My Global Warming Epiphany

American Thinker ^ | August 26, 2009 | Randall Hoven

[neverdem]

Global warming is a complicated subject.  It therefore takes a lot of hubris or ignorance to think you can explain either the "for" or "against" case in a few hundred words.  But I stumbled onto some data that meets my "keen grasp of the obvious" threshold for understanding.

Recall that we really need to answer "yes" to four separate questions before we join the Al Gore religion of "sign the treaty immediately or we will all die."

(1) Is the globe getting warmer?

(2) If so, is man doing it?

(3) If so, is it bad?

(4) If so, is the massive-reductions-in-CO2 approach the best way to deal with it?

You might have seen such questions before, but they frequently get mixed up in public discussions.  For example, some people imply that if the answer to (1) is "yes", then the answer to (4) must be "yes" as well.  If the temperature graph is going up, destroy your SUV.  Or at least switch light bulbs.

However, Bjorn Lomborg thinks the answers to (1) through (3) are "yes", but that the answer to (4) is "no."     He once challenged Al Gore to debate that fourth question alone.  But Mr. Gore treated Lomborg as he would any other global warming skeptic or "denier", comparing him to tobacco companies of old and lecturing him about arctic ice caps and sea levels. 

I am not only stuck on question (2), I'm stuck on question (1).  I've seen graphs of temperatures, such as the so-called "global" temperature.  The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for example, presents such a graph in its "Summary for Policy Makers."(pdf)  While this graph does present to the eyeball a rising trend, one could ask several questions.

• The total range of temperatures is within plus or minus half a degree Centigrade.  Are we sure we are seeing a true trend and not just randomness?
• The total range of time is about 150 years, and the range of time in which an upward trend is apparent is perhaps the last 30 years.  Is that a long enough time period to gauge a trend?
• On the other hand, looking closely at the years since 1998, the trend seems to have leveled off or even dropped.  Is that too short a time to gauge a trend?
• Are the thermometers in enough places and the right places?  Maybe we get too many readings from North America and too few from Antarctica, for example.
• How do you get just one number for each year?  How do you take all the temperature readings from all the thermometers and all the days and hours that temperatures were read, and get a single number?
• If a computer algorithm is used to come up with the numbers, how sure are you that the algorithm did not add some artificial biases?
• How do you compare temperatures over time?  Weren't thermometers added, thermometers replaced, and whole new stations included?  Are earlier readings comparable with later ones?
• How do you know any given temperature reading reflects real climate, and not just what's happening near that temperature station?  That is, do parking lots, buildings, air conditioners, etc. have a significant impact on thermometer readings?
• Weren't all the thermometers used to make this graph on land?  Doesn't that leave out the 75% of the earth's surface that is water?

If the warming trend were stark and obvious, the questions above would be less important.  But one degree in a century?  I can't feel one degree.  I can't find two thermometers that agree that closely.  The temperature regularly changes by 20 degrees or so every day where I live.  On any given day at any given time, temperatures on the earth differ by more than 100 degrees F.  What is signal and what is noise?

Like I said, this is complicated.  But I am willing to accept, as have most scientists including "skeptics", that the "global" temperature went up about one degree in the last 100 years.

That still doesn't answer question (1):  "Is the globe getting warmer?"  Unstated in the question is some sense of time scale.  Warmer since last year?  Since last decade?  Since last century?  Is it a relentless and significant upward trend imposed on minor cyclic deviations?  (Answer key:  No.  No.  Yes.  And that's what James Hansen says when his muzzle is off.)

Frankly, I've seen stock market charts that look an awful lot like the IPCC temperature chart.  It sure looked like the stock price was trending up relentlessly when I bought it.  After that, not so much.

If I leave things at that, I'm confused, but at least find it plausible that average temperatures around the globe are going up.  All based on graphs that vary within fractions of a degree over decades and centuries.  (Plus arctic, but not Antarctic, ice sheet extent; polar bear counts in some regions, but not others; some glaciers shrinking, but others growing; more hurricanes some years, fewer in others; etc.  You know, all that rock-solid evidence of one degree of global temperature change per century.)

But here's where the global warmists came to my rescue.  They tell us that warmer temperatures lead to higher sea levels.  Fortunately, there is only one ocean.  And while sea levels vary with tides over the year, averages are probably fairly reliable.

As it happens, the IPCC does present a chart of sea levels and its trend is more obvious than the temperature trend.  It shows a steady rise of about 200 millimeters in the last 120 years.  That's about eight inches.  Is eight inches over 120 years significant or alarming?

Better yet, and here is where I got my epiphany, scientists have produced a long-term graph of sea level changes, about 20,000 years worth.  The graph below was taken from Wikipedia, but the data behind this graph are widely known and accepted.  NASA, for example, accepts this data and the government of Canada(pdf) publishes a similar graph.

First, look at the vertical scale.  It ranges over about 120 meters (not millimeters), about 400 feet.  On the page you see this graph, a change of 200 millimeters (or the change in the last 120 years per the IPCC) would be would be about the width of your eyelash.  When the seas were 400 feet lower, people could walk from Russia to Alaska and from France to England.

We engineers have a saying: measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe.  That saying is meant to put things in perspective for young engineers who like to calculate things out to the number of digits visible on their calculators.

Global warmists are taking their micrometer, literally, to the last 120 years on this chart, an area that would probably fit in the upper rightmost dot on that chart.  And from that, extrapolating that we are all about to die.

I no longer need to squint my eyes to see a one degree per century trend in a cloud of noisy data.  The trends are stark.  Thus, my epiphany.

If sea levels go along with global temperatures, as the warmists frequently remind us, then this chart makes blatantly obvious that

• Man has just about nothing to do with global temperatures,
• Any temperature changes in the last 100 years are insignificant compared to longer term changes,
• And current trends are most likely just the final flattening out of temperatures after rising from the last ice age.

How can you blame man for sea levels rising when about 99% of that rise since the last ice age occurred before man built the pyramids, much less SUVs?  A rise in sea level over the last century should not be surprising; it's been rising for the last 20,000 years.

If anything, looking at this chart would convince me that long term temperatures are cyclic and that we are coming near the end of the warming part of the cycle.  In fact, it looks like we are near the peak of that warming and could be about to enter the cooling-down part of the cycle. 

Over the time of the chart above, man did pretty well.  His population grew from fewer than 10 million to almost 7 billion.  He had an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution and an information revolution.  He started cities.  He started writing.  He started recording his own history.  He walked on the moon.

Over that time, the sea level rose about 120 meters.  If the current trend continues, it will rise two meters in the next 1000 years.  If man thrived like he did when the seas rose 120 meters, why would the world end if they rise another two?

Our global warming "engineers" seem eager to move to the final stage of their project: cut with an axe.  Something's about to get capped all right, and not just your CO2.

Randall Hoven can be contacted at randall.hoven@gmail.com or  via his web site, kulak.worldbreak.com.

[neverdem]

"We engineers have a saying: measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe."

That's a nice quote describing from the theoretical to the practical.

[VisualizeSmallerGovernment]

5) “If so, can this be better achieved by the government giving more freedom to individuals, or by government seizing total control over everyone’s life?”

[Wiseghy]

Actually, I first saw this chain of reasoning by a poster on FR a year or two ago.
I liked the way the FR’per summerized it better.

[vbmoneyspender]

His 2nd and 3rd questions should be reversed. The 2nd question should be - Is it Bad - because if it isn't - then it doesn't matter whether man is causing global warming or not.

Regarding the author's 4th question - that is really two questions in one. The 4th question should be - can anything be done to stop global warming (assuming it is occuring)?. If nothing can be done, then that is the end of the story. On the other hand, if something can be done,then the last question is - Are the costs of stopping global outweighed by the benefits?

[BIGLOOK]

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9-14 NIV

Unless there's pecuniary gain.

Just a jaded aside.

[Kansas58]

You know, I have been saying the same thing, as far as the steps to “Al Gore” crazy stuff.

1.) prove that the Earth is warming
2.) prove that man is causing the warming
3.) prove that warming is a bad thing
4.) prove that man can enact laws that will reduce warming
5.) prove that any such laws will be worth the cost
6.) prove that any such laws, passed by the USA, will not simply transfer our industry and production to China and India and other countries.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Nowhere above is he pointing out that the recent increase in CO2 is yielding more plant growth and crops by 12% to 27% MORE growth for feed, food, fuel, fodder and farms. More stems, roots, and seed for EVERY plant on earth.

Slightly higher temperatures -today’s temps are 1/2 of one degree warmer than in 1910 or 1970 also increase the growing season. Again, more food and feed for everyone on earth.

[ReadTheLaw]

The polar caps on Mars have advanced and receded where no man has gone before. (Apology to Gene Roddenberry). The sun heats and cools. The fault is in our star, not in ourselves, that we are underlings to climate. (With apologies to Brutus and the Bard)

[a fool in paradise]

It’s clear from the historical record that the atmospheric temperatures have gone through extreme periods of heating and cooling PRIOR to man and industry and nuclear bombs.

So it is a FACT that the temperature CAN fluctuate UP and DOWN without any action from man.

We are left to wonder then IF man is having any measurable effect. And IF our actions may have HELPED us to avoid a looming ice age that was predicted 40 years ago.

Also, what is the OPTIMAL temperature for this planet? A long growing season in Northern Europe? Or Africa?

Who gets to decide what numbers are “right”?

And we still aren’t doing ANYTHING to stop our oceans from draining off the edge of the world!

[a fool in paradise]

Al Gore is a modern day “rainmaker” seeking to make a fortune and legacy off of the rubes.

It isn’t about “saving the planet” it is about controlling your lives just as much as his plan to sticker albums in the 1980s was.

[BigBobber]

Most of our friends and neighbors don’t know the oceans have risen 400 feet in the last 18,000 years. Many are amazed to hear this even though most know ice two miles thick covered most of Canada not long before that. San Francisco Bay has only been around a few thousand years.

When people hear the facts they begin to understand that climate change is a natural process.

[CutePuppy]

Related - the answer by noted environmentalist and avowed believer in "global warming" / "climate change", Bjørn Lomborg himself - Mr. Gore, Your Solution to Global Warming Is Wrong - Esquire, 2009 July 15.

I. A False Choice

.....

The safari story calls to mind the current preoccupation with global warming in the Western world. The financial crisis notwithstanding, many people — including President Obama — believe that global warming is among the most urgent issues of our time, and that cutting CO2 emissions is the most virtuous thing we can do about it. In fact, many say that doing so is perhaps the greatest moral obligation of the current inhabitants of planet earth. And they frame any discussion on warming by telling us that if we don't radically alter the way we live, the worst problems of humanity — chiefly disease and hunger — will become devastatingly worse. Before long, they say — perhaps a decade if we do not act immediately — it will be too late for us.

These apocalyptic visions are not at all supported by the available evidence. And to me, the solutions prescribed by those leading the charge are akin to building more safari parks instead of farms to feed the hungry. Campaigners in rich countries are pushing politicians to spend a great fortune on an ineffective solution to climate change instead of tackling the real problems of today — or looking for better responses to warming.

President Obama and other world leaders face a clear choice. They can continue on their current path — what we might call the "Gore solution" to climate change, given that the former vice-president is the fiercest advocate of cutting CO2 emissions, whether through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme.

Or, here's the truth: There are better, more cost-effective ways to fight global warming. And if we want to fight the problems that will be made worse by global warming, the solutions have very little to do with cutting CO2 emissions.

II. The Real Moral Imperative

The effort to cut carbon emissions is generally cast as a moral imperative necessary to avert the human consequences of warming. In reality, however, it does very little at very high cost. It is also politically complicated, because it requires every nation on earth to agree to reduction targets and then reach them. Even if this were somehow achievable, the plan's meager effects on global temperatures are simply not worth all the pain: If we spent $800 billion over the next ninety years solely on the Gore solution of mitigating carbon emissions, we would rein in temperature increases by just 0.3 degrees by the end of this century. That was the finding reached recently by some of the world's top climate economists at a gathering called the Copenhagen Consensus, where the ramifications of this response to climate change were calculated.

.....

Feel free to post it as a separate thread, or in its entirety.

[jnsun]

Nowhere above is he pointing out that the recent increase in CO2 is yielding more plant growth and crops by 12% to 27% MORE growth for feed, food, fuel, fodder and farms. More stems, roots, and seed for EVERY plant on earth. Slightly higher temperatures -today’s temps are 1/2 of one degree warmer than in 1910 or 1970 also increase the growing season.

Good to see the PE invoke the bio component.

I do wonder how well integrated the biological pathways are in the climate models. Through a marine-bio friend at NASA I know they are included, but have no confidence at all they are reliably or accurately so, especially given the models are driven by so-called "climate scientists."

I'll state my belief again - CO₂ is an adjunct of global warming; its increase has happened over and over in eons past, and the pathways clearly exist to compensate for it.

And, yes, there is political motive behind it all.

[Trityn]

That timing matches this image even down to the "pulse".

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---

[tarheelswamprat]

The polar caps on Mars have advanced and receded where no man has gone before. (Apology to Gene Roddenberry). The sun heats and cools. The fault is in our star, not in ourselves, that we are underlings to climate. (With apologies to Brutus and the Bard)

Get thee to a nunnery and do penance, seven times, and thou wilt receive absolution, or something even better...

[steelyourfaith]

Thanx !

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[RipSawyer]

“We engineers have a saying: measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe.”
That’s a nice quote describing from the theoretical to the practical.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

More than forty years ago I had a job in a manufacturing engineering department at a bearing plant. I was not a mechanical engineer by any means, my job involved scheduling work into the tool and die shop and putting out contracts to outside toolmakers. One day I had to attend one of those worthless boring meetings where nothing is ever accomplished. The “quality control manager” wanted to know why we were wasting so much money holding a super tight tolerance on the punch and die used to punch a hole in sheet metal for a roller bearing shell when the blueprint allowed for a tolerance of plus or minus eight thousandths of an inch on the diameter of the hole being punched. In engineering terms plus or minus eight thousandths would be referred to as, “Loose enough to throw a cat through”. The general foreman had to explain to him that the clearance between punch and die had to be ten percent of the stock thickness for it to cut properly. The tolerance on the tool had nothing to do with the tolerance on the hole being punched. It was embarrasssing to all concerned to have to sit through this display of ignorance on the part of the man charged with assuring that the product met industry standards.

I wonder if the global warming fanatics are misunderstanding things even more than that QC manager misunderstood what he was looking at.

[r-q-tek86]

ping

[PapaBear3625]

Slightly higher temperatures -today’s temps are 1/2 of one degree warmer than in 1910 or 1970 also increase the growing season. Again, more food and feed for everyone on earth.

Warmer temps also mean that large areas of Canada and Siberia become temperate enough for agriculture, further increasing food production.

But the wealthy Left is more concerned about their Malibu beachfront properties.