Cooling the Heat on Climate
October 1, 2023
Warming and cooling, warming and cooling, warming and cooling has been a repeating pattern of earth’s climate in the tens of thousands of years of recent geologic history.
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I learned of these cycles and of the interglacial periods between them when I studied geology at Brooklyn College. I have learned, too, of the fluctuating mini-cycles of earth temperature changes within a major swing. Whether the earth is entering another Ice Age, as1970s doomsayers alarmed the public with, or is still warming from the last global “chill,” must be predicated on reliable weather data assembled from very wide sampling and connected over very long periods of time. The assumption that all the relevant data regarding mini-cycles needed to arrive at a comprehensive and intelligent analysis could even be gathered, let alone assembled, to establish a long-range trend is false to begin with. In common parlance, this is known as guessing.
That global warming is caused by CO2 is another shot in the dark, since a global so-called “greenhouse effect” attributed to CO2 cannot be finally established, let alone form the basis for attempting to control a gas that is in fact essential to life.
No one can seriously deny that climate changes. It always has. But so-called “climate change denying” is a phony political smear term. Those at the receiving end of this accusation justifiably cry foul against politically branded “climate change” policy that calls for fleecing the public and subjecting millions (billions?) of people to extreme hardship and possible starvation. And for what? A miniscule rise in temperature since the last Ice Age?
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To design programs, allocate funds, and recruit labor and resources toward averting a climate-change disaster based on guessing is hugely ridiculous, unless it be to leverage political power through alarmist politics.
Who can seriously deny that climate alarmists have been wrong in their predictions over and over and over again, within a single century? Blame this not on computer modelling per se but on computer modelers who keep forgetting or ignoring the GIGO factor (Garbage In, Garbage Out) in any computer model that uses incomplete or faulty data, which guarantees a flawed output.
Again, this is to not say that the earth isn’t warming but that if it is, there is precious little anyone can do about it – except play swindler politics or gain political advantage.
Reporting anecdotes and hearsay as facts about the climate has become routine journalism in recent years – oh, like claiming that “climate change” is being caused by unusually hot summers, flooding disasters, earthquakes, you-name-it, all of which are repetitions of similar events over a span of centuries. Today’s weather anomalies are as much proof of “climate change” as leaning on a weak and cracking wall that collapses is proof of an earthquake in progress.
I happen to be a gardener who has kept a sharp eye on the weather. This led me in 1963 to research temperature extremes in and around New York City from 1872 to 1963. I discovered that every year broke temperature records except 1877 and 1958, and in 4 out of 5 years both highs and lows were broken. My 9-decades-long survey of temperature anomalies around New York City told me that extreme temperature fluctuations are a constant of New York City weather. (What a surprise!) But to use such incomplete data as I assembled to feed an analysis of long-term temperature “averages” in any particular region is to oversimplify the problem, to say the least. It is just such simplicity that we must not accept in analyzing long-range climate.
The mischief of myopic viewing of weather patterns – extended to climate – was the subject of a Senate floor speech delivered by Senator James Inhofe in 2006:
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“Climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today’s temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age [1300-1850] is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend…It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th century [following the end of the Little Ice Age] means we are all doomed…[And while] man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until…the 1970’s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age. Let me repeat, temperatures got colder after CO2 emissions exploded. If CO2 is the driving force of global climate change, why do so many in the media ignore the many skeptical scientists who cite these rather obvious inconvenient truths?” [Full text of speech here.]
Since it is rarely mentioned, it ought to be stated now and frequently that CO2 is not a gas that only comes from burning fossil fuels. It is also a gas that we all eliminate when we exhale, which is taken up by plants for their growth. Plants in turn release oxygen as their “waste gas.” When have you heard of this essential cycling between CO2 and oxygen in the mainstream media? (It makes me sometimes quip: “You want to reduce your carbon footprint? Stop breathing.”)
Climate change alarmism is ironically leading to a growing skepticism, a sign I think that its doomsday scenario is headed for a doomsday of its own making. The great falsehood that there is scientific consensus on climate change condemns the alarmist projection of a looming climate disaster to the proverbial dustbin of history.
Most Americans know when their intelligence is being insulted and won’t buy the hysteria being pushed over climate change by global warming fanatics.
Image: Anthony J. DeBlasi
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