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Why is it this does not surprise me?

With calls for more alternative energy sources, in many cases mandated by state laws, the so-called environmentalists are fighting tooth and nail to make sure that those alternative energy sources will not see the light of day.

Oh, they make all of the appropriate noise about making the move away from the use of fossil fuels, particularly coal, for generating electricity. But once plans for wind farms or solar electric facilities are proposed, those same environmentalists then protest against the power lines needed to get that power to the consumers.

So what is their real agenda?

To control the populace by controlling access to the sources of energy.

In other words, the liberal push for alternatives has the look of a huge bait-and-switch. Washington responds to the climate change panic with multibillion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for supposedly clean tech. But then when those incentives start to have an effect in the real world, the same greens who favor the subsidies say build the turbines or towers somewhere else. The only energy sources they seem to like are the ones we don't have.

They give with one hand and take away with the other.

One of the arguments made on either side of the anthropogenic global warming debate is there are not enough definitive records about daily, monthly, and annual weather that go back more than a century or two. Beyond that scientists have had to use geological, sedimentary, and chemical studies in order to determine weather conditions over the centuries. But it could be that extensive weather records going back over 400 years may take some of the wind out of AGW proponents' sails, thanks to the British Royal Navy.

Scientists have uncovered a treasure trove of meteorological information contained in the detailed logs kept by those on board the vessels that established Britain's great seafaring tradition including those on Nelsons' Victory and Cook's Endeavour.

Every Royal Naval ship kept a detailed record of climate including air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and major meteorological disturbances.

A group of academics and Met Office scientists has unearthed the records dating from the 1600s and examined more than 6,000 logs, which have provided one of the world's best sources for long-term weather data.

Many scientists believe that storms are caused by global warming, but these were came during the so-called Little Ice Age that affected Europe from about 1600 to 1850.

The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.

"British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone," [Sunderland University geographer] Mr Wheeler said. "They are a stunning resource. Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions."

The Royal Navy recordings would have been consistent, using the same units of measure, the same instruments, made by officers trained to observe their surroundings and to record their observations. I doubt one could find more definitive records than those in the thousands of Royal Navy logbooks. There can be no "adjusting" the climate records as has been done by some researchers (anyone remember the Mann 'hockeystick' graph?), no explaining away the measurements made, no way to claim some kind of bias in the data collected. This data was collected through observation and measurements made by trained observers. Should the data show global warming is part of a natural cycle, it could be a major blow against the AGW faithful.

(H/T Never Yet Melted and Maggie's Farm)

It's not just climate scientists questioning the validity of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. Quite a few of my fellow engineers are also questioning the conclusions brought forth by the UN IPCC, conclusions based upon conjecture, some data, and unvalidated hypothesis.

I do agree with Mr. Williston that engineers should add their voice to the discussion. This is especially true because if the world adopts all the proposals of the AGW alarmists, then you can expect to spend at least twice as much for gasoline and natural gas and you can also expect to spend twice as much for electricity. In addition, the cost of every single manufactured good should go up about 25% due to the higher cost of energy. So what do we know for certain about anthropogenic global warming? Not very much for sure.

Lets go over the basis for AGW.

1)      CO2 concentrations have gone from 300ppm to 400ppm in the last century.

2)      That increase is due to human consumption of fossil fuels and burning forests.

3)      The increases in CO2 from 0.03% to 0.04% is triggering much larger increases in water vapor.

4)      The increase of CO2 and water vapor in the atmosphere that block infrared radiation out to space means that the equilibrium temperature that can radiate heat out to space is at a higher altitude.

5)      The higher altitude of the equilibrium sphere means that surface temperatures have to be hotter.

6)      The world's climate is demonstrably getting hotter, by about a degree in the last century, so all the above is true.

7)      There are one or more tipping points, positive feedback mechanisms, that once passed will cause massive climate change and that may well destroy the human race.

8)      Hence it is a simple fact that mankind is causing all the earth to warm and if we don't do something right away we are all going to kill our grandchildren.

Nice, but first off, it is not a theory. It is a hypothesis. See a theory is built up from a whole series of hypotheses that have been proven experimentally. There are a lot of things wrong with AGW, but the most glaring is that it is not science, no more than intelligent design is. They are both broad sweeping hypotheses that have not only failed experimental testing; real-world results often contradict the stated hypothesis.

That's one of my biggest problems with AGW. It doesn't appear to fit in with any hypothesis with any consistency. So far no one has been able to model the effects given the data available. The models are always off, in most cases by orders of magnitude even over a relatively short period of time (a year or so). So how can we possibly expect to accurately model what the climate will be like 100 years from now? The answer: we can't. No one can.

Even with this failure to prove AGW we are expected to spend billions, if not trillions of dollars fixing a problem that likely does not exist. Yet we are asked to take it on faith that if we don't do something now WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

At first I was one of those believing in the premise of Anthropogenic Global Warming. But as time went by, I started seeing too many holes in the various predictions and hypotheses, causing me to take a closer look. What I saw changed my mind. What I saw also reminded me of the dire predictions of global overpopulation, famine, plague, and a host of other doomsday predictions that never came to be even though those making the predictions swore they had the proof. All that was required was for the rest of us to take it on faith.

While some folks have maintained I am a global warming denier (or rather, a global climate change denier), they would be wrong. I am, proud to say, an Anthropogenic Global Warming skeptic, and with good reason. My skepticism comes from too much conflicting information, where some data suggests AGW may be valid, and other data suggests natural processes. There's been far too many statements made that "the debate is over." I beg to differ. The debate is just beginning. In fact, many skeptical climate scientists were once proponents of the AGW theory. But as more data became available, their support for AGW waned and they started looking for other causes.

One of those scientists is Dr. David Evans, a former consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office. For six years he worked collecting and analyzing data and generating computer climate models for the Australian government. The more data he reviewed, the more convinced he was that CO₂ was not the driving force behind climate change. As he put it, "As Lord Keynes famously said, 'When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?'"

There were four basic facts that convinced Dr. Evans the theory of AGW was wrong.

1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.

Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.

2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.

3. The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the "urban heat island" effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.

4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.

So data being quoted by some to support the idea of AGW either have no connection with CO₂ or are slanted in such a way to as to make it appear so.

Data that challenges AGW is being ignored or explained away as an anomaly, even though there's plenty of anomalous data being used to support the AGW theory. One of those 'anomalous' data sets shows global temperatures have been dropping since 1998, but the AGW faithful ignore it, trying to explain it away as merely a pause in the inexorable rise in temperatures. Yet solar astronomers point to a lengthy delay in the start of Sunspot Cycle 24, a signal the Sun's output has declined and may be entering a period of relative quiet after over a century of increasing sunspot activity. Earth's climate has a tendency to track sunspot activity, with long quiet periods of sunspot activity, called minimums, heralding equally long period of colder temperatures. Are we entering one of those minimums as some solar astronomers suspect?

Regardless, it would be prudent to examine all of the data available, making sure to take into account all factors that can affect the accuracy of the collected data, as mentioned by Dr. Evans. Otherwise the theory of AGW can never be adequately debated or tested.

Last week I wrote about Senator John Warner (R-VA) and his idea to re-impose the National Maximum Speed Limit and why it was such a bad idea. I have no idea how far his efforts to do so will go. But even if he tries and fails, there may be another way we will see the hated 55MPH speed limit make its return, and neither Congress or state governments will have anything to do with it. Instead it may make its reappearance as a regulation created by the Environmental Protection Agency.

What kind of nonsense is this? How is it they can be allowed to set speed limits on the nation's highways when they have no part in traffic regulations and laws? By using a back door.

That back door has to do with CO₂ emissions from cars and trucks. If they slow vehicles down the amount of CO₂ emissions will decrease. Never mind the fact there may be additional costs associated with the lower speed limits they have ignored, one of them being time. After all time is money and the longer it takes people or cargo to get from Point A to Point B, the more it can take its toll on the economy.

Never mind the extra cost might be minimal, there's still the idea that this course of action was decided upon by a friggin' bureaucrat rather than our duly elected representative to Congress or our state legislature. The EPA is sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong and where it has no jurisdiction. Nowhere in its charter is it stated they have control over the highways and byways or the laws and regulations governing them.

If the Agency's aim is to lower CO₂ emissions, would the lower speed limits apply to electric cars? Why should they be forced to drive at a lower speed if they have no emissions? (Yes, I know that ultimately they do have emissions due the the smokestack gases from fossil-fired power plants. But what if you live in an area that uses little, if any fossil fuel for power plants? Much of New Hampshire's electric power comes from nuclear and hydro, with a few coal and natural gas plants, as well as 5 biomass plants. Does that mean we'd get a pass for electric cars? Of course not.)

This proposal by the EPA is merely an end run around the legislative process, usurping the powers of Congress and the state legislatures. We should let them know in no uncertain terms to back off. Another approach is to take them to court. Yet another is to string a few of 'em up, to let them know of our displeasure. (No, we wouldn't hang them until they are dead. Just until they're mostly dead. Of course, with a bureaucrat that might be hard to do because so many of them are already mostly dead...from the neck up.)

As much as it may pain many of the more faithful believers in Anthropogenic Global Warming, it turns out George W. Bush's approach to the reduction of greenhouse gases was the right one.

Bush has been criticized for not embracing the Kyoto Protocols, a treaty that was rejected unanimously by the US Senate during the Clinton administration. It obligated the US to onerous measures in order to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many of those measures would have crippled the US economy while those countries exempt from the limits imposed by Kyoto would have been able to continue increasing their emissions and expand their economies with no consequence. President Bush certainly wasn't going to sign on something that would do nothing but impoverish the US.

As time has shown, Bush made the right decision. Many nations that were signatories to Kyoto haven't even come close to meeting their greenhouse gas emission goals, with most of them seeing their emissions rise. On the other hand, the US has decreased its greenhouse gas emissions 3% since 2002 and they're still falling. With the large increase in energy prices over the past year, I would expect they'll fall off at an even greater rate.

The US has been doing what the Kyoto signatories have failed to do, and we didn't have to destroy our economy to do it. We did it our way, not by following draconian measures laid out by parties that do not have our best interests at heart.

At least someone out there understands the Greens are not friends of the environmental movement, but rather have their own agenda which has little to do with protecting the environment.

I linked to this WSJ opinion piece yesterday, but really should have dug into it a bit more than I did.

As Bret Stephens explains it, the true believers in anthropogenic global warming don't need proof or science or data, because they believe. They want it to be true. They need it to be true.

The real place where discussions of global warming belong is in the realm of belief, and particularly the motives for belief. I see three mutually compatible explanations.

The first is as a vehicle of ideological convenience. Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore - population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations - and global warming provides a justification. One wonders what the left would make of a scientific "consensus" warning that some looming environmental crisis could only be averted if every college-educated woman bore six children: Thumbs to "patriarchal" science; curtains to the species.

These are the "watermelon" environmentalists - Green on the outside, Red on the inside. Any excuse to exert control over the great unwashed masses (that's you and me, folks) is just fine with them. If they can't sell outright overt socialism, then they can use global warming as a back door entry into the lives of the world's population.

A second explanation is theological. Surely it is no accident that the principal catastrophe predicted by global warming alarmists is diluvian in nature. Surely it is not a coincidence that modern-day environmentalists are awfully biblical in their critique of the depredations of modern society: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." That's Genesis, but it sounds like Jim Hansen.

And surely it is in keeping with this essentially religious outlook that the "solutions" chiefly offered to global warming involve radical changes to personal behavior, all of them with an ascetic, virtue-centric bent: drive less, buy less, walk lightly upon the earth and so on. A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence.

Hmm. Where have we heard this line of reasoning before? Could it be from folks like the Taliban, al Qaeda, and other militant fundamental religious cults of a number of faiths? They want us to return a few centuries into the past, eschewing the modern conveniences all in the name of saving the earth. But it wouldn't surprise me that they would exempt themselves from such restrictions because they would need much of that technology to keep an eye on the rest of us, right? Of course it would also mean we would then fall prey to illnesses and diseases we rarely see anymore because the means to treat them would be against God's will...except for them, of course.

Finally, there is a psychological explanation. Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success.

This last one ties in closely with the second one, and makes me wonder what our ancestors from 100 or 200 years ago would say about this foolishness.

I have little doubt the Founding Fathers would be walking around dope-slapping the lot of these AGW believers. They would see it for the foolishness it is, as would anyone from back then. This need to 'voluntarily' dismantle a society based solely upon an over-hyped and unproven theory would be seen for what it is: stupidity.

In response to this post about anthropogeneic global warming, a commenter suggested I visit their blog and read their take on the issue of global warming. It is something I could have responded to immediately, but decided to hold off for a short while in order to gather my counter to the 'fact' of AGW.

My biggest problem with the whole AGW claim is that we are solely responsible for the climate change over the past 150 years or so, with too many of the so-called 'warmists' using temperature recordings over that period to prove what's happening and that it's all our fault. They conveniently ignore the previous 850 years of climate during which the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age occurred. During the Medieval Warm Period (approximately 700 through 1300 A.D.) global temperatures were warmer than they are today. The old canard about Leif Erikson conning Viking settlers to Greenland by calling it "Greenland" was disproved years ago. Greenland was actually green, with a temperate climate not unlike New England or the northern Mid-Atlantic states of today. It wasn't until the Little Ice Age descended upon mankind around 1300 A.D that Greenland became a cold and inhospitable place to live. The settlers finally had to abandon their homes when agriculture was no longer possible and fishing was too poor to sustain them.
 
How do we know this? Part of it is in written records kept by the Norse and part by archaeological research at the sites of the settlements, showing hundreds of years of agricultural work done by the settlers of the kind only possible in a temperate climate.
 
Looking back even farther in the past one must take into account the Roman Warm Period, when there was a lengthy time of well above 'average' temperatures. It was even warm enough for vineyards in northern England/southern Scotland. (The Romans never really tamed the rest of Scotland. The Picts saw to that.) Some vineyards were also prevelent during the Medieval Warm Period, but not to the extent seen during the earlier Roman Period.
 
Work done by Dr. Henrik Svensmark of the Danish Space Research Institute has postulated a direct tie in with the solar activity during those two periods as well as the cold periods between them and from the Medieval Warm Period and today. There are those who disagree with Svensmark's conclusions, but also plenty of climatologists that see there is something to Svensmark's theory.
 
I think my biggest problem is that too many are more than willing to ascribe climate change to a single cause, particularly the AGW proponents. Far too many people on both sides of the debate are willing to cast aside data or additional theories that are in direct conflict with their beliefs or try to minimize factors that may have as great or even greater affect on climate.
 
One chart used by my erstwhile commenter shows changes in the CO₂ and changes in temperatures. Does anyone else notice the same things I did?
 
First, it shows a somewhat regular cycle from the beginning of the chart to the end. Second, it shows both increases and decreases in both CO₂ levels and temperatures. What is driving those cycles? It sure as heck isn't likely to be human activity, is it? Obviously not. Could it possibly be driven by the sun's change in activity in a combination of the 11 year, 23 year, and 178 year solar cycles?
 
Regardless of the mechanisms driving climate charge - warming or cooling - there's far too much hysteria out there making debate difficult, if not impossible. The AGW folks seem to driven to neurosis, their cause taking on the characteristics of obsession, or worse, a religious cult.

Last week marked the 20th anniversary of the mass hysteria phenomenon known as global warming. Much of the science has since been discredited.
 
What, discredited? Thousands of scientists insist otherwise, none more noisily than NASA's Jim Hansen, who first banged the gong with his June 23, 1988, congressional testimony (delivered with all the modesty of "99% confidence").
 
But mother nature has opinions of her own. NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954. Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

This WSJ opinion piece goes on to claim that too much of the environmental/climate change movement has been hijacked by those with a political or ideological ax to grind, leaving the actual scientists out of the debate, except for those who are willing to trade their scientific objectivity for personal gain, political or monetary. (Let's face it, there are millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars out there for grants and research, particularly if you'll use the money to prove climate change, specifically warming, is All-The-Fault-Of-The-Evil-Humans™. That's one hell of an incentive.

Isn't it interesting that more and more reputable scientists, including climatologists, meteorologists, and solar scientists are speaking out, disagreeing with the "fact" of anthropogenic global warming. One of the most recent to speak out against those preaching anthropogenic global warming is the founder of the Weather Channel, John Coleman. He calls it what I believe it is, a scam to gain access to large amounts of money and to seize control of much of the world's population.

The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other's papers, they are summarized and voted on, and voila, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.

Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.

So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.

Frankly, I'm far more inclined to believe John Coleman than Al Gore. Coleman has done far more research and review about something in which he has years of expertise, where Al Gore has none. John Coleman has nothing to gain from denouncing the global warming hysteria he sees. Al Gore has millions, if not billions of dollars to gain if he can sell his pitch that we're all to blame for climate change. So do many of the so-called scientists that have reached a consensus that we're to blame, even though a majority of those "scientists" have no background or training in climate science what so ever. When the deniers with scientific background and knowledge about our climate far outnumber the proponents of global warming, I must go with the majority. This is particularly so because a significant number of the deniers were once proponents of global warming. But as they reviewed studies and conducted research of their own, they found the numbers didn't add up, that too many of the studies reached conclusions that we were the cause of global warming, conclusions that were not supported by the data. And some deniers have been stating that we are more likely entering a period of global cooling, an effect of the lower than average solar activity we are now experiencing. If nothing else, it can be said that the debate about anthropogenic global warming is not over. It's nowhere near over.