Healthy Skepticism Toward Climate Change

Here in Orange County as in the rest of California, the liberal war on "global warming" or the more-chameleon-like "climate change" is impacting our lives and our liberty, most obviously via AB 30, the Enabling Act for expansion of the regulatory state backed Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Poll-acratic Gov. Schwarzenegger (whose policy stances seem to be driven solely by what will land him adulatory magazine covers).

Attorney General Jerry Brown -- the same guy who halted freeway building in the 1970s and early 80s because he thought it would restrain growth (it was the era of "small is good")--  is set to wield AB 32 like a scimitar on an enviro-jihad.

Which leads me to two new posts -- here and here -- by Mark Landsbaum over at Orange Punch. Mark sets his sets on the physical means by which temperatures are recorded, the pervasive of these means of measuring and how long we've been doing it. He links to a site called SurfaceStations.org, "a resource for climate station records and surveys."

It goes without saying that injecting any degree of skepticism toward the figures and findings wafting from the climate change industry will likely lead to being branded a "traitor" by the Mahdi of Climate Change, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- but it's still a free country in which we can voice such skepticism. In the old Soviet Union, dissent was treated as a  form of mental disease -- which isn't too different from the way the EnviroLeft views any who don't unquestioningly follow the party line.

And that's my point -- we ought to be skeptics on this issue, especially since the policy solutions being pushed by the Left involve the expansion of government power over our lives. Barbara Boxer flies over a glacier and to her that's "proof" of climate change -- as if she needs proof -- the aggrandizement of government power inherent in the Left's "save the planet" strategies is enough for her to believe in global warming.

In any case, I thought Mark's posts ought to be brought to readers attention for the benefit of all but those complete lost to the Cult of the Environment.

Comments

[Galileo]

Eppur si muove.

man this post is seriously loaded with language. Why dont you tell us what you really think Matt.

[Webster]

Did he make you have to use a dictionary?

[tylerh]

There was a time for skepticism about the reality that the planet was warming. I was part of it. But a cascade of data in the earlier part of this decade has nailed it down: the planet has warmed, dramatically, in the past century. Indeed, the lead editorial in Science, the world's leading scientific Journal, was "Climate: Game Over."

Since you prefer dialectic to data, let me lay this out for you with only two numbers.

If the Earth's atmosphere trapped no heat Earth would be an iceball, like planet Hoth in Star Wars. It might have life around the equator, but without a warmth-trapping atmosphere Earth would be 20 - 50 degrees (F) cooler. This is not rocket science; it's a simplistic consequence of how much energy the earth receives from the sun and how much energy naturally escapes back into space ("black body radiation", for those who had collegiate physics).

The amount of heat-trapping done by the atmosphere has varied throughout the past five billion years, but is generally about "3." Since the start of the industrial revolution, the extra CO2 dumped into the atmosphere has moved that number to roughly "4". That is, the most direct measurement of atmospheric heat trapping has increased (very roughly) by a third in the past 100 years.

Now, this measured scientific reality does not mean AB30 or any other particular scheme, is a good idea. I oppose AB30. But denying basic physics and a torrent of confirming data doesn't seem like a very good idea, either.

p.s. Mark Landsbaum should either admit he doesn't really known much about how global temperatures are computed, or be embarrassed by his poor grasp of the analytical tools used to correct for the very effects he observes (and myriad others he doesn't mention, like satellite wobbles).

While individual measurements are indeed problematic -- that's why it took 15 years to nail this down -- the conclusions are solid. Indeed, the observed decrease in Stratospheric temperature is almost impossible to explain via mechanisms other global warming.

[Andy Favor]

Tylerh,

Mark's posts on the location of the weather stations just illustrates that scientists have not been adequately maintaining their stations to get reliable data. Yes, global warming studies should only use high altitude data, but the fact is that the data from the land based weather stations is becoming a part of our nation's weather data base and I for one don't trust the global warming fear mongers to not use bad data to further their agenda.

[tylerh]

Yes, global warming studies should only use high altitude data

FALSE.

All data should be used -- But Carefully. Which has been done, despite Mark's claims to the contrary. If you read my post, you'll notice I said the high altitude readings show cooling.

I for one don't trust the global warming fear mongers

Nor do I.

But the vast majority of scientists who have been working on the problem for the last decade are now in agreement: the planet has warmed.

This isn't faith or polemics we're discussing, it's physical measurements. Admittedly, these are tough measurements to get right: the problems Mark pointed out are real, and acknowledged. But the conclusion is no longer disputed by people who actually work with this stuff.

Again, admitting the physical reality of this past century's global warming in no way commits one to join any of the wacky proposals floating about. I, for one, think the future changes will be gradual enough that the free market mechanisms will handle most of the problems without government intervention.

Indeed the uncertainties of the future predictions are large enough that I am against most government efforts (except energy conservation programs) because they are likely to lock in a bad solution.

that scientists have not been adequately maintaining their stations to get reliable data
What a profoundly ignorant statement. There is no one set of temperature measurements. Period. There are all sorts of data, like satellite measurements, aerosonde readings, mud cores, migration records...

Each data set has its problems -- as Mark pointed out for land based temperature measurements. But taken together, the answer is overwhelmingly clear: the planet has warmed. As one would expect when increasing the heat-trapping ability of the atmosphere.