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Hot And Bothered
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 2/2/2007
Climate Change: A U.N. panel officially releases its report telling us the planet is warming, man is the primary cause and doom is imminent. But can computer models that can't predict the past predict the future?
We'll stipulate that the planet is warming. It's been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age. It's been warming since Newsweek warned in the mid-1970s of the onset of the next ice age.
We'll even agree that man has contributed to rising carbon dioxide levels by activities that include breathing and driving the kids to soccer practice.
But the 21-page report released in Paris on Friday portrays man as a plague on the planet that has produced everything from rising seas that will flood coastal areas to monster storms that will flatten everything in their path. Katrina, in the experts' view, was just an appetizer before the apocalypse.
Problem is, they ignore the planet's own history. About 20,000 years ago — long before the first SUV — global sea levels were 400 feet lower than they are now. Sea levels were rising long before the Industrial Revolution and will likely continue to rise, just not at the cataclysmic rates predicted by computer models.
Last year was supposed to be the year hurricanes would start arriving with greater frequency and strength. But nature didn't get the memo. There were only nine named storms during the Atlantic season, with just five becoming hurricanes.
In 2005 there were 27 named storms, 15 of them hurricanes, an exceptional year. The average is 15 named storms and 8.5 hurricanes. Last year was the first since 1997 in which the Gulf of Mexico had only one named storm and the first since 1997 when there were no Category 4 or Category 5 Atlantic storms. Apocalypse not?
All these prophecies of doom are based on computer models that are based on agreed-upon assumptions and fed a relatively small portion of the immense number of variables that affect weather or climate. Not all these variables are known or fully understood, which helps explain why these models can't even predict the past.
When the Clinton administration, which never submitted Kyoto to the Senate for ratification, produced a voluminous climate report, it selected two climate models.
One, from the Canadian Climate Center, forecast dramatic temperature increases. The other, a British model, predicted dramatic increases in precipitation.
Climatologist Patrick Michaels examined these two models and discovered they could not reproduce recorded temperature trends regardless of the period selected. The Canadian model overestimated actual U.S. warming in the 20th century by 300%.
When you can't grasp the past, how can you predict the future?
Even the man credited for starting the warming hype, NASA scientist James Hansen, has been spectacularly wrong in his own predictions. As author Michael Crichton has noted, Hansen's prediction in 1988 of a 0.35-degree Celsius rise in temperatures over the next decade overshot the actual rise — 0.11 degrees — by 219%.
Of course, that's the big problem with these mammoth mathematical models that have dozens of variables. Even minor errors or mismeasurements in key input data can result in huge errors. And these errors aren't without cost.
Global warming advocates want us to spend trillions of dollars to mitigate global warming based on an error-prone approach. It's a risky investment.
As a matter of both fiscal policy and common sense, we need to ask ourselves whether global warming warrants such massive spending — or whether we'd be better off spending that money on other things that would save lives now, like ending the scourge of malaria or helping to provide clean water in developing nations.
These things might not be very sexy, but the money spent would save literally hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Some 2.8 billion people —nearly half the world's population — now live on less than $2 a day. Must we spend trillions to make them — and us — poorer?
Earth has repeatedly warmed and cooled over eons. It's been warmer than now and colder than now. There have been numerous ice ages followed by subsequent warming periods.
We're in one now. It might be argued that man's greenhouse gas emissions have had the beneficial effect of postponing the next ice age, perhaps indefinitely.
We frankly don't see the apocalyptic nature of warmer winters, longer growing seasons or abundant vegetation and crops from increased precipitation and higher CO2 levels.
One thing we do know is that if the environmentalists say it's going to rain tomorrow, it might be wise to apply some sunscreen.
Your example of the sundial and atomic clock. Suppose your accused of a crime and your alibi needs to be within 10 minutes of the time the crime took place. However all your witness can say is that using a sun dial says that the last time you were seen may have as late as 9:20 or early 8:40. How would a more accurate time piece looked at 12 hours later help you out?