Thinking about man-made global warming

© 2013 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. Albert Einstein changed our world without getting into data. He used a notebook and pencil to think his way through issues of theoretical physics. He sat thoughtfully dreaming questions. Early in life Einstein imagined chasing after a beam of light. That physical question brought about his theory of relativity.
      Others before and after Einstein were data-centric researchers trying to make data answer questions. They thought mathematically while he thought physically. We can all learn from Einstein’s approach.
     For the last forty years we have been pummeled by doomsayers about man’s role in the climate of our planet. First, in the 1970s it was man-made global cooling that was set to kill us all. Then in the 1980s it suddenly shifted to man-made global-warming. Now we are menaced by man-made global climate change.
     Throughout 45 years the data has remained stable while the arguments have been all over the place. We Americans were all supposed to be dead by the year 1980; then 1990; then 2000; then 2010. Now we are told we have just ten years and then worldwide catastrophe. ...what we are really asking is: what is the correct temperature for our world? If we are intervening based on temperature it must be wrong, but what is right?
If slabs of ice descend over North America it will cancel the running of the Indianapolis 500. Still, if the new danger is global-warming, Canada becomes the garden spot of North America instead of the icebox.
In the 1980s when man-made global warming was going to kill everyone on the planet by the year 2000, my question about attempting to reverse it was: how will you know when you have gone too far reversing the ravages of man-made global-warming? There was never an answer to that question.
This leads to the question: what is the best overall temperature for Earth? Would the seven billion people be better off if the temperature was a smidge hotter or colder? How could we make that determination? If the temperature of the Earth goes up or down, which regions of Earth win or lose. If the Earth cools, the Russians and Northern Europeans are in the frozen hurt locker. If it goes up, they will dance in the streets.
With a perspective of four decades man-made global change seems a political belief system providing financial and political advantage to the proponents. I do not need data to know that the essential questions of an intervention were and are never addressed. Read full column

Thinking about man-made global warming

Climate Change Editorial by the Washington Post contains misstatements, half-truths, and omissions

Commentary by Robert Endlich, co-host, News New Mexico
The recent editorial by the Washington Post “Humans’ complicity in climate change can’t be ignored,” begins describing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, as, “arbiter of the scientific consensus.” Scientific Consensus is an oxymoron. Science is not done by consensus, it is done using the scientific method: Propose a hypothesis, carefully observe the results, and determine whether the observations match the results. If the results don’t confirm the hypothesis, the hypothesis is wrong.
The claim, increasing greenhouse gases humans have emitted into the atmosphere as chief driver of the warming of the planet over the past half-century, a finding to which they ascribe 95 percent confidence, is without merit or foundation. There is no technical basis for such a claim, if there were, the IPCC would trumpet it loudly; it is simply bloviation.
Since the Post mentions greenhouse gases, we have a considerable number of observations of the temperature, made by NASA satellites since 1979, to validate or falsify the IPCC claims. Measured temperatures from the lower troposphere are determined by the microwave emission from O2 molecules, and are published by two world class organizations, the University of Alabama at Huntsville, UAH, and Remote Sensing Systems, Inc, or RSS, from California.
Observations of greenhouse temperatures by UAH are available monthly on the Internet athttp://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ These data show that the latest temperature a mere 0.17C above the 30 year mean 1981-2010. Look at the data; there is no CO2 signal. Read entire column

Climate Change Editorial by the Washington Post contains misstatements, half-truths, and omissions