The "Climate Wars" have lasted even longer than the War in Afghanistan -- roughly 30 years, versus 16 years!
This year I'm a 20-year veteran of the Climate Wars -- 20 years ago I started reading about global warming.
A month later I thought I understood the basics of climate science.
Today I know less about climate science than I thought I knew then.
Because now I know climate science has a lot of questions, and few answers.
The best answer to a climate change question is often "no one knows" ... but, unfortunately, many people think experts are people who have all the answers, and never say "no one knows" or "I don't know".
I believe I have an advantage over government bureaucrat climate scientists simply because no one pays me to predict a climate catastrophe, I'm very reluctant to make or believe predictions of the future, and I don't trust leftists to present accurate data and/or tell the truth.
It took me 20 years of climate change reading to understand that "climate change" is 99% politics supported by junk science, and 1% real science (1% only because some people with science degrees support the hoax):
(1) We are lucky to be living in the best climate this planet has ever had for humans.
(2) Our wonderful climate is partially ruined by leftists demonizing harmless CO2 plant food to scare people -- CO2 does not control the climate -- but it does 'green' the planet, which is good news.
(3) Leftist "scientists" on government payrolls created a false 'CO2 climate crisis' out of thin air, after leftist politicians hired them to scare people.
(4) Scared people demand that their government do something to save the Earth.
(5) Leftist politicians are happy to expand government regulations and power -- bigger government is what leftists always want -- they could not care less about "saving the Earth".
(6) If leftist politicians really wanted to "save the Earth", they would not completely ignore air, land and water pollution in China, India and other parts of Asia.
(A) 20 years ago I wondered how humans could predict the climate 100 years into the future, when they couldn't predict the climate in one year.
I don't wonder anymore. Humans can't predict the future climate -- the claim that they can is the biggest hoax in human history.
Fools who believe CO2 controls the climate have made wrong climate predictions for the past 30 years.
How many more decades of wrong predictions are required before it becomes obvious CO2 does not control the climate?
Answer: None. If CO2 really controlled the climate, average temperature predictions would have been right for the past 30 years!
(B) 20 years ago I wondered why some "climate scientists" in the 1970s claimed an ice age was coming, and then most "climate scientists" in the 1980s claimed runaway warming was coming.
I don't wonder anymore.
Scientists get attention, government funding, and government jobs, if they make scary claims.
(C) 20 years ago I wondered why the ice glaciers melting in the past 20,000 years, that raised sea level 400 feet, had natural causes ... while ice melting anywhere after 1940 was claimed to be caused by man made CO2.
I don't wonder anymore.
The claimed hand off from natural climate change to man made climate change in 1940 is nonsense.
There is nothing unusual in the historical temperature data after 1940 to even suggest natural climate change has stopped.
In fact, the specific claims of the global warmunists, when written clearly below, rather than using their generic term "climate change", make them look like fools:
Global Warmunists claim:
(a) Natural climate change for 4.5 billion years,
(b) 1940: Natural climate change "dies",
(c) 1940: Man made aerosols take over as "the climate controller",
(d) 1975: Man made aerosols "die",
(e) 1975: Man made CO2 takes over as "the climate controller",
(f) 2000: Man made CO2 "falls asleep"
(g) 2015 / 2016: Pacific Ocean "El Nino" takes over as "the climate controller"
(D) 20 years ago I wondered how 350 ppm CO2 could cause runaway warming, when geologists said CO2 was near the bottom of the historical range (roughly 200 ppm to 7,000 parts per million), and there was no evidence of runaway warming in the past with CO2 levels up to twenty times higher than 350 ppm.
I don't wonder anymore -- runaway global warming is a left wing fantasy, based on absolutely no science.
(E) 20 years ago I wondered how anyone could know man made CO2 was the climate controller.
Today I know that In the “era of manmade CO2” since 1940, we had three different correlations of CO2 levels and the average temperature, so the claim that CO2 controls the climate has been falsified by actual data:
(a) Negative correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1940 to 1975,
(b) Positive correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1975 to 2000, and
(c) No correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 2000 to 2015.
Today I am more confident than ever that CO2 is a minor factor in climate change, assuming its effect is large enough to measure.
So far the only scientific evidence about the effects of CO2 is from simple CO2 lab experiments that may have no connection with real life.
... but if the lab experiments do apply to real life, and CO2 levels continue to rise 2 ppm per year, it would take 200 years for CO2 to double from 400 ppm (today) to 800 ppm, causing the average temperature to gradually increase by a mere +1 degree C. over 200 years -- mainly warmer nights.
1997 was my second year of using the internet, and my first year of reading about global warming.
I'd been writing a finance / economics newsletter since 1977.
As a supporter of free markets, and the resulting prosperity, the growing war on fossil fuels caught my attention.
Fossil fuels are cheap sources of energy that powered the healthy economic growth after World War II.
I immediately suspected the accuracy of long term climate predictions made by people who could not predict the climate in the next year.
But then there was 1990's reality -- the 1990s were a decade of global warming and rising CO2 (the "1990s" turned out to be the only such decade in 4.5 billion years of Earth's history, although I didn't know it then!).
In the 1990s it was easy to believe CO2 controlled the climate, because CO2 levels rose and the average temperature increased at least +0.5 degrees C. from the 1993 low to the 2003 high -- that's half of all the warming claimed since 1880.
... But then the average temperature stopped rising from the early 2000s to 2015, even as CO2 levels continued rising.
We had a flat average temperature trend for at least 12 years (that may still be in progress, but was interrupted by an El Nino heat peak in 2015/2016 -- a natural, temporary cyclical release of heat from the Pacific Ocean).
I wrote my first global warming article in 2007, and another in 2014 after 17 years reading about global warming -- reading at least one article or study every week since 1997.
I launched this blog in late 2014 only for my economic / finance newsletter subscribers.
Sometime in 2015 I started posting some comments about climate articles at a few online climate websites, and sometimes I included the URL for this blog at the end of my comment.
Today, after 11,000 page views here, I think my blog has been a useful public service -- there are plenty of things for people to worry about -- I want people to realize adding CO2 to the air is something to celebrate because it is greening our planet -- CO2 is not something to worry about.
Adding CO2 to the air can only improve the climate:
-- CO2 greens the planet, because CO2 is airborne plant food, and
-- We might get slightly warmer nights too -- also good news!
Continuing to burn fossil fuels to add more CO2 to the air will accelerate plant growth, and further green the planet.
Optimum growth of green plants used by humans and animals for food (the C3 plants) requires CO2 levels to double, triple, or quadruple, from the 400 ppm today.
Optimum green plant growth will increase the food supply for humans and animals -- improving life on our planet.
In 2017, just like in 1997, the cause(s) and physics of climate change are still not known.
Natural climate variations and man made climate variations can’t be differentiated.
Enthusiasts for catastrophic man made global warming belong in two camps:
(1) People who have incentives to promote a climate panic:
(a) Financial incentives (such as profiting from the 'green' industry), or
(b) Political incentives (such as wanting to gain political power), or
(c) Both incentives (such as climate "scientists" getting government jobs to play climate computer games)
(2) Gullible people who have no skepticism -- mainly leftists who blindly trust leftist leaders, even in scientific matters they know nothing about -- and they also blindly distrust anyone who disagrees.
Leftists ought to learn about the lies and failures of strong central governments from the USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela.
Richard Greene,
July 22, 2017
Bingham Farms, Michigan
My qualifications, in order of importance:
Lived in same Michigan home for 30 years and
did not notice much climate change,
Common sense,
Doubts all predictions,
Doesn't trust politicians,
Doesn't trust leftists,
Can't speak French,
BS degree, State University of New York
MBA degree, New York University
CBW40 degree**
** Civilized By Wife for 40 years "degree"
Richard Greene,
July 22, 2017
Bingham Farms, Michigan
My qualifications, in order of importance:
Lived in same Michigan home for 30 years and
did not notice much climate change,
Common sense,
Doubts all predictions,
Doesn't trust politicians,
Doesn't trust leftists,
Can't speak French,
BS degree, State University of New York
MBA degree, New York University
CBW40 degree**
** Civilized By Wife for 40 years "degree"