One of the liberal myths discussed in my September-October economics newsletter fits this blog perfectly, with very few changes beyond adding a space between each sentence:
A myth is usually a conclusion based on subjective feelings and beliefs, rather than objective data, facts, evidence and logic.
Once they believe in a myth, most people have no use for data, facts and logic.
But ... "Without data you’re just another person with an opinion.”, according to legendary business consultant W. Edwards Deming.
Anyone who starts with a conclusion, and later seeks data, will favor data supporting their conclusion (confirmation bias) ... including incomplete, 'adjusted', 'cherry-picked', non-relevant, and created out of 'thin air' data.
Of course conclusions based on data can be wrong too.
Data collection methodologies and likely margins of error need to be questioned.
Short term trends should not be assumed to be permanent.
Some available data are too flawed to use, or there are no relevant data at all.
Common sense is important.
Skepticism is important.
Consensus is not important, and is often wrong.
Once a belief is established in our minds, it's difficult to eradicate, even with a lot of evidence to the contrary.
Many people cling to their myths as if their lives depended on their infallibility.
I call the following a "liberal myth", but anyone can believe it, because it has been falsely stated as a 'fact' in the media so many times, and by people in positions of power.
Liberal Myth #4:
Burning fossil fuels
is causing a climate catastrophe
ECONOMIC EFFECT:
The war on fossil fuels is a war on economic growth, which has been based on inexpensive fossil fuels for over a century.
Direct spending: A September 13, 2013 US Congressional Research Service report said: “Direct federal funding to address global climate change totaled approximately $77 billion from Fiscal Year 2008 through Fiscal Year 2013".
That $77 billion does not include green company and customer tax credits that reduce government tax revenues, but don't require new government spending.
WHY THE MYTH IS WRONG:
Geologists believe Earth has been a wet, warm, greenhouse, volcanic planet, warmer than today for about 3.5 billion years of our planet's 4.5 billion year history.
There is no evidence a climate catastrophe is in progress.
The climate in 2016 is the best climate for human health, human prosperity, and green plant growth rates, in at least 500 years!
A small subset of scientists, called climate modelers, claim 4.5 billion years of natural climate change stopped, and CO2 suddenly became the "climate controller" in 1975 ... but there is no explanation of how this could happen, and no evidence their claim is true.
The climate in 2016 is wonderful, and has been improving for hundreds of years.
We no longer have the unusually cool periods between 1300 and 1800 that coincided with low levels of solar energy (based on the solar energy proxy of sunspot counts).
We no longer have CO2 levels so low (under 200 ppm) that green plant growth was stunted, as we did 20,000 years ago during peak glaciation -- a very cold era when much more of Earth's CO2 was dissolved in the oceans.
Since then, much of the ice has melted, raising sea level 400 feet, and that melting was not from SUVs burning fossil fuels!
The effect of humans on the climate is most likely small, because the climate has been unusually stable and pleasant in the past 135 years.
There is no evidence the small (+1 degree +/-1 degree C.) change of the average temperature since 1880 (mainly affecting nighttime lows) was "abnormal".
Earth's climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years -- no one knows what caused it, and no one knows what a "normal" climate is!
DETAILS:
This blog has details, data and charts -- following is a high level summary avoiding numerical data whenever possible.
There are no accurate average temperature and CO2 data for 99.999% of human history, and the real time data for the remaining 0.001% (1880 to 2016) are very rough.
There were few surface thermometers in the 1800s, and CO2 levels before 1958 have to be roughly estimated from air bubbles in Antarctica ice cores!
Most important: The future climate is just wild guesses ... almost always based on "CO2 is evil" computer models that have been consistently wrong for the past 40 years!
The climate models are nothing more than a very deceptive way of presenting wild guesses ... based on a greenhouse gas theory from 1896.
Almost all global warming predictions are based on the false assumption that CO2 is the 'climate controller' -- but there is no evidence this has ever been true in the past 4.5 billion years of Earth's climate history.
Back in the 1960s smarmy scientists, starting with Roger Revelle, realized that scary predictions would bring them attention and government grants for further study.
Meanwhile, every prediction of doom from various "environmental" boogeymen -- acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer, global cooling, GMO food, exploding silicone breast implants, global warming, etc. -- has been wrong -- 100% wrong!
The only known historical relationship of CO2 levels and average temperature:
When the air temperature rises from natural causes, perhaps solar energy variations, the oceans eventually warm.
Warming oceans release some of their dissolved CO2 into the air (just like a cold glass of soda pop sitting outdoors releases CO2 carbonation into the air as it warms).
Studies of ice cores show CO2 levels peak roughly 500 to 1,000 years AFTER the average temperature peaks.
The claim that rising CO2 causes runaway global warming is the worst claim of all -- CO2 levels have been higher than today during most of Earth's history.
There is no geological evidence our planet has ever had runaway warming, even when CO2 levels were up to 10x to 20x times higher than today.
If this runaway warming theory was true, humans would not be here today!
The politics of climate change is leftist governments hiring scientists willing to make scary climate predictions for money, and then claiming a more powerful central government is needed to save the planet.
Complete baloney.
Predictions of doom are a centuries-old political strategy, first used by religious leaders to control their followers. H. L. Mencken described the strategy well:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
When asked: “Is the scientific debate about global warming over?”
61% of US voters said no.
... But 26% of Republicans, 28% of Democrats, and 19% of unaffiliated voters, say the debate is “over”.
I'm surprised so many Republicans believe 'the science is settled', because science is never settled!
And I'm shocked that 21% of Democrat voters favor the government investigating and prosecuting climate-change skeptics ... like me!
Survey data source: Recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey of likely US voters.
Of course Earth's climate is always changing.
And of course humans do have some effect on the climate:
- Recovering and using fossil fuels releases 'waste' heat,
- Economic growth near land thermometers creates "global warming",
- Dark soot on Arctic ice and snow, from burning coal in Northern Hemisphere, increases absorption of solar energy, and perhaps most important:
- Arbitrary "adjustments" to raw temperature data by government bureaucrats account for up to half the total (minor) warming claimed for the past 135 years.
CO2 is very likely to be a minor climate change variable.
That's the only logical explanation for why we've had three different CO2 - average temperature relationships as CO2 levels rose after 1940:
(1) Negative correlation: Cooling from 1940 to 1975,
(2) No correlation: Flat trend between 1975, and the 1993 low,
(3) Positive correlation: Warming from the 1993 low, to the 2003 high, and
(4) No correlation: Flat trend from the 2003 high to 2015.
Almost all the global warming after 1940 was between 1993 and 2003 (all the post-1940 warming was between 1975 and 2005).
There was a similar amount of warming from 1910 to 1940 -- yet no one blames that warming on manmade carbon dioxide.
The claim that a +2 degrees C. rise of average temperature since 1750 would be a climate catastrophe is silly.
At least +2 degrees C. of warming HAS ALREADY HAPPENED since the coldest years in the late 1600s, when Earth had an unusually cool climate, and unusually low solar output during the sunspot "Maunder Minimum".
The +2 degrees C. or more warming since 1690, when people hated the cool climate, is very good news, not a climate catastrophe!
The claim that 97% of scientists have a consensus on climate change is a complete fabrication, based on faulty questions and data mining.
A majority of all scientists do not believe a climate change catastrophe is in progress.
The survey questions are usually designed so even I would be part of the 97%, yet I am the most skeptical "denier" of a coming climate change catastrophe that you will ever read!
Claiming 2015 was 'the hottest year on record' ignores 99.999% of climate history, for which there are no real time measurements!
The remaining 0.001% only includes ONE mild warming trend that started in 1850.
During that warming trend, probably still in progress, new warm year records are to be expected regularly, until a cooling trend begins.
Antarctica and Greenland ice core studies reveal that our planet has had repeating warming/cooling cycles that last hundreds of years each.
There has never been a warming trend not followed by a cooling trend.
People who believe a climate change catastrophe is in progress are much more likely to remain silent as their government seizes more power over the private sector of the economy "to save the Earth".
The (false) demonization of CO2 and fossil fuels is used by leftists to justify increasing the power of central governments ... and replacing capitalism with socialism.
"One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do environmental policy anymore ... One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy."
Otto Edenhofer,
former IPCC official, from a 2010 interview
"The really inconvenient truth is that it's not about carbon -- it's about (anti) capitalism."
Climate activist Naomi Klein,
from her book: "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate"
1970's environmentalists cared about the environment -- they promoted new regulations that reduced air, water and land pollution.
Today's environmentalists completely ignore real pollution in China and India.
They focus on the false claim that a very beneficial airborne plant food, carbon dioxide, is actually "carbon pollution" -- a belief that is as anti-science as claiming the Earth is flat.