Global Warming is Real

It turns out than while we are seriously concerned about global warming, a problem that no one can blame on Republicans is manifesting itself on our sun.  The 11 year solar sunspot cycle is collapsing.  The last time this happened, the decrease in solar radiation presaged the Little Ice Age. 

First of all, global warming is occurring.  We are in an interglacial period of the last Ice Age, known in this country as the Wisconsin Ice Age.  There was a time when, had the St. Louis Arch been in existence at the time, you could have stood at the observation windows and seen the toe of the Laurentide Ice Sheet just to the north of St. Louis.  Glaciers have come that far south, retreated ahead of temperatures exceeding those today, and reappeared.  There is no doubt that this planet is warming, and there is no doubt that it is a natural, normal, totally uncontrollable action of nature, impacted more by radiation levels from the sun and long, slow cycles of nature than any man-made causes.

We, meaning the industrialized, capitalized, civilized and democratized nations of the world, are not at fault for what nature has predetermined.  So why does Al Gore get to run around telling people, “…it’s settled” our SUV’s are killing polar bears?

First, science does not look for, “settled” ideas.  Science is a self-correcting process that constantly puts its tested hypothesis forward for others to test, criticize and either confirm or deny.  The fastest way to make your scientific conclusions suspect is to refuse to put them up for peer review.  Here is where the media has decided it would rather deal in sensationalism and political agenda than present the truth.

Take, for example, the popular, “Hockey Stick” diagram that is supposed to illustrate the dramatic upward shift in temperature coinciding with the man-made introduction of greenhouse gases (never mind that man-made carbon dioxide makes up only 3% of the atmospheric total!).  The, “Hockey Stick” diagram has been so discredited for its bad science that even the UN has removed it from its global warming documentation.  Unfortunately, the concepts have become an urban myth for anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts.   Mann and Jones, co-creators of the diagram tossed out data from the Medieval Climate Optimum (A warm period of about 400 years) when average temperatures were higher than they are now, as well as the Little Ice Age (another 400 years) in an effort to show that our temperatures were stable prior to industrialization.  They actually tried to describe these hemispheric-wide, centuries long phenomenon as being regional and, therefore, irrelevant.  Then Mann and Jones created a computer model that is so biased that it will produce the same results even if you drop in random data.  When the flaws in this model were revealed, and investigators asked for Mann and Jones’ data to test its scientific veracity, Phil Jones responded by saying, “We have 25 or so years invested in the work.  Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”  This is the attitude of a salesman, not a scientist. 

We are offered few examples of serious, non-hysterical research.  For example, a 2008 article in Nature credits natural cycles, not man-made causes, for the current warming trend in the Arctic.  Yet those preaching catastrophe feel it necessary to point out that this proves global warming while ignoring its acquittal of man-made sources.  What will these people say about an on-coming Little Ice Age?

What am I doing about global cooling?  The same thing I’m doing about global warming.  I’m reading—a lot.