Natural Climate Change Ignorance is not Bliss

Knowledge is based on facts and logic, but is overwhelmed by opinions and emotion. The facts of natural climate change are well known: thousands of times climate has been warmer or colder than now naturally. In the 15,000 years since the end of the Ice Age, there have been five warmer periods, each demonstrated by science studies showing tree lines were further north and reached higher elevations than now; isotopes in ice cores showed past levels of atmospheric CO2 compared to corresponding global temperature; analyses of lake and ocean sediments did the same; and geology recorded sea level rise and fall and glacier retreat and advance.

Science establishes one fact clearly: we are living in a moderately warm period, with a historically low level of atmospheric CO2. During the past million years 100,000-year-long ice ages have been interrupted by 20,000-year-long warmer periods. As oceans warmed, CO2 was released into the atmosphere, and as oceans cooled CO2 was reabsorbed. Changes in atmospheric CO2 then, as now, were caused by warming and cooling which preceded the changes, not were caused by CO2 changes. The 400,000-year record of climate change and CO2 levels contained in the Vostok (Antarctic) ice cores clearly demonstrate this pattern.

Those who believe that increased CO2 causes warming, please answer this simple question: what caused past levels of atmospheric CO2 to increase? We know what caused past warming: changes in the Earth’s orbit and its axis. We know the Earth was much warmer 125,000 years ago during the Eemian, when warming increased atmospheric CO2 and melted permafrost, releasing methane from the frozen tundra. Contrary to warmist predictions, there was no runaway warming, and soon we entered another long ice age that only ended 15,000 years ago.

Earth explains natural climate change to the blissfully ignorant.

Ignorance is not bliss.

Recently I invited myself to be the skunk at the Gualala Municipal Advisory Council (GMAC) party to rubber stamp GMAC’s support of the Consensus Statement on Climate Change and Coral Reefs. Before going I did what only one GMAC member did: I actually read the Consensus Statement. Not only read it, I prepared a point-by-point rebuttal complete with graphs copied from published peer-reviewed studies, and provided each GMAC member a copy. As far as I could tell, still only one of them has read the Consensus Statement, but this didn’t stop them from approving it 5-1.

The presentation by the advocate of endorsing the Consensus Statement was not only devoid of its actual wording, it was conspicuously devoid of science facts and studies supporting its need. His presentation included erroneous and meaningless statements, such as “Arctic sea ice lowest in 3 million years.” The rebuttal I presented demonstrated that Arctic sea ice was lower in the 1930’s, during the Holocene Climatic Optimum of 8,000 to 5,000 years ago, and during the much-warmer Eemian interglacial of only 125,000 years ago, when sea level was over 20 feet higher than now. Strangely, in a presentation about man-caused global warming, he presented three items only about temperatures this year, which were not only incorrect, but severely limited in geography and time period covered. His chart forecasted a spring El Niño, which are commonplace occurrences that were well known and documented long before we began our CO2 obsession.

I also presented a new study showing that increased atmospheric CO2 is a result of natural climate change, and is negligibly affected by burning fossil fuels since only 3% of CO2 discharged into the atmosphere is due to human activities.

Once again, in a Kangaroo Court ruled by emotions, beliefs trumped facts.

Natural Climate Change Deniers

A friend writes that I am a “climate-change denier”, and during a presentation, another friend angrily accused me of denying climate change. I call them “natural climate-change deniers”.

I often speak and write about five periods of natural climate change with warming greater than the present in the past 10,000 years since the end of the Ice Age. Thousands of science studies bear witness that “the only constant in climate is change”. Al Gore of “An Inconvenient Truth”, and Michael Mann of the “Hockey Stick”, both deny proven climate science: five periods in the recent past had natural warming much greater than now. The warmest was the Holocene Climate Optimum, 8,000-5,000 years ago, followed by the Egyptian, Minoan, Roman, and Medieval Warm Periods, each of which was cooler than its predecessor. Current warming is by far the least warm of the six, and seems exceptional only in light of historical climate science ignorance and the fact that it followed the longest and coldest period of the past 8,000 years, the Little Ice Age (1350-1850AD).

Climate records of the past 900,000 years show long glacial periods (ice ages) surrounding shorter interglacial (warm) periods. The previous interglacial was the Eemian, 125,000 years ago, with sea levels 20 feet higher and temperature 5°F warmer. Nature did then what Al Gore says humans are doing now. However, a Global and Planetary Change paper finds that changes in CO2 follow rather than lead global air surface temperature and that "CO₂ released from use of fossil fuels have little influence on the observed changes in the amount of atmospheric CO₂.”

Among many errors, my computer-literate friend missed that Anthony Watts won both the 2011 and 2012 Best Science, and 2012 Lifetime Achievement, on the Bloggies.

Natural climate-change deniers prefer their beliefs to the facts I present.