More skepticism needed over climate change

I turn on the TV and hear it’s 65 degrees downtown and 71 degrees at the airport. The two weather apps on my smartphone say 64 and 67 degrees. Climate scientists tell us that the earth has warmed about 1.8 degrees since 1850. With so much uncertainty as to what the temperature is right now, why would anyone think they could really tell what the average global temperature was in 1850. Do they not understand the concept of “margin of error”?

The “hockey stick” graph, the most iconic symbol of global warming made famous by Al Gore, was based on tree rings from two trees. While most reasonably informed people understand that tree rings provide a crude proxy for precipitation, albeit only at the location of that tree, no one seriously thinks that tree rings say anything meaningful about temperature. Yet the hockey stick is still used to frighten school children and less informed adults into believing that the world will soon end.

The only real “evidence” of catastrophic global warming is computer simulations that are run on models that are programed specifically to react to increased CO2 while ignoring all sorts of other variables, not the least of which is solar activity. So far all the models have been terrible at predicting past or future climate change. Computer simulations are not scientific experiments. Period.

If you believe in climate change because “97% of scientists” believe it, you need to read about how that figure was concocted. If you do not know what “Climate-gate” was, you need to Google it. If you do not know what the most important greenhouse gas is (hint: it’s not CO2), then you need to find out. If you think the “science is settled,” you need to watch some debates on YouTube. Do your homework before you drink the Kool-Aid.

Ned Collum

Basalt

via:: The Aspen Times