This week, a horde of junketeers is
amassing in Europe for yet another conference: COP 23 IN Bonn, Germany.
The token host is the president of Fiji. This one event will consume more
fossil fuels than some small nations use in one year.
Some of the fully indoctrinated attendees will be full of
trepidation that the climate sky is truly falling and that we are on the edge
of yet another dire tipping point. The ruling elites from the E.U. will
be hoping to strengthen their grip on international energy and thus accomplish
their globalization dreams. Christiana Figueres, an outspoken and extreme
anti-fossil fuel proponent, will hope to be one more step closer to putting the
final nail in the coffin of capitalism, to fulfill her fantasy of a perfect
world order under socialism. And the predatory green industrialists will
be salivating over the scraps of meat thrown their way at this Bacchanalian
feast.
The purported common enemy is carbon dioxide, the colorless and
odorless gas that is vital to all of life. We are asked to believe that
this harmless gas is the sole driver of climate change. The real enemy is
anyone who does not agree, which includes most of humanity.
There is a grim reality for many of these bureaucrats. The
inconvenient truth is that more and more people, especially here in America,
refuse to drink the Al Gore Kool-Aid. We celebrated when Donald Trump
pulled out of the Paris Climate Accord. Yet anyone who questions the
climate dogma is ridiculed. We are told that the science is settled and
that all real scientists agree with the global warming position, the illusory
97% consensus. If you question the rubric, you are a simpleton, a denier,
a flat-Earther, a climate change skeptic, and ignorant of real science.
We are often asked if we believe in global warming. But
belief is the realm of religion. Global warming is the religion of the
atheistic green left, described
beautifully by the late Michael Crichton. The Earth was once an
unspoiled Garden of Eden, and man came along and took a bite out of the fossil
fuel apple. We have spoiled the Garden and must be punished.
Redemption requires being denied the apple and buying some carbon offset
indulgences. Those who are not saved must die.
I will not be praying to that god.
The attitude of the true scientist is skepticism. Science is
never, ever settled. Every notion, hypothesis, theory, and law is subject
to review. We have seen too many cases in history where the consensus was
wrong. In the face of new evidence, a real open-minded scientist goes
back to the drawing board. Or as the Duc de La Rochefouocauld said in the
17 century, "There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a
brutal gang of facts." In religion, you are not allowed to question
the dogma.
First, let's clear the air. Everyone knows that the climate
changes. There is general agreement that the Earth has warmed since the
Little Ice Age. Temperature proxies may be hard to defend for portraying
past temperatures, but there is secondary evidence. The Medieval Warm
Period, 1,000 years ago, was probably warmer than now, contrary to Michael Mann
and his Hockey Stick graph. They were growing non-hybridized wine grapes
in northern England at that time. And the Vikings had three thriving
settlements on the southwest coast of Greenland with perhaps three thousand
inhabitants as detailed in Icelandic history. They had grazing animals
and grew cool-weather crops. That is not possible today. The last
Vikings were gone from Greenland by about 1300 A.D. because of the sudden onset
of the Little Ice Age. There are clearly natural climate changes that
still have not been fully elucidated. The science is not settled.
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, but the Earth is not a perfect
greenhouse. There is no glass ceiling to trap all of the heat. Most
infrared heat escapes into space, but a small amount is captured by the gas,
and some temperature rise is expected with higher concentrations. Most of
the Earth's warming occurs within the first 100 parts per million (ppm) of
carbon dioxide. The warming curve is asymptotic so that it now requires a
doubling of CO2 to raise the temperature 1 degree Centigrade. That means
we would have to go from our current 400 ppm to 800 ppm of CO2 to get this
small amount of increase in temperature. (Most of us would not notice the
difference. We also would not feel any effects from this higher level of
CO2. It is common for interior spaces to be above 1,000 ppm carbon
dioxide.)
The IPCC claims that the warming would be much more because of
positive feedback warming from water vapor. But the climate is not
cooperating. No such feedback has been found. Almost every climate
computer model has been wrong over the last twenty years at predicting the
change in our temperature. Except for the El Niño years, the climate has
been remarkably static for two decades. The great American physicist,
Richard P. Feynman, said, "It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is.
It doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with
experiment, it's wrong." The science is not settled.
And then there are all of the hysterical claims about climate
change. We are led to believe that extra CO2 causes warming and cooling
and heavy rains and drought. The list of claims reads like a comedy
monologue. So no matter what happens with the weather, the hysterical
crowd is never wrong. Any wonder why the American thinking public is
skeptical?
Let's look at some popular memes. It is said that if it gets
a little warmer, the poles will melt, and the ocean will rise twenty feet,
engulfing our coasts and most small islands. But if the North Pole melts
completely and so does the sea ice around Antarctica, the ocean level
will scarcely change. Al Gore should be instructed in basic grade school
science and look up Archimedes. The melted Arctic will not raise the
ocean any more than your glass of iced tea will overflow when the ice
melts. But what if the ice pack melts on Greenland and Antarctica?
The ice pack of central Greenland is increasing, as is Antarctica.
Antarctica has 90% of the world's ice, and on a hot summer day, the temperature
is still 30 degrees below zero. That disaster is not going to happen.
On a similar note, it is said there is an acceleration of the rise
of the ocean at this time. The ocean has risen about 400 feet since the
end of the last Ice Age 8,000 years ago, and the continued rise is thought to
be from slow thermal expansion. Depending on what you read, this rise is
about 1-7 mm/year. If you measure the area around Scandinavia, you might
conclude that the ocean is receding. Apparently, the Earth's crust is
rebounding from the weight of ice from that last Ice Age. Nonetheless, I
am pretty sure we can jump out of the way of the microscopic tidal waves to
come on the coasts.
But what about ocean acidification? Let's get this straight:
the ocean is not acidic and probably cannot get that way. Acid versus
alkaline is measured by pH, a logarithmic scale of hydrogen ion
concentration. A pH of 7 is neutral, and a pH of 8 has roughly ten times
less hydrogen ion (acid). Anything above 7 is alkaline and below 7 is
acid. The oceans are a pH of around 8 or more. They are
alkaline. The oceans also contain about 36,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide,
90% of which is in the form of bicarbonate. The atmosphere contains about
3,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide gas, less than one tenth the ocean's. If
you dissolved 10 micromoles CO2 in pure water at pH 7, the resulting
carbonic acid would change the pH to almost 6. If you use sea water, the
pH would be about 6.99. This is because seawater has bicarbonate in a
concentration of about 2.3 millimoles per liter. This ocean water is a
buffered solution and resists pH change. But remember that the ocean is alkaline
already and not neutral. There may not be enough fossil fuels you could
burn to turn the ocean acid.
There are other inconvenient truths. Since the satellite
era, it is now shown that the Earth is greening under the influence of
increased CO2. Carbon dioxide is plant fertilizer, and this is great news
for a hungry world. The deserts of the world are receding under the
influence of the rising CO2. Plants are able to conserve more water with
more CO2. (If I liked bumper stickers, I would have one that says:
"For a green world, burn fossil fuels.") Also, tropical storms
are not increasing in frequency and severity, no matter what the global warming
alarmists and the MSM say.
So what are all of these climate conferences accomplishing? I
can see nothing decent happening that will truly help our fellow humans lead a
healthy, happy, and prosperous life.
The policies of the IPCC will lead us to a new Dark Age.
Wind and solar are highly unreliable sources of energy because they are useful
only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. Of course, they will
have to continue getting exemptions for killings millions of endangered bats
and birds. There are no highly efficient ways of storing excess energy
for later use. Countries that have rushed headlong into these so-called
renewables are suffering brown- and blackouts and high energy costs. Many
of their citizens have to choose between food and electricity.
The radical left seems happy to shutter industry and create one
big miserable planet. You will even find it hard to escape to a more
prosperous region if you have to drive one of the overrated, overvalued,
over-subsidized, and modified electric golf carts that take you 100 miles
before you have to tediously charge them again.
That is what is in store for the formerly happy and healthy and
wealthy West.
What about Africa? Africa has been a special project for
this last century of the misinformed and arrogant West. Especially in
equatorial Africa, the people have been deprived of the privilege of joining
the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. They have been
deprived the use of their own fossil fuels for inexpensive electricity.
Without cheap energy, there is subsistence living. People have to destroy
the forest for wood and kill the animals to survive. They have no money
for their own industry, no energy for lighting, cooking, hospitals, roads, food
preservation, clean water, and prevention of terrible diseases. They also
need the judicious use of DDT to control malaria. Nothing else works
better. And that is what eradicated that scourge from most of the rest of
the world.
The United States of America is a bright hope for the world if it
takes heed. We hope to maintain our lead in affordable energy. This
does not mean we should stop looking for other reliable and inexpensive
energy. There is some hope for small and efficient liquid salt nuclear
reactors; time will tell.
But the IPCC and its bureaucratic minions seem bent on making the
world miserable with their policies, while making lots of money and privilege
for themselves. I guess they attest to the wisdom of that great American
philosopher, Groucho Marx: "happy does not make money."
