Climate Change – 3 Pillars
OPPS-4 The climate change discussion is divided into three main categories (scientific, economic and political). These 3 pillars are each important but are given various levels of importance depending on what side of the climate change discussion a person resides on. The climate alarmists focus on the political side and most politicians are in the alarmist camp. That is unfortunate since the political pillar should be driven by the scientific and economic pillars. I focus on the scientific side, since both the economic and political factors are dependent on the results of the scientific analysis.
On the scientific side, the alarmists refuse to acknowledge that there is no CO2/Temperature dataset that shows CO2 driving the climate on any statistically significant time scale. Not at NASA, not at NOAA, not at any academic or scientific institution on the planet. That’s a problem for the “Anthropogenic Global Warming” (AGW) alarmist crowd. AGW is just a theory with no empirical data to back the theory up.
The projections of warming (catastrophic or not) are based on IPCC computer models that have been programmed to respond to CO2 (and other greenhouse gases, almost exclusively) and to virtually ignore the natural radiative forcings (solar activity, ocean cycles, cosmic ray intensities, cloud cover variations, etc.) that have dominated the planet for 4+ billion years. Nature doesn’t work that way, the natural forcings are still there and will still affect the climate going forward. The Grand Solar Minimum (GSM) we will be experiencing over the next couple of decades will show just how wrong that IPCC programming has been. As in previous GSMs, the temperature drops will be very serious and most likely catastrophic. Our governments are ignoring the existential threat in our immediate future for a manufactured (and unproven) threat 80 years from now.
On the economic side, (also dependent on the scientific pillar), the alarmists refuse to incorporate all of the components required to give an apples to apples comparison between renewables (wind and solar) and fossil fuels. Renewables are not environmentally benign (wind/solar kills millions of insects, birds and bats per year). Mining for rare earth minerals (required by batteries) is an ecological and social disaster in many countries around the world. Carbon taxes, credits, etc. don’t reduce carbon emissions, they just transfer the emissions to other jurisdictions. The social cost of CO2 emissions generally doesn’t include the benefits (such as higher yields associated with higher CO2 levels). Warming is actually beneficial to human activity and opens up more land to development as the arable lands progress further north. And the question still remains, do increased CO2 levels actually lead to catastrophic warming. Not based on historical data!
