There
are three articles in the January-February ECONOMIC LOGIC newsletter,
published since 1981, and unique in the newsletter industry for including bad
jokes and missedspellings at no extra cost.
Here is a revised format larger font version of the Climate Change article that may be easier to read.
A few missedspellings have been fixed. Of course I only left them in the eMail and printed versions of the newsletter to please my wife. She seems so happy when she finds and points out my grammar errors and missedspellings, so why should I disappoint her? And from my point of view, I leave them in just so I have proof the wife actually read the whole article, rather than falling asleep after the first three paragraphs, as she often does. Rich
.
(1) “Climate Change is Secular Extremism”,
(2) ”What is Economics ?”, and
(3) "International Tax Competitiveness Index"
Here is a revised format larger font version of the Climate Change article that may be easier to read.
A few missedspellings have been fixed. Of course I only left them in the eMail and printed versions of the newsletter to please my wife. She seems so happy when she finds and points out my grammar errors and missedspellings, so why should I disappoint her? And from my point of view, I leave them in just so I have proof the wife actually read the whole article, rather than falling asleep after the first three paragraphs, as she often does. Rich
.
With
the exception of 2014, which was too darn cold, Earth's climate has improved
since I was born in the 1950's. It's slightly warmer, and plants grow
faster. I should be enjoying the better climate ... but I'm not
allowed to enjoy it in peace because so many
smarmy leftists have been bellowing since the 1970s that "life on
Earth will end as we know it" from global warming.
.
.
Of course leftists don't claim they can predict the
future. No human can. But they do have future-predicting tools, known to
laymen as REALLY BIG COMPUTERS. And those REALLY BIG COMPUTERS can predict the future.
In fact all you have to do is type in any environmental issue and the computer
prints out its prediction on a small piece of paper. For DDT, for example,
the prediction said: "Life on Earth will end as we know it". For
acid rain, for another example, the prediction said: "Life on Earth will
end as we know it". For the hole in the ozone layer, for a third
example, the prediction said: "Life on Earth will end as we know
it". And for global warming, the prediction also said:
"Life on Earth will end as we know it". Wait a minute! This is
confusing me! When life on Earth is about to end as we know it, should I be blaming DDT, acid
rain, the hole in the ozone layer, or global warming?
.
Climate Change
is Secular Extremism
The Mid-East
has religious extremism. The climate change cult is secular extremism. People
who question climate cult beliefs are character attacked, ridiculed with
completely bogus statistics such as: "97% of scientists agree", shown
the thoroughly discredited Michael Mann "Hockey Stick" chart that's
Al Gore's favorite (the infamous chart was even dumped by the UN's IPCC because
it was so inaccurate), and brushed off with ignorant non-scientific statements,
such as "the science is settled" (science is NEVER settled), coming
from "climate leaders" such as former politician Al Gore, who took
two elementary science courses in college, and couldn't manage to get an A or B
in either one of them. .
In the past 150 years there were only two unusual climate events: The 1930s were hot, and 2014 was cold. That is not a crisis. In fact, the climate has improved over the past 150 years and green plant growth has accelerated. A normal person studying climate history would be happy. But leftists are not normal, and apparently can't be happy unless they are promoting a "crisis" that requires everyone to do as they say, without question. So they invent a crisis. In the 1960s DDT was a crisis. They got DDT banned in the 1970s … and then millions of people died from malaria in the next three decades. DDT is not banned anymore. Another boogeyman was acid rain. Then the hole in the ozone layer. When the public stops being scared by one boogeyman, another is invented and promoted. But the alleged "cure" for every boogeyman since the 1960s is always the same: Halt economic growth, halt population growth, and slash energy use through the use of new unprecedented government regulations.
.
The global warming boogeyman is the latest and "greatest" leftist boogeyman. There is a huge amount of money to publicize it. But nothing bad has happened. And climate predictions since the 1970s have been stunningly inaccurate. There is no environmental damage from the slight warming since the mid-1800s. No one on Earth would have even noticed the tiny change in the average temperature since the 1800s if not for smarmy "warmists" bellowing that the world is coming to an end unless everyone does as they say without question!
.
So exactly what is the global warming boogeyman? The global warming boogeyman is nothing more than wild guess computer game projections of a coming climate catastrophe, announced with great confidence, year after year, for 45 years so far. Well, it was a global cooling crisis for a few years in the mid-1970s, to be precise -- some of us are old enough to remember the scary global cooling covers and articles of TIME and NEWSWEEK.
.
The climate gamers claim a lot more warming is ahead, caused by economic activity, so economic activity must be significantly reduced, because rising CO2 will cause a climate change disaster at some time in the future. The climate computer gamers said exactly the same thing in 1998, and they were dead wrong -- the average temperature is cooler today than in 1998, not warmer (based on all satellite and weather balloon data sources in the world -- the only accurate sources of the average global temperature … so of course they are completely ignored by the "global warmists", who favor inaccurate non-global surface measurements).
.
Each
vertical line on the following chart is intended to look like the mercury line
on an ordinary thermometer. There are 132
"thermometers" on the chart, each showing the average temperature for
one year, ranging from 1881 (left side of chart) to 2013 (right side of chart).
Each thermometer shows ordinary Fahrenheit degrees, with a range of -40 to +120
degrees.
Chart data
are from surface measurements that exaggerate warming for several reasons
listed later. One reason, however, is late
1800s and early 1900s thermometers usually read too low, so the slight warming
shown on the chart is likely to be exaggerated by a too-low starting point.
I've followed global warming since 1997 (through hyperlinks from the "The
Week That Was" column at www.SEPP.org) and had never before seen such a
clear chart showing the minor and completely harmless warming since 1881.
The 132 Thermometer Chart:
Average Temperature from 1881 to 2013
The chart looks like a straight line because the average temperature
of Earth has barely changed in 132 years. It has
increased from about 56.8 degrees F. (13.8 C.) in 1881 to 58.1 degrees F. (14.5
C.) in 2013. That's a change of just over 1 degree F. in 132 years, and the
starting point in 1881 is based on thermometers with at least a +/- one degree
F. margin of error. No one in his right mind should care about a tiny average
temperature difference between any two years because the average temperature of
Earth is ALWAYS changing. Everything that has ever happened on Earth in the
past 4.5 billion years has been accompanied by a changing climate.
.The GISS (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) surface data on the chart have all the pro-warming biases typical of surface measurements. Weather balloons since the 1950s, and weather satellites since 1979, do not have these biases. Both show less warming in the past 40 years than surface measurements, and confirm each other, so of course they are completely ignored by the global warmists.
.
In 2007 Al Gore predicted Arctic ice could be completely melted by 2014. Not even close. Arctic sea ice actually increased over 64% from September 17, 2012 to September 17, 2014 (sea ice extent, or area, with 30% or more ice coverage). 2014 was an unusually cold year. Few leftists realize that because their favorite media sources don't want them to know:
- 2014 had the
greatest snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere on record,
- 2014 had the
greatest Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent (area) on record,
- 2014 had
Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent (area) rebound back to a normal level, and
- 2014 US Great
Lakes ice set three records (the greatest ice extent (area) on record in early
2014, the longest ice duration on record in early 2014, and the earliest ice
formation on record in late 2014).
.In late April 2014 Democrats claimed 1Q 2014 GDP growth was weak because the winter was unusually cold. It was cold. So cold the water meter in our unheated garage froze and cracked in February 2014, for the first time since we moved into our Bingham Farms, Michigan home in 1987. The water company charged us $300 for a new meter, and I'm still looking for some 'climate change victim's fund' to compensate us for our loss! Then in early December 2014 Democrats began claiming "2014 was the hottest year ever". 2014 was claimed to be a very cold year in April 2014, when Democrats used that as an excuse for the slow 1Q economy, and then "the hottest year ever" in December 2014? Well, 2014 could not be a cold year and a hot year at the same time, except to leftists. To a leftist, reality is whatever they wish it to be.
.
Global warmists, desperate to obscure the unusually cold year in 2014, simply lied -- they claimed 2014 was the "hottest year ever", but here's what they conveniently forgot to mention:
(1) All weather
satellites, and all weather balloons, say 1998 was the hottest year they have
measured, since 1979, and since the 1950s, respectively, not 2014,
contradicting the less accurate, non-global, frequently "adjusted"
surface measurements,
.(2) "Ever" refers to less than 150 years of surface measurements, with no data for 99.999% of Earth's history (the prior 4.5 billion years), and
.
(3) All surface measurements, compiled since the late 1800s, have been made during a very mild warming trend that started in the 1800s, so the words "hottest ever" are deceptive, and meaningless:
.
- For example, assume scientists began estimating Earth's average temperature in 1880 by averaging temperatures in several dozen nations. One year later, in 1881, let's assume they found the average temperature had increased one tenth of one degree (let's ignore the margin of error of +/-1 degree for now). Then the temperature remained steady for the next 133 years through 2014. In every year from 1881 through 2014, scientists could have proclaimed "this year was the hottest year ever" to deceive the public about the climate.
.
That would be a meaningless proclamation because every uptrend has new highs. Even a very mild uptrend. New highs define an uptrend. It's only news when an uptrend stops having new highs, because that means the uptrend may be over. And that's why its significant Earth has had no global warming for the past 12 to 18 years. Climate proxy studies reveal Earth is always warming or cooling. There was cooling from roughly 1350 to 1850, so the warming since 1850 is just the other half of a typical warming/cooling cycle. Anecdotal evidence from past centuries showed people strongly preferred the warming trends.
"We
all know democracy requires an informed citizenry in order to function. And the
only way to get an informed citizenry is if people discuss and debate the issues
of the day. And the best way to learn about the issues is through
reading."
Eric Utne, in the March-April 2014 UTNE
READER
.
In his column, Utne also
mentioned his favorite publications and authors. All leftist-biased, of course.
For a leftist, "informed" means reading a variety of leftist-biased
publications. Everything else is considered stupid, written by people who are
'deniers', fools, or just uninformed. Most media sources are leftist-biased so
it takes a little effort to find a source that is not … such as changing the
channel with your remote control. Oh, and by the way, CNN is not a conservative
alternative to MSNBC!
.Leftists believe the environmental activists. But those activists don't want objective reporting about the climate. They just want to scare people. What environmental activists fear most is the truth. They lie and mislead all the time to further their cause. Unlike them, the only thing I seek is the truth. No lying. No wild guess predictions of the future climate. The truth about climate takes place in the present, and in the past, not in the future. So I write about the present and past climate. Activists spend almost all of their time speculating about the future climate, and it seems the future they see is ALWAYS bad news, unless everyone does as they say, without question. How can activists see the future? They can't, of course, but their answer, converted to plain English, is: 'Because we say so, and we couldn't be wrong!' After all, on their side are some leftist scientists who call themselves climate scientists -- a title invented just a few decades ago. And they have some really big computers. A few thousand "scientists" play computer games with their really big computers. And everyone knows really big computers can predict the future. … And now back to reality: Predictions of the future climate are not science, they are climate astrology, whether the predictions are made by a man wearing a suit who has a science PhD, or by a gypsy woman wearing strange clothes and using Tarot cards.
.
Here
are climate headlines you may have missed if your favorite media sources didn't
report them, simply because they did not fit their pre-existing conclusions about
global warming:
.
The Polar vortex grips the US in the coldest
temperatures in decades..
Telegraph UK, Jan 4, 2014
Niagara Falls
frozen: Tourists flock to see icy spectacle.
Guardian UK, January 13,
2014
During the
winter of 2013/2014, 91% of the Great Lakes were frozen by early March. This
was the second largest ice coverage for the Great Lakes, with data collection
starting in 1973.
NCDC-NOAA, March
2, 2014
The Great Lakes
are covered in a record-breaking amount of ice this late in spring. There is
roughly 16 times more ice than normal right now!
Washington Post, April 23,
2014
The Great Lakes
are finally ice free after a record breaking seven months frozen.
Daily Mail UK, June 10,
2014
Satellite
images show the Arctic summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7 million square
kilometers more than 2 years ago despite Al Gore's 2007 prediction it would be
ice-free by now!
Daily Mail
UK, August 31, 2014
With ice
growing at both poles, global warming theories implode.
The New American, September 15,
2014
Antarctic sea
ice extent (area) reached a new record maximum since weather satellite data
collection began in 1979.
NASA, October 7, 2014
Earliest ice on
record appears on the Great Lakes
NOAA, Nov 24, 2014
More snow
covered the Northern Hemisphere in fall 2014 than at any other time since data
collection began 46 years ago by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab. The
fall Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent (area) exceeded 22 million square
kilometers, exceeding the previous record set in 1976.
Washington Post, December 4,
2014
The IPCC was
created by the UN in 1988. It was NOT created to study the climate without
bias. It was created to prove humans are causing global warming, and global
warming will be very bad news for our planet. A secondary goal is the
redistribution of wealth from rich nations to poor nations as some sort of
reparations for "climate change". The IPCC believes its members are
the only true climate scientists, and those who disagree are some other kind of
scientists, or not really scientists at all. That's total nonsense.
There are thousands of scientists and
scholars of Earth and astronomical sciences who believe climate change is due
to natural forces and cycles. They were finally organized in 2007 as the
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), led by
atmospheric scientist Dr. Fred Singer, PhD. The NIPCC
published “Climate Change Reconsidered (CCR)” in 2009 (updated in 2013 and 2014
as two reports) criticizing IPCC reports, which was signed and approved by more
than 31,000 American scientists. CCR concluded: “…
there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon
dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the
foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and
disruption of the Earth’s climate.”
http://www.climatechangereconsidered.org
http://www.climatechangereconsidered.org
Your favorite
media sources most likely ignored the massive NIPCC scientific reports. They apparently
don't want you to know climate science is not settled. In fact, no science is
EVER settled. The statement "The science is settled" clearly marks
the speaker as having no science knowledge, and begs the question: "Why
keep spending billions of taxpayer dollars studying the climate if the science
is "settled"?
If Earth's average temperature is the
question, CO2 is not the answer. The answer is the sun,
volcanoes, tilt of the Earth's axis, water vapor, CO2, methane, clouds, ocean
cycles, plate tectonics, shifting ocean currents, albedo (Earth's changing
reflective properties), atmospheric dust,
atmospheric circulation, cosmic rays, particulates like carbon soot and
volcanic dust, forests and grasslands, urbanization and other land use changes.
Climate is affected by hundreds of factors, and CO2 is just one of them. There
is no correlation between atmospheric CO2 levels and the average temperature of
Earth, proving CO2 is a minor factor. There is evidence from ice core climate
proxy studies that hundreds of years AFTER Earth warms, CO2 levels rise as the
gradually warming oceans (warming from natural non-CO2 causes) release some of
their dissolved CO2 into the air.
Climate change should NOT be an economic
issue because Earth's climate has improved in the past 150 years, and there
have been no climate problems other than some hot years in the 1930s, and a very cold year in
2014.
Unfortunately, climate has been forced into
being an economic issue through the false demonization of carbon dioxide (CO2). Demonizing CO2 can have huge economic effects, especially on poor
nations who need cheap energy from coal to break out of their poverty. CO2
itself is not dangerous -- in fact, more CO2 in the air has beneficial economic
effects. The danger is secondary effects from the demonization of CO2 by global
"warmists", who hate all cheap sources of energy with a passion. They
also hate economic growth, population growth, and free market economics.
Climate beliefs have economic consequences.
During the past
500 million years Earth’s climate has been warmer than it is today most of the
time. During the “Greenhouse Ages” the estimated temperature averaged
22 to 25 degrees Celsius (72 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit). All the land was
tropical or subtropical and sea level was much higher than today. These warm
times were interrupted by three Ice Ages.
Today's average
global temperature is about 14.5 degrees C. Geologists estimate a low of about
12 degrees C. during the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago, and 22
degrees C. during the Greenhouse Ages when there was no ice on either pole.
Today is actually an unusually cold period in the history of life on Earth.
When life on
Earth began over 500 million years ago, CO2 was more than 10 times higher than
today, yet life flourished. Then there was an Ice Age 450 million years ago
when CO2 was 10 times higher than today. The fact that we had both higher
temperatures, and an ice age, at a time when CO2 levels were 10 times higher
than today, completely contradicts the claim that manmade CO2 emissions are the
main cause of global warming.
Who came up
with all these historical climate estimates? Geologists and other real
scientists. Thousands of them. Highly educated people who don't waste their
time, and taxpayer dollars, playing computer games and making completely false
scary predictions of the future climate … and then asking for government grants
for further "study" of the alleged "catastrophe" only they
can see coming.
At
the peak of the last glaciation, or ice age,18,000 years ago, sea level was
nearly 400 feet lower than it is today and Michigan was buried under one to two
miles of ice. There was rapid glacial
melting and sea level rise between 15,000 and 6,000 years ago. In the past
6,000 years, the sea level rise has been slower but steady. In recent times sea
level has risen by about 8 inches a century. Human activity was not responsible
for the warming after the last ice age. So far we have no evidence the 15,000
year-old sea level rise is accelerating. If sea level rise is not accelerating,
then we have no physical evidence of any possible harm from global warming …
and the ever-changing climate remains harmless. Of course we've had scary
predictions since the 1970s, including over-the-top comical sea level rise
predictions from Al Gore, but no actual physical evidence of accelerating sea
level rise.
Global
warming stops for over a dozen years.
Doesn't matter.
The media sources leftists prefer won't mention that.
2014
is an unusually cold year.
Doesn't matter.
Leftist-biased media sources won't report the cold weather records set in 2014, or will print nonsense claiming cold weather is a symptom of global warming too!
Here
are facts about Earth's climate:
Note: Computer game predictions of the future
climate are not data, and have no predictive ability, so cannot be used to
support any conclusions.
(1) Earth's
climate in the past 150 years has been perfectly normal relative to everything
known about our planet's climate history. In fact, the climate has improved
from prior relatively cold centuries,
(2) There has
been no global warming at all in the past 12 to 18 years, and the fact that
both manmade CO2 and average temperature increased from the late 1970s to late
1990s at the same time does not prove one caused the other to rise,
(3) Accurate
and global weather satellite measurements, completely ignored by global
"warmists" simply because they don't like the data, show 1998 was the
warmest year they've measured since launch in 1979 (weather balloons confirm
1998),
(4) 2014 was an
unusually cold year,
(5) In 2013 the average temperature of
Earth was only about +1.3 degrees F. higher than in 1881, with a margin of
error of at least +/- 1 degree F.. That is a meaningless temperature variation,
as Earth is always in a warming or cooling trend. In addition, warming was
expected, and was good news, because climate proxy studies had identified the
prior 600 years as unusually cool,
(6) Manmade CO2
is a minor variable affecting the climate, so minor that the average
temperature and CO2 levels since 1940 have moved in OPPOSITE directions far
more often than they rose at the same time. As a result, there is no
correlation between CO2 levels and average temperature, and that means there's
no scientific proof CO2 affects the average temperature, and
(7) More CO2 in
the air is not bad news, it is good news. CO2 accelerates green plant growth
and greens the planet. And not only do green plants grow faster with more CO2,
but they also use less water while growing faster. Since many green plants are
food for humans and animals, more CO2 in the air is very good news for our
planet.
Earth's climate
has improved in the past 150 years, more CO2 in the air is good news, and the
slight warming in the past 150 years is also good news: The past 150
years were the most prosperous and healthy 150-year period for humans on this
planet so far. Adding more CO2 to the air is the best thing humans have ever
done (inadvertently, of course) to improve the climate, and significantly
accelerate green plant growth. Ask any greenhouse
owner about CO2 enrichment if you want to know more.
."There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years. If there were such a proof it would be written down for all to see. No actual proof, as it is understood in science, exists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states: “It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.” “Extremely likely” is not a scientific term but rather a judgment, as in a court of law. The IPCC defines “extremely likely” as a “95-100% probability”. But upon further examination it is clear that these numbers are not the result of any mathematical calculation or statistical analysis. They have been 'invented' as a construct within the IPCC report to express 'expert judgment', as determined by the IPCC contributors."
Statement of Patrick Moore, Ph.D., former Greenpeace member, before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Subcommittee on Oversight, February 25, 2014
(a) 1800s and early 1900s thermometers tend to
read low vs. modern instruments. That means the early years of measurements are
very likely to be low, exaggerating the warming since then, and the early
measurements were also far from being global coverage,
.
.
from his book "The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels"
.
.
Good source of scientific climate data (no wild guess computer game predictions of the future here):
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com