This series of articles was written for the New York Analysis of Policy and Government by noted author and researcher Alex Bugaeff. We conclude the comprehensive look at the climate change debate.
Human Error and Intention
Climate change has been made into a “Cause” by proponents who seize it to advance their interests. Vast sums of money have been offered and expended in its research and promotion. Former US Senator Al Gore has turned it into a lucrative career for himself and his followers. Enormous research grants have been dangled in front of university faculties in return for findings of global warming.
Dr. Judith Curry, PhD and Chair, Dept. of Earth and Atmospheric Science Emeritus, Georgia Tech University, reports that grants became awarded only to those who would find evidence of warming – “Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment…” she said.
Al Gore aside, the current push to use global warming as a political tool probably began with Philip (Phil) Jones, an English academic associated with the UK’s East Anglia University. Jones received his PhD in Hydrology (the study of the movement, distribution and quality of water on the Earth) in 1977 and began in 1979 as a Research Associate with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, advancing to Professor in 1998.
Phil Jones was a leader in the founding of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the United Nations in 1988. He and other researchers published a series of reports which purported to prove that the globe is warming at the “alarming” rate of 1.5 degrees or so by 2100. They did this by formulating mathematical models that used CO2 as the factor by which warming was predicted. They blamed the burning of fossil fuels for the higher CO2 amounts while ignoring natural sources of it. And then, they proclaimed that this warming would be catastrophic.
The IPCC ignited controversy when it refused to release either their data or their models for analysis by outside scientists. They finally shared their data, but refused to release the mathematical models by which they analyzed it.
Using the IPCC findings, Al Gore and other warming proponents promoted policies to reduce global warming through a tax scheme he called “Cap and Trade.” Under it, corporations would pay taxes on the carbon that their businesses emitted. Gore and his adherents continue to insist that the earth is warming, that mankind is to blame and that their tax programs are the solution.
Al Gore famously cited a survey that 97% of scientists agree on the warming “theory” and that the science of warming is “settled.” He overlooked that the cited survey consisted of about 120 respondents (compared with 31,000 scientists who oppose it), that the IPCC mathematics have been withheld from scrutiny and that the Scientific Method never accepts that findings are “settled” anyway (see below).
Eventually, the data collected by the IPCC researchers began to show the truth – CO2 is a poor predictor of global temperatures. But, now there was too much at stake – money, power and fame. To maintain the illusion of infallibility, Jones and the IPCC falsified their data and conspired with NASA and NOAA among others to keep it quiet, but it came out anyway and was dubbed “Climategate.”
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Can Science Ever Be “Settled?”
The discoveries of science since the Greeks have come primarily by virtue of the Scientific Method. It’s simple, really. You surmise that some phenomenon of the natural world might be true and you make a statement proposing it – the Hypothesis. You Test your Hypothesis using accepted procedures. The Test results either support your Hypothesis or they do not. Then, you publish your Hypothesis, Tests and results so that other scientists can replicate your Tests (peer review). Their results may support your Hypothesis or not.
The more that Tests by others support your Hypothesis, the more confidence you can have that your Hypothesis is reliable. But, it can never be “proven.” Someday, a new or better test may be found that fails to support your Hypothesis. That’s the nature of scientific inquiry. It can never be “settled” and must never be. Otherwise, the Earth would still be “flat.”
CO2-caused climate change is not settled science. Just the complexity of climate and the inability to replicate findings in order to test them makes it impossible. Corruption further compromises any findings. Scientific procedures can be used to track climate and elements, but fine distinctions of a degree or so are speculative.
Conclusion
Climate and temperatures will fluctuate naturally, as they have for all of earth’s existence. The factors affecting them are out of the hands of mankind, except for those greenhouse gases over which we have some control, and they play only a relatively small role. It may be just as likely that we are cooling as that we are warming.
Considering all these factors, their variability and the difficulty of measuring them, it is not possible nor is it advisable for scientists and mathematicians to claim that their mathematical models should be the basis for investing monumental sums of money in a scheme that may be exactly the wrong thing. The findings and dire warnings of global warming proponents must be regarded as unfounded or even, as some have said, a hoax.
Mankind should be a good steward of the planet and those of us who seek to do so should continue to pressure planet abusers, such as India and China, to improve. But, we should not bankrupt ourselves and our nation to assuage a false guilt perpetrated by politicians and corrupted scientists. We need to be smarter than that.
Illustration: Pixabay