Tag: greenhouse gases

This series of articles was written for the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by noted author and researcher Alex Bugaeff. We conclude the comprehensive look at the climate change debate.

Human Error and Intention

Climate change has been made into a “Cause” by proponents who seize it to advance their interests. Vast sums of money have been offered and expended in its research and promotion. Former US Senator Al Gore has turned it into a lucrative career for himself and his followers. Enormous research grants have been dangled in front of university faculties in return for findings of global warming.

Dr. Judith Curry, PhD and Chair, Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Science Emeritus, Georgia Tech University, reports that grants became awarded only to those who would find evidence of warming – “Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment…” she said.

Al Gore aside, the current push to use global warming as a political tool probably began with Philip (Phil) Jones, an English academic associated with the UK’s East Anglia University. Jones received his PhD in Hydrology (the study of the movement, distribution and quality of water on the Earth) in 1977 and began in 1979 as a Research Associate with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, advancing to Professor in 1998.

Phil Jones was a leader in the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the United Nations in 1988. He and other researchers published a series of reports which purported to prove that the globe is warming at the “alarming” rate of 1.5 degrees or so by 2100. They did this by formulating mathematical models that used CO2 as the factor by which warming was predicted. They blamed the burning of fossil fuels for the higher CO2 amounts while ignoring natural sources of it. And then, they proclaimed that this warming would be catastrophic.

The IPCC ignited controversy when it refused to release either their data or their models for analysis by outside scientists. They finally shared their data, but refused to release the mathematical models by which they analyzed it.

Using the IPCC findings, Al Gore and other warming proponents promoted policies to reduce global warming through a tax scheme he called “Cap and Trade.” Under it, corporations would pay taxes on the carbon that their businesses emitted. Gore and his adherents continue to insist that the earth is warming, that mankind is to blame and that their tax programs are the solution.

Al Gore famously cited a survey that 97% of scientists agree on the warming “theory” and that the science of warming is “settled.” He overlooked that the cited survey consisted of about 120 respondents (compared with 31,000 scientists who oppose it), that the IPCC mathematics have been withheld from scrutiny and that the Scientific Method never accepts that findings are “settled” anyway (see below).

Eventually, the data collected by the IPCC researchers began to show the truth – CO2 is a poor predictor of global temperatures. But, now there was too much at stake – money, power and fame. To maintain the illusion of infallibility, Jones and the IPCC falsified their data and conspired with NASA and NOAA among others to keep it quiet, but it came out anyway and was dubbed “Climategate.”

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In an attempt to salvage what they could, IPCC issued reports and assessments that revised their methods, data and standards without admitting anything. . It remains to be seen whether these changes will result in submission of peer reviewed data and conformity to the Scientific Method. Phil Jones has “retired.”

Can Science Ever Be “Settled?”

The discoveries of science since the Greeks have come primarily by virtue of the Scientific Method. It’s simple, really. You surmise that some phenomenon of the natural world might be true and you make a statement proposing it – the Hypothesis. You Test your Hypothesis using accepted procedures. The Test results either support your Hypothesis or they do not. Then, you publish your Hypothesis, Tests and results so that other scientists can replicate your Tests (peer review). Their results may support your Hypothesis or not.

The more that Tests by others support your Hypothesis, the more confidence you can have that your Hypothesis is reliable. But, it can never be “proven.” Someday, a new or better test may be found that fails to support your Hypothesis. That’s the nature of scientific inquiry. It can never be “settled” and must never be. Otherwise, the Earth would still be “flat.”

CO2-caused climate change is not settled science. Just the complexity of climate and the inability to replicate findings in order to test them makes it impossible. Corruption further compromises any findings. Scientific procedures can be used to track climate and elements, but fine distinctions of a degree or so are speculative.    

Conclusion

Climate and temperatures will fluctuate naturally, as they have for all of earth’s existence. The factors affecting them are out of the hands of mankind, except for those greenhouse gases over which we have some control, and they play only a relatively small role. It may be just as likely that we are cooling as that we are warming.

Considering all these factors, their variability and the difficulty of measuring them, it is not possible nor is it advisable for scientists and mathematicians to claim that their mathematical models should be the basis for investing monumental sums of money in a scheme that may be exactly the wrong thing. The findings and dire warnings of global warming proponents must be regarded as unfounded or even, as some have said, a hoax.

Mankind should be a good steward of the planet and those of us who seek to do so should continue to pressure planet abusers, such as India and China, to improve. But, we should not bankrupt ourselves and our nation to assuage a false guilt perpetrated by politicians and corrupted scientists. We need to be smarter than that. 

Illustration: Pixabay

This series of articles was written for the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by noted author and researcher Alex Bugaeff. We continue the comprehensive look at the climate change debate.

Is the Globe Warming?

Believers in climate change as a menace contend that the globe is warming, that it is warming at an alarming rate, and that the greenhouse gas, CO2, is to blame. But, is the globe warming? We must first look to the history of the earth’s temperatures.

There have been periods in long-term history when global temperatures were higher than they are today. If technological ice core readings are any measure, the Eemian Interglacial period (140,000 to 120,000 years ago) temperatures were significantly higher. During the Medieval Warm, the melting of glaciers over Greenland allowed the populating and farming of that island, hence the name. Even during the so-called Industrial period, temperatures during the mid-1930’s were higher than at present.

 “Periods of Earth warming and cooling occur in cycles. This is well understood, as is the fact that small-scale cycles of about 40 years exist within larger-scale cycles of 400 years, which in turn exist inside still larger scale cycles of 20,000 years, and so on.”

 Do Sea Levels Indicate Global Warming?

Sea levels have risen and fallen naturally over time with the arrival and departure of cold and warm periods. During glacial periods, sea levels were some 500 feet below their current levels. The Bering Land Bridge was exposed as a result of glaciation and people and animals crossed it from the Asian land mass to North America.

Since 1850, sea levels have been rising at the overall rate of about a half inch per year. These rates are affected primarily by the following: changes in the earth’s crust (mostly volcanic, tectonic plate and earthquake activity), by subsidence of lowland and unstable substrates, such as in Venice, Italy and in Atlantic Ocean barrier islands, by built-upon landfills, such as the San Francisco International Airport and the Manhattan Battery, and by glacial melting and growth (of Arctic and Antarctic glaciers). Sea levels can appear to rise because coastlands sink.

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Dr. Judith Curry, PhD, Department Chair of Earth and Atmospheric Science, Emeritus, Georgia Tech University, estimates that at their current rate, sea levels will rise about 30 inches by the year 2100. She calculates that about half that increase can be attributed to global warming.

So, is the globe warming? Not, it appears, because of increases in CO2 or other greenhouse gases. In addition to the natural highs and lows of previous eras, during the 1970’s and 1980’s there were claims that global cooling was taking place instead and that IT was a threat to civilization. Greenhouses gases were accused of cooling the earth, just as they are now accused of warming it. So, temperatures go up and down, but are the temperatures actually as they are claimed to be?

How Accurate Are Global Temperature Readings?

We should not assume that the temperatures reported, even by NASA, are accurate.

The earth’s temperatures are measured primarily using surface and satellite devices. Historically, surface devices consisted of thermometers housed in ventilated boxes set on waist-high stilts – “Stevenson screens.” Starting in the 1890’s, approximately 11,000 such devices were set around the globe and were monitored by US and British laboratories. Many of these locations were in “urban heat islands” – places where heat builds up and is stored in asphalt streets and concrete buildings, thereby giving false high readings on the thermometers placed there.

Then, in 1985 big changes were begun: Stevenson screens were replaced by a supposedly more accurate device – the Platinum Resistance Thermometer – and the number of surface stations was reduced to approximately 6,500. Also, thermometer devices were housed in buoys and were set afloat on the oceans to measure air temperatures over the seas. They have been free to drift with the currents from the beginning, raising the question of where the readings are being taken. And, all of this has introduced the question of data reliability.  https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/04/19/systematic-error-in-climate-measurements-the-surface-air-temperature-record/

From space, satellites have been “measuring” global temperatures since about 1979, but they don’t actually measure air temperature. Instead, satellites measure the radiance of earth’s features through radiometry – radio waves emitted by water, rock, soil, and the like. Air temperatures are then inferred through comparisons with trends in surface readings, as described above. That is, mathematical formulas are used to derive trends in atmospheric temperatures from the thermometer readings on the earth’s surface. 

Since direct measurement of temperatures is so inconsistent, researchers have taken to applying mathematics and statistics to its analysis. If observed results stray from the expected outcomes, these researchers “adjust” the data. If the difference is too great, they may “reconstruct” past data (reduce it) so that the current data looks warmer. As Carlin, et al found, “…each new version of GAST (Global Average Surface Temperature) has nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history. And, it was nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern. This was true for all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and Hadley CRU (Jones, IPCC).”f The sum total of the temperature accuracy question is that we cannot be sure that temperature reports are accurate or stable. The temperature devices or methods themselves, our inability to compare “apples to apples” over time because of the changes to them, and the error introduced through mathematical and other inferences cannot be relied upon to be as precise as claimed. Then, we have the issue of how the scientists’ “goals” factor in? How is human error introduced into the process?

The Report concludes tomorrow.

Illustration: Pixabay