The magic words “global warming” are surrounded by left-wing mythology. We’ve all heard apocalyptic predictions about what will happen if we don’t start walking everywhere we go and heating our homes by burning dried animal manure.
It’s time to discuss how that mythology arose and why it needs to be replaced with the truth.
On any given topic, most people won’t listen to you unless you flash some credentials. I have two degrees, in statistical analysis and political science.
Statistical analysis can be used to demolish left-wing mythology, masquerading as “science” in several areas — notably transgender ideology and climate change. The underpinning of all science is statistical analysis.
All science is the collection of data, followed by analysis of that data. Statistical analysis can be applied to see how cherry-picked data points are used to terrify us into abandoning fossil fuels.
So I’m at least as qualified as Al Gore (B.A., journalism), John Kerry (B.A., political science), or Greta Thunberg (high school student) to discuss the data behind climate change hysteria.
The focus by the lunatic left-wing fringe is on the past 150 years of carbon dioxide (CO2) increases, correlated increases in global mean temperature (GMT), and “what to do about it.” This focus is exemplified by the following graph:
Source: ClimateCentral.org. Used with permission.
Notice the alarming shades of red, orange, and burgundy. These are selected to scare the hell out of us. Climate Central might be a left-wing hysteria factory, pretending to be a nonpartisan teller of unbiased, inconvenient truths. (Such practices are extremely common on the left.)
This 150-year focus is best described as myopia, or tunnel vision. If we expand our scope of study to the past 800,000 years, the graph becomes far less alarming, as this one from Wikimedia Commons illustrates.
Notice the white background. That’s how dispassionate, unbiased scientists present their data. Also notice that the big spikes on the graph correspond to a natural cycle of roughly 105,000 years.
The data come from Antarctic ice cores: centuries of snow compressed under its own weight into ice. Air bubbles, trapped in the ice, are perfectly preserved air samples dating back 800,000 years.
Of course, 800,000 years ago, the GMT (red line on the graph) was so high that there was very little ice in Antarctica. There’s our first clue. So we can’t get any air samples that are more than 800,000 years old.
John Tyndall discovered the greenhouse effect of CO2 about 150 years ago: when CO2 goes up, the air retains the sun’s heat better.
Atmospheric CO2 (various shades of blue lines on the graph) and climate change have an amplifying effect on each other. When GMT is high, CO2 naturally increases. But when GMT drops, atmospheric CO2 dissolves back into the ocean, thus amplifying the drop in GMT. So the red line closely parallels the blue line.
The big 105,000-year wave is called a Milankovitch cycle. There are smaller cycles within the big ones, because there are several variables affecting GMT: orbital variations, wobble of the Earth’s axis, volcanic activity, etc.
Notice also that there were huge variations in GMT for millennia before the first SUV was built. (For Planet Earth, that’s a permanent feature, not a bug.) About 300,000 years ago, Antarctica was significantly warmer than it is now.
Here are two inconvenient truths for the left: there are too many wild variables that have nothing to do with SUVs, and our ability to measure them (therefore our ability to precisely predict their behavior) is limited.
Throughout the Stone Age and Bronze Age, GMT was warmer than it is now. That’s the period when civilization started and flourished. Around A.D. 50, GMT dipped below our current level. Then we had the Little Ice Age (1050-1750).
Again, all this happened before the first SUV was ever built.
When the Vikings discovered Greenland, they called it that because it was green. The Little Ice Age turned it to the color of ice and bones. Viking colonies along its coast suffered crop failures, and then they starved to death.
Elsewhere in the world, we’ve also found ancient underwater cities (eight of the 14 cities on this list found themselves underwater due to rising sea levels), as well as the ruins of a fishing village 100 feet inland from the current shoreline.
So sea levels have been both higher and lower than they are now, just within the few millennia that humans have built cities.
We’re still emerging from the Little Ice Age, so it’s 100% natural for GMT to slowly increase. The problem is that the CO2 level is increasing too rapidly to be explained by natural factors. And our current GMT spike can’t be sufficiently explained by any natural Milankovitch variables.
Houston Control, we do have a problem. The myth lies not in whether we have a problem, but what to do about it.
China and, not coincidentally, the lunatic left-wing fringe want us to abandon fossil fuels, and carpet America and Europe with solar farms, battery farms, and wind turbines. China builds almost all the world’s solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium batteries. Again, this is not a coincidence.
But no matter what we do, China and India will make global warming happen. All by itself — between construction in China and construction in third-world countries — China is bringing one new coal-fired power plant online every 72 hours. It’s also cranking out liquid-fueled engines faster than ever before. It’s much the same for India.
Greenhouse gas emissions by China, India, and the Third World are not limited by the Paris Accords and never will be. The Paris Accords are voluntary. No such nation will ever give up the promise of prosperity that cheap electricity brings.
Do we want to become dependent on China as the source of our energy production? (That would guarantee our second-tier status among nations.) Or do we want to achieve energy independence again? The recent election tells us what the American people want, and it was a wise decision.
Inevitably, the oceans will rise about 30 feet. Coastal cities worldwide will be below sea level. But the Dutch have been building seawalls, starting with medieval engineering, for over 600 years. Most of their cities are already below sea level. The rest of the world can do the same.
We can build seawalls around Boston and New York. A couple more across the Delaware Bay, the Chesapeake Bay…all the way around to Puget Sound. (Our left-wing friends ask us, “Why do your solutions always involve building a wall?” Because it works.)
If China, India, and the Third World are making global warming unpreventable, then we need to focus on mitigation of its effects, rather than prevention efforts that will ultimately prove futile.
Sparsely populated coastal areas, like Martha’s Vineyard and Rehoboth Beach, will have to be abandoned. It’s unfortunate for elitists like the Obamas and Bidens, but it won’t destroy the planet or make humans extinct. We’ll have years to move coastal populations inland. We will adapt and thrive, as we’ve always done.
