Right On: Liberals’ global warming fetish

March 8, 2017 Utah Channel 3

OPINION – Is the globe warming?

Yes, it has warmed erratically approximately 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the Little Ice Age ended about 1850.

Is manmade carbon dioxide the cause?

Man-made carbon dioxide certainly contributes. Questionable temperature data revisions and obvious climate model errors create uncertainty about how much warming is a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age and how much is man-made. I discuss this below.

Should we be doing something just in case?

Yes. We should develop alternative energy sources, including nuclear power, hoping to make them competitive with carbon fuels. (Of the leading alternatives, only nuclear power can provide energy on a calm night.) But attempting to rid the country of carbon fuels without viable, acceptable alternatives is economic suicide.

Public understanding of global warming has been distorted by two longstanding myths, repeated endlessly by liberals and the mainstream media.

Myth: The science is settled.

Fact: A distinguished panel of experts involved in the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and National Climate Assessment process unanimously stated that climate change science is “not settled.”

Myth: Ninety-seven percent of scientists believe global warming is caused by humans.

Fact: This erroneous media claim has been thoroughly debunked. Ninety-seven percent agree humans contribute.

Why do global warming alarmists and liberal politicians keep these myths alive?

Simple: They want to remake the economy to fit their ideals.

In Rahm Emanuel’s classic words, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste …. It’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

One thing Democrats “could not do before” was trample opponents’ First Amendment rights.

Obama’s Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified that she looked into prosecuting so-called climate change deniers and referred it to the FBI. A Democratic senator piled on as did the usual suspects: The New York Times, the state of California, 17 Democratic state attorneys general and 20 professors.

Threatening to prosecute opponents seems to be the Democrats’ way to “settle the science.” Which party has the fascists?

After global warming was first brought to public attention in 1989, climate scientists were lifted from academic obscurity and showered with government research grants.

A wise science professor explained a fundamental rule of scientific research: you find the results you’re paid to find or you find a new job. Awash in research funds, climate scientists unsurprisingly began to produce studies confirming what their liberal benefactors wanted to hear.

But a serious problem arose: a warming hiatus. Within measurement error, worldwide temperatures did not rise from 1998 through 2014. Yet man-made carbon dioxide emissions increased 25 percent during these 16 years.

No climate model can explain the warming hiatus, not one of 108 different models.

So what’s a climate scientist to do to keep the funding rolling?

The answer was pragmatic and controversial: When the model doesn’t fit the data, change the data.

In June 2015 (a suspiciously convenient time five months before the Paris Climate Conference), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists wrote, “Newly corrected and updated global surface temperature data … do not support the notion of a global warming hiatus.”

To make the data fit the model, they adjusted ship and buoy-based temperature readings upward, put more weight on certain ocean buoy arrays and raised some land-based temperatures. But even this heroic attempt left the data lower than all but three of the 108 different climate models.

How could NOAA collect data for 16 years without discovering a need for these revisions? Could it be that government scientists did their best to discredit the warming hiatus just in time to send Obama’s team to the Paris conference?

Like many others, I smell a rat.

Revising observed data long after the fact is a very controversial topic with passionate advocates on both sides. But this revision’s scope, timing and the fact the revised data still lay below almost all model predictions should give the rest of us reason enough to be uncertain about climate forecasts.

Fortunately, man-made global warming theory provides another way to test its validity. This check on the theory can’t be hidden by NOAA data revisions.

Climate scientists predict that global warming will cause severe weather events to increase both in number and intensity. Compare predictions with observations to date:

Severe weather will increase dramatically (U.S. is in the longest hurricane drought in history).
Typhoons will devastate Asia (Western Pacific typhoons have abruptly decreased).
Droughts will increase (Droughts are shorter, less frequent and cover less area).
Polar ice caps will melt (Antarctic ice cap is growing faster than Arctic ice melting).

Warren Buffett, a liberal who owns an insurance company, confirms that severe weather claims have dropped significantly including a significant reduction in tornado damage.

All this will be a surprise to most Americans because liberal mainstream media continue reporting “fake news,” hyping every storm and polar bear picture as confirming man-made global warming.

Continuing controversies rage about both climate data and model accuracy. Severe weather forecasts have failed to materialize. Is this a good time to launch an expensive remake of the economy?

Continuing to tweet the myths about his global warming fetish, Obama announced his Clean Power Plan to environmentalist applause. He touted his plan despite the fact that the EPA’s preferred climate model, MAGICC (Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change), predicts that by 2100, his plan will reduce global temperatures by only 0.035 F! Both Obama and the EPA failed to acknowledge this embarrassing fact in their press releases.

If the Supreme Court hadn’t issued a stay, Obama’s plan would effectively kill coal mining and hamstring the oil and gas industry while dramatically raising consumer energy costs, all without climate benefits.

I could only laugh at a green power advocate’s recent claim that Obama’s plan would actually lower societal costs. His arguments use logic similar to the claims that Obamacare would lower health care costs. We all know how that turned out.

Adding insult to injury, Obama signed us up for the Paris climate accord. Per the accord, two of the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters get off the hook. China, the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter, promises to begin reducing carbon emissions 13 years from now (don’t hold your breath). India announced it will triple its coal-fired electricity capacity by 2030.

Obama’s proposed unilateral carbon reductions are like unilaterally disarming to promote world peace.

I predict that global warming will remain on front pages until liberals find a new crisis to exploit. Meanwhile temperature observations will continue well below alarmist forecasts of impending doom.

Howard Sierer is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.

Email: hsierer@stgeorgeutah.com

Twitter: @STGnews