Climate Change Facts

I created this page because most conclusion and actions on climate change by the environmental community are based on "consensus," not on publications by the scientists themselves.  Consensus has no place in scientific research -- we don't vote on scientific results, and we don't take actions unless results are conclusive.  They are what they are and no one expects every result to coincide with some expected norm.  I focus here on results and conclusions presented by scientists, not by an environmental community. ____________ Cap-and-trade costs begin in California Herb Lindberg, November 15, 2012 From an Associated Press article on November 14, Calif debuts landmark program to cap emissions, we learned that California laws for cap-and-trade turned into the promised nightmare in California on Wednesday, November 14, 2012.  That is when the first $964 million in "pollution permits" for CO2  emissions were auctioned off for 2012-2013.  That's a billion bucks down the drain which you and I will be paying for when we use anything that releases CO2 , mostly electric power plants and oil refineries but permit requirements are much more widespread. This is just the beginning, as the cap will be lowered in future years so "polluters" will have to buy even more permits.    This is maddening because in the first place CO2 is pollution only according to man-made law.  In natural law it is a necessary part of life for anything that breathes -- animals, plants, fungi, humans, and all. It's more maddening because the reason our lawmakers have put a price on CO2 emissions is that they say it is the primary cause of global warming. A growing number of scientists believe It is NOT the primary cause of global warming. The dominant greenhouse gas, by far, is water vapor.  The amount of CO2 is less than 5% of the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and man-made CO2 is a small fraction of that. And it is NOT that CO2 heating produces water vapor and hence its effect is amplified.    Absorption (or reflection) of the sun's heat by water in the sky is determined by whether the water is in vapor form (greenhouse gas) or in cloud form (reflecting surface). And this is determined by the intensity of the solar wind, which shields the earth from cosmic rays by deflecting them away from the earth. (The universe is flooded by cosmic rays coming from far away supernova and similar cosmic events.)  The indicator of solar wind is sun spot activity.    In periods between sun spot activity cosmic rays are free to hit water vapor molecules, which produces particles large enough to collect water vapor into droplets, much as dust does. Clouds are formed by these droplets and reflect the sun's radiation back into space. During sun spot activity, far fewer cosmic rays enter the atmosphere and water vapor is free to act as a greenhouse gas to heat the earth, and between activity clouds are formed which cool the earth.   Data sets over periods of 100 and 400 years show that the earth's temperature closely follows sun spot activity. When sun spot activity (and solar wind) goes up, earth's temperature goes up, and when sun spot activity goes down the temperature goes down.  The graphs below were taken from the first video following these articles. Solar activity (red) and temperature (blue) over 100 years Solar activity (red) and temperature (blue) over 400 years Some objected that particles produced by impact of cosmic rays with water vapor may not be large enough to precipitate water droplets and hence clouds. This is countered by a comparison of cosmic ray intensity and global temperature over the past 500 million years. When cosmic rays go up, temperature goes down, when cosmic rays go down temperature goes up. In the chart below the cosmic ray graph (yellow) has been flipped vertically to see the close correlation. The cause of global warming (and cooling) is no longer a philosophical debate divorced from our day to day lives. Politicians are beginning to spend our money directly, beyond the clean-energy subsidies we are already paying.  Get informed and complain. __________

 

Below is a recent article, submitted Augest 13, 2012 and displayed October 19, 2012 on  American Thinker.  Similar information is given in the movie that follows the article.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/08/the_keys_to_the_climate_debate.html

August 13, 2012

The Keys to the Climate Debate

By David M.W. Evans

 

Hardly anyone knows that two thirds of the warming predicted by the climate models comes from assumed changes in humidity and clouds, and only one third comes directly from the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Some awareness of the calculations is essential, because there is no direct observational evidence that rising CO2 caused the bulk of the recent warming.  If there were, don't you suppose we would have heard all about it by now?  The world has spent over $60B since 1990 looking for that evidence.  The ice cores shown by Al Gore in his movie were once supporting evidence, but higher-resolution ice cores subsequently showed that the temperature changes occurred a few hundred years before the corresponding changes in CO2 and thus cannot have been caused by them. Instead, the theory of man-made global warming relies on calculating the predicted temperature rise.  First, the direct warming of the extra CO2 is reckoned, using principles known from laboratory work for over a century.  Then the warming or cooling effect of the changes in humidity and clouds caused by the direct CO2 warming (the "feedbacks") are estimated.  The first part is sound; the second is where the real debate lies. The theory of man-made global warming assumes that humidity and clouds amplify the warming directly due to CO2 by a factor of three: extra CO2 warms the ocean surface, causing more evaporation and extra humidity.  Water vapor, or humidity, is the main greenhouse gas, so this causes even more surface warming. This is the most important feature of the debate, namely because it is responsible for most of the warming, but more crucially because it is based on an assumption.  It also helps explain why warmists and skeptics both insist that they are right. The warmists are correct that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that it causes warming, that CO2 levels have been rising, and that the atmosphere has been warming.  For many in the public, this is the whole argument. Skeptical scientists agree with all those points, but note that they do not prove that something else isn't causing most of the warming.  As a thought experiment, suppose that the main cause of warming was actually Venusians with ray guns.  Then all those points would still be true! Skeptics point out that the extra humidity caused by the extra CO2 might cause more clouds.  Clouds reflect incoming sunlight and so cool the planet, which would counteract the direct CO2 warming.  Skeptics say the changes in humidity and clouds, instead of amplifying the direct CO2 warming by three, probably dampen it instead, maybe halving it. Global cloud cover was observed to decrease during the warming of the 1980s and 1990s.  But the warmists say there are fewer clouds because it warmed.  So we are left wondering, did fewer clouds cause the warming, or the other way around? The skeptic's main suspect is the sun.  While the sun's radiation is roughly constant, its magnetic field varies considerably.  This field shields the earth from cosmic rays that, according to recent experiments at the world's premier atom-smasher CERN, create very small particles in the air.  These in turn might lead to bigger particles that seed clouds.  Clouds cool the planet, so the warming over the last century might have been due to the sun's increasing magnetic field strength. We scientists can calculate how much warming results directly from an increase in CO2 levels.  We know how much CO2 levels and temperature have risen since pre-industrial times, but the warming directly due to CO2 is only a third of the observed warming.  The theory assumes that no other major influence on temperature changed, so the effect of the CO2 must have been amplified threefold, presumably by changes in the atmosphere due to humidity and clouds.  That is the crucial warmist assumption. There is no observational evidence for this amplification, but it is nonetheless implicitly built into all the models. If the CO2 theory of global warming is right, the climate models should predict the climate fairly well.  If the CO2 theory is wrong, because there is another, larger driver of the temperature, then the climate models will perform indifferently. According to the latest data from mankind's best and latest instruments, from impeccable sources, the climate models are doing poorly: they have got all their major predictions wrong since 1990. Government climate scientists tend to excuse away these failings, often blaming unmeasured aerosols whose effects are only dimly understood.  These excuses wear ever thinner as the CO2 level continues to rise but the temperature plateau of the last 12 years persists. Supporters of "action on climate change" may soon have to face up to the fact that they have been unwittingly relying on assumed amplification by humidity for most of the predicted temperature increases, and that the amplification is not there in reality. What distinguishes science is that evidence trumps the opinion of any human.  Since at least the Enlightenment, the ultimate authority in matters scientific is universally recognized to be observational data. But who wants to look at data?  It is so much easier to just ask a recognized expert, and looking at data all seems so complicated and disputatious.  Well, we all understand graphs of temperature over time, so the data is relatively easy to interpret.  The data mentioned above is all in the public domain, and downloadable by anyone.  Ask a climate scientist about it and he'll often say something complicated and confusing, then assert that his theory is right -- basically, "trust us."  Citizens and the media now have to decide whether their highest authority is the data or the climate scientists, because these two entities are in conflict. This issue illustrates a wider problem.  What if most experts in a field decide to promote some idea, acting on self-interest rather than the public good?  Perhaps the group decision is arrived at innocently, maybe through serendipitous evolution or maybe by failing to adapt a dominant paradigm to changed circumstances or data.  Perhaps it is reinforced by confirmation bias and by selecting newcomers as experts only if they agree with the idea.  Should we just listen to the experts?  Would we jump off an economic cliff if they told us to? Surely the solution is to require any group of experts to be able to sufficiently explain their decision at several levels of complexity, right down to the very simple.  If you cannot teach your idea simply, maybe you cannot really defend it.  In particular, the experts must be able to explain fully without omissions, because omitting contradictory or anomalous evidence or ideas is the easiest way for an expert to convince a lay person, who is usually unaware that the confounding material exists. Experience in financial and legal matters shows that we need some combination of auditing, checking, red teams, and professional defenders.  Why should climate be any different? Dr. David Evans modeled carbon in Australia's biosphere for the Australian Greenhouse Office.  His wife runs the world's fourth-biggest skeptic climate site.

Climate Change Facts -- Movie

We're all being brainwashed from every conceivable direction, and have been for years and years, that man-made global climate change will bring the end of the world unless we cut back on energy use, particularly electrical energy made with fossil fuels. Do yourself and the world a favor by taking only an hour to combat these years of brainwashing by viewing this movie.  The movie demonstrates that most of the brainwashing is nonsense promoted for completely different reasons than concern with climate. The Global Climate Change mongers have created a self-perpetuating "research" machine that generates fear and continues to grow while those with more rational science are cast out as "deniers." It took real courage for the scientists in this film to come forward. They will suffer the consequence of being shunned for research dollars so that we may know the truth.

 

 

Meteorologist Brian Sussman adds to the mounting resistance against global climate fear mongers and profiteers with his books, Climategate (2010) and Eco-Tyranny (2012). Note that the "precautionary principle" is never applied to the negative effects of environmental precaution, for example the risk of NOT having the energy we need to run the modern world. And behind all this is   U.N. Agenda 21, the United Nation's plan to control your life.  Agenda 21 is the most freighting thing to come along since Nazism, it's that bad.  The speaker rambles a lot but delivers the message if you have the time (an hour, plus questions but you can skip those). Get comfortable, but be prepared to be mentally uncomfortable -- you think your world is changing now, but it's going to get a lot worse unless we can stop this steam roller.

 

 

Embedded in both the climate change and Agenda 21 dogma is the Delphi technique for obtaining "consensus," which in this case means stifling any views that don't agree with the political body imposing a consensus. A good description of the unmodified technique is presented in a paper by Alan Cline, which I repeat verbatim at the end of this page.  But first I give immediately below an article by Albert V. Burns on how the technique is modified to manipulate groups of people to adopt a pre-formulated consensus. Albert Burns' article explains in detail how this technique has been bastardized into a tool for group manipulation.  In this case he is concerned about land use policies but I'm sure it was used to get consensus from gullible scientists (and not so gullible non-scientists) in the UN's IPCC.   The Delphi Technique: Let’s Stop Being Manipulated! By Albert V. Burns More and more, we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings, councils, or boards to “help determine” public policy in one field or another. They are supposedly being included to get ”input” from the public to help officials make final decisions on taxes, education, community growth or whatever the particular subject matter might be. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, surface appearances are often deceiving. You, Mr. or Mrs. Citizen, decide to take part in one of these meetings. Generally, you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting. Supposedly, the job of the facilitator is to be a neutral, non-directing helper to see that the meeting flows smoothly. Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting. The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the Delphi Technique. This Delphi Technique was developed by the RAND Corporation for the U.S. Department of Defense back in the 1950s. It was originally intended for use as a psychological weapon during the cold war. However, it was soon recognized that the steps of Delphi could be very valuable in manipulating ANY meeting toward a predetermined end. How does the process take place? The techniques are well developed and well defined. First, the person who will be leading the meeting, the facilitator or Change Agent must be a likable person with whom those participating in the meeting can agree or sympathize. It is, therefore, the job of the facilitator to find a way to cause a split in the audience, to establish one or a few of the people as “bad guys” while the facilitator is perceived as the “good guy.” Facilitators are trained to recognize potential opponents and how to make such people appear aggressive, foolish, extremist, etc. Once this is done, the facilitator establishes himself or herself as the “friend” of the rest of the audience. The stage is now set for the rest of the agenda to take place. At this point, the audience is generally broken up into “discussion—or ‘breakout’—groups” of seven or eight people each. Each of these groups is to be led by a subordinate facilitator. Within each group, discussion takes place of issues, already decided upon by the leadership of the meeting. Here, too, the facilitator manipulates the discussion in the desired direction, isolating and demeaning opposing viewpoints. Generally, participants are asked to write down their ideas and disagreements with the papers to be turned in and “compiled” for general discussion after the general meeting is reconvened. This is the weak link in the chain, which you are not supposed to recognize. Who compiles the various notes into the final agenda for discussion? Ahhhh! Well, it is those who are running the meeting. How do you know that the ideas on your notes were included in the final result? You Don’t! You may realize that your idea was not included and come to the conclusion that you were probably in the minority. Recognize that every other citizen member of this meeting has written his or her likes or dislikes on a similar sheet of paper and they, too, have no idea whether their ideas were “compiled” into the final result! You don’t even know if anyone’s ideas are part of the final “conclusions” presented to the reassembled group as the “consensus” of public opinion. Rarely does anyone challenge the process, since each concludes that he or she was in the minority and different from all the others. So, now, those who organized the meeting in the first place are able to tell the participants and the rest of the community that the conclusions, reached at the meeting, are the result of public participation. Actually, the desired conclusions had been established, in the back room, long before the meeting ever took place. There are variations in the technique to fit special situations but, in general, the procedure outlined above takes place. The natural question to ask here is: If the outcome was preordained before the meeting took place, why have the meeting? Herein lies the genius of this Delphi Technique. It is imperative that the general public believe that this program is theirs! They thought it up! They took part in its development! Their input was recognized! If people believe that the program is theirs, they will support it. If they get the slightest hint that the program is being imposed upon them, they will resist. This very effective technique is being used, over and over and over, to change our form of government from the representative republic, intended by the Founding Fathers, into a “participatory democracy." Now, citizens chosen at large are manipulated into accepting preset outcomes while they believe that the input they provided produced the outcomes which are now theirs! The reality is that the final outcome was already determined long before any public meetings took place, determined by individuals unknown to the public. Can you say “Conspiracy?”  What to do? These “Change Agents” or “Facilitators” can be beaten! They may be beaten using their own methods against them. Because it is so important, I will repeat the suggestions I gave in the last previous column. One: Never, never lose your temper! Lose your temper and lose the battle, it is that simple! Smile, if it kills you to do so. Be courteous at all times. Speak in a normal tone of voice. Two: Stay focused! Always write your question or statement down in advance to help you remember the exact manner in which your question or statement was made. These agents are trained to twist things to make anyone not acceding to their agenda look silly or aggressive. Smile, wait till the change agent gets done speaking and then bring them back to your question. If they distort what you said, simply remind those in the group that what he or she is saying is not what you asked or said and then repeat, verbatim, from your notes the original objection. Three: Be persistent! Wait through any harangues and then repeat the original question. (Go back and reread the previous column.) Four: (I wish to thank a reader of the previous column for some EXCELLENT suggestions.) Don’t go alone! Get as many friends or relatives who think as you do, to go along with you to the meeting. Have each person ”armed” with questions or statements which all generally support your central viewpoint. Don’t sit together as a group! Spread out through the audience so that your group does not seem to be a group. When the facilitator or change agent avoids answering your question and insists that he must move on so everyone may have a chance to speak, your own agents in the audience can then ask questions, worded differently, but still with the same meaning as yours. They can bring the discussion back to your original point. They could even point out, in a friendly manner, that the agent did not really answer your question. The more the agent avoids your question, and the more your friends bring that to the attention of the group, the more the audience will shift in your favor. To quote my informant: “Turn the technique back on them and isolate the change agent as the kook. I’ve done it and seen steam come out of the ears of those power brokers in the wings who are trying to shove something down the citizen’s throats. And it’s so much fun to watch the moderator squirm and lose his cool, all while trying to keep a smile on his face.” Now that you understand how meetings are manipulated, let’s show them up for the charlatans which they are. Published in the September 23, 2002, issue of Ether Zone. http://etherzone.com/cgi-bin/search/search.pl?Terms=Albert+V.+Burns Copyright © 1997-2002 Ether Zone. Republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact. Prioritization Process Using Delphi Technique White Paper by Alan Cline Carolla Development   Background and Motivation The Delphi technique was developed by the RAND Corporation in the late 1960's as a forecasting methodology. Later, the U.S. government enhanced it as a group decision-making tool with the results of Project HINDSIGHT, which established a factual basis for the workability of Delphi. That project produced a tool in which a group of experts could come to some consensus of opinion when the decisive factors were subjective, and not knowledge-based. Delphi is particularly appropriate when decision-making is required in a political or emotional environment, or when the decisions affect strong factions with opposing preferences. The tool works formally or informally, in large or small contexts, and reaps the benefits of group decision making while insulating the process from the limitations of group decision-making; e.g., over-dominant group members, political lobbying, or "bandwagonism". Delphi has worked well when trying to prioritize national funding for projects among different states with conflicting goals, or if the scale of the decision-making problem is very large: "The size of the budget for ASSIST, and the large number of proposals submitted, generated a complex decision problem. For example, the number of possible ways of funding is far more than could be considered individually. In view of this, and the need to identify secondary criteria and allow them to influence the funding decision, decision makers at [National Cancer Institute] decided that a formal modeling approach should be used." [Hall92] Taiwan used the method to prioritize their entire Information Technology industry, and they conclude: "Finally, these decisions reflect the experts' world views, life experiences, cognitive feelings and perceptions. Thus, these results are based on the participants' subjective assessments which may also be influenced by data. Decision-making in itself is subjective. However, the use of experts in a systematic manner will yield a satisfactory solution to sociotechnical problems." [Madu91] Delphi has the added advantage that it works as an informal, subjective model when the decisions are based on opinion, and can be directly converted to a formal model, when the data is more knowledge-based.   Delphi Prioritization Procedure The remainder of this document describes the general procedure for defining key criteria and prioritizing items that use those criteria (e.g., project funding). It is a variation on the classic Delphi technique adapted from the National Cancer Institute to fit the particular problems of corporate project prioritization. The prioritization process enumerated below will allow the stakeholders and subject matter experts to produce a list of project rankings, or several lists, from which the decision-makers in upper management may apply other criteria to make a decision. The process can be completed in a few short meetings by a panel of experts, by the corporate associates at large in a series of questionnaires, or by a hybrid of the two. The description below is vague when company policy or facilitator discretion may be used to invoke a variation. Pick a facilitation leader. Select a person that can facilitate, is an expert in research data collection, and is not a stakeholder. An outsider is often the common choice.   Select a panel of experts. The panelists should have an intimate knowledge of the projects, or be familiar with experiential criteria that would allow them to prioritize the projects effectively. In this case, the department managers or project leaders, even though stakeholders, are appropriate.   Identify a strawman criteria list from the panel. In a brainstorming session, build a list of criteria that all think appropriate to the projects at hand. Input from non-panelists are welcome. At this point, there is no "correct" criteria. However, technical merit and cost are two primary criteria; secondary criteria may be project-specific.   The panel ranks the criteria. For each criterion, the panel ranks it as 1 (very important), 2 (somewhat important), or 3 (not important). Each panelist ranks the list individually, and anonymously if the environment is charged politically or emotionally.   Calculate the mean and deviation. For each item in the list, find the mean value and remove all items with a mean greater than or equal to 2.0. Place the criteria in rank order and show the (anonymous) results to the panel. Discuss reasons for items with high standard deviations. The panel may insert removed items back into the list after discussion.   Rerank the criteria. Repeat the ranking process among the panelists until the results stabilize. The ranking results do not have to have complete agreement, but a consensus such that the all can live with the outcome. Two passes are often enough, but four are frequently performed for maximum benefit. In one variation, general input is allowed after the second ranking in hopes that more information from outsiders will introduce new ideas or new criteria, or improve the list.   Identify project constraints and preferences. Projects as a whole are often constrained by total corporate budget, or mandatory requirements like regulatory impositions. These "hard constraints" are used to set boundaries on the project ranking. More flexible, "soft constraints" are introduced as preferences. Typically, hard constraints apply to all projects; preferences usually apply to only some projects. Each panelist is given a supply of preference points, about 70% of the total number of projects. (For example, give each panelist 21 preference points if 30 projects have been defined.)   Rank projects by constraint and preference. Each panelist ranks the projects first by the hard constraints. Which project is most important to that panelist? Some projects may be ignored. For example, if the total corporate budget is 100 million, the panelist allocates each project a budget, up to the maximum requested for that particular project, and such that the total of all budgets does not exceed the $100 million. Some projects may not be allocated any funding. Next each panelist spreads their preference points among the project list as desired. Some projects may get 10 points, others may get none, but the total may not exceed the predefined maximum (21 in our example above).   Analyze the results and feedback to panel. Find the median ranking for each project and distribute the projects into quartiles of 25, 50, and 75-percentiles (50-percentile being the median). Produce a table of ranked projects, with preference points, and show to the panel. Projects between the 25th and 75th quartile may be considered to have consensus (depending on the degree of agreement desired); projects in the outer-quartiles should be discussed. Once the reason for the large difference in ranking is announced, repeat the ranking process.   Rerank the projects until it stabilizes. After discussing why some people (minority opinion) ranked their projects as they did, repeat the rankings. Eventually the results will stabilize: projects will come to a consensus, or some will remain in tha outlier range. Not everyone ma} be persuaded to rank the same say, but discussion is unnecassary when the opinions stay fixed. Present the ranking tabhe to the decision makers, with the various preferences as options, for their final decision. References and Associatad Reading _Dre86] Dressler, Fritz, John Seybold, "People Productivity", Modern Office Technology, June, 1986, v31, p12. [Hall92]$Hall, Nicholas, John Hershey, Larry Kessler, R. Craig Stotts, "A Model for Making Project Funding Decisions at the National Cancel Institute"; Operations Research, 1992, v40, n6, pp1040-1052* [Hyde86] Hyde, W.D.,$"How Small Groups Can Solve Proflems", Industrial Engineering, 5986, v18, n2, pp42-49. [Madu91] Madu, Christian, Chu-Hua Kei, Assumpta Madu, "Setting Priorities for the IT Industry in Taiwan - A Delphi Study", Lonc Range Planning, 1991, v24, n5, pp105-118. [Shel92] Sheldrick, Michael, "Automotive Ehectronics: the Oracle Speaks: Ckntinued Strong Growth"; Electronic News, April 20, 1992, v38, n1908, p17. [Tayl85] Ta}lor, Raymond, David Meinhardt, &Defining Computer Information Naeds for Small Business: A Delphm Method", Journal of Small Busijess Management, April, 1985, v23, p3. Here's another example of the technique used to manipulate, in this case at schools: learn-usa.com.

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