This is the first of several articles on climate change. What most people take for granted as common knowledge is probably incorrect. If you learned about global warming in a public school, you need to re-study the facts, without any political influence. I am amazed at how far the hype has gone when the data has never changed. I’ll give away the ending now: what passes for science these days falls well short of the scientific method.
There are huge holes that have yet to be explained by those who claim that man impacts the carbon cycle, or if carbon actually matters in the context of earth’s warming and cooling. There is no consensus, and since when does that even matter in science? At one time, there was consensus that the earth was flat. There was even consensus that the sun rotated around the earth!
This article will look at how scientists determined what happened in the past with earth’s temperature. Any theories HAVE to explain the past, and this is where most anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming theories fail.
The Ice Age
One of the first questions that needs to be answered is, “How do scientists explain the warming that melted the sheet of ice during the ice age?” Scientists say a natural process created the ice, and then a natural process melted it. The earth cooled dramatically and then warmed up, without any influence by man. This process continues today, yet no one can tell you how much of a factor man contributes to this process.
Wikipedia has a nice summary of the causes of ice ages, or the causes of climate change using today’s spin:
“The causes of ice ages remain controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial–interglacial periods within an ice age. The consensus is that several factors are important: atmospheric composition (the concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane); changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy); the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the Earth's surface, which could affect wind and ocean currents; variations in solar output; the orbital dynamics of the Earth-Moon system; and the impact of relatively large meteorites, and volcanism including eruptions of supervolcanoes.”
Read that paragraph again and consider the complexity of the theories involved in estimating how each one affects earth’s atmosphere and temperature. Which one impacts temperature the most? Can’t answer that? Neither can scientists, yet they expect us to believe that they can estimate man’s impact in 50 years to the nearest centigrade?
Earth’s Status Quo
How do we know change is taking place or what the status quo is? We need to establish a baseline and scientists have put together temperature models based on proxy data. Proxy data means that scientists use theories regarding data to create other data. In this case, the earth’s temperature record is recreated from sources such as ice cores, ocean and lake bottom sediments, glacial deposits and features, sedimentary rock analysis, and tree ring data. Here is a chart that uses proxy data from the surface temperature of the
From “A Global Warming Primer”
We already know the temperature was much warmer during Medieval times than today. If you see temperature data that shows today warmer than the medieval period, you should be suspect of where that data came from. More than likely, it came from the thoroughly discredited “hockey stick graph.”
Hockey stick chart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hockey_stick_chart_ipcc_large.jpg)
The “hockey stick graph” was created by using an algorithm that searched for “hockey stick shaped” data. The scientists who created it refused initially to release the data so that other scientists could replicate their results. Theories must be replicable, or they are quickly invalidated. Once the scientific community finally shamed them into showing their data, the jig was up. But many people unscrupulously continue to throw the hockey stick graph in your face as “science.”
This figure shows the Antarctic temperature changes during the last several glacial/interglacial cycles of the present ice age and a comparison to changes in global ice volume. The present day is on the left.
The summary from Wikipedia for this chart:
"The first two curves shows local changes in temperature at two sites in
What is important is the cycle. The earth's temperature cycles back and forth through ice ages. It would be good to know for certain that carbon dioxide indeed warmed the earth because then we could pump out vast quantities to stave off the next ice age, which is apparently coming due.
Next: Carbon Dioxide
The earth’s temperature record has been reconstructed from various sources around the world. Bearing in mind that these are still based on theories, they are producing similar results; mainly, that the earth’s temperature cycles through dramatic highs and lows naturally. So why is there so much excitement over a process that has been going on for thousands of years? Because many scientists, although hardly a consensus, have decided that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have warmed the earth by putting too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But is this really true? And how much does man contribute? Is there a causal relationship between carbon dioxide and earth’s temperature?
Scientists are still debating the answer to these questions, and there is yet to be a consensus. On the next Climate Change post, we’ll look at the carbon dioxide data. And no, Al Gore does not count as a scientist, but he could probably fill quite a few onion sacks.
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