I began reading about global warming as a 'hobby' in 1997 because the attack on fossil fuels was related to my primary interest: Economics and finance.
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I made a list of about six climate questions that I wanted to find answers to.
So far I still have almost no answers … and I've added five more questions!
About 10 years ago I got more interested in climate change stories concerning the sun because the popular press seemed to ignore everything unrelated to CO2, such as:
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(A) Astronomers, mainly in Russia, who were predicting global cooling starting around 2012 to 2015, that would last 40 or 50 years, due to declining solar activity, and
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(B) The 1,500-year solar climate cycle discovered by Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger working with Greenland ice cores, and Claude Lorius working with Antarctic ice cores, for which they shared the 1996 Tyler Prize (“environmental Nobel Prize”).
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Since 1997 I have always believed changes of the sun, clouds and humidity are much more important than CO2, but I still have no definitive proof.
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The only three things I've "learned" in 18 years:
(A) Climate models are worthless computer games, because too little is known about the causes of climate change to project the future climate,
(B) The claim that warming since 1975 was caused by CO2 is a belief, not a fact, and
( C ) Al Gore is a doofus
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My current list of climate questions for which I seek answers:
(1) Where is the scientific proof that the rise of CO2 causes warming, when there was no correlation of CO2 and average temperature in real time measurements since 1850, or in historical climate estimates derived from studies of climate proxies?
If I assume CO2 is really the "climate controller", even without scientific proof of that assumption, then I want to know:
(2) Why do climate history experts claim warming peaks preceded CO2 peaks by 500 to 1,000 years?
(3) Why do climate history experts claim CO2 levels have been up to 10, or even 20, times higher than today, with no evidence of runaway warming? (warming oceans release CO2 into the air, and then more CO2 in the air causes more ocean warming, and repeat)
(4) Why was there cooling from 1940 to the mid-1970's?
(5) Why was there a flat average temperature trend from the early 2000's to 2015 (so far)?
(6) Why has there been so much warming around the North Pole since the late 1970's and a declining sea ice extent trend, but almost no warming around the South Pole and a rising sea ice extent trend?
(7) Why does the atmospheric "hot spot" in the tropics claimed by Global Climate Models not exist in real life?
(8) Why do almost all Global Climate Model simulations overstate actual warming?
(9) Why do so many people consider the few degrees F. of warming since 1850 to be bad news?
(10) Why do so many people consider the increase of CO2 from 275 ppmv in 1750, to 400 ppmv today, to be bad news?
(11) Why do so many people believe scary climate change predictions when every prior scary environmental catastrophe prediction since the 1960s, from DDT to acid rain, was wrong?
Note: Since 1997 I have only been able to delete one question from my list (below), because I think I figured out the answer … but then I could be wrong:
(Q) "Why does Al Gore think he knows so much about global warming?"
(A) He actually knew almost nothing about the future climate, but he did know how to get attention, and then made a lot of money investing in "green" industries supported by taxpayer subsidies!