Cliamte Change ubject: Climate Change... manmade or otherwise inevitable
Last week I wrote about and shared several articles all of which were highly critical of the lack of planning associated with the attempts by governments to move from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The premise of my message was, given the changes in climate, and given the need to move to renewables, that the planning was abysmal and was leading us into economic catastrophe unnecessarily.
Most of the reaction I have received has been in general agreement with those comments and the attached articles. More of you are coming to the realization that our governments have done the worst possible job, at the level of criminal negligence, of managing the necessary changes.
However, I did receive one comment which was particularly interesting because this gentleman, who is a scientist by background, objected entirely to the underlying assumption of my email, that being that climate change to the extent it exists, is manmade. Alastair Gordon gave me permission to share his views and he is interested in your responses.
Here is Alastair’s response…
Remember the threat of apocalyptic global cooling, followed by apocalyptic global warming, and finally apocalyptic climate change? Anyone who can sustain a belief through all these reversals is a fundamentalist nitwit, not a thinker. I have attached an article from 1976 that you'll find interesting. But first a brief reality dump...
Antarctic and Siberian ice core samples are the only hard evidence we have in understanding the relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) and global temperature. Everything else is conjecture and laughably simplified computer models of climate that have now proven their absolute lack of predictive accuracy. Climate change skepticism is a result of objectively analyzing the hard evidence that underpins this whole debate.
Let’s look at the evidence:
1. The Antarctic (and other) ice core samples allow us to track both atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature for at least the past 800,000+ years. In fact, those ice cores are the only real scientific evidence in this debate, evidence that is untainted by selection bias or changes in the location, distribution, and accuracy of measurement technology since humans began to track temperature. Those ice core samples show that factors other than CO2 level have driven periods of extreme global warming and cooling with no contribution from humans. Don't we have to assume that those factors (solar activity, orbital variations, etc.) are still at play and that we are likely in a natural warming or cooling trend now, as we have always been?
2. Over the past 800,000 years, every WARMING period started when CO2 was at an historic LOW and every COOLING period started when CO2 was at an historic HIGH. If CO2 were a greenhouse gas, would we not expect the opposite to be the case? In a laboratory setting or in a simplistic computer model of climate, then perhaps CO2 could be a theoretical greenhouse gas, but hard empirical evidence of how CO2 affects temperature on this complex planet shows that CO2 is irrelevant to temperature. And if that is the case, the whole argument that man-made CO2 is warming the planet is likely wrong, and all steps to curb CO2 emissions will have no affect on global temperature.
3. The ice core samples also clearly show that, in every warming period, global temperature always rose 200 to 1000 years BEFORE CO2 levels (and the inverse in every cooling period). Since cause must always come BEFORE effect, then the evidence shows that temperature change is the CAUSE and CO2 level is the EFFECT. If we accept that solar variability is the cause of the past 800,000 years of global warming and cooling, then the most plausible explanation of the delayed rise in CO2 levels is that a warmer planet caused CO2 to gradually come out of solution in the oceans and into the atmosphere, and a cooling planet causes the oceans to gradually re-absorb that CO2. That strikes me as a more reasonable explanation for the cause-and-effect relationship between CO2 and temperature than being forced to believe that cause can come AFTER effect.
4. There is the argument used by those who believe in man-made climate change that CO2 does not CAUSE global warming, but that it AMPLIFIES external forcings. Again, the hard evidence does not support that hypothesis. If CO2 were an amplifier of global warming, then a warming planet (caused by solar variations) would drive more CO2 from the oceans into the atmosphere, and we would see a positive feedback loop with runaway warming. Yet that has never happened. Every warming period has given birth to a cooling period and every cooling period has given birth to a warming period. That would seem to debunk the theory that CO2 is an amplifier of external warming forces.
5. On a practical observational level, I have a cottage on a lake north of Toronto. A few seconds ago in geologic time, that place, and most of Canada and Europe, were buried under kilometers of ice that extended to the North Pole. Yet around 12,000 years ago, rapid and extreme global warming caused that massive sheet of ice to melt and become the tiny dot that is today's Arctic ice sheet. And all that happened in the blink of a geologist's eye and all without the help of humans.
6. Assuming we are in a natural warming or cooling period (as we always have been on this planet), then why waste resources, brain power, and time at war with CO2, a natural and harmless gas that supports all green life on this planet? Why not apply those resources to dealing with rising (or falling) ocean levels and lengthening (or shortening) growing seasons? In other words, we should adapt to natural changes over which we have no control, rather than pretending we can control global temperature and dissipating our resources chasing an imaginary villain.
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My response… seems entirely reasonable but how can so many other scientists be so wrong….after all didn’t President Obama tell us years ago that with 99% of scientists agreeing, that manmade climate change was a given- no more discussion! I remembered reading a book on climate change that suggested that the origins of the apparent warming trend is likely sun spots.
Alastairs response…
No Mike, it is not possible that they are right. And that is exactly what "they" are counting on. If they had any predictive power whatsoever, we would now be in a new ice age. When that didn't happen, global cooling became global warming. When that stopped 20 years ago, global warming became climate change.
Not one of their predictions based on absurd climate modeling has come to pass. Not one!
You know the Oak Ridges Moraine just north of Toronto? A fraction of a second ago in geologic time, that was the leading edge of kilometers-deep glaciers that extended to the North Pole. Most of North America was buried under a mile of ice that never melted. Lake Ontario was Lake Iroquois, about 3 times the size of the current lake. Its shores can still be seen just south of Upper Canada College. And in a blink of a geologist's eye around 10,000 years ago, an ice dam that had been around for a million years in the St. Lawrence River quickly melted and the Great Lakes poured into the Atlantic, emptying down to their present level. Maybe if David Suzuki was around and ordered the aboriginals to put out their cave fires, we could still be buried under a mile of ice.
Of course it is the sun! That is the only furnace we have and it has never burned at a fixed rate. CO2 is NOT a greenhouse gas on planet Earth.
The assertions of the climate change lobby are rubbish. It is not a matter of opinion, it is a matter of unequivocal evidence. Well, unless you believe that cause can come after effect.
If Alastair is right- and he is not alone in his beliefs- we are currently enduring one of the greatest worldwide conspiracies perpetrated on mankind, ever!
Your comments are invited!
Mike