Meltdown: Exposing a Global Warming Truth (Part One)

Let me preface this article by acknowledging the fact that I do not possess all of the intricate details concerning our climate, its variables, and how they work (such as paleoclimatology and thermodynamics). It is also to be recognized that, in fact, nobody does. If they did, I would not need to write anything further because the issue of climate change would not be alarming. We would have scientific solutions readily available for whatever problems may arise in the future.

Keeping these facts in mind, I will now tell you why every warning and prediction about global warming is scientifically unsubstantiated at this time. There is also no empirical evidence that supports the claim linking human carbon dioxide emissions to catastrophic global warming. Since most variables of our climate are not fully understood, all calculations about our future are pure speculation.

Don’t get me wrong, talking about possible future scenarios can be important when considering present courses of action, but it is not science if the assumptions cannot be tested or reproduced with any level of certainty. The current solutions proposed for climate change have been recommended without a solid understanding of climate change. There have been zero experiments conducted that successfully duplicate past climate changes and there have been zero experiments conducted that demonstrate an effective solution to global warming.

Let’s start with the scientific aspect of climate change.

Manipulating Science

Dr. Michael E. Mann is well known for his research of historical climate and this research lead to the infamous “hockey stick” graph published in 1998. It showed a relatively stable climate for almost a thousand years with no Medieval Warm Period or Little Ice Age, then a severe spike in temperature starting just before the start of the 20th century.

Dr. Mann's Hockey Stick

In the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), released in 2001, this graph was used to help demonstrate the effects of anthropogenic global warming. In the section of the report in which the graph was published, Mann was the lead author. This conflict alone should have many people worried about the integrity of the reports, but it goes much further.

Shortly after this “hockey stick” graph gained prominence, other researchers began to question its validity. When they asked for the data and codes that Mann used to produce his graph, Mann declined to share it with them. Why would a scientist not want to share his research (which was funded by public money) if he was confident about the results? Well, as it turns out, the data he used was flawed and so was the formula that generated the graph. Even advocates of anthropogenic global warming denounced his research practices for this study.

Dr. Hans von Storch, a German scientist and advocate of man-made global warming, expressed his thoughts about this graph in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Here is what he said:

“We were able to show in a publication in ‘Science’ that this graph contains assumptions that are not permissible. Methodologically it is wrong: rubbish.”

Later in the interview, Dr. von Storch said the following:

“Our data show a distinct warming trend during the last 150 years. Yet it remains important for science to point out the erroneous nature of the Mann curve. In recent years it has been elevated to the status truth by the UN appointed science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).This handicapped all that research which strives to make a realistic distinction between human influences and climate and natural variability.”

When asked why critics of the “hockey stick” weren’t able to make their case, Dr. von Storch said this about Dr. Mann:

“His influence in the community of climate researchers is great. And Mann rejects any reproach most forcefully.”

This “rubbish” known as Mann’s “hockey stick” theory was allowed to be printed in an international report produced for governments to assess policies that would greatly affect how we live. This graph has been debunked time and again over the last few years and it presents a serious problem for the credibility of climate science. As shocking as it is that a United Nations organization would be somewhat politicized, erroneous assumptions of statistical data is seemingly an every day occurrence in science and has been for quite some time. In some cases, all of the research is based on conjecture alone.

An astonishing example of this was the study of the effects of nuclear war. In 1983, the TTAPS study (an acronym derived from the names of the participants) attempted to calculate the effects of multiple nuclear warhead detonations on the climate. The paper was called, Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions. Despite having no data for any of their calculations, which included such variables as target flammability and the amount of particles thrown into the atmosphere from the blast, they came to the conclusion in their nuclear winter scenario that Earth’s temperatures could decrease by 20 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Imagine running a computer model to make such a prediction when all of your variables are unknown.

Scientists and other “experts” are not infallible. Sometimes large groups of them are wrong. In some cases, everybody is wrong. There is no such thing as proof by consensus. In many instances, a consensus arises because of a lack of evidence, not because of convincing evidence. Science only requires one person to be right with data that can be reproduced to verify the claim. Consensus is irrelevant if data and experiments support or refute the argument.

Nicolaus Copernicus did not share the consensus’ Ptolemaic view that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo Galilei was able to verify the theories of Copernicus through observation but was met with hostility from many people who belonged to the consensus. Isaac Newton contributed even further to the previous discoveries. If the views of the consensus were to be blindly accepted as science, why would there be a need for these men and their scientific research? These scientists were skeptical of traditional beliefs and they proved themselves right through observation and experimentation.

Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein certainly were not part of any consensus when they developed their theories of natural selection and relativity, respectively. Robert Dietz and Harry Hess would hardly be considered a consensus with respect to their contributions on plate tectonics. Throughout history we often see public perceptions and widely held beliefs shattered by one man’s research or by the work of very few. It does not take thousands of people to develop a theory and conduct experiments to prove it. It only calls for one man with ingenuity.

The advocates of the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis (it’s not a theory) that blame humans for a slight rise in temperature over the past 100 years ask us to believe what they say because of the size of the group saying it. In reality, all they need to do is produce conclusive data and apply it to some type of experiment to reproduce the results of their climate models. This has not happened. Climate models are not evidence. They are not supposed to replace the scientific method. They should only be complementary at most, not the proof itself.

Climate models have demonstrated a consistent inaccuracy to replicate current and past climates. The reason for this is almost the same reason why the TTAPS study was completely unreliable, and that is because much of the data is not known. In addition to unknown data, many of the interacting processes of climate, such as sea ice, land surface, oceanic, and atmospheric components, are not even close to being fully understood. If scientists do not entirely comprehend these processes, how can they generate an accurate computer model to forecast past, current, and future climates?

The answer is: They cannot.

All computer models require human input of raw data and equations or algorithms. The computer needs to be told by these humans which components have a stronger influence, or forcing on the climate. If one of the people programming a model happens to believe that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing global warming, then he will naturally put more emphasis on that forcing factor. Never mind the fact that nobody is sure exactly how much each factor influences our climate. This entire process is typically subjective. Add to this the fact that almost all climate models require human adjustments after the model run in order to more accurately reflect observed measurements, and you now have a generally unreliable data source replacing the tried and true method of experimentation.

To fully understand how accurate these models can be, let’s do a simple calculation. Let’s assume everyone knows about probability and how it can be applied to a climate model’s precision. If the model can calculate multiple variables to determine the effects of each one on our climate and determine their collective effects, then its accuracy can be tested by taking each variable’s degree of certainty and multiplying it by the others until the calculation is complete for the total number of variables.

To make our calculation simple, let’s use ten variables at a certainty of 95% for each one. That means we thoroughly know and understand 95% of everything there is to know about each individual variable and its effects. When discussing our climate, this is a very high percentage of certainty. So, our simplified calculation is the following:

95% or 0.95 multiplied by itself 10 times = 60% accuracy

After only ten variables calculated, there is already 40% uncertainty of the final analysis. Take into consideration the fact that scientists don’t have anything close to a 95% certainty about our climate variables and the fact that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of different components that go into climate change, and it is clear that these models would have considerable difficulty making accurate forecasts without extensive human (subjective) manipulation of the process. This means the models are subject to frequent, corruptible influences. That’s hardly a replacement for scientific experimentation.

Despite having information from multiple climate models and peer-reviewed, scientific articles about global warming, the predicted range of temperature increases over the next century by the IPCC’s 4th assessment report have about a 300% margin of error!

Does this satisfy the requirements of science when it’s understood that government policies affecting our lives will be based on this information?

Invoking the Media

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this is the apparent need for the media to corroborate stories of global warming for the scientists. Science should be able to stand on its own, independent of irrelevant news stories that hype normal weather patterns and occasional, but natural, regional disasters. The media makes a news story out of almost every weather event as if thunderstorms have never happened in the Midwest, hurricanes have never hit the Southeast, and snow has never fallen in Buffalo.

Everything is blamed on global warming, and that’s just how the advocates want it. They have managed to convince a large number of the population that any weather conditions are the result of global warming. If there’s a heat wave in Minnesota, if it snows in Texas, or if it rains in Arizona, it’s global warming. They have even been able to persuade people to believe that forest fires are a result of this. But an important question to ask is, why does science need the media to promote its so-called “evidence” of global warming?

There are two simple answers. The first one is: scientists that are advocating for anthropogenic global warming know that they lack any real evidence of their claims. The second one is more troubling: this is how you spread propaganda.

Unfortunately, this is not a new technique.

Several decades ago, a man named Paul Ehrlich began making alarming predictions about the future. He claimed that overpopulation of the planet would cause hundreds of millions of people to starve to death in the 1970’s, and then revised the number in a later scenario to four billion people by 1989. It never happened. He claimed that the world would suffer from severe shortages or total depletion of oil and many other natural resources long before the turn of the last century. It never happened. He believed that half of all species on Earth would be extinct by the year 2000. It never happened.

However, many people bought into the hysterical claims. Why? Dr. Ehrlich was an ecological scientist which apparently gave him routine authority on such matters. He was seen and heard quite often in the media conducting interviews, writing books, and visiting nightly talk shows.

Many predictions about catastrophes would be made over the years by many people and the media was always more than willing to report on it, whether it was scientifically verified or not. Sometimes the current, observed evidence directly contradicted the soothsayer’s warnings.

The founder of the environmental organization Worldwatch Institute, Lester Brown, made predictions in 1981 about an inevitable increase in world food prices that would apparently become a major problem because of increasing populations. Thirteen years later, he claimed that the world’s farmers would not be able to produce enough food for the rising global population. In 1997 he again made another statement claiming the scarcity of food would be society’s defining issue in the near future. There has never been a global food shortage or a dramatic rise in prices since Brown’s 1981 prediction.

Food production has actually been increasing since long before his first dire warnings.

For many decades, so-called “experts” - including scientists - have been producing untested prophecies about everything from the causes of various cancers to the effects of nuclear fallout.

In 1988, actor Ted Danson predicted that in ten years (which would have been 1998) the oceans will be dead because of human pollution. Two decades later, the oceans are still alive.

In 1991, as the oil fires were burning in Kuwait, Carl Sagan (the letter S in the TTAPS study) attempted a prophetic claim that those fires would cause an effect similar to the nuclear winter scenario, meaning that temperatures would be abnormally cold around the world. It was to be dubbed “the year without a summer.” He said it would damage worldwide crops and that this should be taken into consideration with respect to our war plans. This was another prediction that never came to fruition.

Who doesn’t remember the hysteria about the new millennium? How many reports and predictions were we blessed with concerning mass computer failures which would result in crashing economic markets, food shortages, and total anarchy? There were survival guides to help people get through the year without having to rely on any societal functions like transportation, law enforcement, shopping, banking, or communication services. Meanwhile, the new millennium came and went with nothing more than a larger than usual New Year’s celebration.

Most of these stories were proudly flaunted by the media and most of the people trying to articulate these opinions willingly sought them out. They knew what the media was capable of doing and how effective it could be to use them. All the hype surrounding the new millennium showed that the media is eager to promote outlandish stories just for the sake of manufacturing crises to generate revenue. If there is something that the media understands fully, it is that death sells and fear sells. If you can combine the two, you have one hell of a tale.

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The template has not changed with global warming. Promoters of alarmism are merely following an age-old tradition used by many activists and scientists in the past. Sadly, most of these people that go to the media to advance their cause don’t have the science needed to back their claims. The ones who do have extensive research don’t have a good enough story to make the news cycles or an international government endorsing a fabricated consensus.

Many of the people promoting environmental issues and trying to use scientific claims to support their extreme policies are not even qualified members of the scientific community, like Laurie David, Cheryl Crow, and many other actors and singers. The most prominent advocate for anthropogenic global warming, Al Gore, has even admitted to exaggerating catastrophic scenarios in order to frighten the public into believing in his cause. Dr. James Hansen, scientist and the “father of global warming”, has admitted to the same thing. They do this knowing that the media will pick up the story and run with it. Is this acceptable behavior from scientists and political leaders?

[img_assist|nid=17897|title="Global Warming by Al Gore"|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=81]

To date, there is no scientific evidence that links human activities to global warming. There is no scientific evidence that proves there will be catastrophic warming. There is no scientific evidence that proves warmer temperatures will destroy the planet. There is no scientific evidence that proves carbon dioxide is the primary climate forcing agent. There is no scientific evidence that proves ice core records provide uncorrupted and accurate readings of past or current atmospheric content. There is no scientific evidence that proves we can cause a runaway greenhouse effect.

However, there is plenty of evidence that counters these claims. But you will be lucky to ever hear it in the media. So, as I said at the beginning, if we knew all of the different variables and how they work, and if we had all of the solutions, then there is no need for alarm because our scientists will be able to fix our problems. It is obvious, nevertheless, that we do not have any real solutions, which makes it clear to any rational person that we do not fully understand how our climate works. Anyone who claims that they do is not only a liar, but is completely agenda-driven and dangerous to society.

Believe what you want to believe, but at least do some research and use a little common sense before you form your opinions and advocate for a global cause. Don’t blindly accept a news report or what is spoken in an interview simply because it’s a scientist saying it. We are all victims of subjectivity in one way or another, but that does not mean we should rely on biased scientific reports. The climate science is not settled, but if you don’t believe me, ask the 17,000-plus scientists who agree.

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