions about the different ideas. This happens for two reasons. First, they are unable to disprove the opposing position with actual facts, and second, their arrogance compels in them the belief that they are always right, and that justifies them using any means necessary to implement their radical and dangerous agenda.

Reality deniers are a stubborn lot; hold their beliefs no matter what

Commentary by James Shott

The number of notable people who behave as if they are endowed with special insight about the environment is an interesting element in the ongoing saga.

The most recent example of this is Secretary of State John Kerry, who fell off the diplomatic wagon and insulted millions of Americans he represents to the world who don’t agree with his narrow view of environmental issues by calling them members of the Flat Earth Society.

Arrogance of this magnitude from a public employee is not unheard of, but arrogance wasn’t Mr. Kerry’s only sin. He expressed the asinine belief that climate change is “the world's largest weapon of mass destruction, perhaps even, the world's most fearsome weapon of mass destruction.”

Tell that to the victims and their families of true terrorism, like the 9-11 attacks and in the Boston Marathon bombing.

President Barack Obama also asserts with absolute certainty that global warming/climate change is “settled science.”

Misters Obama and Kerry are no better than the rest of us non-scientists: they have chosen to believe one side of the argument about global warming, now renamed “climate change,” since the catastrophic warming trend we were warned about ad infinitum unexpectedly disappeared.

Some might expect that President Obama is better informed than everyone else. However, given the number of rather important events that he said he learned about from the media – the IRS abuse of non-profit applicants, the capture of the Boston Marathon bomber – he probably gets his environmental news there, like the rest of us.

But Mr. Kerry’s madness and Mr. Obama’s misplaced certainty aside, real scientists understand and will tell you that science is never settled. There may be general acceptance of a particular theory, but the possibility that someone will come across something that disproves an existing theory always exists.

On that subject Charles Krauthammer – who as a medical doctor has much deeper understanding of the scientific method than either Mr. Obama or Mr. Kerry – offers this example: “Newton’s laws were considered settled for 200 years until a patent clerk [Albert Einstein] in Switzerland turned them over with a single paper in 1903 — and that was pretty settled science. The idea that this is all settled is absurd.”

Saying that science is settled is simply a way to try to suffocate dissent, says columnist George Will. “When a politician, on a subject implicating science – hard science, economic science, social science – says the debate is over, you may be sure of two things: the debate is raging, and he is losing it.”

When scientists say science is settled, they are guilty of the same sin as journalists often are: allowing their political ideology to overpower their integrity and displace professional principles. And scientists often have the added motivation of filthy lucre: federal money to fund their research, totaling $68 billion from 2008 to 2012.

There are lots of scientists, climate scientists and others, who disagree with the manmade climate change theory, but that’s something Mr. Obama won’t learn from the media, because most of the agenda media don’t report much on topics that don’t fit their leftist ideals, like man-caused climate change.

Reality deniers ignore inconvenient evidence and cling to their views. Evidence like the email scandal from November 2009, where emails between International Panel on Climate Change participants suggesting conspiracy, collusion in exaggerating warming data, possibly illegal destruction of information, organized resistance to disclosure, data manipulation, and private admissions of flaws in their public claims, were exposed. A second round of email revelations occurred in 2011.

And the “hockey stick” graph created in 1998 purporting to show a dramatic increase in global temperatures in the 20th century, and was a major piece of evidence supporting manmade global warming. It was created by Penn State University’s Dr. Michael Mann.

The theory has come under suspicion for data manipulation. It is a complex story, but here’s a brief version: The graph relied heavily upon data taken from 252 trees on the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia. It used data from 12 trees that showed a warming trend, while a subset of 34 different trees showed no significant warming. Further, temperatures in the Middle Ages were missing from the Mann data. So, even if there was warming, temperatures from hundreds of years before the industrial revolution were warmer than those in the 20th century.

As a result, several individuals and publications challenged the veracity of the research, and Dr. Mann sued a number of his detractors for libel. However, it appears that the suits will not go forward because Dr. Mann refuses to release the details of his research, which is necessary for him to show the defendants actually defamed him.

These things cry out for attention, but are instead explained away.

Many people don’t know much about science, a point proven by a National Science Foundation study, which shows that one in four Americans believes the sun orbits the Earth, rather than the other way around.

So, many Americans trust scientists and elected officials to tell them the truth about important matters, and when they manipulate data, or sell a particular concept as “settled science,” many believe them anyway.

Cross-posted from Observations