I recently received another one of those annoying political robocalls explaining that were are risking our planet if I did not support the progressive socialist democrats and their agenda…
Unfortunately, there was nobody on the line that I could enlighten with some simple observations.
(1) It is a fact that the global climate is undergoing continuous change. And historically, the Earth warms as ice ages recede and cool when the cycle is reversed. Unfortunately, the cycles are of a geologic timescale, and our brief history on Earth precludes verifiable results from any mitigation strategy. Perfect for politicians who continue to kick various cans down the road using specious 10-year timeframes for results that rarely appear.
(2) What we do know is that many of the so-called scientific predictions of the past have been proven wrong or grossly exaggerated over the last decades.
(3) The oversimplification of a complex and chaotic process, such as global climate change, by arbitrarily assigning a single metric, global mean temperature, and an overriding control factor, atmospheric carbon dioxide, is one of politics and not of science.
(4) No scientist to date has evidence of an optimal temperature for a human-inhabited planet such as Earth considering the temperature variation between the Equator and the two polar regions. Moreover, no scientist has been able to detect, isolate, and measure man's input to the global climate amid the climate's natural variability.
(5) The hypothesis that man is not only causing global warming but can overcome, mitigate or alter climate on a global scale is just that, an unproven hypothesis, science fiction that allows theories to supersede evidence and mathematical models to supersede observation and measurement.
(6) I continue to wait for some scientist to prove that atmospheric carbon dioxide can mitigate the effects of climate's actual drivers: the Sun's energy output in all spectral bands, the production of extraterrestrial cosmic rays, the Earth's position relative to the Sun, the Earth's precessional and rotational dynamics, the Earth's vulcanology and plate tectonics, the heat transfer between ocean and atmosphere, the behavior of deep ocean currents, and the most significant greenhouse gas influence, water vapor (clouds). Clouds are a self-regulating feedback loop in the climate process and are very rarely considered in the majority of climate models.
(7) There is no doubt in my mind that the terrestrial temperature datasets have become unreliable, mostly from the loss of the original data, the manipulation and homogenization of the remaining data, and the considered and deliberate manipulation of the data to support an unproven hypothesis. Even though the satellite-based datasets are limited in the number of years of coverage, they paint quite a different picture, especially when they actually cover global dimensions as opposed to a small number of temperature measurement stations.
(8) Additionally, the corruption of billions of dollars washing through institutions and corporations creates an implicit bias to support research that favors the "fashionable science" by funding those projects which keep the tap to the public purse open and flowing at full force. Few studies to replicate, authenticate, or falsify major studies are funded and executed.
(9) There is only one evidentiary conclusion that can be drawn from decades of climate experience. Politics can corrupt science when the variables of money, power, position, and prestige can be manipulated by self-interested individuals, institutions, and organizations.
(10) We cannot allow the progressive socialist democrats to control our safety, security, economy, or culture lest it results in a totalitarian state and the destruction of an exceptional America.
Bottom line…
It might be helpful to consider the science surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic to see the corrupt influence of politics on science and the misuse of billions of dollars to the benefit of a limited number of self-serving, politically-connected individuals and institutions.
We are so screwed.
-- steve
“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS
"The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius
“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw
