Global Warming Fact and Fiction - a skeptical response.

By Xax

Part three

DATA (in song because this whole thing can get boring)

++ "He out shocked in every single way. He'll stop at nothing just to get his political say" ++

James Hansen is a well known guy in the climate change/global warming debate. He was one of the first scientists to raise concern in the late 80s. At the time of his warning, there was no significant evidence of global warming leading some to doubt it. While Hansen acknowledged the problem, "it is clear that a large part of the eventual greenhouse warming owing to anthropogenic gases already in the atmosphere has not yet occurred", he still believed that there was a "climate time bomb" due to growing green house gases. In fact, it was worse not seeing a response "because the positive climate feedbacks associated with a high sensitivity only come into play in response to the warming." Does that make sense? Increases gases = increased warming = increased feedback. Despite that fact that we had no evidence, if we waited to gather more information, the continued buildup would make things worse. We couldn't afford to wait. He made those statements in 1990, yet they sound so similar to arguments I hear today.

Hansen made news in Nov 16 2008 in the UK Telegraph:
"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record..."

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running…

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with."

Hmmm, October was not the hottest on record in 2008 despite inflammatory claim to the contrary. And scientists aren't doing quality control with the data they are getting? That's disturbing. If that's the case, then why should we trust the data given to us before 2008? Maybe some of their other claims were wrong too. Oh wait.

++ "Me mind on fire. Me soul on fire. Feeling hot hot hot" ++

Wasn't 1998 supposed to be the hottest year on record? It was everywhere wasn't it? Now there is a reasonable explanation for why 1998 was so hot, but some people did not report that. And if they did, they glossed over it. Why? Because global warming is hot. It's sexy. It sells.

USA Today. Jan 12 1999

"Part of the warmth of 1998 was because of one of the strongest El Ninos that the 20th century has ever seen. El Nino, a pool of warm ocean water off the coast of Latin America, affects climate worldwide.

But some scientists view the heat of 1998 as an indication of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which are released by factories and cars. Many scientists say the gases are building up and trapping heat in the Earth's atmophere."

"El Nino was certainly a contributor," says Tom Karl, senior scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C."...The only explanation consistent with the data is an increase in greenhouse gases."

Actually it turns out that El Nino was a main factor for the warmth during 1998.

National Geographic Magazine. 1999

"It rose out of the tropical Pacific in late 1997, bearing more energy than a million Hiroshima bombs. By the time it had run its course eight months later, the giant El Nino of 1997-98 had deranged weather patterns around the world...

El Nino's abnormal effects on the main components of climate-sunshine, temperature, atmospheric pressure, wind, humidity, precipitation, cloud formation, and ocean currents-changed weather patterns across the equatorial Pacific and in turn around the globe. Indonesia and surrounding regions suffered months of drought. Forest fires burned furiously in Sumatra, Borneo, and Malaysia...Temperatures reached 108°F (42°C) in Mongolia"

To be fair, NASA said they were misquoted about 1998 being the warmest year:

"Contrary to some statements flying around the internet, there is no effect on the rankings of global temperature. Also our prior analysis had 1934 as the warmest year in the U.S. , and it continues to be the warmest year, both before and after the correction to post 2000 temperatures. However, as we note in that paper, the 1934 and 1998 temperature are practically the same, the difference being much smaller than the uncertainty."

What about the claim that the ten hottest years were since 1990? Isn't that what Al Gore said? When that movie came out, groups like the Sierra Club were all over that. Looks like they were wrong about that too because I only know of four: 1990, 1998, 1999 and 2006.

++ "City's breakin' down on the camel's back. They just have to go 'cause they don't know when" ++**

These temperature readings come from respected institutions. I do not what to throw entire organizations in the toilet but we must look how the data is collected. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) admitted in the October debacle they had low quality control over the information they received. Turns out the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is having some trouble with their surface temperature stations. Some of the temperature stations are in violation of National Weather Service's standards. The National Weather Service is a department within the NOAA. The weather stations are located next to air conditioners, parking lots, on roof tops and near other structures which can throw off temperature. Also, sometimes weather stations are missing information for weeks at a time, and they fill in that missing information based on computer algorithms. Ask yourself: "Shouldn't we rely on actual temperature data and not extrapolations, especially if those extrapolations occur over a period of weeks?" Also, if that computer algorithm is based on faulty information, how can it be reliable?

++ "Up in the Himalayas, C'mon I Wanna Lay Ya" ++

We hear that the Polar Ice cap is melting, but is it true?

Wattsupwiththat.com. May 13 2009

"Below is a visual comparison of DMI 1958 Arctic temperatures vs. 2009, showing that temperatures have hardly changed since the start of their record...Below is an overlay directly showing that 2009 temperatures (green) are similar to 1958 (red) and close to the mean. Blue is mean temperature for the 41 year record...

Temperatures have warmed since the start of the satellite record, but they cooled even more between 1940 and 1980...

Everyone (including NSIDC) quietly acknowledges that most of the Arctic was warmer in the 1940s than now-so they shift the warming argument to the Alaska side. However, that argument also has problems. Alaska temperatures rose at the positive PDO shift in 1977, and have cooled again with the recent negative PDO shift-as seen below. 2008 was notable in that Alaska glaciers started to increase in size."

By the way there's one ice shelf that has been perpetually "collapsing" since 1993.

++ "I've got to go home. Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there"++

We've been cooling since Jan 2007 and continue to do so today. There's a handy chart here.

Even the NY Times admits that there's cooling happening.

"This was the sixth coolest July on record. The high was 86 on July 17. For June and July, the average as of Thursday was 70.6, the third coolest. As of the end of the day Thursday, the average temperature in July was 72.6, nearly four degrees below normal.

"A monthly departure of four degrees below normal is very significant," said Gary Conte, a National Weather Service meteorologist."

If you continue to read that article, they try to dismiss this cooling by citing natural causes, like rainfall, cloud cover and oceans. Yet if skeptics try to use the same line of logic-that increasing climate temperatures are due to natural variations-we're called "The Deniers", we ignore the science, and we're being fed talking points from oil and petroleum insiders who hate the earth and its entire people.

++ "Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air. There's no air, no air." ++

There are two important parts to this debate. Are humans the driving force behind global climate change? No. Do increases in Carbon Dioxide precede temperature increases? No. The bombshell is that CO2 increases AFTER, AFTER, AFTER temperature increases.

Science. March 14 2003:

Nicolas Caillon states (Bolding is my own):

"The analysis of air bubbles from ice cores has yielded a precise record of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, but the timing of changes in these gases with respect to temperature is not accurately known because of uncertainty in the gas age-ice age difference. We have measured the isotopic composition of argon in air bubbles in the Vostok core during Termination III (240,000 years before the present). This record most likely reflects the temperature and accumulation change, although the mechanism remains unclear. The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation."

So if there's evidence that increased carbon dioxide comes after increased temperatures, then the notion that we need to reduce our carbon output to stop warming goes up in smoke.


SUMMARY

There is enough evidence for me to doubt the conventional wisdom on global warming. The climate is a complex system in constant flux. The historical record on temperatures has shown that the earth is prone to massive temperature swings. All of these swings happened before mankind created the combustible engine. There's reason to believe that these temperature swings are happening now and we have no control over it. If Venus is a good example of the harm that positive feedback and warming can do to a planet, it's also a good example of how there were no humans on that planet to push that warming along. It happened on its own. While knowledge about the climate has increased, we do not fully comprehend the intricacies of the whole system. If we did weather prediction would be A LOT more accurate. The data produced by respected institutions can be corrupted. It can be corrupted by improper quality control, by faulty readings or by people are politically or personally motivated to pursue an agenda and ignore those who disagree. Heck, even the EPA suppressed contradictory reports about global warming.

The correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature is not as simple as the blanket metaphor commonly used to explain global warming. There are things you must consider. Increasing carbon dioxide does not significantly increase temperature, the logarithmic effect. Also, there's pre-historic evidence that temperature increases occur before carbon dioxide increases. And nearly half of the carbon we emit into the air does not make it into the atmosphere. Where does it go? No one really knows.

You can disagree with me, but you should not ignore or dismiss me. The reality is that there are concrete reasons to be skeptical of anthropogenic global warming. Many of those reasons are based on scientific and mathematical evidence. It is because of that, that we 'deniers' take a cautious look at bills like Cap and Trade. This is something that will have a significant effect on our economy, most of it bad. But, global warming fanatics continue to push this line of a planet in peril and how we must act quickly to decrease our carbon output. It's imperative that skeptics just "Shut Up". President Obama admits that Cap and Trade will increase electricity rates by making it harder to build coal fire plants, drill for oil or natural gas. Europe signed onto the Kyoto Protocol and is still working to decrease their emissions. MIT states that the cap and trade in Europe has had no significant impact "in a macroeconomic sense", but what about on a microeconomic scale? Well, there are employer layoffs due to high energy prices and causing some industries to outsource to other countries like Morocco and China. Spain is having problems because for every 1 "green job" created, 2 conventional jobs are lost. How does a program like that help boost a country's economy? It doesn't. This is why China and India have essentially said "Fuck you guys" and I don't blame them.
If you want to decrease our use of fossil fuels, then you have to be realistic about it. Alternative sources are not economically viable. They are unreliable. How do you efficiently store the energy from wind and solar when it stops blowing and turns dark? They are often inefficient compared to common sources. Ethanol blends have less energy than gasoline and reduce fuel economy in cars. They can require more energy input to create than they give out. It takes the energy of fossil fuels like coal to split hydrogen from water via electrolysis. The other cheaper option is to split hydrogen from methane. To make ethanol you have to grow the crops, fertilize them, process them, ship and pump the ethanol in special tanks and pipes. Solar, wind and bio-fuels are heavily subsidized by the US government in order to make them competitive. That means you're paying twice for the same thing- through subsidy tax dollars (which makes it possible for them to bring these energies to market) and then through direct payments to the individual alternative energy companies. It's lunacy. The most viable alternative is nuclear. It's a technology we are familiar with and it can be used to meet current and future US energy demands. But while we are working on this "alternative", we should continue to exploit what we know works and what we have. It just makes sense.


**If anyone knows what the heck they are really saying let me know, because it's all over the map out there.