Climate Change Guide for Skeptics
A skeptical look at climate change exaggerations, lies, and undeniable basic facts.
President Biden on October 5th visited the Florida southwest coast devastated by Hurricane Ian and claimed that it had:
"… ended the discussion about whether or not there is climate change and (sic) we should do something about it."
Not quite yet. Governor DeSantis deserves credit for not rolling his eyes.
This followed numerous print and TV pieces prompted by Ian claiming that
“Climate change is rapidly fueling super hurricanes.” - Washington Post
“Here’s how climate change intensifies hurricanes.” -ABC
“Strong storms are becoming more common in the Atlantic Ocean.” -New York Times
These claims are expertly shown to be false (and intentionally so) by Michael Shellenberger in his excellent Substack post Media Lying About Climate And Hurricanes, which presents extensive proof including the graphs shown below, which demonstrate that there is no long term increase in the total number of either all or major landfalling US hurricanes.
Hurricanes join the list of many other weather phenomena that the media, politicians, and many scientific institutions falsely claim are becoming more extreme due to climate change. I previously addressed this issue in December of last year in my Substack post “Climate Change and Tornadoes”, which showed (graph below) that there has been no increase in US tornado intensity since the beginning of the NOAA database in 1950 despite claims to the contrary by politicians, climate change activists, and the media.
Given the ubiquitous exaggeration and outright lies told by politicians, scientific institutions, and media regarding climate change, many so-called climate change “Deniers” and skeptics claim that anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) and the subsequent effects on global climate is a “hoax”. This is wrong.
Not only is anthropogenic climate change (ACC) real (and important), denial of this fact allows climate change Alarmists to brand anyone opposed to their efforts as unscientific quacks! Humanity will benefit from an honest scientific discussion of possible future climates, and how we might adapt to or mitigate those scenarios, including the practicality of, and the costs and benefits associated with, mitigation and adaption efforts.
This Climate Change Guide for Skeptics is intended to help reasonable individuals, who also are skeptical, to separate fact from fiction and avoid appearing like morons when discussing this issue with friends or in public forums.
Greenhouse Gasses (GHG) and the Greenhouse Effect
This is a real phenomena. Please do not claim it violates the 2nd law of Thermodynamics! Anyone who is skeptical of this concept should visit Maui's 10,000 foot Haleakala peak in the afternoon in shorts and a t-shirt and wait for the sun to go down, as I did when I was younger and less wise. Soon after the sun sets, it becomes very cold because the atmospheric blanket is much thinner at that elevation. This results in significantly less absorption the Earth's infrared rays and reflection of this energy back down to us (compared to sea level which stays at a toasty 80+ F).
CO2 is a GHG and Humans are Increasing the Atmospheric Concentration
A lot of climate change Skeptics will correctly point out that water vapor is by far the biggest GHG. But they then go further (into quack land) and imply that CO2 doesn't matter. It does. Please do not say that CO2 is only a trace gas at only 414 ppm (true) and imply that small concentrations can’t affect physical phenomena (false) - Don’t ever try drinking water with ONLY 0.01% concentration of Botulinum toxin, for example.
Burning of fossil fuels is the primary reason CO2 has increased from 280 ppm in pre-industrial times to 413 ppm at present.
The Earth’s temperature results from a delicate balance between the relatively large incoming flux of radiation from the sun and the large outward IR radiation from the Earth (plus energy moving into or out of the oceans - ignore this for now). Both of these energy fluxes are orders of magnitude greater than the IR flux re-radiated back to Earth by CO2. That doesn’t negate the fact that increasing CO2 increases the temperature of the Earth.
Unfortunately the topic of GHGs and radiative heat transport away from Earth is hard to explain without physics and spectroscopy. But the short explanation is this: There are IR windows that allow the Earth’s radiation to escape at certain wavelength’s and GHGs like CO2 are effective absorbers at some of these frequencies where water vapor is not a great absorber. In fact, satellite measurements of IR coming from Earth over time have shown increased CO2 absorption of this radiation over time, confirming the fundamental premise of human caused AGW.
The Earth is Warming on Average by 0.15-0.2 C (0.27-0.36F) Per Decade
While it is true that Alarmists have fiddled with temperature records, the various temperature measurement technologies, including Earth-based thermometers, weather balloons and satellites, all show the Earth is warming. Each technology gives slightly different trends, but all measurements are in general agreement that the Earth's average surface air temperature is increasing at 0.15 to 0.2 C per decade (0.27-0.36 F/decade). The increase over the last hundred years is around 1.1 C.
Sea Level is Rising But No Need to Panic (Yet)
Global mean sea level has risen around 8 to 9 inches (21–24 centimeters) over the last 140 years. The current rate of sea level rise is 1.4 inches /decade (www.climate.gov). The rate of rise is accelerating.
Some long time climate change Skeptics like Anthony Watts at the website Watts Up With That? claim that scientists are fudging the sea level numbers to show the rate of rise is accelerating. But even the esteemed Skeptic Watts admits that “global sea level has been rising at a relatively steady pace of approximately one foot per century since at least the mid-1800s.” We know from a multitude of other research efforts that global sea level rate of rise had been close to zero for the several thousand years prior to 1880.
Thus we have conclusive evidence of acceleration in the rising level of the global seas occurring at the same time as anthropogenic CO2 emissions begin a rapid rise at the end of the 19th century. With an understanding that the Earth’s oceans are effectively an extremely large (non-linear) thermometer, the fact that the oceans are rising at an accelerating rate is probably the most significant EVIDENCE of AGW.
Climate Will Continue to Change
How will climate change going forward? No one knows for sure, but the most likely scenario is that current trends continue or accelerate slightly. The latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) includes models of future climate based on multiple scenarios of how future emissions of GHGs might change with various emission policies. The graphs below show the predicted increase in global temperature and global sea level under the various emission scenarios.
Climate change models have deservedly received a large amount of derision from Skeptics, including myself. They've consistently overestimated potential future warming, and the reporting of model results by major media outlets is usually distorted to accentuate extreme possibilities.
In a previous Substack article, “How Accurate Are Climate Change Models?”, I showed how the supposedly more advanced climate models, such as CMIP6, have too many free parameters (garbage in - garbage out) and therefore have little predictive value. However, simple energy balance models based on basic physics have been accurate and can be used to predict future temperature increases. These models predict an additional 1 C (1.8 F) temperature rise if CO2 atmospheric concentration reaches 560 ppm, double the pre-industrial level.
Mitigation and Adaptation - The Real Debate
If we ignore the hyperbolic exaggerations of impending climate change doom along with the reactive denial of the basic facts of anthropogenic climate change, we can then move on to the real CC discussions we need to be having, which are the cost and benefits of various mitigation and adaptation strategies. I will address those issues in the next climate change article.
Excellent presentation about the realities of earth's climate, Dr. Coleman.
(Forgive my formality. I'm truly an old guy)
My perspective is that climate zeolites and propagandists need to stop treating climate change as a replacement for religion.
Likewise, climate skeptics need to somehow learn how to dampen their skepticism so they do not come across as fools.
Come to think of it, both extremes come across as foolish.
My observation is government employees should have taken more STEM classes and fewer soft courses. With a greater understanding of our present technology, they might have come to a more practical program than "everybody needs to buy electric cars." It will take a great many decades worth of building 100s of nuclear power plants to create the electricity to charge the batteries of electric powered cars and light duty trucks.
I've always had one foot on the technical side of the knowledge fence and my other foot on the humanities side.
My technical knowledge includes computer programming, plus a great deal of study and training in terms of our electric and transportation infrastructures.
And of course, in the 60s and 70s I worked as a newspaper reporter and editor at the largest daily circulation paper north of Boston.
I even know what it takes to deliver electricity to the on/off switch, having used restoring old houses as my off duty therapy ☺️.
Thank you once again for bringing some truth to a topic that needs fewer modern journalists and politicians muddying the waters.
I look forward to reading your coming essays.