Blissful Intentional Science Ignorance - Encouraged and Promoted by Big Media

Over six years ago our local weekly newspaper, The Independent (big laugh) Coast Observer, emailed me that my letters would no longer be published. However, on rare occasions one of mine slips through, and this is the latest.

Editor

Believers in human-caused climate change argue that they follow the science, but then don’t. For example, sea-level increase; many Bay Area scientists predict a six-foot increase by 2100, but these predictions lack mention of San Francisco’s tide gauge, installed in 1854, the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. Its history is easily accessed online, as are those of all the world’s tide gauges, at psmsl.org. Per San Francisco’s 166-year record, sea level has risen six inches, at a steady pace of 3.6 inches per century. At the end of 2021 sea level was at its lowest for the past eight years, and 4.6 inches lower than its peak in 1983.

San Francisco tide gauge record since 1854 showing the 1983 peak 

and lack of significant change since then.

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website shows sea level at Los Angeles increasing at a steady rate of 3.8 inches per century. Neither San Francisco nor Los Angeles show any increase in the rate of sea-level rise for the past century, and if their current rates are sustained the forecasted six-foot increase will be reached after the year 3800.

The Los Angeles rate of increase of 0.96 millimeters per year is less than four inches per century (3.8 inches)

The San Francisco rate of increase of 1.94 millimeters per year is less than eight inches per century (7.6 inches ) and was achieved by a curious adjustment by NASA at ~1896 not found in the tide gauge data. 

 

Many scientists also ignore Greenland ice core studies that indicate that we now live in the coldest 1,000-year period of the past 10,000 years. 

(It's a pity that I wasn't able to put these charts and links in my letter to the editor, because as you can see, a picture is worth a thousand words.)

 

For (human-caused global warming) scientists, ignorance is bliss.

Unscientific San Francisco Chronicle

John Diaz’s article “Truth and Denial” (Insight, page E3, San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 2012) was remarkable for its lack of science in a supposedly scientific editorial. Diaz made a perfunctory denunciation of the fraud (and probable forgery) perpetrated by “Scientist” Peter Gleick on The Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Chicago.

In his article Mr. Diaz lightly condemned Gleick while trying and convicting The Heartland Institute and man-caused global warming skeptics of crimes against humanity. According to Mr. Diaz: "The scientific consensus that human activity is accelerating global warming is solid; the only real debate is about the magnitude and timing of the consequences. Its effects are already apparent. Melting glaciers and ice caps. Sea-level rise. Severe storms and drought. Devastated crops."

The fact that global warming is not accelerating, and that numerous reputable and respected scientists deny its consequences did not enter into Mr. Diaz's labeling of skeptics as "deniers", furthering the ongoing effort to establish and maintain an odious link with Holocaust deniers. Mr. Diaz obviously is unaware that glaciers have been retreating for over 300 years since the end of the Little Ice Age. In Glacier Bay, Alaska, retreat was over 50 miles from 1780 to 1912, and only six miles since. Sea level rise has decelerated, according to Europe's new sophisticated satellite system, and is trending at about six inches per century or less, the same as the two previous centuries. The alarmist forecast for the San Francisco Bay Area of six feet by 2100 would equal the highest rate of increase per century experienced at the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago, when there was vast quantities of ice to melt and global temperature was much higher than today. Concerning severe storms and drought, and devastated crops, even dedicated "warmist" scientists deny linkages, and respected neutral scientists such as the Doctors Pielke, Senior and Junior, dismiss it entirely.

Mr. Diaz also assumes with no evidence that skeptics are well funded, but if he had chosen to read the fraudulently acquired Heartland Institute budget, and compared it to warmist organization budgets - Sierra Club, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Federation, etc. - he would be confronted by the facts that the Heartland Institute budget is only a small fraction of the budgets of any one of these organizations, that only a small portion of Heartland's budget was applied to climate change, and that Big Oil provides far more money to warmists than to skeptics.

Mr. Diaz, I can easily substantiate skeptic science positions by inquiring government, not skeptic, sources. Mr. Diaz, it seems you and many other "reporters" have lost your nose for news when it comes to natural climate change. 

Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory (Amazon Reviews)

I'm having a very enjoyable exchange on Amazon.com concerning reviews of "Slaying the Sky Dragon - Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory."

One reviewer commented:
"you can transfer energy to the earth from a reflective green house layer even if the energy level of the earth is higher."


To which I replied: (The charts I show are not part of my Amazon reply because I could not load them on Amazon. I wish I could. They support my replies very well)
"This reviewer confuses insulation with reflection. He also confuses a greenhouse which prevents the air warmed by the heated earth from mixing with the outside air, with the insulating effect provided primarily by water vapor in the atmosphere. If he would look at the historical record he would find many periods when warming began long before CO2 increased, and when cooling began when CO2 was much higher. In both cases warming and cooling soon - in 800 years or so - caused the oceans to release or absorb CO2, respectively.

If CO2 has always been driven by climate change, and has never been the driver, how did it get behind the wheel now when even current levels of CO2 are historically very low? It is much easier to understand current warming of one degree F per century to be a rebound from the end of the Little Ice Age 300 years ago, than as a product of a very recently increase of an atmospheric trace gas.

Compare a night in an equatorial desert to a humid, summer night in Michigan - the atmosphere above each containing the same tiny concentration of CO2 - and then determine what you want to do with your coat. It goes on, in the desert, and stays off in Michigan. And water vapor does its balancing magic, just as it has for billions of years.

My reply generated the following from "Freedom Ride":
The commenter fails to understand radiative forcing, fails to recognize that this massive, geologically near-instantaneous increase in GHGs is unique in climate history, fails to recognize the fundamental difference between H2O and the other GHGs, and apparently does not know that the increasing absolute humidity is a feedback effect of increasing concentrations of the persistent GHGs, principally CO2.


In short, Mr. Combs does not know what he is talking about. He *is* skilled at repeating some rather old, shop-worn denier talking points, at least. No doubt he finds them reassuring, bless his heart.

Which inspired me to reply:
Freedom Ride makes many misstatements, none more egregious than that the increase in CO2 is unique, since for most of the Earth's history atmospheric CO2 has been multiples higher. The fundamental difference between H2O and other so-called greenhouse gases is that H2O comprises over 95% of the total, and that the increase of water vapor from warming provides a negative feedback through clouds and through heat transport in the atmosphere to increased warming.


Freedom Ride continues the alarmist method of making sweeping statements without providing any observational proof or support. As an example, the existence of six periods of greater warming since the end of the Ice Age just over 10,000 years ago are robustly supported by world-wide studies, as is the fact that these periods were characterised by stable atmospheric CO2.

Current sea level rise is unremarkable at eight inches per century and slowing, and can be compared to 420 feet of increase since the end of the Ice Age - an average of over four feet per century.

Also sea level studies have shown coral thrived about 6,000 years ago three to six feet above what is now sea level. Even an alarmist must concede that higher sea level then, evidenced by coral growth, proves greater warmth then.

My points are not old, shop-worn denier talking points. They have come from the reading of numerous compilations of historical facts by such climate greats as H. H. Lamb, and primarily are just repititions of what the Earth is telling us. Vineyards in England 1,000 years ago, where they fail today, is a fact that knows no politics.

Soon Freedom Ride replied:
Again, Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower.

Combs posts a number of non sequiturs and moldy-oldie denialist assertions which may be disregarded. He's is an AGW denier, the intellectual equivalent of HIV/AIDS deniers, evolution deniers, moon landing deniers, etc. He employs the same tactics: anomaly hunting, cherry picking, Gish galloping and flat-out bs'ing. He is an ideologue--a Libertarian, perhaps?--oppressed by the irresistible march of science. Science is his enemy: he carefully ignores the unanimous, published affirmations of every major scientific professional association in the world. He searches the internet for comforting propaganda, which he presents here to insulate himself from cognitive dissonance. While it may satisfy him, it is transparently silly to anyone aware of the facts.
 
And I immediately countered:
"Combs reveals his ignorance. He apparently does not know (unsurprising, since apparently he gets his information from non-scientific sources) that in ancient times of much higher CO2 concentrations, insolation was much lower."

Freedom Ride, your ad hominem attacks far exceed your science. About insolation, "Earth's Climate: past and future," William F. Rudman:

"Insolation has varied around a constant long-term mean and has followed the same tilt and precession cycles for millions of years. Consequently, its fundamental character has stayed the same. As a result, we can use the same insolation curve throughour the full 3-Myr history of northern hemisphere glaciation illustrated by this conceptual model."

Mr. Ride. So far I have seen no science in any of your posts. Will any be forthcoming?

Has Mr. Ride gotten off the bus, or is he finally searching for some facts to throw back at me?


So far he is pitching a "no fact-er".

This Amazon exchange is very satisfying. If I presented similar comments on a website like Realclimate.com, they would never be posted.

Global Warming - Much Ado About Nothing

Sometimes the best proof can be found in the camp of the enemy, crafted by their hands.


When the discussion is of global warming, the first point to examine is: "Is it warming?"

The answer is "Yes, and it has been for about 200 years since the end of the Little Ice Age."

That should answer the next question: "Is the warming man-caused or natural."

Obviously, the answer is: "Natural, since the Little Ice Age (1350 - 1800 AD) was a period of natural cooling following the much warmer than present Medieval Warm Period (950 - 1350 AD)."

Since no studies of the Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age have hypothesized let alone proven changes in atmospheric CO2 as causation, the inevitable conclusion is that natural climate change forces were at work.

Now, how much natural warming is there?

According to United States government statistics, and their NOAA Satellite and Information Service website, the United States has been warming at a rate of one degree Fahrenheit per century for the past 116 years.



One degree Fahrenheit per century.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Is this a big deal?

If so, why?

Al Gore says catastrophes are coming because of this warming.

One degree Fahrenheit per century?

Al says glaciers are melting.

True. In fact at least one since 1760-1780 AD, at Glacier Bay, Alaska. From 1760 to 1912 it retreated over sixty miles.



Al, since mankind was not causing significant increased atmospheric CO2 during the period 1760 to 1912 AD, what made the dramatic glacier retreat then different from the much less dramatic glacier retreat now?

Al, inquiring minds want to know.

What's the big deal?

How Many Global Warming Alarmists Can Dance On Al Gore?

For several years I have immersed myself in books and articles, first about man-caused global warming, and then about climate change when the term “global warming” became problematic to Al Gore and His Acolytes. It didn’t take long for me to realize there was a pattern to most of the articles, and to the supporting and opposing comments they invoked from their audience. Simply, both sides were arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin before proving that angels exist.

Similarly, arguments about the effects of human activities on warming rage without establishing whether carbon dioxide significantly effects warming, or even if warming is good or bad.

So this discussion should begin at the beginning.

Is the Earth warming? Yes, at a rate of about 1º Fahrenheit (F) per century for the past two centuries, which coincidentally is the period since the end of the Little Ice Age.

Has there been similar warming in the past 1,000 years? Yes, in the Medieval Warm Period.

Has there been similar warming in the past 10,000 years? Yes, six or more, one of which – the Holocene Optimum – was much warmer.

Have there been periods of similar or greater warming in earlier periods? Yes, hundreds of them.

Were previous warming periods caused by increased atmospheric CO2? No, although Al Gore mistakenly said they were.

Is the current warming caused by increased atmospheric CO2? No, it’s just a continuation of the warming that began about four hundred years ago and ended the Little Ice Age.

Are sea levels rising? Yes, recently about six inches per century.

Have sea levels risen in the past? Yes, over 400 feet since the end of the last Ice Age 11,000 years ago.

Have sea levels ever been higher than they are now? Yes, hundreds of feet higher.

See how simple it is? We have already demonstrated that warming is not unusual. For that matter, cooling isn’t either. Neither are rising sea levels, or falling ones.

Does this surprise anyone? It shouldn’t, and you don’t have to be a climate expert, meteorologist, rocket scientist, mathematician, failed presidential candidate, or any other exalted personage to understand that climate change is natural, and has been for billions of years. The evidence is all around us.

However, historians and geologists are probably our best guides to past climate changes. Historians can tell us that the Thames would freeze over in the winter during The Little Ice Age, and that Ice Faires were held on it. Or that there were vineyards in England a thousand years ago where there aren’t now. Or that Vikings farmed parts of Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period that are in permafrost today, and that these farms and Viking settlement of Greenland failed as The Little Ice Age took hold.

Geologists can point out ancient beaches hundreds of feet above the current sea level, or channels once cut by rivers that are now under the sea.

Arrayed against these clear and simple facts, we find a so-called science that claims our current warming is caused by human activities that have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. Further, according to Al Gore, carbon dioxide is “the most important of the so-called greenhouse gases”, and greenhouse gases cause warming. Beside the easily proven scientific fact that the greenhouse effect is a myth, such arguments begin from a premise that is in itself in error. First, water vapor, not CO2, is obviously the most important since it comprises 95 percent of total so-called atmospheric greenhouse gases. CO2 is a piddling (meaning very small) part of the total – almost four percent.

Carbon dioxide is a trace gas and is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere (Dry air contains roughly [by volume] 78.09% nitrogen, 20.9% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.039% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases). Following this line of discovery, the next logical step would be to determine how much of the miniscule portion of air that is carbon dioxide results from human activity. Again, the word miniscule fits our needs, since natural sources (such as decaying vegetation) produce about 97%, and human activities produce only three percent. Therefore, human activity produces 0.001% of the volume of the atmosphere, or looking at just greenhouse gases, 0.12%. (click on this link)

Or, “Much ado about nothing.”

This chart illustrates that the green portion representing Kyoto mandated carbon dioxide reductions is about 1/20th of human-produced CO2, and that when taken in the context of the entire atmosphere achieves monumental insignificance, as does anthropogenic CO2.



“Nothing? Nothing, you say. Don’t you know that if it weren’t for the greenhouse effect, we’d all freeze?”

To which I succinctly reply, “male bovine excrement!”

Actually, opportunities to be frozen have appeared frequently in Earth’s history, although more often the Earth has been warmer and ice free. We’re now in a cool period, and have had polar ice for the past 35 million years, but for roughly 75% of its history the Earth has been ice free. This chart shows Earth’s most recent temperature history, beginning roughly 542 million years ago with the Cambrian period.



Our atmosphere does not operate as a greenhouse. A greenhouse has a cover which allows visible light to enter and to be absorbed as heat energy by the contents of the greenhouse. This heat energy then warms the air in the greenhouse through radiation, and the warm air is trapped inside the greenhouse and is prevented from mixing with the colder air outside.





Did Al get the science right?

In his introduction to “An Inconvenient Truth” Al Gore states: “I have learned that, beyond death and taxes, there is at least one absolutely indisputable fact. Not only does human-caused global warming exist, but it is also growing more and more dangerous and at a pace that has now made it a planetary emergency.”Later Gore quotes Mark Twain: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Al’s “absolutely indisputable fact” is just the sort of statement that Twain would have covered by his admonition.

By my count Gore listed at least three “facts”, none of which are indisputable. We’ve already demonstrated that warming can, and has, existed without human causation. We’ve shown the Earth has been warmer without producing catastrophic conditions. As we will later show, we can’t say the same about cooling.

Our world is filled with the unbelievable, yet Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” deserves a featured place in the “Great Hall of Unbelievables.” At the most basic level, Gore got the science wrong, yet some scientists praise him, even when these same scientists must concede that Al’s predictions are unrealistic – none believe sea levels could rise 20 feet by 2100 – they mute their criticism with remarks like “Gore got the science right.”


But did he get the science right? If so, then what has driven previous periods of climate change that have been equal or greater than the present? Are prominent scientists saying that CO2 is (and by implication has always been) the driving force in climate change?

Al Gore certainly did when he showed the chart of fluctuations of CO2 and temperatures derived from Vostok ice core samples, and said that rising atmospheric CO2 levels caused global temperatures to rise. However, and very inconveniently for Al, the Vostok studies actually show that temperatures rose before CO2, and furthermore, that temperatures fell while CO2 levels were still high. For the last almost half-a-million years covered by the Antarctic ice core samples taken at Vostok, temperature changes drive CO2 changes (not vice versa)with a lag time ranging 500 to 1,500 years.



Only briefly chastened by the Vostok revelations, anthropogenic (man-caused) global warmists concede that rising temperatures (resulting from orbital and solar variations) cause rising CO2, but then theorize that rising CO2 takes over and forces a much greater increase in temperature than possible without CO2’s contribution to the greenhouse effect.

Interestingly, while they weaseled out of the box they found themselves in when rising temperatures cause increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, they’re still stuck in the box because they can’t explain why temperatures fall before all-powerful CO2 does.

And temperatures have always fallen after rising, regardless of CO2 levels.

In fact, it’s happened many times in the last 10,000 years, after our most recent Ice Age ended 11,000 years ago. Since Al Gore has made much of Greenland, and what he sees as the potential for the Greenland ice cap to be dislodged dramatically by warming and cause sea levels to suddenly rise 20 feet, it behooves us to look at what Greenland ice cores tell us about the past 15,000 years. Talk about your warming! Only 15,000 years ago Greenland warmed 22º F (12.5º C) in only 1,000 years, plunged 29º F (16º C) back into cooling, then surged upwards over 30º F (17º C), all in only 4,000 years. Then, except for two very brief periods, Greenland temperatures remained significantly higher than the present for more than 10,000 years.



The following chart shows temperatures peaked almost 8,000 years ago and that succeeding peak temperatures have been steadily lower. The chart ends at Year 0 (2004), and clearly shows the warmer Medieval Warm Period roughly 1,000 years ago, and the recent very cold Little Ice Age (1200 to 1800 AD) that we are recovering from at a rate of about 0.5º Centigrade per century.







Unprecedented warming?

Al displayed the infamous “Hockey stick” graph (created by Dr. Michael Mann et al, famous in Climategate disclosures for his trick to “hide the decline”) in “An Inconvenient Truth” which wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and The Little Ice Age. Al then trumpeted that current warming was “unprecedented”, leaving one to wonder what Al thinks “unprecedented” means. I think I know what it means, but to be sure I checked the dictionary and found I’m right and Al’s wrong. Unprecedented means “it ain’t happened before” (I’m paraphrasing). One dictionary showed: “without previous instance; never before known or experienced; unexampled or unparalleled”.

Unprecedented warming does not mean in the past 100 years, 500 years, 1,000 years, &etc. I suppose you could say that something is unprecedented in your lifetime, or since instrumental temperature records began (Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer in 1724). However, if you say that the current warming is unprecedented, you had better include a qualifier like “since the end of the Medieval Warm Period approximately 1300 AD”.

In recent history (the past one-hundred million years – see the following chart), average global temperature was steady at about 21º C (a balmy 70º F) for most of the period while atmospheric CO2 fell 75%, from 1,500 parts per million (ppm) to the present 380 ppm. This chart also shows we now live in a low-atmospheric CO2 environment compared to over a half-billion years ago when CO2 was 7,000 ppm. Only for a brief period (in geologic terms) 315 to 270 million years ago has both CO2 and temperatures been as low as now. Obviously, for a long time temperature not only has had a low correlation with CO2, but has been insensitive to changes in CO2. That’s what you would expect, since the Greenhouse Effect is a myth, a now-and-again coincidence that does not even fit the past fifty-year period of intermittent warming.





The Greenhouse Effect myth - Or the power of coincidence

“One of the most important factors is the greenhouse effect; a simplified explanation of which is as follows. Short-wave solar radiation can pass through the clear atmosphere relatively unimpeded. But long-wave terrestrial radiation emitted by the warm surface of the Earth is partially absorbed and then re-emitted by a number of trace gases in the cooler atmosphere above. Since, on average, the outgoing long-wave radiation balances the incoming solar radiation, both the atmosphere and the surface will be warmer than they would be without the greenhouse gases … The greenhouse effect is real; it is a well understood effect, based on established scientific principles."

The above sounds very neat. It’s too bad it’s wrong.

The abstract below, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics, Version 3.0 (September 9, 2007)” was authored by two German physicists, Gerhard Gerlich and Ralf D. Tscheuschner. 

“The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier 1824, Tyndall 1861, and Arrhenius 1896, and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarified. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet, (c) the frequently mentioned difference of 33º C is a meaningless number calculated wrongly, (d) the formulas of cavity radiation are used inappropriately, (e) the assumption of a radiative balance is unphysical, (f) thermal conductivity and friction must not be set to zero, the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified.”

The authors concluded their study hopefully: “The authors express their hope that in the schools around the world the fundamentals of physics will be taught correctly and not by using award-winning "Al Gore" movies shocking every straight physicist by confusing absorption/emission with refection, by confusing the tropopause with the ionosphere, and by confusing microwaves with shortwaves.”

Once the anthropogenic global warmists have their greenhouse effects taken away, what remains?

Global Warming - Still Dead, Al Gore

Five years ago Al Gore convinced the World that hurricanes like Katrina were due to anthropogenic global warming, and that the worst was yet to come, and on its way.

Since Al set the standard, what has happened since Katrina is fair game for global warming skeptics.

This chart shows (click on it for a larger image) that world-wide tropical cyclone activity increased in the early 1990's, dipped for a few years then increased again in the late 1990's, fell rapidly in the early 2000's, rose for four years but not as high as in the 1990's, then fell steadily for the last four years to the lowest point in the past 33 years.
Are these fluctuations normal or anomalous?

To answer that question we need to look at a longer time period. How about since 1950, which the global warming alarmists have identified as the beginning since atmospheric CO2 according to their numbers began its steady increase then, corresponding with the rapid industrialisation after World War II.

What do you think? (again, click the chart to get a larger image)

Among many obvious conclusions that can be drawn from this chart, the most important is that for about 24 years strarting in 1970, tropical cyclone activity was very low, even as CO2 increased steadily.

Would you like to comment at this time, Mr. Gore?

Notice 1950 and 1961 had stonger activity than any of the years since.

Mr. Gore, doesn't it look like the steadily higher levels of atmospheric CO2 aren't reflected in the trend of tropical cyclone activity since 1950, and doesn't that mean that there is no evidence that increasing CO2 is causing stronger, thereby more dangerous, hurricane activity?

You showed us Katrina, and said it does.

Florida State University (click on this link - their name - to read Florida State's full report) is showing us sixty years of tropical cyclone activity that says it doesn't.

CO2 goes up, hurricane activity doesn't.

That's not the way you said it happens, Al.

Talk about an incovenient truth.

CO2 Can't Cause Global Warming

Increasing CO2 can't cause global warming - the Vostok ice cores show warming precedes rising CO2, not vice versa. Since water vapor is by far the predominant greenhouse gas (95%), and can increase quickly and in huge quantities - just add heat from the sun to the 40% of the earth's surface not shielded by clouds - increased CO2 adds no net increase to warming.

Climate scientist and Hungarian, Dr. Miklos Zagoni in his paper “CO2 Cannot Cause any more “Global Warming”” dated December 2009 describes this discovery and its meaning. Dr. Zagoni beautifully sums it all up: “Since the Earth’s atmosphere is not lacking in greenhouse gases [water vapor], if the system could have increased its surface temperature it would have done so long before our emissions. It need not have waited for us to add CO2: another greenhouse gas, H2O, was already to hand in practically unlimited reservoirs in the oceans.”

Dr. Zagoni explains: “Earth type planetary atmospheres, having partial cloud cover and sufficient reservoir of water; maintain an energetically uniquely determined, constant, maximized greenhouse effect that cannot be increased further by emissions. The greenhouse temperature must fluctuate around this theoretical equilibrium constant; [change] is possible only if the incoming available energy changes.”

For further explanation of natural climate change, the Pacific decadal oscillation and other periodic fluctuations (see the Maunder Minimum and sun spot activity) complete the picture. How the simple and simplistic coincidence of 150 years of warming (following the Little Ice Age) with 50 years of rising CO2 (during which temperatures fell almost as often as they rose) could be considered proof of the need to drastically and expensively (and vainly) change all aspects of human existence is ludicrous. The genius of humanity is in adapting to, not denying, the natural forces of change. It is preposterous to think that the current climate is the optimum when we have indisputible proof that climate has and will constantly change.Read more:

Two Interesting Points Debunking Global Warming

It seems we notice what interests us. I’m very interested in seat belt goodies - and debunking the Warmists.

Some recent writers to our weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, called me a global warming denier and claimed that science by consensus supports their view of anthropogenic global warming. However, we have to thank Al Gore for inadvertently teaching us that 600,000 years of Vostok (Antarctica) ice core samples show CO² lags rather than precedes warming. If further studies are needed to prove that CO² is not the primary driver of global warming, we only have to look at the past seventy years to see that in over half of those years we had cooling as CO² rose.

In fact, the claim that recent warming is unprecedented was disproven by the observed warming of 1860 to 1880, 1910 to 1940, the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), and other periods of the past 10,000 years such as the Roman and the Holocene Climate Optimum.

Adding to the chaos of Climategate –leaked emails revealed how UN IPCC scientists tried to withhold data from public scrutiny – other recent disclosures shed light on the dubious science of anthropogenic warming. The first concerns melting Himalayan glaciers.

During our vacation in India, Alice and I read an article by an Indian scientist that contradicted claims by the UN IPCC that Indian glaciers were melting rapidly. Then we learned that the Indian skeptic was right. The UN claim in 2007 that Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 was based on a news story generated by a brief telephone interview with a little-known Indian scientist in 1999. The scientist’s research was never peer-reviewed and does not support what he purportedly said – and he now denies what was reported in his name - in the interview. A UN official now says he will recommend that the glacier assertions be eliminated from the IPCC assessment.

The fallacious Indian glacier melting ties in with apocalyptic predictions by Al Gore and the IPCC of sea level increases of six feet or more by 2100.

Jason Lowe, a leading climate researcher: "(W)e think such a big rise by 2100 is actually incredibly unlikely. The mathematical approach used to calculate the rise is simplistic and unsatisfactory."

The consensus may be frozen, but its science is melting away.

Global Cooling - Al Gore Shows the Way

I declare that this recent prolonged cold period is the beginning of global cooling - and of course is also the end of global warming.

"Wait," I hear the cry of Al Gore and His Acolytes. "How can you declare global cooling after just a month of some of the worst cold weather in the past 100 years?"

That's the easy part. Al Gore and The Warming Gurus declared a piddling Category 3 hurricane, Katrina, proof of global warming just because it got a lot of headlines for its unlucky strike ("lucky" for the Warmists) on New Orleans. So after 15 years of no appreciable warming, and almost ten years of modest cooling, I feel it's time to declare the coming of Global Cooling.

It's not like it's unprecedented. For over a million years we have had long glacial periods broken by shorter interglacial periods. The last Ice Age ended just over 10,000 years ago, and since then we have had warmer periods than today interspersed with cooler periods. In fact, during the past 11,400 years about 7,500 of those years were warmer than the present. However, the warming has been diminishing and the Little Ice Age (1300 to 1850 AD) was colder than recent preceding cold periods.

It looks like we're on the verge of another cold period, probably one similar to the Ice Age. Unlike Al Gore and His Panic Mongers, I don't think it will happen fast. The mile-thick ice sheets over Chicago won't be there for another 20,000 years. By then the sea levels will be over 400 feet lower than today.

You wouldn't need a Channel Tunnel to go from Europe to the United Kingdom, just a snowmobile or skis.

More on this

Send Democrats to Greenland

It seems just yesterday that Al Gore directed our attention to Greenland, for which we should all be grateful. Greenland artifacts of Viking habitation demonstrate that the Medieval Warm Period was, indeed, warmer than the present.

However, Al Gore and his Acolytes are nothing if not history challenged. To them "unprecedented" warming means the end of the inconvenient cooling in 1975. For awhile they tried to say that present warming was the most in the past 1,000 years, but then Mann's "hockey stick" was shattered and they had to concede the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1350 AD, well within the past 1,000 years).

Then it was unprecented warming for the past 400 years, which conveniently begins during the Little Ice Age. There sure wasn't much warming then.

Unfortunately for Al, science marches on and recent climate records for Greenland show that it was warmer, and got warmer faster, in the 1930's than our current period. (Click here for the report)

This chart of Greenland climate change for the past 170 years show that the 1930's warming was greater and faster than now.

What's a warming alarmist to do?

Nail in Man-Caused Global Warming Coffin

I have often mentioned that previous periods were warmer than the present.

Further, that these warmer periods did not cause runaway warming, although from all that the current alarmists say, they should have. If man-caused warming triggers positive feedbacks - increased water vapor traps more heat, more heat increases water vapor and generates more release of CO2 from oceans and methane from thawing permafrost - then previous warming should have done the same.

It didn't.

More proof of that, or the lack of runaway warming, is clearly shown in a recent video.

The video is great, but for quiet contemplation of the graphs showing previous periods of greater natural warming compared to the present, go to "Hockey stick observed in NOAA ice core data."

Click on this graph showing periods of climate change during the past 10,000 years. Of interest are the two periods of greater warming during the past 2,000 years - the Medieval Warm Period of about 1,000 years ago, and the even warmer Roman Period at year "0". So much for Al Gore's claim that the current warming is "unprecedented."

Obviously Al learned from Bill Clinton how to parse the truth. What Al meant to say is the current warming is unprecedented if you only look at the last 1,000 years, and then only if you use the discredited "hockey stick" prepared by Michael Mann of "Climategate" fame that eliminated both the Medieval Warm Period (850 to 1350AD) and the Little Ice Age (1350 to 1850AD).

In other words the current warming is unprecedented if you only go back to the Little Ice Age, or if you hide or overlook all the previous warming periods. For example, the graph shows at least a dozen in the past 10,000 years warmer than the present.

Climategate - Man-Caused Global Warming is Dead!

I've had so much fun reading the hundreds of e-mails that were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, that I forgot that one of my duties as a global-warming skeptic is to help publicize evidence that the alarmists are lying, distorting, or fudging climate science.

A very good spot to get a lot of information directly from the e-mails is the Bishop Hill Blog. Forinstance, Michael Mann, the creator of the discredited "hockey stick" that was/is the core of Al Gore's presentations, discusses how to destroy a journal that has published sceptic papers.(1047388489)

So far all the main stream media reports have only reported the records being hacked, and their only analyses have been that the consensus for man-caused global warming will stand. How this can be concluded without looking at the e-mails involved is beyond me, except it again illustrates how the media wants to advocate rather than report.

Bloggers will have to stay on this and keep pushing the disclosures, or the main stream media will do as usual - ignore it and hope it all goes away.

How reporters can walk - run - away from such a juicy opportunity to engage in momentous investigative reporting boggles my mind. Their editors have to really want them to carry the water for Al Gore to let that happen.

The Last Word on Rising Seas Alarmists

A writer to our local weekly newspaper accused me of being like Hitler – apparently the Left’s favorite device for silencing conservatives – because he avows that I repeat lies against anthropogenic global warming over and over until repetition gives them substance. Oddly enough, that’s the way I feel about the global warming activists; no matter the science, one outrageous claim of impending disaster follows another.

The latest was in a front-page San Francisco Chronicle article Report: rising seas could cost Ca. more than $100B, by Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writer, Wednesday, March 11, 2009.

The prediction of a 1.4-meter sea-level rise over the next century is based on international climate change models that predict more land ice melting as warming continues.

On Tuesday, top climate scientists in Copenhagen, Denmark said new research suggests that current international predictions of sea level rise are too conservative, and warned that seas could rise twice as much as previously projected.

Al Gore, of course, predicted that sea levels would rise 20 feet by 2100, over four times the amount of this most extreme current projection and about ten times what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has led us to expect.

The prediction that sea levels would rise 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) by 2100 really got my attention. The first thing that hit me was that we are already nine percent of the way this century to 2100, so we should have already experienced five inches of rising sea levels – over half of the total for the past century - if we’re going to get to 4.6 feet by 2100. So far sea levels have risen 0.7 inches since 2000, leaving us needing an increase of over 4.5 feet in the next 91 years (or an increase of 19.9 feet to satisfy Al Gore).

Have there been sea level increases in the past as great as 4.6 feet in a century? There certainly have; since the end of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago sea levels have risen over 400 feet, an average of over two feet per century. Of course the rate was about double the two-foot average during the first 10,000 years following the end of the Ice Age because there was so much ice to melt and warming was much faster than currently.

By the Holocene Climate Optimum, a warmer period than today which lasted from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago, sea level increases of approximately 400 feet had occurred, and in the last roughly 8,000 years sea levels have only risen a total of about 40 feet, or an average of half a foot per century.

Remarkably, given the dire prophecies of sea levels rising 4.6 feet this century, the Holocene Climate Optimum had exceptional warming in northern latitudes and yet sea level increases per century apparently did not exceed one foot. Why would warming of a lesser magnitude now cause melting of a far greater magnitude? It didn’t during the Medieval Warm Period (800 to 1300 AD), when tree lines in the Alps were 300 meters higher than today and Greenland glaciers had retreated much farther than at present.

This last point is significant, because according to Al Gore and his global warming alarmists, Greenland is particularly vulnerable to suddenly melting. Interestingly, scientists who have carefully studied Greenland don’t see how Gore’s or others’ dire prophesies can be fulfilled. There is ample evidence that the Greenland ice cap has withstood longer periods of warmth without significant shrinkage, and there are enormous physical barriers to sudden ice movement and rapid changes that would cause flooding. Very accurate records also show that Greenland was much warmer sixty to eighty years ago than it is now.

Temperatures were warmer in the 1930s and 1940s in Greenland. They cooled back to the levels of the 1880s by the 1980s and 1990s. In a GRL paper in 2003, Hanna and Cappelen showed a significant cooling trend for eight stations in coastal southern Greenland from 1958 to 2001 (-1.29ºC for the 44 years). The temperature trend represented a strong negative correlation with increasing CO2 levels.

We must thank Al Gore for drawing our attention to Greenland, where temperatures went down as CO2 increased for half a century. Besides the strong negative correlation between temperatures and CO2 in Greenland, scientists have found a strong positive correlation between temperatures and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.

That’s right, Al. Scientists have found a strong positive correlation with a natural force, not an anthropogenic one.

Warming in the Arctic is likewise shown to be cyclical in nature. This was acknowledged in the AR4 (the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)) which mentioned the prior warming and ice reduction in the 1930s and 1940s. Warming results in part from the reduction of arctic ice extent because of flows of the warm water associated with the warm phases of the PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) and AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) into the arctic from the Pacific through the Bering Straits and the far North Atlantic and the Norwegian Current.

Polyakov et al (2002) created a temperature record using stations north of 62 degrees N. The late 1930s-early 1940s were clearly the warmest of the last century. In addition, the numbers of available observations in the late 1930s-early 1940s (slightly more than 50) is comparable to recent decades.

The same is true for the Antarctic Ice Cap, which arguably has been increasing and would increase if warmer temperatures cause increased precipitation.

Warmer temperatures are, of course, at the heart of this issue, and I suggest that no one will be able to argue anthropogenic global warming convincingly when confronted by Climate Change: Driven by the Ocean not Human Activity, by William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus, Dept of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University (Prepared for the 2nd Annual Heartland Institute sponsored conference on Climate Change, New York City, March 8-10, 2009). In his presentation Dr. Gray clearly demonstrates that doubling of atmospheric CO2 will only increase global temperatures about one degree Fahrenheit this century. In other words, there will be no warming engine to drive Antarctic and Greenland melting and concomitant significant rising of sea levels.

Sorry Al. By 2100 you’re going to be stuck with over 19 feet in your mouth, and the more cautious scientists predicting a 4.6-foot rise will come up four feet short.

Greenhouse Gases Up, Global Temperatures Down

What does it mean when a cause factor in a model increases, and the effect it is supposed to cause decreases? One reasonable conclusion is that the causative factor in the model is wrong.

Global warming models predict that if greenhouse gases increase, warming increases. Further, if greenhouse gases increase more rapidly than predicted, warming should also increase more rapidly.

Recent increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide indicate it is increasing at a 3.5% rate per year instead of the predicted 0.9%. Therefore, warming should be increasing at an accelerating rate rather than at a reduced or negative rate, as it has in the past decade.

The Master Resource blog notes that global warming models are adrift, and Dr. Patrick J. Michaels shows that temperature observations fall at or below the models' lower temperature predictions. In other words, the models are being proven false by reality.

Time to get some new models.

Nailed on a Cross of Carbon Reduction

It is obvious, even in the UK, that: Man Caused Global Warming Disproved

When will the United States come to reality?

Strangely enough, that will occur when Obama becomes president. It's been easy for the Democrats to be global warming alarmists during the Bush administration. The Democrats could just stand back and toss accusations. Now they're in charge, and if they call a tune, they're the ones to pay the piper.

The first thing the Democrats will notice is that global warming has ended naturally. There's no way anyone can claim that mankind has caused the current cooling.

Next the Democrats will notice that the United States can't afford economy-destroying and wasted expenditures on a phantom problem, when so many real ones are challenging for a share of very limited resources.

As pointed out in the Daily Telegraph article I linked above, the final dose of reality that will strike through our leaders' thick skulls is that we won't be able to satisfy our (and the world's) energy needs through expensive and unreliable alternative energy technologies. Wind, solar, biofuel, and wave are, and will continue to be, expensive and inadequate energy sources. Nice playtoys, but nuclear, coal, oil, and gas will have to continue to carry the world's energy demands.

The only alternative is to deny further development of economies classified as undeveloped and developing, and the peoples of these nations are not going to sit back and have their futures denied by wide-eyed environmentalists living lives of luxury in the developed nations.

They'll revolt rather than have their lives nailed on a cross of carbon reduction.

One man, one Easter, is enough for all times.