Pucks. Dumb as a puck. Just thinkin’ of metaphors here. Rapid fans who sport their loyalties by the team shirts they wear and the paint on their faces. Fights throughout the stands. From the luxury boxes above, the owners oversee a world covered in ice on which heated violence occurs over a puck. And the puck itself? Dumb as itself as it takes hit after hit after hit by hockey sticks. And the hockey sticks? They consist of a longer shaft and a shorter blade, both made of various materials, including initially only wood, and then other materials, evolving into the carbon fiber composition of today’s sticks. Carbon fiber. Hmnnn. Makes me think of carbon. Strange thought, that. Combining carbon with the thought of hockey sticks. Or, maybe not so strange…Are we pucks? Certainly, we seem to be hit by either or both of two hockey sticks.
The Climate Hockey Stick
Millions of Americans have been driven into anxiety over climate change * because of Michael Mann’s famous hockey stick graph. If you are one of the few who have not been so driven, I’ll simply describe the graph. It shows time along the X-axis and temperature on the Y-axis. The line runs on a gradual incline (the shaft) upward against the Y-axis until the Industrial Age and the onset of fossil-fuel burning, at which point the line climbs sharply upward (the blade). Oh my! Since the Little Ice Age, temperatures have risen and have risen rapidly since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Mann’s graph shows an increase in the rate of rise, demonstrable by proxy records, such as tree rings and ice cores. The sharp rise, argued by some to be more a visual product of horizontal shortening of the graph, seems to put the world on course for runaway greenhouse warming that alarmists attribute mostly to a single cause: Anthropogenic carbon dioxide, a gas that is the by product of burning fossil fuels. In truth, the gas can demonstrably be shown to have risen to over 400 ppm in our atmosphere from a pre-Industrial approximation of 250 ppm. The hypothesis that the gas is responsible for any warming in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has its problems, however: 1) Temperatures have not risen according to the models based on carbon dioxide concentrations and the projections of an angry Al Gore because hiatuses in warming have occurred; 2) A complex and dynamic atmosphere responds to many interrelated causes as Mann and others have rightly noted, with causes as yet unknown and all variability somehow linked to both Pacific and Atlantic sea-surface temperature oscillations; 3) The Northern Hemisphere, where the greater area of continental mass, mountain systems, and human population lie is different from the Southern Hemisphere’s mostly ocean surface and paucity of human residents; and 4) The data history is largely “proxy” and derived from many sources, including tree rings, ice cores, oxygen isotope analysis of calcium carbonate shells, configuration of land and sea as an effect on ocean currents, the ocean currents themselves, mountain systems, and even solar insolation dependent on the Sun’s activity compounded by Milankovich cycles. Nevertheless, Mann and others make an argument, visualizable in the hockey stick graph, that the world is in a warming trend. The problem as seen by “deniers” is that warming now doesn’t approach warming that occurred in the absence of humans during, say, a period about 55 million years ago when the temperature of the Arctic Ocean was a tropical 70 or more degrees Fahrenheit. Since that time Earth has undergone persistent cooling—until, according to Mann and others, it recently began to warm (especially since the Little Ice Age and more than the Medieval Warm Period about a millennium ago that saw the Vikings settle in Greenland).
Whew! Has this hockey game gone into overtime?
The Debt Hockey Stick
There’s another hockey stick graph that should cause Americans anxiety. It’s the graph of the national debt, now standing at over $30 trillion. The debt was rising like temperatures since the Little Ice Age at a rather steady but gradual incline. And then, beginning in the Obama Administration, it took the hockey stick climb. Granted, some of the debt Americans have they owe to themselves. That’s about 20% of the total debt. Granted also, some of the debt can be rolled over, meaning that new debt can pay off old debt. But the entire national debt can’t be covered by the government’s paying itself “back” or by rolling over old debt into new debt. That makes the hockey stick debt graph one that should concern Americans. And here’s where the climate hockey stick graph meets the debt hockey stick graph. The one is motivating some to exacerbate the other, much the way that ocean waves increase in height when crests of one wave train merge with crests from another wave train, sometimes causing a very large rogue wave capable of knocking a cruise ship around.
If the current trend in government policies continues, the Mann hockey stick graph will soon be a major influence on the debt hockey stick graph to the economic detriment of all Americans—and maybe to the entire West. Actually, check that; it already is an influence because the Biden Administration has policies in place that will make what is now cheap and abundant energy more costly for everyone, and that means also for the government. The reason? Biden et al. (and not just Al, as in Al Gore) want to eliminate fossil fuels because of extrapolations based on the hockey stick graph of temperatures. Biden, demonstrably by his actions, believes carbon dioxide will kill us all, as he labels global warming an existential threat. His solution for saving all of humanity is the elimination of fossil fuels, even though it is also demonstrable that at 400 ppm carbon dioxide is not the sole cause of any warming and at that concentration is lower than its presence during previous geologic epochs and periods. As some reasonable scientists, including the founder of Greenpeace, have noted, the planet, compared to its past status, is in a carbon famine and historically, carbon increases have been followed some forty times by temperature decreases. More carbon also facilitates a greener world.
Two Hockey Sticks Collide in Superposition, and Every Player in the Game of Life Gets Hurt
The economic hockey stick is now almost inextricably linked to the climate hockey stick. More people have become convinced that to bend the blade of the climate graph toward the horizontal—straighten the stick—or even to reverse its orientation to a downward trend, the world must steepen the economic hockey stick graph. There’s no denying that the steepening of the economic blade occurred during the current and previous two Administrations. But wearing the skates of the Obama Administration that incorporated climate change policies, Biden has by fiat steepened the economic graph in the name of climate change. Biden has superimposed, possibly irrevocably, the one stick on the other.
Remember That in the Hockey Arena, the Ice Is Artificially Maintained
Hockey. Isn’t that the game that inspired the joke “I went to a fight last night, and a hockey game broke out”? Are there hockey players who still have all their teeth? Have all of us lost teeth to those two hockey sticks that are taking the bite out of our economic welfare? Certainly, the Mann (unintentional) climate and government (intentional) debt hockey sticks have taken a bite out of the American economy and the personal finances of Americans. Seems to me that both the climate alarmists--ignoring the economic costs that will impoverish and therefore, as a consequence shorten the lives of millions to billions of people--and the government spenders intent on eliminating carbon--ignoring the realities that they produce no products to earn wealth but simply take from everyone according to their agenda based on climate change scenarios—need to be put on ice.
If I were asked what I could do with both hockey sticks…
*I was tempted to write “driven into a frenzy” because I had just written a blog on frenzy (See entry for August 14, 2023).
The Climate Hockey Stick
Millions of Americans have been driven into anxiety over climate change * because of Michael Mann’s famous hockey stick graph. If you are one of the few who have not been so driven, I’ll simply describe the graph. It shows time along the X-axis and temperature on the Y-axis. The line runs on a gradual incline (the shaft) upward against the Y-axis until the Industrial Age and the onset of fossil-fuel burning, at which point the line climbs sharply upward (the blade). Oh my! Since the Little Ice Age, temperatures have risen and have risen rapidly since the beginning of the Industrial Age. Mann’s graph shows an increase in the rate of rise, demonstrable by proxy records, such as tree rings and ice cores. The sharp rise, argued by some to be more a visual product of horizontal shortening of the graph, seems to put the world on course for runaway greenhouse warming that alarmists attribute mostly to a single cause: Anthropogenic carbon dioxide, a gas that is the by product of burning fossil fuels. In truth, the gas can demonstrably be shown to have risen to over 400 ppm in our atmosphere from a pre-Industrial approximation of 250 ppm. The hypothesis that the gas is responsible for any warming in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has its problems, however: 1) Temperatures have not risen according to the models based on carbon dioxide concentrations and the projections of an angry Al Gore because hiatuses in warming have occurred; 2) A complex and dynamic atmosphere responds to many interrelated causes as Mann and others have rightly noted, with causes as yet unknown and all variability somehow linked to both Pacific and Atlantic sea-surface temperature oscillations; 3) The Northern Hemisphere, where the greater area of continental mass, mountain systems, and human population lie is different from the Southern Hemisphere’s mostly ocean surface and paucity of human residents; and 4) The data history is largely “proxy” and derived from many sources, including tree rings, ice cores, oxygen isotope analysis of calcium carbonate shells, configuration of land and sea as an effect on ocean currents, the ocean currents themselves, mountain systems, and even solar insolation dependent on the Sun’s activity compounded by Milankovich cycles. Nevertheless, Mann and others make an argument, visualizable in the hockey stick graph, that the world is in a warming trend. The problem as seen by “deniers” is that warming now doesn’t approach warming that occurred in the absence of humans during, say, a period about 55 million years ago when the temperature of the Arctic Ocean was a tropical 70 or more degrees Fahrenheit. Since that time Earth has undergone persistent cooling—until, according to Mann and others, it recently began to warm (especially since the Little Ice Age and more than the Medieval Warm Period about a millennium ago that saw the Vikings settle in Greenland).
Whew! Has this hockey game gone into overtime?
The Debt Hockey Stick
There’s another hockey stick graph that should cause Americans anxiety. It’s the graph of the national debt, now standing at over $30 trillion. The debt was rising like temperatures since the Little Ice Age at a rather steady but gradual incline. And then, beginning in the Obama Administration, it took the hockey stick climb. Granted, some of the debt Americans have they owe to themselves. That’s about 20% of the total debt. Granted also, some of the debt can be rolled over, meaning that new debt can pay off old debt. But the entire national debt can’t be covered by the government’s paying itself “back” or by rolling over old debt into new debt. That makes the hockey stick debt graph one that should concern Americans. And here’s where the climate hockey stick graph meets the debt hockey stick graph. The one is motivating some to exacerbate the other, much the way that ocean waves increase in height when crests of one wave train merge with crests from another wave train, sometimes causing a very large rogue wave capable of knocking a cruise ship around.
If the current trend in government policies continues, the Mann hockey stick graph will soon be a major influence on the debt hockey stick graph to the economic detriment of all Americans—and maybe to the entire West. Actually, check that; it already is an influence because the Biden Administration has policies in place that will make what is now cheap and abundant energy more costly for everyone, and that means also for the government. The reason? Biden et al. (and not just Al, as in Al Gore) want to eliminate fossil fuels because of extrapolations based on the hockey stick graph of temperatures. Biden, demonstrably by his actions, believes carbon dioxide will kill us all, as he labels global warming an existential threat. His solution for saving all of humanity is the elimination of fossil fuels, even though it is also demonstrable that at 400 ppm carbon dioxide is not the sole cause of any warming and at that concentration is lower than its presence during previous geologic epochs and periods. As some reasonable scientists, including the founder of Greenpeace, have noted, the planet, compared to its past status, is in a carbon famine and historically, carbon increases have been followed some forty times by temperature decreases. More carbon also facilitates a greener world.
Two Hockey Sticks Collide in Superposition, and Every Player in the Game of Life Gets Hurt
The economic hockey stick is now almost inextricably linked to the climate hockey stick. More people have become convinced that to bend the blade of the climate graph toward the horizontal—straighten the stick—or even to reverse its orientation to a downward trend, the world must steepen the economic hockey stick graph. There’s no denying that the steepening of the economic blade occurred during the current and previous two Administrations. But wearing the skates of the Obama Administration that incorporated climate change policies, Biden has by fiat steepened the economic graph in the name of climate change. Biden has superimposed, possibly irrevocably, the one stick on the other.
Remember That in the Hockey Arena, the Ice Is Artificially Maintained
Hockey. Isn’t that the game that inspired the joke “I went to a fight last night, and a hockey game broke out”? Are there hockey players who still have all their teeth? Have all of us lost teeth to those two hockey sticks that are taking the bite out of our economic welfare? Certainly, the Mann (unintentional) climate and government (intentional) debt hockey sticks have taken a bite out of the American economy and the personal finances of Americans. Seems to me that both the climate alarmists--ignoring the economic costs that will impoverish and therefore, as a consequence shorten the lives of millions to billions of people--and the government spenders intent on eliminating carbon--ignoring the realities that they produce no products to earn wealth but simply take from everyone according to their agenda based on climate change scenarios—need to be put on ice.
If I were asked what I could do with both hockey sticks…
*I was tempted to write “driven into a frenzy” because I had just written a blog on frenzy (See entry for August 14, 2023).
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