Anthropogenic Global Warming

(updated October 2013)

The global warming controversy is about whether global warming is going to be a serious problem and whether it is being caused primarily by human production of CO² – hence term “anthropogenic”.

Believers are certain that AGW is not only real, but alarming, because the result will be massive global extinction, famine, war, drought, flooding, disease, and super storms. Believers are also certain that these alarming results are imminent, that we are past the point of no return, and that the science is settled. Until very recently, believers included all governments, all universities, all media elites, all Democrats, all progressives, all liberals, all socialists, all communists, all environmentalists, most scientists, and most CEOs.

In spite of such widespread belief in AGW alarmism, I was always pretty confident that it was greatly exaggerated because of the cult-like behavior of believers and because it too perfectly justified the dominant groupthink in American academia, government, and media:

Government has the right and the obligation to enforce every good idea, and given that the main problem in the world is how Americans have more than others, we need a global government.

Nevertheless, AGW belief reached such a fever pitch in 2005 that I had to investigate, and my very first round of independent thinking, which could have been done by anyone, falsified the connection between CO² and warming because the ice core data showed that each CO² increase occurred after the warming. This falsifies AGW because the warming caused the oceans to release some of their CO² reserves, which are 50 times greater than the CO² in the atmosphere, and those CO² increases didn’t cause more warming, which would have released more CO², which would have caused more warming. Therefore, it should have been obvious to any independent thinker that there was no reason to be alarmed.

In real science, once a theory has been falsified, it is discarded, but when Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008, I knew that AGW was far from dead, so I spent several hundred additional hours researching the issue more deeply. As always, I wasn’t certain what I would conclude because anyone who says “The science is settled.” is not a scientist.

I was able to falsify several supporting claims and theories, and I exposed two of the three main champions of AGW  (James Hansen and Al Gore) as intentional frauds. Since then, several huge developments such as ClimateGate have also falsified AGW and/or discredited its champions, and yet only a few have abandoned the theory.

An excellent place to start is a concise article from November 16th, 2011. An extensive compendium of AGW scandals and frauds has been compiled by Pierre L. Gosselin. As of the fall of 2013 there has been no warming in 17 years, and the models of believers are increasingly wrong.

Global warming research is unnecessarily difficult because the vast majority of the media and scientists and half of the public are true believers, and like any true believers who have this level of power, this gang of true believers is guilty of excessive bias, deceit, and bully tactics. Therefore, as usual, we will have to defy the bullies as well as our own bias, and think for ourselves to uncover the truth.

Temperature Trends

It seems hard to believe that anyone would find the temperature trends alarming, but most people never see this data.

Up until about 1000 years ago, Temperatures were frequently higher than now during this interglacial (period between ice ages) and yet CO² levels were always lower than now. Also note that temperatures frequently rose much faster than their current rate – sometimes as much as 200 times faster – and the cause was never CO². Perhaps this explains why global warming alarmists only talk about the last 1000 years of this interglacial.

(Source: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

30-50 previous interglacials have occurred since the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch 1.8 million years ago. Temperatures during the last three previous interglacials were even warmer than our interglacial, and CO² levels were always lower than now during those interglacials. (The Pleistocene epoch ended with the Younger Dryas event . We are now in the Holocene epoch.)

Global warming alarmists (and the media) get their modern temperature measurements from James Hansen, who is a NASA scientist by training, but who is also a very biased global warming alarmist, and yet he controls the temperature records published by NASA, which ironically are collected from ground stations – not satellites. James Hansen hand edits the temperatures he publishes, and he also frequently decides to omit readings from certain ground stations for certain months.

Note that satellite data is much more accurate than ground data. Not only can we get unedited satellite data, but data from ground stations is available from fewer locations, and ground data can be impacted by local human activity such as how cities can grow and envelop ground station locations, thus creating an artificial trend of increasing temperature readings. The only benefit of using ground data is that records go back to about 1860; whereas, satellite data only goes back to December 1978.

We will next look at the satellite data, which in spite of its short record should still be relevant and alarming given the computer models promoted by Michael Mann, James Hansen, Al Gore, and the media. Also, recent data is relevant because every year since about 1997, alarmists and the media like to say that the last ten years are “the hottest decade in the hottest century”, and sometimes they remember to add “for the last 1000 years”, (but why only the last 1000 years, and why not mention that it was at least as hot about 1000 years ago when CO² levels were much lower?)

1998 was an especially hot year because of a super El Nino – not greenhouse gases. In that year and some subsequent years, the popular alarmist mantra included the additional claim that this is “the hottest year” in the hottest decade in the hottest century. Al Gore makes this claim with 2005 as “the hottest year” in his 2005 documentary, but he was wrong because he was using data from James Hansen, which leads us to another twist.

In 2008, James Hansen had to fix his data because it was so out of sync with the satellite data. Hansen’s original hand-edited ground data showed that recent years were much hotter than the satellite data, which made his original data seem much more alarming. After fixing his ground data to more closely match the satellite record, Hansen’s temperatures were still slightly hotter than the satellite data, which brings us to yet another twist.

If warming were caused by green house gases, then the warming would first appear in the lower troposphere (which is where satellites record temperatures), and the warmer air would eventually cause temperatures at ground stations to rise too – but that is not what is happening according to Hansen’s own data. Hansen’s data makes it look as if ground temperatures are rising first, which makes a more alarming trend when looking only at ground data, but which implies a geothermal cause instead of greenhouse gases. Ironically, if Hansen makes his ground temperatures even lower than satellite temperatures (from the lower troposphere) to support his greenhouse gas theory, then the warming trend would almost disappear and become smaller than rest of the warming trend that we have been experiencing since The Little Ice Age ended around 1850. (The Little Ice Age was a 500 period of low solar activity and superstorms.)

Now let’s look at the satellite data from December 1978 through December 2008 for the Northern Hemisphere, and note that this data is twice as alarming as it should be because it is not long enough to contain the warm period in the 30’s and the cold period from 1945 through 1975. If this graph also included those periods, we would see that temperatures are rising about half as fast as this graph would imply.

If anyone is interested, they can download this data directly from the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and then they could import it into Excel and generate these graphs like I have done here.

Hmm …

In spite of omitting the warm period in the 1930’s and cold period from 1945 – 1975, this graph is not very alarming, is it, and it is especially not alarming considering that this increase is consistent with the temperature increase since the end of the little ice age in 1850 (and yet most greenhouse gases have been generated since 1950). Also, note that temperatures have been falling in recent years.

Although, the Northern Hemisphere saw no alarming temperature increases, perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in the Southern Hemisphere.

Hmm…

The Southern Hemisphere is even less alarming than the Northern Hemisphere. Perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in the Tropic rather than the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.

Hmm…

The Tropic data is even less alarming than the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Perhaps the alarming temperature increases occurred in a land known only to James Hansen, Michael Mann, and Al Gore.

Opinion Trends

Note that the media, government, and scientists have alternated every few decades between predictions of a coming ice age and predictions of global warming.

1895 – A New York Times headline read, “Geologists Think the World May Be Frozen Up Again”.

1896  Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, suggested that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal would enhance the earth's greenhouse effect and lead to global warming.

1923 – Time Magazine reported, “The discovery of changes in the sun’s heat and the southward advance of the glaciers in recent years have given rise to conjectures of the possible advent of a new ice age.

1924 – The New York Times ran stories about “A New Ice Age”.

1931 E. O. Hulbert published a calculation showing that doubling or tripling the amount of CO² in the atmosphere should increase the surface temperature by 4 and 7 degrees respectively.

1933 – The New York times reported on “The Longest Warming Spell since 1776”.

1934 – The warmest year from 1900 – 2008.

1938 Guy Callendar argues that CO² greenhouse Global Warming is underway.

1939 – Time Magazine told its readers that, “Weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.

1945 – 1975 The earth was unusually cold.

1957 Time Magazine printed an article titled, "One Big Greenhouse."  It claimed that if surface temperatures would increase 1 to 2 degrees, secondary effects may occur.  Possibly the melting of the ice in Greenland which would flood the earth's costal lands. Also, that the sea temperatures would increase causing them not to hold the concentrations of CO² as they previously did and further the amounts of CO² in the atmosphere.

1974 Time Magazine reported the coming of Another Ice Age and the language was about as alarmist as the mainstream media reports of Global Warming today. Time reported a 2.7 degree Fahrenheit drop in temperatures since the mid 1940’s. Public service announcements were aired in between cartoons to repeatedly warned kids in America about The Coming Ice Age. I saw these first hand.

1975 – The New York Times declared, “A Major cooling Widely Considered to be Inevitable”

1981 NASA scientist James Hansen claimed that global warming was occurring faster than predicted.

1988 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was Established by the United Nations Environment Program and World Meteorological Organization.  The IPCC's first report found that the planet had warmed by 0.5 degrees C. in the past century.

1998 – A super El Nino causes weather disasters and the second warmest year on record after 1934.

2001 – Time Magazine reported, “scientists no longer doubt global warming is happening.”

2005 Al Gore produced the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, which polarized the issue because it seemed so compelling but was mostly based on inaccuracies and exaggerations.

2007 “Six Greenpeace activists vandalized the chimney of the Kingsnorth power station in Kent, England, painting graffiti that cost £30,000 to remove. At their trial for causing criminal damage, the defense presented arguments that the six had a lawful excuse to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. … The jury accepted the lawful excuse argument and acquitted the activists of causing criminal damage.” James Hansen flew to England to testify in their defense.

2007  The fourth IPCC report said that the planet had warmed 0.74 degrees C. since the beginning of the Twentieth Century.

2008 Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize because his documentary had created so many true believers in AGW.

2008 I heard NASA scientist James Hansen tell NPR’s Dianne Rehm that chief executives of fossil fuel companies should be put on trial for crimes against humanity. He also explained that the climate change occurring now is 1000 times faster than ever before. Apparently Hansen is unaware that the current warming trend is actually 50-200 times slower than the abrupt warming trends (Dansgaard-Oeschger events discovered in the 1980’s) that occurred about every 1470 years throughout the last ice age from 120,000 years ago until 12,000 years ago. Hansen is thus exaggerating by a factor of 200,000 or 20 million percent.

2008 Global warming alarmists retreated. Perhaps in response to the recent cooling trend, the theory of anthropogenic global warming with its specific prediction – warming – morphed into the unfalsifiable (and thus non-scientific) theory of anthropogenic climate change where every type of climate change is attributed to human activity. This is about as scientific as the theory that, “Everything that happens is God’s will.” Neither is falsifiable.

2008 Global warming alarmists retreated. Alarmists had already retreated from the bully claim that “everyone agrees” and adopted the elitist claim that “every scientist agrees”. Now they have retreated to the pathetic claim that “every climatologist agrees” – as if only climatologists can think. Of course, climatologists are the field of experts that warned us of the coming ice age in the 1970’s, so if I were an alarmist, I wouldn’t want to put all of my eggs in that basket.

2009 The vast majority of American scientists have a new boss, Mr. Obama, and he is a global warming alarmist, so scientists with a different opinion are now going to experience even more pressure to conform.

2013 NASA discovered that CO2 in the atmosphere expelled 95% of the heat from a massive burst of energy from the sun, which seems to contradict AGW alarmism.

Current Opinion

About half of Americans believe that humans are causing the earth to warm about 1000 times faster than ever before. Nearly as many believe that in just a few decades – or at most 100 years, the result will be a global apocalypse.

The belief in Anthropogenic (human caused) Global Warming is not evenly distributed among Americans. For example, there is a large and growing Gap between Democrats and Republicans with Democrats becoming more convinced and Republicans becoming less convinced. I can also add from personal experience that libertarians have always been skeptical, that the mainstream media have always been true believers, and that anyone climbing the corporate ladder, social ladder, or political ladder is much more likely to believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming whether they are a Democrat or Republican because they are more vulnerable to peer pressure.

In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican nominee for President of the United States assured us that anthropogenic global warming was a very serious problem that they would address as President. Not all candidates were true believers, but the winner from each party was a true believer.

When Barack Obama won the 2008 primary, he said, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." I wouldn’t bother repeating this if Obama had been appropriately ridiculed for this ludicrous and narcissistic statement, but in fact this statement seemed to improve his image and increase his support in America and around the world.

Clearly, to the majority who believe this, anyone who stands in the way, such as a global warming skeptic, must be a very bad person indeed, which helps explain why those who disagree are bullied, shunned, fired, and publicly ridiculed. However, the depth of knowledge of the vast majority of those who support this kind of persecution is quite shallow and hence they persecute because of their bias, and their bias is the result of their desire to conform to peer pressure.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of all people today assume that the obvious way to solve a big problem like Anthropogenic Global Warming is a massive increase in government control of human activity. However, the reality is that global warming is not a significant threat and is not primarily caused by humans. Therefore, the reality of global warming is the antidote to this Orwellian future.

Global Warming is one of the best examples of why I say: The Promise of Reality is Freedom.

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the reality of Global Warming was exposed as nothing more than a religion with its own apocalypse prophecy and with the vast majority of its followers having blind faith. This is the moment that began to restore the image of reality and freedom as the last, best hope on Earth.

Although Global Warming has all the characteristics of a religion with its own apocalypse prophecy, the bigger picture is that authoritarian leftist ideology (also known as government) is the dominant religion today, and its prophets have foreseen the apocalypse – and it is Global Warming.

Leftist Agenda

The leftist agenda says that it is unfair for Americans to eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and give away huge sums of money – thus resulting in global fairness.

Global warming “science” says that we are destroying the earth to produce meat, drive cars, drive bigger, safer cars, etc. – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and spend huge sums of money to combat global warming – thus resulting in global fairness.

Even Obama said in May, 2008, “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times. … That's not going to happen.” He also said, “When you spread the wealth around, it is good for everybody.”

I remember in 1976 when my teacher at my government school explained how it is unfair for Americans to eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc. She explained that it was primarily American excess, waste, and greed that was causing The Coming Ice Age. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and spend huge sums of money to combat The Coming Ice Age – thus resulting in global fairness.

Time magazine, the New York Times, and other media warned of The Coming Ice Age around 1975, and commercials placed in between cartoons warned kids repeatedly about The Coming Ice Age. Why do you think the media today never mention how wrong they were in the 70’s? Why do you think the media today are so certain that Anthropogenic Global Warming is such a huge threat? Could the mainstream media have a leftist agenda?

I do not think it is a coincidence that global warming directly supports the leftist agenda. Nor is it a coincidence that the authoritarian left champions “science” that directly supports a massive increase in government control of human activity.

Given what the left does when it has more power, and given the many past lies, hypocrisy, and bully tactics used by the left (e.g. the media) to promote any science that supports a leftist agenda, we should always be suspicious of a leftist agenda and any science that supports a leftist agenda. Global warming is such an obvious example of a leftist agenda, that it is tempting to dismiss it summarily. However, in spite of the many lies and bully tactics of the authoritarian left to promote the idea of anthropogenic global warming, could their conclusion be right?

I would not be impressed if 100% of leftists and journalists believed something – because of their history (in my lifetime) of exaggeration, conformism, and authoritarianism. I would still be skeptical if 97% of scientists agree. However, given the high stakes, the complexity, the claim that 97% of scientists agree, and that I think we are still at the early stages of uncovering the truth, I decided it was time to do some independent thinking on this topic – just in case those exaggerating conformist authoritarian leftists were on to something.

Fluorocarbons

At about the same time scientists were warning us about The Coming Ice Age, there were also commercials between cartoons that repeatedly warned kids about how fluorocarbons were going to destroy the ozone layer.

Holy Crap! They were right! There were many skeptics at first, and those few industries that would suffer financially paid scientists to come up with alternative theories and generally cheated to generate public doubt – until the ozone hole surprised everyone (including alarmists) when it appeared over the Antarctic in 1985.

In spite of the superficial similarities between the fluorocarbon problem and the theory of CO² induced global warming, they are actually very different, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that because one theory was true that the new theory has any validity whatsoever. They are in no way connected, and new scientific theories are still frequently proven wrong, and they always will be. That is how science works – most theories are wrong, and we perform tests to find out which are right.

Whereas, the fluorocarbon theory was a chemical reaction; the theory of CO² induced global warming was a physical reaction (thermodynamics). Whereas, the predicted result of the fluorocarbon theory was dependent on few variables with limited possibility for inaccuracy and with low probability for the discovery of variables whose relevance was previously unknown; the predicted result for the theory of CO² induced global warming is dependent on many variables with significant possibility for inaccuracy and with huge probability for the discovery of variables whose relevance was previously unknown.

Al Gore Discredits Global Warming

In 2007, Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace prize for his role in increasing the number of true believers in Global Warming.

Ironically, the reality is that Al Gore has done more to discredit Global Warming among mature and thoughtful people than any one person.

Al Gore was a big joke even to fellow Democrats before his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, and now he is a rock star among the more conformist Democrats. It is almost as if that were his goal. Clearly, accuracy and integrity were not his goal.

Exaggerations and lack of critical review by the media, politicians, and some scientists already make any mature and thoughtful person assume at first that Global Warming is probably a non issue. However, by embracing Al Gore as their champion, global warming alarmists have only increased doubt among mature and thoughtful people. Nevertheless, to this day, Gore’s many specious claims are cited as scientific dogma by the mainstream media.

Gore’s past hypocrisy and exaggerations make any mature and thoughtful person assume he is lying. His hypocrisy and exaggerations about Global Warming in particular confirm that he is lying.

How betrayed did you feel when your favorite new organizations reported shortly after the debut of “An Inconvenient Truth” that Al Gore has three houses, that one is over 10,000 square feet, that he doesn’t exercise the green energy option offered by his local power company, that he is addicted to private jets and limousines, and that even George Bush exercised the green energy option offered by his local power company. (BTW, I use hydro power and natural gas, so even a skeptic like me is more green than Al Gore.)

How betrayed did you feel in May 2010 when your favorite news outlets set you up by showing Al Gore testifying before Congress last year saying, “Every penny that I have made, I have put right into a non-profit deal, Alliance For Climate Protection, to spread awareness of why we have to take on this challenge.” – only to dash your spirits by then revealing that Al Gore had just added to his house collection with a $9 million dollar home in California having six fireplaces?

How betrayed did you feel when you learned that the US Media also ignored that a court in the U.K. listened to expert testimony from both sides and ruled that school kids must be informed of the biggest inaccuracies identified by the court before they can watch “An Inconvenient Truth” in school, or else teachers would be guilty of political indoctrination. Why would the US Media bury this story?

Ice Core Data

The ice core data was the cornerstone of the argument for anthropogenic global warming, but has become the cornerstone of the argument against it.

Gore stood in front of a giant graph of ice core data proving that temperature correlated nicely with the CO² levels for the last 600,000 years. However, Gore offered no explanation for why CO² levels would have risen or fallen before humans, which should have prompted Gore to examine the data more closely. If Gore had actually looked at the data more closely, he would have noticed several inconvenient truths. First, temperatures were higher than now many times in the past, and yet CO² levels were lower than now. Second, many times in the past, the Earth warmed as much as 12-15 degrees Celsius in as little as 10 years, which is about 200 times faster than the current warming trend (which began around 1750). Third, and most important, the temperature increases actually preceded the increases in CO². What Gore failed to explain was that when temperature increases, the oceans release their gases (like a warm Coke), or that the oceans contain 50 times more CO² than the atmosphere.

Although Al Gore ignored and misinterpreted the data, and although we see in the ice core data that past temperature increases preceded, and thus were not caused by, additional CO², these two facts alone do not falsify the theory of AGW. However, we can falsify the theory of AGW with one simple deduction that I still have not seen explained elsewhere: According to AGW theory, even if those historical CO² increases were released from the oceans following higher temperatures, then the additional CO² released from the oceans should have caused even higher temperatures, which should have released additional CO² from the oceans, which should have caused even higher temperatures … Of course, this runaway greenhouse effect never happened, and this fact alone falsifies the overall theory of AGW.

To summarize: The ice core data shows that temperature increases caused the oceans to release some of their vast stores of CO², thus significantly increasing atmospheric CO², which did not cause additional warming.

Given that the ice core data actually disproves the theory of AGW, it is possible that the AGW establishment will throw out the ice core data in order to save their overall theory of AGW. For example, they may “discover” that the ice core data is neither accurate nor global after all, in which case it could neither prove nor disprove AGW. Therefore, lets continue our analysis.

So temperature was driving CO², but what was driving temperature?

Note that Gore omitted a third graph showing that insolation (the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth) also correlated nicely with temperature and CO² from the same ice core data. This diagram was created for the journal Nature in 1999 by scientists from France, Russia, and the US using the same ice core data that Gore used.

 
(Source: Climate Sanity)

Obviously, neither temperature nor CO² levels can drive sunlight, but sunlight can drive temperature, which can then drive CO².

Just because sunlight drove temperature, which drove CO², doesn’t disprove the fact that CO² absorbs infrared – in a lab, but what about in the real world where there are far more variables?

Consider that higher temperatures caused the oceans to release CO², but that if more CO² in the atmosphere raised temperatures further, then wouldn’t that have caused the oceans to release more CO². Wouldn’t there have been a runaway feedback effect until the oceans had released all of their CO²? So, why didn’t this feedback effect happen, or if it did, why was it so insignificant, and why did it stop as soon as it had begun? Clearly, for reasons we may not yet know, more CO² in the atmosphere has a negligible impact on global temperatures – far less than predicted solely by CO²’s ability to absorb infrared – in a lab.

Recent Temperatures

Gore said , “Flooding in Asia, Mumbai, India this past July (2005): 37 inches of rain in 24 hours, by far the largest downpour that any city in India has ever received.” How does he know that? Records probably go back maybe a few decades at most.

Gore said we have temperature records going back to the Civil War, “if you look at the 10 hottest years ever measured in this atmospheric record, they have all occurred in the last 14 years. The hottest of all was 2005.”

Whereas, the ice core data goes back 600,000 years, we are now at CO² levels about 33% higher than any time in that data. As improbable as it seems, could different variables be more relevant now, and in a way that supports alarmist predictions? Such speculation is highly improbable, which is probably why no scientist has made such a claim. Therefore, we already have enough data to know that the warming trend of the last 160 years (since the little ice age) is both small and just an anomaly driven mostly by something other than CO², and that any extent to which it is driven by CO² will soon be cancelled out by whatever cancelled out all those previous rises in CO² in the ice core data.

Just in case anyone is still worried that the slight warming trend for the last 160 years might be alarming because of some as yet undiscovered factor, consider some additional facts:

• 160 years is not statistically significant compared to 600,000 years.
• The overall warming trend has been increasing at a slow and consistent rate since 1750, and yet 90% of anthropogenic CO² entered the atmosphere after 1970.
• Gore and other alarmists use NASA’s GISS temperature data from ground stations.
• GISS data has been manually adjusted by James Hansen.
• The ground stations allowed to be part of the data each year are hand-picked by James Hansen, and he often omits many stations.
• Ground stations are inherently less accurate than satellite data.
• The two sources of satellite data (from UAH and RSS) agree with each other, but disagree with Hansen’s GISS data.
• James Hansen is a scientist at NASA, but he is also a highly political global warming alarmist.
• Even James Hansen’s data shows that Temperatures increased from 1862 to 1877, decreased from 1877 to 1917, increased from 1917 to 1944, decreased from 1944 to 1976, increased from 1976 to 1998, and decreased from 1998 to 2008.

Kilimanjaro

Gore claimed the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are melting because of anthropogenic global warming. He showed a photo from 1970, 2000, and 2005. Each photo showed substantially less ice than before; however, the 2005 photo was from a different side of the mountain – very misleading.

Most scientists know that global warming is not the cause for the melting ice on Kilimanjaro. For example, one such team of scientists (Motes and Kaser) wrote an article in American Scientist in 2007 named The Shrinking Glaciers of Kilimanjaro: Can Global Warming be Blamed?. This article explains that the temperature is never above freezing and the glaciers of Kilimanjaro have been retreating for at least 100 years because of reduced snow fall and increased evaporation. Both are caused by lower humidity and the evaporation is also driven by an increase in solar radiation. A different article theorized that the cause of lower humidity is that the local population has been clearing the surrounding vegetation.

Hurricane Katrina

Gore explained that warmer waters increase storm frequency and intensity, and that 2005 saw record numbers of tornados, typhoons, and hurricanes. When talking about Katrina specifically, he claimed that we should have been prepared for Katrina because “there had been warnings that hurricanes would get stronger.” You can verify yourself that books were published in 2005 with titles like “The Coming Age of Superstorms” – after Katrina. He then explained how Winston Churchill warned about the rise of Nazi Germany, and how no one listened to him either. He then explained how he actually won the 2000 Presidential election.

Clearly, the point Gore wants the viewers to take with them is that Global Warming caused Katrina, that he actually won the 2000 Presidential election, and that if he had been the President, then he would have been prepared for Katrina. This is about as ludicrous and narcissistic as what Obama said when he won the Democratic Party primaries, "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal … and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth." However, like Obama’s ludicrous and narcissistic statement, Gore’s statements actually made him more popular.

Of course, what Gore either doesn’t know or doesn’t tell the viewer in this segment is that:

• He lost the Florida vote and then lost two recounts in spite of some rather contrived recount rules designed to favor Gore. During the third recount (again designed to favor Gore), the Supreme court said that he was out of time. Gore would have won the recounts, except that there were still about 3000 write-in ballots to count from overseas US military personnel (mostly because of the war in Iraq), and about two-thirds of them voted for Bush. This explains why Gore tried to use the courts to throw out the votes of those US military personnel who were fighting overseas, and thus if there had a been a runoff election, Gore’s disgusting act of betrayal would have ensured his defeat. In spite of losing Florida, Gore would have still won the electoral vote if he had not for years betrayed the values of the little state of Tennessee – his home state.
• It only seems like the trend is towards more frequent and intense storms because the 1980’s, and especially the 1970’s, were unusually quiet decades for the last 270 years (perhaps because of the cold spell from 1945 to 1975), but satellite data is only available since about 1975, and accurate satellite data has only be available since about 1990. More recent storm activity is not unprecedented. For example, 1935 and 1969 saw similar hurricanes.
• In spite of Katrina and “The Coming Age of Superstorms”, nothing happened in 2006, and then nothing happened again in 2007. 2008 was an average year.
• Factors in addition to ocean temperature, such as humidity and wind shear, influence Hurricane formation and intensity.
• Katrina went down to a category 3 by the time it hit New Orleans.

Polar Bears

Gore claims that polar bears are dying and will become extinct because the arctic ice cap is shrinking each year. The mainstream media report this as if it were an indisputable fact even though they should know that the bears who died in the incident in September 2004 on which Al Gore based this claim were later discovered to have died because of stormy seas, and that as of 2009 this is the only known incident of polar bears drowning.

The media also know that the official 1970 polar bear population was 5,000 – 10,000, and that the polar bear population has grown to 25,000 as the ice cap has been shrinking.

Even the most casual but objective research would reveal that polar bears existed at least 200,000 years ago and thus survived the previous interglacial period 120,000 years ago, which was about 5° C warmer than the current interglacial period. In fact, the earlier parts of our current interglacial period were warmer too. 10,000 years ago was about 3° C warmer, and 6,000 years ago was about 2.5° C warmer.

Like other interglacials, ours began (10,700 years ago) with the earth at maximum tilt, so the sun was more directly overhead at the poles in the summer.

Given the higher temperatures and more direct sun, it should be no surprise that in the NOAA image below, the north pole was warmer and had no summer ice cap 6,000 years ago.

To be fair, we cannot know with certainty that the ice cap was entirely gone, but in addition to the heat and direct sun, consider that scientist Art Dyke has verified that the Northwest Passage was open 10,000 years ago because he found bowhead whale fossils in arctic ocean floor sediment from that period.

(Source: National Climatic Data Center)

Sea Level Rise

When Gore showed his audience footage of an Antarctica ice shelf towering 700 feet above the ocean surface and stretching as far as the eye can see, he didn’t mention that what he was showing was actually digitally generated footage from the global warming apocalypse movie “The Day After Tomorrow”.

Gore explained how these ice sheets tower 700 feet above the ocean surface and they are melting even faster than some scientists predicted. Of course, every viewer will at that moment instinctively but incorrectly assume that this could raise the ocean levels several feet. The viewer would have to really stop and think about it to realize that the ice sheets are floating, so if they melt, their melt water wouldn’t raise the ocean level at all. Therefore, the viewer will be alarmed by the thought of such a great height and expanse of melting ice, but both the great height and enormous expanse of these ice sheets is irrelevant. To be fair, Gore did indirectly give the viewer the information to make this conclusion, but it was buried in such sloppy and alarmist hyperbole, that most viewers are not going to understand that the ice sheets are floating, and even fewer would understand that when these ice sheets melt, the melt water does not raise the ocean level, and that their size is thus irrelevant in this regard.

Gore also told us to be alarmed by the pools of water on the Larsen B ice sheet, but he never said why.

At the end of Gore’s sloppy little diatribe, he said this was why some pacific islanders had to be evacuated to New Zealand, which sounds catastrophic and sudden (alarming!), but that is not what happened, and he gave no details – just one sentence.

Let’s do some independent thinking. The Larsen B ice sheet was at the terminus of a glacier, so when it melted, the glacier was free to flow into the ocean at a normal glacial pace. Although Gore made it sound as if the ice sheet melt water itself was the main problem, if you rewind a couple of times, you might realize that it is only the additional water from glacier melt that can cause the oceans to rise. He gave no information about how much this incident raised ocean levels. He just implied that the whole glacier suddenly slid into the ocean and said that it caused islanders to be evacuated, but you can look up the effect of the faster flow, which was that the glacier lost 124 feet of thickness in a couple of years

Now let’s suppose the volume lost was 124 feet times 10 square miles. The resulting sea level rise would be about one thousandth of an inch, so if a similar incident happened 1000 more times, then the oceans would rise 1 inch in a couple of years.

After Al Gore says that Greenland and Antarctica are melting, he explains that each would add 20 feet to the current sea level. Gore thus makes the viewer feel as if sea level is about to suddenly rise 40 feet. However, the true believers at the IPCC, who shared the Nobel prize with Gore, project a rise of 7 – 29 inches by the year 2100, and most of that rise would not be from melted ice, but would be from the fact that water expands a little as it gets warmer.

Gore is thus in the extreme minority of global warming extremists.

Glaciers

As Gore talked about how fast glaciers were melting, he showed a close up of a glacier as chunks broke off and fell into the ocean. From that angle it looked as if the glacier was disintegrating right before our eyes and would be gone really soon, but what he did not tell us was how this footage looked exactly like normal glacier activity to any experienced person. (Glaciers grow on one end, and pieces fall off the other end.)

This reminds me of a recent special report by Anderson Cooper (on CNN) on global warming. While standing on a glacier next to an expert, he explained to the viewer that both the large cracks in the glacier and the water flowing under the glacier were alarming and were caused by global warming. The reality is that these have always been natural features of glaciers, and the expert was making what seemed like a halting effort to tell Anderson that without making him look stupid. In fact, it looked as if the expert had directly said that, and then Anderson Cooper edited out the parts that did not support the alarmist point he wanted to make – thus making the expert look stupid. I guess Anderson Cooper realized how easily anyone can generate global warming alarmism without being challenged. I think he was inspired by Al Gore.

Al Gore failed to mention that glaciers are shrinking from their growth during the little ice age, from growth during the cold period from 1945 to 1975, from lower humidity, and from higher solar radiance. Why don’t the media ask when glaciers started melting? For example, the Ilulissat glacier in Greenland has been shrinking since some time before 1850.

Additional Deceptions

These are not all of the remaining deceits in Gore’s documentary. They are just those additional deceptions that I chose to investigate. I suspect several other statements made by Gore, but they are not important enough for me to investigate unless Gore becomes even more influential.

Kyoto – Gore championed the Kyoto treaty, but consider the reality. Unlike the US, China signed and ratified the Kyoto treaty, and yet the rate of CO² output from China has continued to increase faster than the US, and China now produces more total CO² than the US.

Media Bias – Gore said that 0% of scientific articles doubt global warming, and that 53% of mainstream media articles doubt global warming.

Mileage Standards – Gore said that the US cannot sell cars in China because their mileage standard is too high. At that time (2005), China’s mileage standard was 30.2 mpg, and yet the US was selling cars in Europe, and the European mileage standard was 37.5 mpg. Therefore, if the US could not sell cars in China, then the cause was something other than Chinese mileage standards.

Safety Standards – Gore does not mention that other countries have lower safety standards, which lets them make lighter cars, and lighter cars use less gas – but at the price of human life and limb.

I saw Ed Bagley Jr. make this same omission on Fox News. He said that the new light weight electric cars coming from Toyota would be safer than current cars because they will use new safety features. Even if you believe him, note that what he failed to mention is that if heavier cars used these same safety features, then they would be even safer than the lighter cars.

The US government also makes an effort hide the fact that bigger cars are safer. The crash safety ratings by the US government only compare the safety of cars in the same size class, which hides the fact that bigger cars are safer than smaller cars.

Why does the left try to hide the fact that, all things being equal, a heavier car is safer? What is worth the cost in human life and limb?

Ice cap – Gore said that ice reflects 90% of sunlight and that water absorbs 90% of sunlight, but these are the theoretical maximums. What Gore fails to mention is that in reality, the sun is at a very low angle in the arctic, and water becomes highly reflective at low angles. Also, gore failed to mention that at low angles, the amount of light per square mile is much lower than when the sun is directly overhead.

Positives – Gore neglected to mention a single positive outcome of global warming. When has a change ever been 100% negative?

Adaptation – Gore neglected to mention the option of adaptation to global warming rather than stopping it.

Nature – Gore also failed to mention the many natural causes of climate change, and that they are capable of causing much larger and more rapid changes than what we have observed since 1750.

Natural Factors

Most people are not aware of most of the natural forces that drive our climate, which seems really odd given the widespread alarm about climate change.

The earth has a molten core from which heat continuously escapes in many ways – the most obvious of which are volcanoes and thermal vents on the ocean floor – such as those under the arctic ice cap, which are quite active.

The Pacific Ocean has several climate cycles such as El Nino, La Nina, Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Tree rings detect these fluctuations as far back as 1661. These patterns can each vary in length and amplitude.

Solar activity directly correlates to past climates right up through the 20^th century. The little ice age correlates directly with the Maunder Minimum, which was a period of no solar activity. A 2003 study by Ilya Usoskin found that sunspots had been more frequent since the 1940’s than in the previous 1150 years, so of course it is warmer. Also note that global temperatures have been falling since 1998, and that 2008 had less solar activity than any other year since 1900 with the sole exception of 1913. As of February 5^th 2009, sunspot cycle 24 has begun (in early January); however, it has only had one sunspot, and this cycle started several years late.

The following chart shows solar activity for the last 11,400 years.

The following chart shows solar activity for the last 2000 years.

During the last Ice Age, which began about 120,000 years ago, at least twenty sudden climate shifts occurred. These Dansgaard-Oeschger events, started with an increase of the regional temperature in the North Atlantic area by up to 12 degrees centigrade in the course of only a decade. Dansgaard-Oeschger events appear to be caused by the sun.

Cosmic ray activity such as nearby super novae correlate to past climate change, and particularly to cloud formation. Also note that solar activity blocks cosmic rays from hitting the earth.

The tilt of the earth’s axis changes every 20,000 years between 24 degrees and 22.5 degrees. For example, in another 10,000 years the north pole will point to Vega instead of Polaris. When the tilt falls below 23.5 degrees, the northern hemisphere should enter an ice age. The current tilt is 23.5 degrees and falling. Given these facts and given that the length of this interglacial is already about as long as interglacials ever get, it looks like the next ice age really is coming. Of course, it could still be another few hundred years though. Perhaps CO² will save us from another ice age.

Our solar system orbits the center of our galaxy every 225 million years at a speed of 155 miles per second . Sometimes we are in an arm of the galaxy, and sometimes we are between galactic arms. Sometimes we go through a patchy region. Sometimes we are outside the galactic plane, and sometimes we are in the middle.

All of these natural factors a can force a rapid and significant change in temperatures on our planet, but all are underreported when discussing global warming.

Anthropogenic Factors

The current level of CO² in the atmosphere is 385 ppm, and humans are increasing atmospheric CO² in by 2ppm per year. Although this CO² increase theoretically should be causing global warming starting around 1950, the evidence contradicts this theory, which means that something must be neutralizing the theoretical effects of more CO². The cause is probably whatever neutralized the CO² when it increased after previous warming trends during the last 600,000 years. Also, note that increased CO² did not cause any previous warming trends, and that previous increases in CO² were caused by the warming trends.

Human production of airborne particulates from smokestacks, dust, etc. should cause global cooling by blocking sunlight, and any significant decrease in such pollutants should cause global warming. Humans did in fact increase production of such pollutants in the 20^th century until about 1970, which is when the Clean Air Act was enacted. This correlates directly with the cold period from 1945 to 1975, and the warming after 1975.

Human production of CFCs also had a cooling effect until they were banned in the 1980’s, which also correlates nicely with the cold period from 1945 to 1975, and the warming after 1975.

Could the left be right?

I believe that global warming is a real phenomenon with some measure of human contribution, and that CO² does absorb some IR frequencies thus causing some greenhouse effect – of course there are many other variables.

Temperatures are rising for multiple reasons, and this could cause the oceans to stop absorbing CO² and start releasing their CO², which could raise temperatures even more. If this were a big problem though, then why is it that past warming trends caused higher CO² levels but that those higher CO² levels did not cause substantial additional warming, and why is it that the earth cooled off again each time? It is almost as if through some complex mechanism that higher CO² levels actually cause global cooling – at least that is what the ice core data suggests.

The War on Anthropogenic Global Warming

The Obama administration may never refer to its new War on Global Warming as “The War on Global Warming”, but Obama has created a new position for a Global Warming Czar, and he has chosen Carol Browner to fill this role. Carol Browner is a political and environmental extremist, who hides her actions and beliefs.

The New York Times reports that Carol Browner says Global Warming is “the greatest challenge ever faced”, and that her views are directly in line with Obama’s.

Carol Browner has been a die-hard Clintonite from the beginning of the Clinton administration, through Hillary’s presidential campaign. As head of the EPA, she not only served longer than any single individual within the Clinton administration, but she also made many enemies among Republicans and American businesses by working with Al Gore to create new regulatory powers that allow the EPA to regulate the output of CO² by Americans. The Supreme Court at that time was already so far from the Constitution that it supported the new regulatory powers.

In order to prevent more of the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of little cover ups that had become the trademark of the Clinton Administration, the Supreme Court ordered the files of the Clinton administration to not be deleted, and Carol Browner filed for an exception to this ruling, but the Court declined. Then Carol Browner ordered her staff to delete all files on her hard drive and the hard drives of several other EPA officials. Even the backup tapes were overwritten, which violated longstanding government rules. Browner claimed that she was unaware of the court ruling. What was Carol Browner so desperate to hide?

After serving Bill Clinton, Carol Browner worked as a lobbyist for clients such as the Middle East interests who wanted to buy several American ports, and this was after 9/11. She refuses to reveal her entire list of clients and says she was not a true lobbyist.

Carol Browner was also one of the 15 members of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which is part of Socialist International. However, her membership has been scrubbed from the site. I could find only one remaining page that mentioned her on their site, but it di list her as a member of this Commission. My separate searches of their site for each Commission member generated multiple hits going back to 1997, but a search on Carol Browner, generated only one hit. I guess they somehow overlooked this page when they were destroying the evidence. Fortunately, an original Socialist International page was saved by the Green Tracking Library, who also retrieved her original Wikipedia page. Her connection to Socialist International was scrubbed from her Wikipedia profile, but her original Wikipedia page was retrieved from a Google web page cache, which is typically refreshed only about every 3 weeks.

The nature of this Socialist international commission is socialist of course. They want Americans to be subject to a world government that takes precedence over the US government, and in a nutshell, they think that it is unfair that Americans eat more meat, drive more cars, have bigger, nicer, safer cars, use more energy, have bigger homes, have more money, etc – and thus Americans are bad. Therefore, Americans must lower their standard of living and give away huge sums of money – thus resulting in global fairness.

Sound familiar?

By appointing Carol Browner, Obama has thus violated his pledge to shun lobbyists, his pledge to enact change, his pledge to be bipartisan, and his pledge of transparency. Obama must therefore be deeply committed to a War on Global Warming if he would violate so many of his pledges to create a new Global Warming Czar and appoint Carol Browner as the Czarina.

Why isn’t the mainstream media telling us all of this? It is almost as if they have a leftist bias and are also in the tank for Obama.

Why do we care?

In addition to the speculative long term possibility that we might harm the environment, we also care about the more immediate impacts on our daily lives. Al Gore and the left would curtail our freedom and have us waste as many billions fighting global warming with little or no benefit.

On a related note, Bush would curtail our freedom and have us waste billions fighting terrorism with little or no benefit.

Both the War on Terror and any war on anthropogenic global warming would uniquely weaken America more than other countries. The War on Terror is obvious. A war on global warming would uniquely weaken America because several other developed countries are able to use more nuclear power and hydro power. Among nations with a high proportion of oil and coal power plants, only the US has both large spaces and a good economy that results in more cars and houses and bigger cars and houses.

The reality is that the War on Global Warming has much in common with the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror. The reality is that the War on Global Warming is a war on freedom. The reality is that the War on Global Warming is an unnecessary war on freedom.

The Promise of Reality is Freedom.