Preface: I tried to stop myself from writing yet another comment on the politicization of climate change and global warming, but the keyboard took control.
Apparently—at least to me—the argument on anthropogenic climate change is moot at least in the opinion of alarmists. Generally, most alarmists will not discuss the possibility their arguments might be a little flawed because they rely 1) on computer models that have as yet to prove their predictive worth and 2) on the widespread acceptance of “warming” propagandized into their psyches; as a result, the alarmists are steeped intractably in their belief. They hold their position regardless that past projections that have not become reality. They fail to see any questionability in climate modeling though they do have a legitimate contention that carbon dioxide will force the atmosphere to retain more heat. The problem isn’t the thermodynamic process of warming by carbon dioxide; the problem lies in prediction and acting on questionable prediction.
Just what will a warmer atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide do? Should we panic? Will seas that are now thermally expanding by a millimeter or so per year rise by a meter in a century or in eight centuries that a 1.3 mm rise produces? Would eustasy actually be a problem if people had not built on the seas’ edges as they have since the end of the Younger Dryas 12 millennia ago? I suppose one could ask President Obama who now owns two homes on shores he once said would be inundated. Surely, that’s a sign of hope, a sign that the future is not as dire as he once said it was. And surely, his declaration in June, 2008, that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …" has come to fruition. Why otherwise send millions on two expensive homes by the sea?
Nevertheless, I sense panic in the air—or should I say “in the atmosphere,” mostly by those on the Left side of the political aisles in western-style democracies?
When they are not derisively and smugly dismissing deniers’ skepticism based on those failed predictions, they argue that previous climate models are under constant refinement. In this latter argument, which I believe we can take seriously, they are right to so argue. Both super computers and additional data should enhance all climate modeling and predictability. However, there are many data, many feed-back loops, and many unknowns among climate drivers. And with regard to the promise of super computers, note that “bad data in, bad info out” still applies: Regardless of the computing power, someone has to chose the algorithms; someone has to choose how to weight the stats, regardless of statements to the contrary.
In the context of this climate talk, both sides are eager to cite anecdotal “evidence” derived from weather events, such as the summer of 2022’s European heat wave that alarmists and the winter of 2021-22’s stratospheric polar vortex noted by alarmists and deniers respectively.
Over the past 25 years alarmists have been convinced of global warming by a highly vocal group of influencers and by the IPCC, a group of scientists who I believe are bent on “proving their premise” and not on examining, in Karl Popper’s terms, its falsifiability. In many instances the focus of the science is not objectively examining the possibility of a negative hypothesis, but rather on proving by induction the overall idea of climate warming. What do I mean?
People involved in the “climate business” range from entomologists ((What happened to the bees?) to marine biologists (What happened to the corals?) and to epidemiologists (Why are Zika, Dengue, West Nile, and malaria spreading?), all who, in studying very specific ecologies and diseases, extrapolate any geographic change as an indicator of warming. * The result is that in the annals of the IPCC, many research papers focus on local, cyclic, or temporary phenomena that could have causes other than an ineluctable global pattern. In this context my best advice to alarmists is to avoid relying too much on extrapolation. When they do rely on inductive approaches to climate, alarmists lose my empathy. But they have my undivided attention when they argue deductively, say from thermodynamic data and processes. There’s no denying that carbon dioxide can absorb and reradiate certain wavelengths in the infrared spectrum—most in the same frequencies that water molecules absorb; that’s both a theoretical and an experimental “fact.” But is the warming a predictable “existential threat”?
Have humans altered the planet? Of course we have. One need only to look at the denuded landscape of farmlands from New Jersey to Iowa or at the desolate hills of Skyros, a Greek island whose ecology has been under attack by humans for millennia (by overgrazing, replacing endemic vegetation with olive groves, forestry, trampling by grazers, urbanizing, and paving). But are we the exclusive driver of “heat (radiative) forcing” in the atmosphere? That, I believe, is somewhat debatable, but I see not debate but lectures given by both sides.
Once carbon enters the atmosphere, a large percentage of it will remain for centuries. That means, of course, that what we do today will have a potential effect centuries from now. We could say that those many generations of land-clearing farmers and herders from Greece to North America have us as witnesses to their actions. And since many countries continue to add carbon, today’s 400+ ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will likely increase.
But most concerning to me is the politicization of climate discussions because it has negative economic ramifications today for countries like the US, Germany, Britain, Canada, and Australia, all of which are nations that have decreased their reliance on the very energy sources that made them affluent. At the same time China and India continue to spew carbon in seemingly ever greater amounts. In 2022 China announced an increase in coal production by some 300,000,000 tons. That doesn’t sound like a restriction in compliance with the Paris Agreement. Are the western democracies being played? Are we fools and tools?
You and I Discuss Climate Change, but First, a Few Lines from a Movie:
One of Rock Hudson’s comedies was Send Me No Flowers, co-starring Doris Day. In the film Hudson plays George Kimball, a hypochondriac, Day plays his wife, and Ed Andrews plays Kimball’s doctor, named Morrissey. Here’s an exchange between doctor and patient:
Dr. Morrissey: is it a sharp pain, is it a dull pain, or does it grip like a vice.
George Kimball: Yes, yes!
Dr. Morrissey: No-no-no! Pick one!
George Kimball: I guess it’s a sharp pain, hurts like the dickens when I press it.
Dr. Morrissey: Then don’t press it!
George Kimball: What kind of pills are they?
Dr. Morrissey: You wouldn’t know if I told you. Just take them. Take the pills.
George Kimball: Well, aren’t you doing an awful lot of writing [of diagnosis or prescription] for just indigestion?
Dr. Morrissey: The more I write, the more money I charge.
Do you see any parallel between their conversation and that between the current American Administration and its people?
Acting on what we believe to be true also means acting on what we believe to be sensible. The problem for each of us is that distinguishing between sense and nonsense in the climate debate is difficult because we are inundated with “facts” or “information” from both reliable and unreliable sources and because, like our ancestors, we are gullible and impetuous with regard to widespread and repeated rumors, especially those we hear a barrage of stories by a compliant media that accepts the concept that climate change can only mean bad things lie in the near future. (Recall that the popularized “We have only 12 years left” like the previous warnings of the late nineties and early two thousands, derived from the IPCC’s use of ten-year increments in its predictions. Wait! Aren’t we down to just eight years—or fewer in 2022?)
Sense and nonsense: We live in a world that constantly befuddles us in every aspect of our lives. Online and published advice on diet, for example, varies enough that I ask myself whether I should avoid eggs, eat one, eat just the white, eat two or three, or even eat five per day as one online person advises. And what about those fats and carbs over which people argue, and—don’t get me started—what about red meat? Should I subsist on a diet of Brussel sprouts and carrots? Those little green veggies do have protein—I saw that on a podcast, in a “health food magazine,” or on a YouTube video—I don’t remember which. Fish? Too much tuna and I might suffer from methyl mercury poisoning—Minamata disease. Save the tuna! Save the oceans! Save me! Sense and nonsense. Remember the adage about moderation? Is that the answer in both diet and climate arguments?
I believe I remember Dr. Morrissey telling George Kimball in that 1964 movie, “You’re eating too much roughage.” Was “roughage” considered to be a dietary problem in the 1960s? Or was the line written in jest? Did such a statement make sense in that decade? Maybe sense in diet lies in all things moderate: I could eat some eggs, some fats and carbs (including roughage), some fish, and, on occasion some red meat. Is that sensible enough? Possibly—but how do I truly know. What do I do with the centenarian who says, “I ate bacon and had a shot of whiskey every day”? What should I think about my father who died at 97 after having eaten processed meats like salami, had a whiskey and coffee in the morning with his buddies after they played a round of golf, and ate pasta and breads? Was that apple he ate every evening truly what kept the doctor away until his bride of 75 years died six months earlier?
Moderation helps because it might limit the harmful nonsense, but, of course, it might also limit the helpful sense. The expression “apple-a-day” also means “Daminozide-a-day,” doesn’t it? How did Dad avoid getting cancer when he consumed Daminozide (Alar) daily in addition to smoking unfiltered cigarettes from his teen years until he turned 62? He seems to have beaten the statistics—even surviving the battle on Okinawa. Maybe that is what the atmosphere is going to do, also. Maybe the statistics aren’t the wherewithal of either diet or climate. Some who have eaten and smoked as my dad did, did not survive into their late nineties. Some regions of the planet might gain rather than suffer from increased temperatures. Would a tropical planet be unlivable? Such a scenario has occurred before just as a frozen world has occurred, and yet life has both survived and flourished. Palm trees in western Pennsylvania? Corals along the coast of New Jersey? I could handle that. Would grow my own bananas!
There is the additional problem of defining moderation. Who’s to say where the limits lie? And with regard to climate change, who’s to say where and when the change is “extreme” or “moderate”? Burn just a little coal or increase during by 300,000,000 million tons like the Chinese? Drive a hybrid or a full-out EV powered by wind and solar? Turn the thermostat down in winter and up in summer? Will global warming be moderate if we are moderate? The carbon we have already put in the air will hang around for centuries, as I said above.
Will we reverse the supposed temperature trend if we go to the extreme and eliminate all use of fossil fuels? Is closing an American pipeline while allowing a Russian pipeline an appropriate balance? Was that an act of moderation or mere political expediency? Is shutting down American coal-fired power plants while allowing Chinese coal-fired power plants to operate the moderate and prudent course? Will such actions in one or a several countries make a difference between extreme and moderate global warming? What if the result of warming is good for people who want to grow orange trees in southern New York and grapes in Calgary?
Remember that before the Little Ice Age grapes grew well in England. And note that cold temperatures limit plant growth. Think the Year without a Summer, 1816, when a “volcanic winter” followed the 1914 eruption of Mayon and the 1815 eruption of Tambora, causing widespread famine. Truth be told, plants don’t do well in cold. They thrive in warmer conditions unless they can’t tap into a water supply as in arid areas. Look at the abundant diversity of plant species in the tropics as opposed to the limited diversity of species in an Aspen forest. Of course, a mantle of warmth does not come with a complete silver lining; the tropics foster some nasty bugs like Ebola.
In daily life just about every reasonable adult can discern sense from nonsense—that is, just about every reasonable adult who lived before the rise of news outlets, including newspapers a couple of centuries ago. Nowadays, discerning between sense and nonsense is more difficult that ever, even for those who claim to be “educated.” Why? Three reasons. First, there are those “out there” who have sadistic intent and lack compunction, their motives to mislead masked by a manipulative personality, a pathology, and the ease of reaching a wide audience. Second, there are those “out there” whose knowledge is questionable though their intentions might be “good”; they pass on information derived from the first group, and in doing so are themselves unknowing victims. Third, there are those “out there” who, believing that what they “know” is sensible, have an agenda and hubris that exaggerates the significance of their knowledge: That seems to be especially true of politicians and alarmists like Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, and John Kerry, but it is also true of people on the opposite side of the ideological aisle.
When I read headlines, such as “Global warming blamed for heat wave in Europe,” written by Jonathan Powell and posted online at ChinaDaily.co.cn, I wonder about the state of the modern intellect and its ability to discern sense from nonsense because of those three reasons. As an American, I’m inclined to distrust any news associated with China because I recognize that country’s adversarial relationship with the U.S. and other economic powers. But please read the following from Powell’s posted article, and then we’ll have a chat.
“Spain's state meteorological office Aemet said the latest episode was the third-earliest on record and the first to arrive this early since 1981, reported The Guardian. ‘We are facing unusually high temperatures for June,’ an Aemet spokesperson said. Ruben del Campo, a spokesman for Aemet, said the extreme heat in June follows the country's hottest May in at least 100 years.”
Me: What occurs to you?
You: Well, when I see that, I think, “If this is an ‘early heat wave,’ then maybe there’s something to this climate stuff.” What do you want me to see?
Me: I want you to see four terms: “third earliest on record,” “since 1981,” “reported in The Guardian,” and “in at least 100 years.”
You: Meaning?
Me: First, “third earliest on record” means there were two earlier heat waves.
Second, 1981 takes us back to a time when the world Press, if not the overall scientific community, was just beginning to accept warming as a trend. A widespread nine-paragraph article by Peter Gwynne in Newsweek some five or six years earlier had mentioned the possibility of a cooling trend that the public latched onto in the late seventies; the notion of cooling spread like wildfire. The fire of “global warming” had to await the nineties. By the mid-1990s the US EPA was delving into greenhouse gas emissions—I know because I took one of the earliest inventories of greenhouse gases that the EPA funded through the Pennsylvania Energy Office (and as I have mentioned elsewhere, the EPA wrote me a letter saying it would use my GHG inventory as a model for the other states to follow). I suppose I should thank Al Gore who pushed the EPA to study greenhouse gas emissions and who fostered predictions of the dire consequences of climate change that became the centerpiece of his career and wealth. “Thanks, Al. You were largely responsible for my graduate students’ much needed work.”
Third, that recent article on the heat wave in Europe was derived from information “reported in The Guardian.” As in so many climate reports, the information is, as so much climate talk is, secondhand and extrapolated. Powell doesn’t seem to have looked the horse in the mouth. He read that someone else--The Guardian—checked the teeth.
And fourth, that such a heat wave occurred 100 years ago as the article mentions, means that the current heat wave is not without precedent. In fact, there are on record many heat waves, and we can reasonably assume that there have been many unrecorded heat waves through which humans have suffered.
You: But you seem to indicate that the scientific community was not aligned with that cooling assessment when you say “if not the overall scientific community.” Does that mean there were people who thought Earth was warming even in the 1970s?
Me: Yes. Not everyone boarded that Polar Express found in the Newsweek article. And that is understandable since, after all, the 1970s were a relatively nascent period of weather instrumentation, but every scientists knew that Earth warmed enough to cause the last glacial advance to halt and reverse by the end of the Younger Dryas. While some proclaimed “global cooling” in the seventies, others were saying Earth was warming, and they had good reason when they looked at the physical evidence such as recessional moraines, kettles like Walden Pond, and polished rock surfaces in Central Park, all features left behind by once thick and extensive glaciers. And sea level? Well, it has risen by as much as 120 meters since the big ice sheets melted. Standing along the East Coast today would have meant standing farther inland during the sea’s last “low stand.” Much of the continental shelves were above water. How else to explain the Javan rhinos? The Northern Hemisphere has been warming for at least 12 millennia with interrupting periods of cooling. And strangely, that warming has occurred under a lower quantity of carbon in the atmosphere.
Those who addressed climate issues in the seventies did so without extensive satellite data, without ubiquitous ground and sea sensors, and with very little information about 1) the vertical stratification of temperatures, 2) the effects of El Niño and La Niña, 3) meridional and zonal flows, 4) shifting vertical and horizontal ocean currents that might or might not have been occurring, and 5) the global warming effects of CFCs, whose effect on ozone was discovered by Molina in 1973 and whose effect on temperature was postulated by Lu in 2013. ** Scientists of the time were hard pressed when asked for solid data sets on either side of the temperature issue. And certainly, as is still the case today, scientists of the time could not see all the interacting features and processes. We do know more now about interactions and feed-back loops than we knew in the 1960s and 1970s, and we have computers to mash all that information into models that analyze recorded and proxy temperatures and predict trends, but we still have knowledge gaps and humans deciding what weight to give to any particular set of data.
You: Aren’t you worried that you’re like that proverbial frog sitting in ever hotter water because you won’t acknowledge the trend of warming? Even the seeming skeptical climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry acknowledges some warming has occurred. What if the trend in temperatures is really spiraling upward as the alarmists claim? Isn’t it better to act on the potential than to sit idly by like that frog?
Me: Frankly, no, I’m not concerned. I do acknowledge some warming. Since the 1990s I’ve acknowledged that some warming seems to have occurred. Like Curry, I know that some numbers have been fudged to fit the narrative, however. Like Curry, I question the claim that a rapid rise in temperature is inevitable. In my relatively short existence I’ve lived through some very hot summers and some very cold winters both of which I would have ascribed to large cycles, decadal cycles for example. If I remember correctly, there was very little talk first of El Niño and subsequently of La Niña until the seventies. Now even the general public is aware of both phenomena through news stories.
But let me refer to that online article I asked you to read because this summer of 2022’s heat wave is driving the Europeans to panic and cry “climate change.” Do you think the only cause of a heat wave is climate change?
Sure, I can understand a reason for the panic. Higher absolute temperatures and their associated heat indexes pose a real danger. But they also pose inconveniences in an age that imposes few hardships on affluent Europeans and Americans. Shouldn’t we consider the human factor before we panic: We Northern Hemispherians have grown accustomed to physical and psychological comfort, the latter largely because short memory neurons don’t hold the heat waves of the twentieth century like that of the mid-1990s and mid-1930s. Because people can’t remember, they say, “There’s never been weather like this.” In fact, a warmer Earth is more common than a cooler Earth as the geochemical record shows. But discomfort tends to make the point of global warming alarmists. Yet, if we are, in fact, living during an Interglacial Period like all those previous interglacials, then we should expect a rise in temperature overall punctuated by some hot days.
You: But isn’t an earlier budding out of trees a natural and indisputable testimony for warming? Aren’t the crocuses coming out earlier? Isn’t spring arriving a week earlier? Don’t you see the real effects of climate change? It just makes sense to be concerned. And now we have a devastating heat wave in Europe and an extended drought in the American Southwest. Look at the water level in Lake Mead, for gosh sake, it’s almost as low as it was when the lake first began to fill. And it certainly won’t recover under temperatures that this July have exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit and that will likely continue through August and early September.
Me: Sure—all you are saying seems to make sense, seems to support global warming. I’ll still ask whether this change in spring is an anomaly or a trend? If I see a change today, should I panic and extrapolate to a hot future. I remember the cold in the mid-to-late-seventies when wintertime temperatures in my area hit record lows, and wind chills hit -40 Fahrenheit. I remember watching a spring college baseball game in the mid nineties in Boca Raton when the wind chill must have been near freezing. If I had to look at the winters of the late seventies, during one of which it snowed in Miami, I would predict a downward temperature trend. I can’t use one season or two or three as an indicator. Climate has traditionally been defined on a thirty-year plot of temperatures AND precipitation. You also can throw evapotranspiration into that mix if you want. And with regard to climate designations, you should know that the boundaries between tropical, subtropical, temperate, and boreal climates fluctuate.
Is this 2022 heat wave a “trend”? Or is it part of a decadal pattern, part of a cycle? What of the “Pause” in rising temperatures of the last seven or eight years, a period with demonstrably no increase in temperature from 2014 till now? Is that a trend? Probably not, also. The warming could resume at any time—and it could possibly reverse regardless of the alarmists’ claims. One has to live a relatively long time and have very accurate data to be able to determine a “climate” trend. Even the proxy temperatures uncovered by researchers studying everything from corals to tree rings to oxygen isotopes might be incomplete or flawed or questionable data.
Are temperatures of the past couple decades increasingly higher? Seems so, but in order for me to make sense of climate, I have to have irrefutable evidence that there is a direct and proportional relationship between the advertised culprits of global warming and global temperatures. And certainly, I can’t use isolated phenomena as a guide. Hurricanes were supposed to increase in number and intensity, but they have not done so. What am I supposed to think of the very long droughty periods that affected the Mayans or the Anasazi? Both those devastating droughty periods occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.
What I’m saying is that separating sense from nonsense is not easy, especially since climate has become politicized and, to tell the truth, “weaponized” against individuals who merely question the veracity and sense of climate proclamations. For example, why wouldn’t a Chinese news outlet like the one I quoted above want to frighten Europeans and Americans off fossil fuels while the Chinese burn their coal, oil, and natural gas in support of their booming economy? Why wouldn’t the people who are in the business of “carbon credits,” windmills, lithium batteries, and solar panels want to scare us off fossil fuels? I have little doubt the Chinese see a looming profit in potential sales of solar panels and rare earths for electric car batteries.
You: I’ll grant that the Chinese have their selfish motives, but surely all those European and American scientists can’t be wrong about climate.
Me: What do you mean by “all those scientists”? You’re not talking about that debunked 97%, are you? Ordinarily, I would agree that those scientists who have evidence of warming are worth listening to, but many of them are on a lucrative roll of grant after grant after grant—the funding for climate research seems to be unending, especially since most of it comes from taxes and the rest from wealthy alarmist disciples. Many climate scientists attend conferences in places where I could never afford to go—and they could not afford to go if they were not on some grant. Paid-for meals, rooms, and travel…Well, you get my point. Why spoil such a good life by going out of the way to disprove what the world has been convinced of and is willing to pay for? Can’t have that money stop rolling in. It’s a livelihood with few controls on spending under government agencies committed to retooling the energy sector by fiat.
I’m skeptical because I see the potential for corruption just as I see a potential for Chinese propaganda, and I’m skeptical because I have seen the caveats in agreements and doctored info.
You: Okay, I understand, but just because there is corruption isn’t a reason to doubt some of their findings. By the way, what do you mean by caveats?
Me: The footnotes beneath the signatures on that Paris Agreement: India, for example, says that it will comply as a signatory as long as it gets financial help from other countries and as long as the switch to “green” tech doesn’t interfere with its burgeoning economy. And other countries, Russia and China, have similar caveats and exceptions. Seems that just the Europeans, Americans, Canadians, and Australians have bought wholesale into the—for want of a better term—climate scheme. Does it make sense that the chief emitter of carbon dioxide is permitted to spew that gas in the atmosphere whereas other countries must decrease their emissions? A good example of climate policy turned to nonsense lies in how the Dutch government has harmed its own farming economy by imposing controls on nitrogen during the same heat-wave summer that stresses crops. (See my blog of 7/18/2022) Aren’t the Irish in the process of limiting their farmers, also. Doesn’t any Irish politician remember his history lessons on the Potato Famine? If you suppress farming artificially, you mimic natural disasters like that famine.
You: But you can’t deny that it is hot today. Climate change could be the cause.
Me: Have you ever been this hot?
You: Yes.
Me: To use the term “climate change” to cover any particular weather event isn’t necessarily—let me amend that to “just plain isn’t”— “good science.” Individual weather events are part of every atmosphere on every planet with an atmosphere. If the heat of 2022 is, in fact, a phenomenon caused by climate change, to what extent does any “climate factor” play in a particular heat event—or in any cold event? If one just says, “Well, it’s the trend,” I’m not convinced, especially in light of the last eight years of a “temperature pause” that researchers at the University of Alabama, Huntsville identified this year.
But I understand the psychology: When it comes to comfort and convenience, most humans live in the present and not in some past condition. That’s one reason that the current heat wave panics the public.
Remember “We Are the World,” that song written and performed to save the drought stricken people of Ethiopia? The 1983-1985 drought exacerbated by war led to a horrendous famine that elicited charity from around the world—and the singing of that song to raise money. Ordinarily a rather semiarid region, Ethiopia needs only the slightest shift in weather patterns to plunge it into drought. Now think of the Colorado River Valley today, also lying in a semiarid region. Are you surprised that Lake Mead is at an historic low? I’m not, especially since droughts have long been a part of the American Southwest. Add the stress on water resources that of all those city dwellers and visitors to Las Vegas, and walls! Droughty conditions become more noticeable and Press-worthy. And speaking of Press-worthy I’ll add that had I been alive in the nineteenth century and living in Oregon, I would not have been aware of the heat both of the battle and in the atmosphere as the Union and Confederacy fought in July, 1863, at Gettysburg.
You: What?
Me: The point being that I know about Lake Mead’s low stand, about drought in the Southwest, about heat in Europe because reporters find it Press-worthy, and because they are not only numerous and ubiquitous, but they are also hungry for stories to broadcast over radio, on TV, on the Web, and over social media. Have you seen the reporters on TV during any weather event: Standing on streets as kids play under an open hydrant during a heat wave, standing on the beach as people flock to the ocean on a hot day, standing—or trying to stand—during a hurricane? They make their living by making any story they tell seem to be relevant to everyone and highly significant to the locals.
Because the regions of East Africa and Southwest USA have been the sites of droughts for many millennia and Europe has been the site of some very hot summers and very cold winters, does it make sense to ascribe any current short term conditions to a global pattern driven by carbon dioxide? Can anyone really say to what extent global carbon dioxide at 400 ppm causes a drought or a heat wave in a specific region? If that person can so ascribe, then the question becomes historical: Why were the Anasazi and the Mayans afflicted by decades-long drought—much longer than the current Southwest drought—when the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere was below 280 ppm? Why did the suspected long term drought that coincided with the Jamestown colony occur in and around 1607? It seems to me that whatever weather event occurs, the alarmists will see an immediate connection to climate change or global warming. Dare I ask such questions? Dare I even think to ask them? What if someone committed to eliminating fossil fuels finds out?
You: (Quizzical look) What?
Me: Not to worry—I think. I do like asking questions. I have done research for a major coal company, but I have also performed research for the PA DEP and the US EPA. So, I’ve paid my dues on environmental issues. Heck, until it got too expensive, I even subscribed to windmill electricity. And I understand that the alarmists would tell us that the rise in carbon dioxide is ubiquitous, so if heat gathers some place, it can migrate to another place. But one might ask why its effects aren’t both ubiquitous and proportional according to latitude, land-water distribution, elevation, and insolation. I cannot ascribe a specific event to a supposed general warming trend just I can’t ascribe the current eight-year pause in temperature to a cooling or steady state trend.
Or, one might argue that the rise in temperature during the past century or so, maybe 3/4 to 1.5 degrees C over that period actually indicates a rather steady state for a volatile atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere has been warmer and carbon dioxide content has generally declined during the course of the past 65 million years until it reached that 280 ppm. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere even at today’s 400 ppm is a very low quantity by comparison with foregone eras. Although the refinement is a bit blurry for million-plus year periods, there are some data that indicate an increase in quantity of carbon dioxide has trailed rather than preceded a rise in temperatures.
Again, in any assessment of temperatures vs. carbon dioxide content, everyone should ask about the refinement and inclusiveness of the data. By that I mean that on most graphs we see great detail for the past thirty years but less detail for millennia or multiple millennia. And when we consider million-year-long or longer periods, such as the Pleistocene, the data become less refined. Was there a very warm summer during one of the glacials? Was there a very cold summer during one of the interglacials? Of course.
So, if the Biden Administration, the English, Germans, and Australians choose to quash fossil fuel use on the basis of a supposed warming trend, I’ll continue to ask how they can guarantee the soundness of their decisions. What if current policies simply impose hardships on people used to cheap energy and physical comfort? On what data does the Administration act? Does it have evidence that quashing fossil fuel use in the United States will affect world temperatures? If so, to what extent will the policies affect temperatures? If it’s science, then there should be a scientifically determined quantity. And if the Administration cannot cite specifics, but speaks rather in generalities while laying claim to the science of climate, then it has, in fact, no objectivity, but rather, as so many contrarians point out, a climate religion.
A Bit of an Epilogue
As I wrote at the outset, I didn’t want to write this. I have not advanced your knowledge if you’ve been paying attention to IPCC reports, skeptics’ arguments, the physics of greenhouse gases, or actual data. I hate to admit that I have not covered the precise way in which any greenhouse molecule absorbs and reflects various frequencies. But that would require a very lengthy essay replete with tables and graphs.
As always, I write to inspire others to think.
*Thanks go, largely, to Rachel Carson, who effectively got DDT banned with her book Silent Spring, leading to “‘No scientific peer reviewed study has ever replicated any case of negative human health impacts from DDT,” said Dr Roger Bate, media and development director for the International Policy Network and joint author of the study with Richard Tren, director of economic policy at the non-governmental organisation Africa Fighting Malaria.’” —reported in, of all places, the online outlet for the NIH.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1173321/ Accessed July 27, 2022.
** In 1995, Mario Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland, and Paul Crutzen received the Nobel Prize for their work on CFCs and their effects on ozone.
Q.-B. Lu. Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change. International Journal of Modern Physics B, 2013; 1350073 DOI: 10.1142/S0217979213500732 and University of Waterloo. "Global warming caused by CFCs, not carbon dioxide, researcher claims in controversial study." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 May 2013. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130530132443.htm
Apparently—at least to me—the argument on anthropogenic climate change is moot at least in the opinion of alarmists. Generally, most alarmists will not discuss the possibility their arguments might be a little flawed because they rely 1) on computer models that have as yet to prove their predictive worth and 2) on the widespread acceptance of “warming” propagandized into their psyches; as a result, the alarmists are steeped intractably in their belief. They hold their position regardless that past projections that have not become reality. They fail to see any questionability in climate modeling though they do have a legitimate contention that carbon dioxide will force the atmosphere to retain more heat. The problem isn’t the thermodynamic process of warming by carbon dioxide; the problem lies in prediction and acting on questionable prediction.
Just what will a warmer atmosphere richer in carbon dioxide do? Should we panic? Will seas that are now thermally expanding by a millimeter or so per year rise by a meter in a century or in eight centuries that a 1.3 mm rise produces? Would eustasy actually be a problem if people had not built on the seas’ edges as they have since the end of the Younger Dryas 12 millennia ago? I suppose one could ask President Obama who now owns two homes on shores he once said would be inundated. Surely, that’s a sign of hope, a sign that the future is not as dire as he once said it was. And surely, his declaration in June, 2008, that “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal …" has come to fruition. Why otherwise send millions on two expensive homes by the sea?
Nevertheless, I sense panic in the air—or should I say “in the atmosphere,” mostly by those on the Left side of the political aisles in western-style democracies?
When they are not derisively and smugly dismissing deniers’ skepticism based on those failed predictions, they argue that previous climate models are under constant refinement. In this latter argument, which I believe we can take seriously, they are right to so argue. Both super computers and additional data should enhance all climate modeling and predictability. However, there are many data, many feed-back loops, and many unknowns among climate drivers. And with regard to the promise of super computers, note that “bad data in, bad info out” still applies: Regardless of the computing power, someone has to chose the algorithms; someone has to choose how to weight the stats, regardless of statements to the contrary.
In the context of this climate talk, both sides are eager to cite anecdotal “evidence” derived from weather events, such as the summer of 2022’s European heat wave that alarmists and the winter of 2021-22’s stratospheric polar vortex noted by alarmists and deniers respectively.
Over the past 25 years alarmists have been convinced of global warming by a highly vocal group of influencers and by the IPCC, a group of scientists who I believe are bent on “proving their premise” and not on examining, in Karl Popper’s terms, its falsifiability. In many instances the focus of the science is not objectively examining the possibility of a negative hypothesis, but rather on proving by induction the overall idea of climate warming. What do I mean?
People involved in the “climate business” range from entomologists ((What happened to the bees?) to marine biologists (What happened to the corals?) and to epidemiologists (Why are Zika, Dengue, West Nile, and malaria spreading?), all who, in studying very specific ecologies and diseases, extrapolate any geographic change as an indicator of warming. * The result is that in the annals of the IPCC, many research papers focus on local, cyclic, or temporary phenomena that could have causes other than an ineluctable global pattern. In this context my best advice to alarmists is to avoid relying too much on extrapolation. When they do rely on inductive approaches to climate, alarmists lose my empathy. But they have my undivided attention when they argue deductively, say from thermodynamic data and processes. There’s no denying that carbon dioxide can absorb and reradiate certain wavelengths in the infrared spectrum—most in the same frequencies that water molecules absorb; that’s both a theoretical and an experimental “fact.” But is the warming a predictable “existential threat”?
Have humans altered the planet? Of course we have. One need only to look at the denuded landscape of farmlands from New Jersey to Iowa or at the desolate hills of Skyros, a Greek island whose ecology has been under attack by humans for millennia (by overgrazing, replacing endemic vegetation with olive groves, forestry, trampling by grazers, urbanizing, and paving). But are we the exclusive driver of “heat (radiative) forcing” in the atmosphere? That, I believe, is somewhat debatable, but I see not debate but lectures given by both sides.
Once carbon enters the atmosphere, a large percentage of it will remain for centuries. That means, of course, that what we do today will have a potential effect centuries from now. We could say that those many generations of land-clearing farmers and herders from Greece to North America have us as witnesses to their actions. And since many countries continue to add carbon, today’s 400+ ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will likely increase.
But most concerning to me is the politicization of climate discussions because it has negative economic ramifications today for countries like the US, Germany, Britain, Canada, and Australia, all of which are nations that have decreased their reliance on the very energy sources that made them affluent. At the same time China and India continue to spew carbon in seemingly ever greater amounts. In 2022 China announced an increase in coal production by some 300,000,000 tons. That doesn’t sound like a restriction in compliance with the Paris Agreement. Are the western democracies being played? Are we fools and tools?
You and I Discuss Climate Change, but First, a Few Lines from a Movie:
One of Rock Hudson’s comedies was Send Me No Flowers, co-starring Doris Day. In the film Hudson plays George Kimball, a hypochondriac, Day plays his wife, and Ed Andrews plays Kimball’s doctor, named Morrissey. Here’s an exchange between doctor and patient:
Dr. Morrissey: is it a sharp pain, is it a dull pain, or does it grip like a vice.
George Kimball: Yes, yes!
Dr. Morrissey: No-no-no! Pick one!
George Kimball: I guess it’s a sharp pain, hurts like the dickens when I press it.
Dr. Morrissey: Then don’t press it!
George Kimball: What kind of pills are they?
Dr. Morrissey: You wouldn’t know if I told you. Just take them. Take the pills.
George Kimball: Well, aren’t you doing an awful lot of writing [of diagnosis or prescription] for just indigestion?
Dr. Morrissey: The more I write, the more money I charge.
Do you see any parallel between their conversation and that between the current American Administration and its people?
Acting on what we believe to be true also means acting on what we believe to be sensible. The problem for each of us is that distinguishing between sense and nonsense in the climate debate is difficult because we are inundated with “facts” or “information” from both reliable and unreliable sources and because, like our ancestors, we are gullible and impetuous with regard to widespread and repeated rumors, especially those we hear a barrage of stories by a compliant media that accepts the concept that climate change can only mean bad things lie in the near future. (Recall that the popularized “We have only 12 years left” like the previous warnings of the late nineties and early two thousands, derived from the IPCC’s use of ten-year increments in its predictions. Wait! Aren’t we down to just eight years—or fewer in 2022?)
Sense and nonsense: We live in a world that constantly befuddles us in every aspect of our lives. Online and published advice on diet, for example, varies enough that I ask myself whether I should avoid eggs, eat one, eat just the white, eat two or three, or even eat five per day as one online person advises. And what about those fats and carbs over which people argue, and—don’t get me started—what about red meat? Should I subsist on a diet of Brussel sprouts and carrots? Those little green veggies do have protein—I saw that on a podcast, in a “health food magazine,” or on a YouTube video—I don’t remember which. Fish? Too much tuna and I might suffer from methyl mercury poisoning—Minamata disease. Save the tuna! Save the oceans! Save me! Sense and nonsense. Remember the adage about moderation? Is that the answer in both diet and climate arguments?
I believe I remember Dr. Morrissey telling George Kimball in that 1964 movie, “You’re eating too much roughage.” Was “roughage” considered to be a dietary problem in the 1960s? Or was the line written in jest? Did such a statement make sense in that decade? Maybe sense in diet lies in all things moderate: I could eat some eggs, some fats and carbs (including roughage), some fish, and, on occasion some red meat. Is that sensible enough? Possibly—but how do I truly know. What do I do with the centenarian who says, “I ate bacon and had a shot of whiskey every day”? What should I think about my father who died at 97 after having eaten processed meats like salami, had a whiskey and coffee in the morning with his buddies after they played a round of golf, and ate pasta and breads? Was that apple he ate every evening truly what kept the doctor away until his bride of 75 years died six months earlier?
Moderation helps because it might limit the harmful nonsense, but, of course, it might also limit the helpful sense. The expression “apple-a-day” also means “Daminozide-a-day,” doesn’t it? How did Dad avoid getting cancer when he consumed Daminozide (Alar) daily in addition to smoking unfiltered cigarettes from his teen years until he turned 62? He seems to have beaten the statistics—even surviving the battle on Okinawa. Maybe that is what the atmosphere is going to do, also. Maybe the statistics aren’t the wherewithal of either diet or climate. Some who have eaten and smoked as my dad did, did not survive into their late nineties. Some regions of the planet might gain rather than suffer from increased temperatures. Would a tropical planet be unlivable? Such a scenario has occurred before just as a frozen world has occurred, and yet life has both survived and flourished. Palm trees in western Pennsylvania? Corals along the coast of New Jersey? I could handle that. Would grow my own bananas!
There is the additional problem of defining moderation. Who’s to say where the limits lie? And with regard to climate change, who’s to say where and when the change is “extreme” or “moderate”? Burn just a little coal or increase during by 300,000,000 million tons like the Chinese? Drive a hybrid or a full-out EV powered by wind and solar? Turn the thermostat down in winter and up in summer? Will global warming be moderate if we are moderate? The carbon we have already put in the air will hang around for centuries, as I said above.
Will we reverse the supposed temperature trend if we go to the extreme and eliminate all use of fossil fuels? Is closing an American pipeline while allowing a Russian pipeline an appropriate balance? Was that an act of moderation or mere political expediency? Is shutting down American coal-fired power plants while allowing Chinese coal-fired power plants to operate the moderate and prudent course? Will such actions in one or a several countries make a difference between extreme and moderate global warming? What if the result of warming is good for people who want to grow orange trees in southern New York and grapes in Calgary?
Remember that before the Little Ice Age grapes grew well in England. And note that cold temperatures limit plant growth. Think the Year without a Summer, 1816, when a “volcanic winter” followed the 1914 eruption of Mayon and the 1815 eruption of Tambora, causing widespread famine. Truth be told, plants don’t do well in cold. They thrive in warmer conditions unless they can’t tap into a water supply as in arid areas. Look at the abundant diversity of plant species in the tropics as opposed to the limited diversity of species in an Aspen forest. Of course, a mantle of warmth does not come with a complete silver lining; the tropics foster some nasty bugs like Ebola.
In daily life just about every reasonable adult can discern sense from nonsense—that is, just about every reasonable adult who lived before the rise of news outlets, including newspapers a couple of centuries ago. Nowadays, discerning between sense and nonsense is more difficult that ever, even for those who claim to be “educated.” Why? Three reasons. First, there are those “out there” who have sadistic intent and lack compunction, their motives to mislead masked by a manipulative personality, a pathology, and the ease of reaching a wide audience. Second, there are those “out there” whose knowledge is questionable though their intentions might be “good”; they pass on information derived from the first group, and in doing so are themselves unknowing victims. Third, there are those “out there” who, believing that what they “know” is sensible, have an agenda and hubris that exaggerates the significance of their knowledge: That seems to be especially true of politicians and alarmists like Greta Thunberg, Al Gore, and John Kerry, but it is also true of people on the opposite side of the ideological aisle.
When I read headlines, such as “Global warming blamed for heat wave in Europe,” written by Jonathan Powell and posted online at ChinaDaily.co.cn, I wonder about the state of the modern intellect and its ability to discern sense from nonsense because of those three reasons. As an American, I’m inclined to distrust any news associated with China because I recognize that country’s adversarial relationship with the U.S. and other economic powers. But please read the following from Powell’s posted article, and then we’ll have a chat.
“Spain's state meteorological office Aemet said the latest episode was the third-earliest on record and the first to arrive this early since 1981, reported The Guardian. ‘We are facing unusually high temperatures for June,’ an Aemet spokesperson said. Ruben del Campo, a spokesman for Aemet, said the extreme heat in June follows the country's hottest May in at least 100 years.”
Me: What occurs to you?
You: Well, when I see that, I think, “If this is an ‘early heat wave,’ then maybe there’s something to this climate stuff.” What do you want me to see?
Me: I want you to see four terms: “third earliest on record,” “since 1981,” “reported in The Guardian,” and “in at least 100 years.”
You: Meaning?
Me: First, “third earliest on record” means there were two earlier heat waves.
Second, 1981 takes us back to a time when the world Press, if not the overall scientific community, was just beginning to accept warming as a trend. A widespread nine-paragraph article by Peter Gwynne in Newsweek some five or six years earlier had mentioned the possibility of a cooling trend that the public latched onto in the late seventies; the notion of cooling spread like wildfire. The fire of “global warming” had to await the nineties. By the mid-1990s the US EPA was delving into greenhouse gas emissions—I know because I took one of the earliest inventories of greenhouse gases that the EPA funded through the Pennsylvania Energy Office (and as I have mentioned elsewhere, the EPA wrote me a letter saying it would use my GHG inventory as a model for the other states to follow). I suppose I should thank Al Gore who pushed the EPA to study greenhouse gas emissions and who fostered predictions of the dire consequences of climate change that became the centerpiece of his career and wealth. “Thanks, Al. You were largely responsible for my graduate students’ much needed work.”
Third, that recent article on the heat wave in Europe was derived from information “reported in The Guardian.” As in so many climate reports, the information is, as so much climate talk is, secondhand and extrapolated. Powell doesn’t seem to have looked the horse in the mouth. He read that someone else--The Guardian—checked the teeth.
And fourth, that such a heat wave occurred 100 years ago as the article mentions, means that the current heat wave is not without precedent. In fact, there are on record many heat waves, and we can reasonably assume that there have been many unrecorded heat waves through which humans have suffered.
You: But you seem to indicate that the scientific community was not aligned with that cooling assessment when you say “if not the overall scientific community.” Does that mean there were people who thought Earth was warming even in the 1970s?
Me: Yes. Not everyone boarded that Polar Express found in the Newsweek article. And that is understandable since, after all, the 1970s were a relatively nascent period of weather instrumentation, but every scientists knew that Earth warmed enough to cause the last glacial advance to halt and reverse by the end of the Younger Dryas. While some proclaimed “global cooling” in the seventies, others were saying Earth was warming, and they had good reason when they looked at the physical evidence such as recessional moraines, kettles like Walden Pond, and polished rock surfaces in Central Park, all features left behind by once thick and extensive glaciers. And sea level? Well, it has risen by as much as 120 meters since the big ice sheets melted. Standing along the East Coast today would have meant standing farther inland during the sea’s last “low stand.” Much of the continental shelves were above water. How else to explain the Javan rhinos? The Northern Hemisphere has been warming for at least 12 millennia with interrupting periods of cooling. And strangely, that warming has occurred under a lower quantity of carbon in the atmosphere.
Those who addressed climate issues in the seventies did so without extensive satellite data, without ubiquitous ground and sea sensors, and with very little information about 1) the vertical stratification of temperatures, 2) the effects of El Niño and La Niña, 3) meridional and zonal flows, 4) shifting vertical and horizontal ocean currents that might or might not have been occurring, and 5) the global warming effects of CFCs, whose effect on ozone was discovered by Molina in 1973 and whose effect on temperature was postulated by Lu in 2013. ** Scientists of the time were hard pressed when asked for solid data sets on either side of the temperature issue. And certainly, as is still the case today, scientists of the time could not see all the interacting features and processes. We do know more now about interactions and feed-back loops than we knew in the 1960s and 1970s, and we have computers to mash all that information into models that analyze recorded and proxy temperatures and predict trends, but we still have knowledge gaps and humans deciding what weight to give to any particular set of data.
You: Aren’t you worried that you’re like that proverbial frog sitting in ever hotter water because you won’t acknowledge the trend of warming? Even the seeming skeptical climate scientist Dr. Judith Curry acknowledges some warming has occurred. What if the trend in temperatures is really spiraling upward as the alarmists claim? Isn’t it better to act on the potential than to sit idly by like that frog?
Me: Frankly, no, I’m not concerned. I do acknowledge some warming. Since the 1990s I’ve acknowledged that some warming seems to have occurred. Like Curry, I know that some numbers have been fudged to fit the narrative, however. Like Curry, I question the claim that a rapid rise in temperature is inevitable. In my relatively short existence I’ve lived through some very hot summers and some very cold winters both of which I would have ascribed to large cycles, decadal cycles for example. If I remember correctly, there was very little talk first of El Niño and subsequently of La Niña until the seventies. Now even the general public is aware of both phenomena through news stories.
But let me refer to that online article I asked you to read because this summer of 2022’s heat wave is driving the Europeans to panic and cry “climate change.” Do you think the only cause of a heat wave is climate change?
Sure, I can understand a reason for the panic. Higher absolute temperatures and their associated heat indexes pose a real danger. But they also pose inconveniences in an age that imposes few hardships on affluent Europeans and Americans. Shouldn’t we consider the human factor before we panic: We Northern Hemispherians have grown accustomed to physical and psychological comfort, the latter largely because short memory neurons don’t hold the heat waves of the twentieth century like that of the mid-1990s and mid-1930s. Because people can’t remember, they say, “There’s never been weather like this.” In fact, a warmer Earth is more common than a cooler Earth as the geochemical record shows. But discomfort tends to make the point of global warming alarmists. Yet, if we are, in fact, living during an Interglacial Period like all those previous interglacials, then we should expect a rise in temperature overall punctuated by some hot days.
You: But isn’t an earlier budding out of trees a natural and indisputable testimony for warming? Aren’t the crocuses coming out earlier? Isn’t spring arriving a week earlier? Don’t you see the real effects of climate change? It just makes sense to be concerned. And now we have a devastating heat wave in Europe and an extended drought in the American Southwest. Look at the water level in Lake Mead, for gosh sake, it’s almost as low as it was when the lake first began to fill. And it certainly won’t recover under temperatures that this July have exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit and that will likely continue through August and early September.
Me: Sure—all you are saying seems to make sense, seems to support global warming. I’ll still ask whether this change in spring is an anomaly or a trend? If I see a change today, should I panic and extrapolate to a hot future. I remember the cold in the mid-to-late-seventies when wintertime temperatures in my area hit record lows, and wind chills hit -40 Fahrenheit. I remember watching a spring college baseball game in the mid nineties in Boca Raton when the wind chill must have been near freezing. If I had to look at the winters of the late seventies, during one of which it snowed in Miami, I would predict a downward temperature trend. I can’t use one season or two or three as an indicator. Climate has traditionally been defined on a thirty-year plot of temperatures AND precipitation. You also can throw evapotranspiration into that mix if you want. And with regard to climate designations, you should know that the boundaries between tropical, subtropical, temperate, and boreal climates fluctuate.
Is this 2022 heat wave a “trend”? Or is it part of a decadal pattern, part of a cycle? What of the “Pause” in rising temperatures of the last seven or eight years, a period with demonstrably no increase in temperature from 2014 till now? Is that a trend? Probably not, also. The warming could resume at any time—and it could possibly reverse regardless of the alarmists’ claims. One has to live a relatively long time and have very accurate data to be able to determine a “climate” trend. Even the proxy temperatures uncovered by researchers studying everything from corals to tree rings to oxygen isotopes might be incomplete or flawed or questionable data.
Are temperatures of the past couple decades increasingly higher? Seems so, but in order for me to make sense of climate, I have to have irrefutable evidence that there is a direct and proportional relationship between the advertised culprits of global warming and global temperatures. And certainly, I can’t use isolated phenomena as a guide. Hurricanes were supposed to increase in number and intensity, but they have not done so. What am I supposed to think of the very long droughty periods that affected the Mayans or the Anasazi? Both those devastating droughty periods occurred long before the Industrial Revolution.
What I’m saying is that separating sense from nonsense is not easy, especially since climate has become politicized and, to tell the truth, “weaponized” against individuals who merely question the veracity and sense of climate proclamations. For example, why wouldn’t a Chinese news outlet like the one I quoted above want to frighten Europeans and Americans off fossil fuels while the Chinese burn their coal, oil, and natural gas in support of their booming economy? Why wouldn’t the people who are in the business of “carbon credits,” windmills, lithium batteries, and solar panels want to scare us off fossil fuels? I have little doubt the Chinese see a looming profit in potential sales of solar panels and rare earths for electric car batteries.
You: I’ll grant that the Chinese have their selfish motives, but surely all those European and American scientists can’t be wrong about climate.
Me: What do you mean by “all those scientists”? You’re not talking about that debunked 97%, are you? Ordinarily, I would agree that those scientists who have evidence of warming are worth listening to, but many of them are on a lucrative roll of grant after grant after grant—the funding for climate research seems to be unending, especially since most of it comes from taxes and the rest from wealthy alarmist disciples. Many climate scientists attend conferences in places where I could never afford to go—and they could not afford to go if they were not on some grant. Paid-for meals, rooms, and travel…Well, you get my point. Why spoil such a good life by going out of the way to disprove what the world has been convinced of and is willing to pay for? Can’t have that money stop rolling in. It’s a livelihood with few controls on spending under government agencies committed to retooling the energy sector by fiat.
I’m skeptical because I see the potential for corruption just as I see a potential for Chinese propaganda, and I’m skeptical because I have seen the caveats in agreements and doctored info.
You: Okay, I understand, but just because there is corruption isn’t a reason to doubt some of their findings. By the way, what do you mean by caveats?
Me: The footnotes beneath the signatures on that Paris Agreement: India, for example, says that it will comply as a signatory as long as it gets financial help from other countries and as long as the switch to “green” tech doesn’t interfere with its burgeoning economy. And other countries, Russia and China, have similar caveats and exceptions. Seems that just the Europeans, Americans, Canadians, and Australians have bought wholesale into the—for want of a better term—climate scheme. Does it make sense that the chief emitter of carbon dioxide is permitted to spew that gas in the atmosphere whereas other countries must decrease their emissions? A good example of climate policy turned to nonsense lies in how the Dutch government has harmed its own farming economy by imposing controls on nitrogen during the same heat-wave summer that stresses crops. (See my blog of 7/18/2022) Aren’t the Irish in the process of limiting their farmers, also. Doesn’t any Irish politician remember his history lessons on the Potato Famine? If you suppress farming artificially, you mimic natural disasters like that famine.
You: But you can’t deny that it is hot today. Climate change could be the cause.
Me: Have you ever been this hot?
You: Yes.
Me: To use the term “climate change” to cover any particular weather event isn’t necessarily—let me amend that to “just plain isn’t”— “good science.” Individual weather events are part of every atmosphere on every planet with an atmosphere. If the heat of 2022 is, in fact, a phenomenon caused by climate change, to what extent does any “climate factor” play in a particular heat event—or in any cold event? If one just says, “Well, it’s the trend,” I’m not convinced, especially in light of the last eight years of a “temperature pause” that researchers at the University of Alabama, Huntsville identified this year.
But I understand the psychology: When it comes to comfort and convenience, most humans live in the present and not in some past condition. That’s one reason that the current heat wave panics the public.
Remember “We Are the World,” that song written and performed to save the drought stricken people of Ethiopia? The 1983-1985 drought exacerbated by war led to a horrendous famine that elicited charity from around the world—and the singing of that song to raise money. Ordinarily a rather semiarid region, Ethiopia needs only the slightest shift in weather patterns to plunge it into drought. Now think of the Colorado River Valley today, also lying in a semiarid region. Are you surprised that Lake Mead is at an historic low? I’m not, especially since droughts have long been a part of the American Southwest. Add the stress on water resources that of all those city dwellers and visitors to Las Vegas, and walls! Droughty conditions become more noticeable and Press-worthy. And speaking of Press-worthy I’ll add that had I been alive in the nineteenth century and living in Oregon, I would not have been aware of the heat both of the battle and in the atmosphere as the Union and Confederacy fought in July, 1863, at Gettysburg.
You: What?
Me: The point being that I know about Lake Mead’s low stand, about drought in the Southwest, about heat in Europe because reporters find it Press-worthy, and because they are not only numerous and ubiquitous, but they are also hungry for stories to broadcast over radio, on TV, on the Web, and over social media. Have you seen the reporters on TV during any weather event: Standing on streets as kids play under an open hydrant during a heat wave, standing on the beach as people flock to the ocean on a hot day, standing—or trying to stand—during a hurricane? They make their living by making any story they tell seem to be relevant to everyone and highly significant to the locals.
Because the regions of East Africa and Southwest USA have been the sites of droughts for many millennia and Europe has been the site of some very hot summers and very cold winters, does it make sense to ascribe any current short term conditions to a global pattern driven by carbon dioxide? Can anyone really say to what extent global carbon dioxide at 400 ppm causes a drought or a heat wave in a specific region? If that person can so ascribe, then the question becomes historical: Why were the Anasazi and the Mayans afflicted by decades-long drought—much longer than the current Southwest drought—when the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere was below 280 ppm? Why did the suspected long term drought that coincided with the Jamestown colony occur in and around 1607? It seems to me that whatever weather event occurs, the alarmists will see an immediate connection to climate change or global warming. Dare I ask such questions? Dare I even think to ask them? What if someone committed to eliminating fossil fuels finds out?
You: (Quizzical look) What?
Me: Not to worry—I think. I do like asking questions. I have done research for a major coal company, but I have also performed research for the PA DEP and the US EPA. So, I’ve paid my dues on environmental issues. Heck, until it got too expensive, I even subscribed to windmill electricity. And I understand that the alarmists would tell us that the rise in carbon dioxide is ubiquitous, so if heat gathers some place, it can migrate to another place. But one might ask why its effects aren’t both ubiquitous and proportional according to latitude, land-water distribution, elevation, and insolation. I cannot ascribe a specific event to a supposed general warming trend just I can’t ascribe the current eight-year pause in temperature to a cooling or steady state trend.
Or, one might argue that the rise in temperature during the past century or so, maybe 3/4 to 1.5 degrees C over that period actually indicates a rather steady state for a volatile atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere has been warmer and carbon dioxide content has generally declined during the course of the past 65 million years until it reached that 280 ppm. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere even at today’s 400 ppm is a very low quantity by comparison with foregone eras. Although the refinement is a bit blurry for million-plus year periods, there are some data that indicate an increase in quantity of carbon dioxide has trailed rather than preceded a rise in temperatures.
Again, in any assessment of temperatures vs. carbon dioxide content, everyone should ask about the refinement and inclusiveness of the data. By that I mean that on most graphs we see great detail for the past thirty years but less detail for millennia or multiple millennia. And when we consider million-year-long or longer periods, such as the Pleistocene, the data become less refined. Was there a very warm summer during one of the glacials? Was there a very cold summer during one of the interglacials? Of course.
So, if the Biden Administration, the English, Germans, and Australians choose to quash fossil fuel use on the basis of a supposed warming trend, I’ll continue to ask how they can guarantee the soundness of their decisions. What if current policies simply impose hardships on people used to cheap energy and physical comfort? On what data does the Administration act? Does it have evidence that quashing fossil fuel use in the United States will affect world temperatures? If so, to what extent will the policies affect temperatures? If it’s science, then there should be a scientifically determined quantity. And if the Administration cannot cite specifics, but speaks rather in generalities while laying claim to the science of climate, then it has, in fact, no objectivity, but rather, as so many contrarians point out, a climate religion.
A Bit of an Epilogue
As I wrote at the outset, I didn’t want to write this. I have not advanced your knowledge if you’ve been paying attention to IPCC reports, skeptics’ arguments, the physics of greenhouse gases, or actual data. I hate to admit that I have not covered the precise way in which any greenhouse molecule absorbs and reflects various frequencies. But that would require a very lengthy essay replete with tables and graphs.
As always, I write to inspire others to think.
*Thanks go, largely, to Rachel Carson, who effectively got DDT banned with her book Silent Spring, leading to “‘No scientific peer reviewed study has ever replicated any case of negative human health impacts from DDT,” said Dr Roger Bate, media and development director for the International Policy Network and joint author of the study with Richard Tren, director of economic policy at the non-governmental organisation Africa Fighting Malaria.’” —reported in, of all places, the online outlet for the NIH.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1173321/ Accessed July 27, 2022.
** In 1995, Mario Molina, F. Sherwood Rowland, and Paul Crutzen received the Nobel Prize for their work on CFCs and their effects on ozone.
Q.-B. Lu. Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change. International Journal of Modern Physics B, 2013; 1350073 DOI: 10.1142/S0217979213500732 and University of Waterloo. "Global warming caused by CFCs, not carbon dioxide, researcher claims in controversial study." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 30 May 2013. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130530132443.htm
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