Memories of the 28th Century

This isn’t the first time, and it may not be the last time, but I am sick of the propaganda that is spewed out by climate change alarmists. I decided to look around for material that would turn my rant into something that would have wider appeal, and the article from bibliotecapleyades.net is one such item. The article describes how the various techniques of poor logic have been used to frighten some people into believing the anthropogenic climate change story. There are plenty of examples of red-herrings, appeal to authority, and so on. The Climate change people are especially enthusiastic about “Shifting the Burden of proof – I need not prove my claim, you must prove it is false.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

The problem of authors appealing to authority is especially common in the science targeting part of the press. Science writers should be acquainted with the basics of logic, so they should understand that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy. But the science press has the same problem that the general press has; it is rare for the writers to have any background in science. When a feature writer interviews a scientist and parrots back the scientific matters that were mentioned, I have some sympathy for the writer but not much. Aren’t the writers curious enough to read up on green house gases? Personally, I decided that I wouldn’t get burned again after the foolishness about the coming ice age that was so popular in the 1970’s and early ‘80’s. I ignored the whole climate issue for a couple of decades.

One day when I didn’t have anything to do I decided to look into the issues and see what. I think that I was open-minded when I looked at it. I read a few general articles, and those led me to have a number of questions, basic questions, such as what is a greenhouse gas. I investigated the things that I wondered about, and it became clear that the argument that was provided was fallacious. The whole matter hinges on a few points: what gases act as greenhouse gases and to what degree, and is CO2 a greenhouse gas? The established science is perfectly clear that water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas with methane being in the second spot. It is questionable whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it’s easier to concede it a position of having a slight ability to absorb and re-emit Infra-Red energy in a certain narrow band. Then there is the question of whether the increase in CO2 led or followed the rise in temperatures. It certainly appears that CO2 has followed; that is strongly the case in tundra areas where some of the rotting vegetation has bound up CO2 since the end of Medieval Warm period.

I did some more research on CO2 levels, and it appears that the annual change is rather large about the same as the amount thought to be added by human activity. It also appears that the present level 380 ppm is not unusually high the history of the Earth; this is clear even from the data of the climate alarmists.

The next matter that I looked into was recorded history. While there have been detailed weather records for about 130 years, people frequently wrote about weather and crop trends. It is clear from records of various sorts that there was a medieval Warm Period, and there was a Roman Warm Period, and there was a Little Ice Age. The dates for those periods are uncertain, except that the Little Ice Age ran from about 1300 to about 1850 with climate having tapered in and out of the extreme period, so the normal climate ended about 1200, and the new normal period started about 1950.

Most of what we know about the Medieval Warm Period relates to crops and where they were successfully grown. For example, the grain barley, among other things, was grown in the Greenland Colony; barley hasn't been able to ripen in Greenland since some time in the late 1200's. This is merely one salient example. The Roman Warm Period was of a similar temperature, but the present period of warming has not gotten worldwide temperatures to a similar level. The available evidence makes it clear that there is no run-away warming, and there is no sign that any climate disaster is likely.

One prediction of climate change alarmists has been that there would be an increase in large storms, and the evidence has been mixed. There have been some storms that covered huge areas, but that had happened before. After Hurricane Katrina it was predicted that there would be more major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S., but that has not happened. I won't try to predict anything in that regard. It was claimed by some that the Winter of 2015 in the Eastern U.S. was uniquely cold, but I remember one that made it look almost warm. Climate is chaotic; it changes in unpredictable ways; it will continue to be so.

This post is about science and understanding actual science and about considering the logic of an article, in addition to pointing out that the climate change alarmists have presented inaccurate information in ways that have included logical fallacies that were intended to make fantasies look like actual facts.

I didn't include anything from the climate.geologist-1011.net/ article, but it is excellent. I advise everyone to look at it.





http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opin...-1227115176694


http://townhall.com/columnists/walte...7847/page/full

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the...rature-swings/

http://climate.geologist-1011.net/