Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   11/27/2018

Obsessing over climate, migrants

Spectacles that consumed the public’s attention (or at least the news media’s idea of what the public cares about) included the “Fourth National Climate Assessment,” or NCA for short, and the mobs of migrants attempting to breach the sovereign border of the United States at San Ysidro. We were lectured over future calamities if we don’t “address” the “issue” of human-caused global warming/climate change. The scary-image news crowd also provided us with videos of tear gassing from the clash with Border Patrol officers.

Some thoughts: Human-caused (or anthropogenic) global warming—now apparently including any meteorological inconvenience or catastrophe—has been a never-ending source of mostly futuristic projections tied to current/recent phenomena. People overwhelmingly put it near the bottom of issues they feel are important, mostly because they probably conclude that weather has been with us forever and inclement weather is to be expected. What has changed has been the ability of news media to make local or regional bad weather into a national story.

Likewise, with our catastrophic fires. They can be caused by power line malfunctions, overgrown forest fuel and homes built with non-fire-resistant materials—placed in proximity to each other—that would, in normal conditions, pose no fire threat. The global warming advocates and alarmists care not for the details of contributory factors when they can regale the public with frightening scenarios supporting their go-to solution of more government control and higher (carbon, in this case) taxes.

 If you thought that inquisitive journalists would do research and inform us of the history of environmental predictions that have proven inaccurate, or even completely wrong, you’d be in error. Read “A quick refresher course to remind us of previous global warming/cooling scares” by Jack Heliner. Read the headlines, over 120 years, of dozens of alarms of catastrophic warming and coming ice ages. Be afraid now.

You would also be mistaken to think they would dig into the climate report data to discover any contradictions. For instance, the infamous “hockey stick,”—a graph with a sharp upturn to supposedly show the radical warming of recent decades—was promoted in Al Gore’s movie warning everyone about catastrophes to come. Penn State Professor Mann, who created the graph, has never provided the entirety of his data for the essential role of "peer review," necessary to prove or disprove inaccuracies.

British climatologist Phil Jones, of East Anglia’s climate research unit, had to admit that the Medieval Warming Period was warmer than current times and was a world-wide occurrence. Authorities have had to admit that the actual UN reports don’t directly support the summaries provided to the media and political consumers. They are given the talking points and narratives supportive of government efforts and anti-carbon solutions preferred by the alarmist partisans. I have dozens of articles and hundreds of pages supporting the non-alarmist and realistic approach to conflicting data.

Endless record highs? Not true. Those regular pronouncements rely on ground sensors that 1) have hot streets, parking lots and large building air conditioning built up nearby, and 2) have had numerous adjustments made downward for earlier readings that make current temps appear higher. Moreover, I’ve seen where the “margin of error” is larger than the actual increase from prior readings, making it all unreliable.

A graph derived from https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/, NOAA’s Climate At A Glance, shows an unremarkable trend over nearly 30 years. When the current temperature is placed along a straight line going back to 1989, and compared to the rolling 2-year average and all four National Climate Assessments, a curious pattern is evident. The 1990 average is a tiny fraction of a degree below now; the average goes down, up, down and up until the 1st NCA in 2000—at which point the average is almost exactly the same as now.

When the 2^nd NCA came out in 2009, the average had been below current temperatures continuously, and almost a whole degree lower than now. The average then went up to the current level and back down for the 3^rd NCA. For the current, 4^th NCA (you better be sitting down), the average global temperature went up slightly before falling back to the current NOAA-derived yearly level.

So, the global average was at or below the current temperature from 1990, through 2000, 2009, and 2014, and now, 2018. It went up slightly for the last few years before returning to the current level. What is the basis for the hysteria, the doom-and-gloom, the sky-is-falling projections? There has been no net change for almost 30 years. Neither tornados, nor hurricanes, nor rainfall, nor blizzards have increased.

The Camp conflagration had a similar cause as one that killed 500 in Minnesota a century ago: then there was tinder dry slash left on the forest floor ignited by sparks from a passing locomotive; now we had dry fuel built up over decades ignited by sparks from a PG&E utility transformer. Clear and thin the forests!

On the migrant confrontation: Yes, separated children and tear gassed crowds are disturbing—just as they were under Barack Obama’s policies. Don’t throw rocks; you won’t get tear gassed. Outraged partisans in the media and political class didn’t condemn Obama—it’s only Trump that they hate; it’s only America that they wish ill upon. The political and cultural elite simply prefer to import the third world.

American reporters won’t tell you about the preponderance of military-age single men or the source of the millions of dollars of support. They seem disinterested in the hard-core socialist, anti-American agenda behind “Pueblo Sin Fronteras,” (People without borders) and other hard left, pro-Chavista (as in the Venezuelan dictator) groups. However, Univision and other Spanish outlets did report about such things, as well as the criminals and Bangladeshis among the Central Americans.

See: “Media Tells Us Border Patrol are Bad Guys For Not Letting Illegals Force Way Into U.S.” by Nina Bookout; “Examining the Migrant Horde-Pt 2—The Power Behind the Horde” by Bill Reader; and “Anybody hearing about just how far left the caravan organizers are?” by Monica Showalter.