The Earth’s climate is very complex and well beyond the understanding of even the best scientists. The forces “creating” the climate can be powerful, natural, unknown, and interacting in both complex and unknown ways.
These forces involve the sun and the many variations of the solar production of radiant heat and light, the variations in solar magnetic fields, variations in sunspots production rates, the solar wind and its interaction between cosmic radiation and interactions with the Earth’s magnetic field.
Furthermore there are strong and mostly unexplainable variations in movements of oceanic tides and current variations, about which we also know little.
With so much that is unknown and with so much uncertainty about the climate, one would expect that global warming scientists and their swarms supporters in the media, academia, and the political leadership, would be a little cautious, even humble at making sweeping and profound statements of their rigid certitudes.
Their statements are invariably warning of imminent doom if we don’t change our behavior to their liking. Let us examine briefly one of the complexities, sea level changes.
We all recall that in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, mention is made of sea levels rising by 20 feet as a result of global warming. Such loose talk has now become an everyday conversation among the media, even though the statement has been discredited (http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html) in numerous analyses.
Then we recently heard Meredith Viera of NBC up the sea level ante by ten-fold when she told the world that sea levels would rise 200 feet if the ice melted, ten times greater than Gore’s exaggerated prediction (http://tinyurl.com/6rvoc7).
The word “if” as used here by Viera is known as a “weasel” word. It sets up a dramatic “then” statement of doom designed to scare her audiences. There are a number of such weasel words used in journalism such as could, should, may, might, maybe, perhaps, likely, probably, expected, and my favorite, “link”.
Their copious use by journalists (or ex-vice-presidents) makes it easy to generate scare stories on the spot, while lazily avoiding the hours of requisite homework in producing hard-nosed evidence.
Recently Dr. James Hansen, climate alarmist and advisor to Vice president Gore (as reported by Craig Idso at CO2science.com) issued another warning about rising sea levels. Hansen warned that by the end of this century sea level rise will be measured in meters, unless we do what he tells us to do (http://tinyurl.com/6oehvb).
A close observation will disclose that neither Gore, Viera, nor Hansen provided any supportive evidence, such as actual sea level data, or trends in sea level data, to support their scary assertions.
One suspects these people don’t appreciate that thousands of scientists from around the world appreciate the importance of such data, that there are thousands of scientists who are quite capable in knowing cause and effect, how to treat data, handle data, analyze data, and would appreciated being able to check them, to verify them, corroborate and replicate them.
Many, such as Ross McKitrick (http://tinyurl.com/6s2h2g) and Steve McIntyre (http://www.climateaudit.org/) even know the fine points of computer modeling, writing the codes, and how others have generated scare stories by manipulating computer climate data and codes.
The nation really doesn’t need patronizing lectures, let alone flawed assertions from failed lawyers, light-weight journalists, nor heavily-funded, kept scientists with political support and destructive agendas.
It gets worse. Picking up on the sea level rise scares, the leaders of many nations such as those from the South Pacific, are telling there scare stories of being flooded out by rising seas.
Furthermore, they “know the cause” of the sea level rise, because of the sweeping assertions by people like Gore, Viera, and Hansen. Their blame for losses of their island homes on Tuvalu (http://www.tuvaluislands.com/warming.htm), Vanuatu (http://tinyurl.com/5d2jxx), Kiribati (http://tinyurl.com/6ncdxh), and others, is directed at the CO2 emissions from the capitalistic United States. To reach these conclusions requires ignoring a great deal of contrary hard-nosed science.
As we have come to learn from UN activities, there is a considerable anti-American sentiment among UN members, who not only wag fingers at the US, but also call for the US to pay for damages to their home islands.
It is an elaborate scheme at the international level which would be called “the rackets” on the streets of New York. It is legitimized and orchestrated by many powerful people on an international scale and national levels. Almost no one is calling for hard scientific evidence to support such claims.
Such evidence does in fact exist, but it shows quite conclusively that the contrary conclusions prevail, that the measured sea level rises are very small, consistent with known sea level rises measured since the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1700s.
Dr. Vincent Gray is a climate expert living in New Zealand and one of the most prolific reviewers of all of the significant documents produced by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). From his intimate knowledge he has found that both the IPCC and its documents are hopelessly flawed scientifically, including the chapters devoted to sea level rises. He recently reported this about the sea level situation in the South Pacific:
“As I keep pointing out Flinders University in Adelaide had the task in 1991 of settling it once and for all by installing state-of-the-art tide-gauge equipment on 12 Pacific islands. The results have been a disaster for the global warmers (shown in table below)... There was no overall change in any of the islands after the sixteen years. The reaction was what might be expected. The results have never been published in a "peer reviewed" journal. They are only available on the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website in a series of Monthly Reports that are "Untitled". See the latest report at http://www.bom.gov.au/ntc/IDO60101/IDO60101.200809.pdf
If you ask "Google" for information on sea level you get pages of claims that the Pacific islands are sinking in the sea, and it is difficult to find the actual facts, that the islands, including Tuvalu, are not sinking. They will likely keep the true information out of the official literature as long as they can.”
Climate data are available, but it has to be forced into public view for assessment. We clearly cannot depend upon those flawed vice-presidents, television hosts and hostesses, nor those kept scientists who heap scorn on those who would challenge their flimsy climate orthodoxies.
Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mailto:mike@foxreport.org
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