Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   6/02/2015

        Data, statistics—bogus and real

There is so much in the global warming/climate change/disruption (or whatever current iteration of “the sky is falling”) issue that relies on bogus information and data. Scare-mongers and alarmists, absent climatic conditions and temperature trends that conform to their computer model predictions, have reverted to nearly-religious fanaticism: Humans are changing the Earth’s climate for the worse; doubt it and you’re an idiotic miscreant. Their “tell” (poker term for bluffing) is their use of ridicule, demonization and “just shut the heck up” when asked questions.

One illustration of manipulation, even fabrication, of scientific opinion is the “97 percent of scientists agree” theme. Read, “Mr. Obama, 97 percent of experts is a bogus number,” by Richard Tol. Basically, the authors cherry-picked between 40 and 60 papers out of almost 13,000; that’s 0.5 percent, not 97 percent. We are harangued that consensus on the potential (in their Armageddon-like predictions) to make the planet unsuitable for human existence, supercedes any non-scientific minds from entertaining doubts.

Of course, the list of supposedly scientific predictions of similar catastrophes in the age of modern science and academic institutions extends back about 100 years. In the 1930s, explorers and scientists pronounced the alarming decline in Arctic ice as a cause for great concern, not unlike recent alarmism over the declining (now resurging) Arctic ice sheet. The Arctic ice resumed its normal size after the 1930s; it also now appears to be expanding in spite of the dire words of prominent climate warriors like Al Gore, who assured us it would disappear (actual statement by Gore: ice-free Arctic by 2013).

Who can forget, if you are of a mature age, Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb,” a book warning of endlessly over-breeding humans exceeding the capacity of crops, precipitating vast starvation and death among Earth’s population. Never happened. Ehrlich actually took up a wager with an economist over the future prices for essential but often rare elements, selected by Ehrlich. He lost the wager over those elements, due to discoveries that, in turn, drove down the market prices in every case. Leftist greens don’t comprehend the potential for discovery and innovation.

Doom and gloom sells, especially when it can be retailed as coming from unquestioned authority, with a message that we must all do, or refrain from doing (the collectivist streak runs in such folks), some activity; or that mandates the elimination of some product. People have some psychological or emotional need to feel that they possess superior knowledge, knowledge that comes from the highest authority. Such authority leads to self-righteous attitudes by the adherents of whatever the current theory of catastrophe portends. That such alarming, threatening events are predicted, rather than occurring in the here and now, obviously requires a willing suspension of disbelief—a faith, if you will, in things not yet seen or observed but rather assured of approaching just beyond the horizon of decades hence.

Over 95 percent of all computer models have proven to be massively wrong in not predicting the current 19-year stretch without statistically significant global warming. Rather than question the underlying assumption that human-created CO2 (as opposed to natural variability) is an irreversible driver of ever higher temperatures, the climate alarmists double down on the human greenhouse gas theory—insisting the heat is somehow hiding in the oceans, or wherever. Natural climate variability is universally accepted among (even climate) scientists; those doubting that humans alone are warming the planet accept the fact that Earth’s climate does, indeed, change. It’s just that, as CO2 rises, there are no actual occurrences of higher temperatures, or an increase in hurricanes, tornadoes or droughts in an historical sense.

I would remind readers that I provided, years ago, the name of a petition signed by tens of thousands of scientists and PhDs disagreeing with the theory that human activity is the primary driver of a warming climate. I looked it up again: www.petitionproject.org. “The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of ‘settled science’ and an overwhelming ‘consensus’ in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong.

“No such consensus or settled science exists…It is evident that 31,487 Americans with university degrees in science—including 9,029 PhDs, are not ‘a few’…These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.”

Under the “Summary of Peer-Reviewed Research,” a review article about the human-caused global warming hypothesis is downloadable. Included charts, supported by 132 cited sources, reveal: Figures 1) Medieval Climate Optimum, as well as the Roman and Minoan Warm periods, were warmer than today, 2) Glacier shortening occurred before, and is unaffected by, hydrocarbon use, 3) and 5) Temperatures have correlated with the sun, not hydrocarbon use, 4) Since the Little Ice Age, the temperature trend has been 0.5 degree C. per century (DP: hardly alarming), 7) Over the same period, American rainfall has increased 1.8 inches per century, 8) and 9) Tornadoes and hurricanes have decreased or remained constant, 11) and 12) The rate of sea level increase, about 7 inches per century, has not changed with hydrocarbon use.

You are paying more for gas and electricity due to fallacious data and theories.