A climate rap is when I sit down with my 2009 Apple MacBook Pro laptop confuser, and type whatever comes out of my head, or elsewhere! First draft -- with no revisions or rewrites, living dangerously with spell check turned off. I have arbitrarily decided, after retiring in 2005, that proofreading is for losers.
The science of climate change can be simple and easy to understand. Climate alarmists, usually leftists, believe the climate can ONLY get worse in the future. That's puzzling to me, for two reasons: No one can predict the future climate, and the climate has been improving since the cold 1690s. We've had a global warming trend since then. And a faster, but still harmless, global warming trend since1975. I'm not a "climate denier", as brainwashed climate alarmists call anyone who disagrees with their coming climate crisis fantasy. I am willing to admit there is a climate. But I'm happy with it. Do leftists debate climate science, or anything else, you ask? You must be kidding, leftists assert their beliefs and character attack skeptics -- they do not debate, or become more moderate! They only move further left.
The15 short climate science lessons that follow have not been learned by climate alarmists. Nor do they want to learn. They rarely know ANY climate science, other than acting as trained parrots for scary, and always wrong, climate predictions. No offense intended toward parrots:
(1)
Earth's climate is always changing (our planet is not in thermodynamic equilibrium, using over complicated science talk).
(2)
Earth's climate in the past one million years was usually too cool for humans to enjoy, except ski bums. There were warm periods called interglacials, that have lasted 10,000 to 15,000 years in the past. We are living in the Holocene Interglacial, and should be happy about that fact. It could end tomorrow, or in thousands of years. No one knows the future climate ... but apparently a lot of people can't enjoy the current wonderful climate !
(3)
During interglacials, there are multi-hundred year periods of mild warming, followed by multi-hundred year periods of mild cooling. People living in the past have strongly preferred the warmer centuries. The current Modern Warming started around 1700 to 1750. We should be be happy to live during a mild warming trend.
(4)
Computer models predict whatever their owners want predicted. There is only one real climate model, out of over 40. "Real" means the only model that seems to make decent predictions (of mild, harmless global warming). A Russian model called INMCM5, soon to be updated to INMCM6 ( Institute of Numerical Mathematics at the tbd, -- I've been trying to remember the tbd for 10 years, and just failed again! ) But just one model that seems to work, out of over 40, is likely to be a lucky guess, not true climate science knowledge. The rest of the so-called models are near worthless computer games. Real science requires right predictions, not their wrong predictions.
(5)
There are plenty of unanswered questions, and too many climate science assumptions touted as facts. The precise causes of climate change are unknown. We do know the climate of our planet changed from only natural causes, not man made, for 4.5 billion years. We do know that climate alarmists, since the United Nation's IPCC was formed in 1988, decided that natural causes of climate change are minor, and can be ignored. They offer no explanation of why natural causes should be ignored.
(6)
Most of what is claimed to be climate science is NOT science at all -- just always wrong wild guesses of a future climate. And that imaginary future climate is ALWAYS bad news. In their dreams of the future, leftist climate alarmists have decided the climate was perfect around 1755 ( "pre-industrial"), even though people living then thought it was too cool, and any deviation from 1755 is bad news. Apparently 1755, with only rough temperature estimates, was "perfect". And never mind the past 4.5 billion years! Continual wild guesses of the future climate, by people who have been making wrong predictions for 50 years, so far, are NOT real science. The United Nation's IPCC chose 1755 as their “Pre-Industrial” reference year. But 1755 is roughly the end of the Little Ice Age, the coldest period in the last 10,000-years! Global warming since then is GOOD news !
(7)
The predictions were right about warming ... except from 1940 to 1975 (cooling), and from 2003 to mid-2015 (flat trend) while carbon dioxide (CO2) levels were rising. Not bad, but the only other choice was global cooling ... because the climate of our planet is ALWAYS warming, or cooling. The warming predictions grossly overestimated the warming by almost 2x if you start the count in 1975, and almost 3x if you start the count in 1940. CO2 levels have been increasing since the 1930s trough of the Great Depression, so 1940 is a logical starting point for analyses.
CO2 levels accelerated significantly after 1950. So 1950 would be a decent starting point too. There is no logical reason to start the count with 1975 UNLESS you want to ignore the 1940 to 1975 cooling (while CO2 levels increased), to get a better match of climate predictions and climate reality. But even when starting in 1975, actual warming is still half of predicted warming, even when data mining to make the climate model predictions look better. The fact that climate model predictions have NOT improved since the 1970s, still consistently overestimating warming, means that modelers WANT to scare people with their predictions -- accurate predictions DO NOT matter to the government bureaucrat "scientists".
(8)
Radiative forcing is a fancy pants climate science term for the difference between how much sunlight reaches Earth's surface during the day and how much heat flows back to space at night. If both values are the same, Earth’s temperature doesn't change. Of course the climate always changes, meaning that long term changes to this balance are constantly causing the global average temperature to rise or fall.
(9)
Carbon dioxide, that was once in the atmosphere, became stored as carbon, underground in oil, natural gas and coal deposits, millions of years ago. Burning those fossil fuels "recycles" CO2 into the atmosphere. Lab experiments say more CO2 in the air will disrupt Earths cooling ability. That's a fair assumption. Scientists have no idea how much, but scientists don't like to say "We don't know". So they arbitrarily declare CO2 controls the global average temperature. But that was not true in the past one million years, where CO2 peaks FOLLOWED temperature peaks, based on scientists studying Antarctica ice cores to reconstruct past temperature and CO2 levels.
(10)
CO2 and methane levels have increased a lot from 1755, with CO2 up from 280 parts per million (ppm) to about 415 ppm now -- up almost 50%. Methane, another greenhouse gas, increased about 150%, from 0.75 ppm to about 1.8 ppm. Methane is believed to be much more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but there is very little in the air, compared with CO2. Carbon dioxide and methane have natural sources too -- plant-decomposition, volcanoes, coal, the oceans, and gas deposits. The human-contribution is only a few percent.
(11)
CO2 is believed to have a declining warming effect as the concentration increases in the atmosphere. Above 1,000 ppm, adding more CO2 to the atmosphere should have very little effect. Plants, however, would love to have 1,000 ppm -- above 1,000 ppm is a typical target inside the greenhouses owned by smart growers, using CO2 enrichment systems.
(12)
The greenhouse effect is essential for life on Earth. Without it, the Earth would be a lifeless ice ball. With CO2 under about 150 ppm, few plants would be able to manufacture sugars, so they would die.
(13)
Climate science requires answers to questions about what happens with water vapor in the atmosphere, and clouds. Water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas, and it does not remain constant. There's strong evidence that water vapor, and water in the clouds, both affect the climate. More clouds in the daytime block more incoming sunlight. Scientists don't know how to calculate the impact of all these changes.
(14)
The climate system is complex. The claim that one gas, CO2, controls everything is VERY UNLIKELY to be true. There is not much understanding of the effects of clouds. But the many unknowns do not stop government bureaucrat climate scientists, and other climate alarmists, from trying to scare the public into allowing them, and leftist politicians, to micro-manage our lives.
(15)
I said 15 climate science items, and I just ran out of steam, and diet Coke ...
Well, I'll add that the Green New "Ordeal" (GND) is extremely expensive, not feasible in 15 years, or 30 years, and foolishly replaces cheap, reliable fossil fuel energy with expensive, intermittent solar and wind energy ... where the wind turbines are effective bird ( boid, in Brooklyn, USA ) and bat shredders. Also, MOST of the GND money would be required for the socialist programs that have NOTHING to do with energy. Anyone who supports the "socialist manifesto" Green New Ordeal is a fool, and is hereby banned from this blog!
End of ranting and raving,
Floyd R. Turbo style:
Rich "Heavy R" Greene
... I will now sit down
and blast my ears and body
with a real bass heavy
1995 rap by 2PAC --
food for my two self
designed subwoofers,
and for unknown reasons,
my cat, Mr. Sneaky,
will sit on the floor
next to me. as I listen to:
So Many Tears
" I lost so many peers,
and shed so many tears ..."