Some Questions from an Advocate for Climate Stasis
I love answering questions. I wish more correspondence eager for dispute and debate would adopt this civilized method of learning the opposite point of view.
A reader with the Haphazard yet Dapper name of RandomDude asks about my conclusions concerning the Global Climate Socialist Revolution.
He writes:
Bypassing the whole argument here, if I may ask, what, other than generic anthropological observations that the evidence is kinda, in your opinion, suspiciously presented, is doubtful about the climate change suggestion?
- Is the existence of the greenhouse effect cast in doubt?
- Is it the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere that you believe isn’t correctly measured or reported?
- Is it the suggestion that greenhouse effect of those greenhouse gasses in those concentrations affects the planet in the large scale same as in laboratory?
- Is it the source of the greenhouse gasses being human activity rather a natural process?
- If all four are true, then climate change models must also be true. So which one, exactly, is cast in doubt here?
Certainly you may ask. I am happy to answer.
- First, the theory of the greenhouse effect, while certainly true of the atmosphere of Venus, has no evidence whatsoever to back it here on earth. No past change in global temperature has been scientifically linked to greenhouse gas effects rather than, say, for example, changes in planetary albedo and solar output.
- The amount of greenhouse gasses certainly has not been correctly measured and reported. I am a little amazed you ask the question. How, even in theory, would measurements in the arctic regions or the Gobi desert be done? Who defines whether CO2 is considered to be a ‘greenhouse gas’ or not?
- Your next question is worded oddly, as it sounds as if you are asking me whether an experiment in a lab, under controlled conditions, is a proper means of predicting the real world complexities of a climate system, whose contributing factors have never yet been fully cataloged, much less measured.The answer is not just ‘no’ it is ‘heck, no.’ That is not how the scientific method works.For example, if one scientists knows enough about forest growth to estimate the changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide caused by Amazonian deforestation, but does not take into account the reforestation of North America, or another scientist estimates the changes in carbon dioxide production caused by an increase of sea plankton in one ocean, but does not take into account the growth of the ice caps in the arctic limiting sea plankton growth in that ocean, and neither of them take into account either each others’ work nor the effect of space radiation increasing the amount of upper atmospheric oxygen being converted to ozone at the South Pole, or take into account the gasses and particulate matter released by the eruption of Mount Erebus, then how could anyone, anywhere, make a coherent prediction about the whole system, no matter what a lab experiment showed?The lab experiment results show only what would be the real world results if and only if the real world conditions are replicated correct in the lab.
- Some human activity produces some greenhouse gasses, yes. But the devil is in the details.Other human activity has effects on the environment in other ways, such as the aforementioned deforestation changing the aforementioned planetary albedo, which would tend, everything else being equal, to lower global temperatures.The devil is also in the dosage.The question is not whether eating nothing but two pounds of salt every meal for a year will kill you. It surely will. Salt contains none of the vitamins needed to sustain human life.
However, from this, the conclusion does not follow that a pinch of salt in your fish on Friday dinner will kill you, especially if the content of your other meals on other weekdays is not considered.
So, here. Cow farts do release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as do certain human industrial processes.
I have yet to see any credible scientific evidence or read any allegation that this is a measurable amount compared to natural releases caused by geological or oceanic processes.
Do the factories in China actually produce more change to the global composition atmospheric gasses than all the plantlife in the Pacific, combined with all underground gases vented from subsea volcanoes?
The numbers I have seen from reputable scientists indicate that the number of parts per million, even under the most generous assumptions, of changes to the global atmospheric composition caused by human activity is negligible: below detectable thresholds.
- The answer to your last question is a resounding no. Your last question, if you will forgive me, is absurd.If the climate change models were true, they would not only be able retroactively to model the past changes in climate leading to the present, but would predict the future and be open to verification when that future date arrived.The model predictions have never once made an accurate prediction.
Such are my answers. Thank you for asking.
I welcome correction on the point of any accurate predictions arising from any computer models of the climate: the ice cap was predicted to melt. It grew. Sea levels were predicted to rise. They did not. Average world global temperature was expected to rise. It leveled off. The frequency and severity of tropic storms was expected to increase. They decreased.
Now let me ask questions in return. Not merely my interlocutor, but any interested party is welcome to answer.
Suppose a concerted effort, backed by billions of dollars, motivated by the selfsame motives which created the Cold War during the last century, and urged by the same groups of people with the same worldview for the same reasons, set their minds to bamboozling the public, including you, with a hoax of junk science, how would they go about it?
- Would they, for example, pay huge bribes to NASA asking them publicly to support the talking points of the alarmists without making any actual contribution to the climate science involved, considering that NASA are mostly rocket scientists? Would they, for example, funnel huge grants to academics whose results affirmed their desired outcomes?
- Would they approach the United Nations to use its prestige to create a false atmosphere of hysteria, a body whose corruption exceeds that of nearly any other international organization in history?I mean, if the United Nations can be trusted to condemn the United States as guilty of war crimes and human rights violations, and condemn Israel as the Little Satan and children of pigs and dogs, then their moral clarity is beyond reproach, is it not?Would they falsify data to the IPCC of the UN, and, when the malfeasance was revealed in the press, level libel lawsuits against the reporter and pundits spreading the truth about them?
- Would they approach the same people who, ten years earlier, ran a similar campaign of misinformation concerning Global Cooling? Would they make false claims about the consensus of the scientific opinion? Would they consult a consensus rather than give the real results of real observations and experiments?
- Would they use computer models rather than real world observations? Would they hide the evidence? Would they cherry pick data to achieve the illusion of the desired result?
- Would they mis-state how the scientific method works, so that no one in their audience realizes that a true scientist controls his variables, and draws no conclusions regarding real world conditions whose variable are not known?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
