Last time I wrote about global warming, I said this:
I won’t claim the climate isn’t changing. That much is obvious. But I have yet to see anyone show that we’re causing it. What’s more, I have yet to see anyone show that the climate would stop changing if we (magically) completely eliminated pollution tomorrow – and there’s certainly practically no evidence that we can actually reverse it.
As it turns out, I was wrong; the climate isn’t really changing.
I suspect some of you are staring at your screen with your jaw on the floor. Allow me to elaborate. You know the CRU? The group which was at the forefront of the pro-Anthropogenic-Global-Warming movement? The group whose e-mails were leaked, displaying their scientific misconduct to the world?
Their director, Phil Jones, has temporarily resigned from his position while the whole thing is investigated. What’s more, he has publicly admitted that not only is global warming not caused by man, but nothing significant is happening!
But don’t take my word for it. In his interview with the BBC, he admits that since 1995 there has been no statistically significant planetary warming. He goes on to quibble over “almost significant” and “over longer periods of time”, in an effort to still support his pro-AGW stance, but then he says this:
Of course, if the [Medieval Warming Period] was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today (based on an equivalent coverage over the NH and SH) then obviously the late-20th century warmth would not be unprecedented.
Forbes.com points out that “A Nature study last year showed water temperatures in the Indonesia area were the same in medieval times as they are today.”
In other words, there is, in fact, evidence that the MWP was just as warm as we see things today, which means our current warmth is not unprecedented.
Why does this all this matter? Well, people who think global warming is man-made always point to greenhouse gases as the cause. Since 1995, we’ve increased our yearly GHG production by 26%; however, this has had no effect on planetary temperatures.
So if greenhouse gases don’t actually affect the planet’s temperature, and if there have been similar warm periods in the past, then what evidence remains to support AGW?
Jones also states something else:
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don’t believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view.
The director of the Climate Research Unit believes the debate is not over. How then can Gibbs, the White House press secretary, make the statement he made back in December?
… on the order of several *thousand* scientists have come, uh, to the conclusion that, uh, climate change is happening. Uh, I don’t think that’s, uh, anything that is quite frankly, among most people, in dispute anymore.
Even the CRU didn’t really know whether climate change is happening, or whether it’s man-caused. (If they were sure, there would have been no reason to engage in all the scientific misconduct they did.)
I, for one, am uncomfortable making policies based on such controversial opinions.
There are plenty of reasons to reduce pollution, so it’s complete and utter nonsense to base any pollution-reducing measures on whether global warming is happening (or even on whether it’s our fault). (Here I’m referring to the Copenhagen conference, whose stated goal is, according to Gibbs, to “stop and reverse climate change”.)
I’m not well versed in climatology, but this whole CRU thing is based on two people. The head of the CRU and some guy from Penn State. They don’t represent the entire field of climatology nor the entire research of that field. I’m not sure why what a press secretary and two other guys says makes a difference over thousands of people’s research. I think this is a pertinent quotation from the article:
“I’m 100% confident that the climate has warmed. As to the second question, I would go along with IPCC Chapter 9 – there’s evidence that most of the warming since the 1950s is due to human activity.”
You also missed the part about volcanic eruptions having a cooling effect on the planet. I can speak on that a little, because it is mentioned in my geology text. There was an eruption in 1815 in Tambora Indonesia that was the largest volcanic eruption in a millennium. In 1991 there was an eruption in the Philippines (Mount Pinatubo) that “dropped temperatures approximately half a degree Celsius for a couple of years. While this may not seem like much, it was enough to temporarily offset the global warming trend of the past 100 years”
Again, as a wannabe geologist, the Earth is a pretty darn complex system and there is a lot we don’t understand about it. So I think it is even harder for non-scientists who aren’t in the field to understand what exactly is going on. It seems like the majority of scientists in the field are saying “Hey, this is a problem.” Politicians, corporate interests, and non-scientists are saying “Hey wait, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And my question to that is, what motivation to climatologists have to make up global warming? There’s no smoking conspiracy theory email or message. It’s all vague communications from a few guys, which again, isn’t representative of the entire climatology community.
I don’t know; what motivation would they have to refuse to share their data? What motivation would they have to selectively ignore data that’s inconvenient for their desired outcome? (For example, the CRU ignored tons of Russia’s data for no apparent reason and refused to explain why.)
Two people? I suggest you google for the list of leaked e-mails. There were far more than two people involved, and not all of them were part of the CRU.
The misconduct those leaked e-mails showed was not limited to just hiding data. Scientists were encouraged to hide data, yes, as well as ignore Freedom of Information Act requests; several scientists made comments about deliberately preventing skeptics from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. So they weren’t just hiding their own data, they were actively censoring their skeptics.
Several scientists also made statements in those e-mails along the lines of “we can’t explain what we’re seeing”.
It’s not just a couple of vague e-mails; it’s a large set of very clear communications about the issue, showing that they themselves aren’t certain global warming is even happening, and that they don’t want the world to know they aren’t sure.
From the e-mails, it’s clear that for some unfathomable reason (funding?), they have a vested interest in making the world believe in global warming, even though they themselves aren’t sure it’s happening.
I still want to know how all the AGW enthusiasts can claim we’re causing global warming when clearly, all our greenhouse gases in the last fifteen years have not affected the temperature in any statistically significant way.
The effects of Global Warming is getting much stronger these days. We should concentrate more on alternative energy to reduce carbon emissions.
Great posts.
Imagine: If we were all pointing to actual data sources.
We would have nicknames for them. No such thing.
Humans just like yelling at each other.
There are an additional 700 million people on the planet under age 7 since 2012 exhaling billions of pounds of CO2 each year. (plants love CO2, good for crops)
There are over a million (hard to believe) underwater volcanoes whose activity is not a constant.
Besides the Sun’s cycles we know about, its ultraviolet and infrared change and that data hard to find. Why?