The Patriot Post® · Reflections on My 45th Earth Day

I remember the first Earth Day in 1970. I was a freshman in high school and we had an Earth Day Assembly. There was a play with Steppenwolf’s “The Monster” blaring. They changed the words “America where are you now, don’t you care about your sons and daughters?” to “America where are you now, don’t you care about your parks and waters?” The young ladies from the drama club and the cheerleaders were dressed up as trees running around on stage. When I saw that, I wanted to become a tree-hugger, but alas, none of the trees was interested in hugging a 5’ 2" 160 lb. freshman nerd.

Years later this has grown into a borderline religious holiday for some. I thought Earth Day Eve caroling would be a good idea until I was pelted with recycled cans and organic waste. And getting dressed up as a tree was not a good idea since every dog in the neighborhood was howling at my lousy singing and trying to use me as a place to relieve themselves.

Thank you, thank you very much. I’m here till the editors get tired of me. Try the Tofu Veal.

Given the myth and reality of what is going on with our planet and the evolution of this movement into some kind of socio/political/economic/religious/intolerant machine, I thought I would infuse some humor into the situation while reminding people that the planet is not in danger of becoming a wasteland by what we hear from these people. Other things, perhaps, but not global warming. There are far more pressing problems facing mankind today, chief among them the longstanding one of man’s inhumanity to man, which seems to be the root cause of many ills. But when I look at some of the things that are being spouted as evidence of environmental disaster, it’s easy to see how this issue is far from the end of existence it’s portrayed as. The most visible high priest of Gaia is perhaps Nobel Prize winner Al Gore. Yet the doom and gloom since his Academy Award-winning movie “An Inconvenient Truth” came out has burned up like paper in fire. The movie was a major accomplishment, though whether you wish to admit it or not, it did for the global warming movement what “Triumph of the Will” did for Germany in the eyes of many in the 1930s. How ironic that we find people on my side of the climate issue being demonized with terms that bring up memories of arguably the greatest case of man’s inhumanity to man by the very people who recently put out this movie. Yet the inconvenient truth in both cases is that the missive was proved false.

But let’s try to keep a joyful warrior spirit. The use of facts is convenient for that.

I will use some of the more choice worries from “An Inconvenient Truth.”

The melting of the ice caps? Global sea ice is above normal.

The Southern Hemisphere is breaking daily records and threatening to reach all-time high anomalies!

Earth does this back-and-forth act in all things. When some places are warm, others are cold. Because the oceans have been in their warm cycle and this affects most the northern ice cap, it has been well below normal. It does so by warming the land masses of the Northern Hemisphere which have greater temperature ranges, and by doing so, influences the Arctic, a landlocked ocean. But notice how during its heyday the time the Southern Hemisphere was below normal at the start of the satellite era. The testable theory is that once the Atlantic shifts to its cold cycle in the coming five to 10 years, the Arctic ice cap recovers. It’s then that Climate Ambulance Chasers will try to shift attention to the shrinking southern ice cap (at least it better be shrinking). That is the whole natural cyclical theory for ice caps – when one expands, the other shrinks. So it’s a test. And yes, the Arctic ice cap has decreased overall since 1978, but you don’t need to be a math major to understand that if global sea ice is above normal, it means that there is a greater compensating increase, counter to the missive we have heard for all these years.

Then there is the issue of hurricanes. Again, aren’t we looking at this globally? Since the movie and the dire pronouncements, global tropical activity has sunk to record lows! The chart below by Dr. Ryan Maue through the 2013 season shows the fall of the ACE index – the overall activity in the tropics – since the release of “An Inconvenient Truth.”

This should return toward normal and even go back above in the coming years. Why? The simple answer is because nature swings back and forth in cycles. You see, in spite of trying to make this more complex (certainly the details are more complex), the main missive remains the same: The earth by its design has no “perfect” climate but is in constant search for a balance it can never attain.

Then there are tornadoes. For the third year in a row, after the one major year of 2011, we see abnormally low tornado production. It should pick up next week, but as of this writing we are at record lows for the date.

Then there is the 10-year running global temperature since the Pacific began entering its colder mode. The NCEP CFSR is regarded as perhaps the gold standard measurement of global temperatures. This is against a 30-year mean, or just a bit after the satellite era started, which means there is little anyone can do to adjust temperatures down in the pre-satellite era to make today look warmer. It’s an apples to apples comparison; before 1978 we did not have the kind of reliable satellite data we do now. So since the year of “An Inconvenient Truth,” the inconvenient truth is temperatures have started a jagged descent.

For the record, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP), where this data is derived, is not a right-wing think tank.

Regarding all those computer models that had so many in a tizzy about the impending doom of the planet, this chart from Dr. Roy Spencer shows plainly that basing policy on computer modeling is a fool’s errand. People who forecast every day understand that no event is true until it actually happens.

We can go on and on here. The fact is this: Given the actual geological record of the earth’s temperatures vs. CO₂

As far as the Hockey Stick, here is a list of all the scholarly articles that show the earth has been warmer before. By my count there are around 100. How is it we are to trust one without even being able to see the data behind it?

As I sit here writing this reflection of Earth Day, I will end with this. I believe the intent of the original Earth Day was good even if the cheerleaders dressed up as trees would not allow me to become a tree-hugger back in 1970 (they probably couldn’t get their arms around me anyway). I think that being good stewards of this garden called Earth (I don’t believe it’s Gaia, but something that is given to us by God, and as such we should take care of it) is spot on. But to deal with reality, one must face reality, and there is demonstrable evidence that runs counter to the missive this has grown to now. And to show you what a good sport I am, I like the movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” But I like a lot of movies where fantasy is involved.

It’s up there with “The Wizard of Oz,” a movie in the day where tornadoes were not caused by man as they try to make you believe now. But given my love of the weather, saying I like “An Inconvenient Truth” the way I like “The Wizard of Oz” (I like “Star Wars” too!) is high praise indeed.

Hope you had a holly jolly Earth Day.

Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.