Global Warming Has Little to Do With Global Warming
This is the last regular *Patriot Post* column I am doing, because there is nothing else left to argue about. The simple fact is this: A test that can be evaluated objectively is underway. That test matches the ideas of people like me that nature is in control (i.e., sun, oceans, stochastic events) vs. the idea that CO2 is the control knob. We have the objective way at looking at it by satellite and that measure started in 1978 after the Pacific was in its cold cycle for 30 years. The game is now in the second half. The warming that occurred from the late 70s to mid 90s was correlated almost 1 to 1 with the Pacific warming, and this large body of water with tremendous stores of energy warming the air till the global atmosphere adapted, and the temperature rise leveled off. We could not observe nearly as accurately before similar events, we did not have the satellites to do so! The Pacific flipped into its warm cycle in 1978, for the first 30 years of satellite era temps, and is now turning cold. The Atlantic is in its warm cycle, but will soon turn colder. So we simply watch the global temperatures while the downside of the cycle occurs and see what they do.
This is the last regular Patriot Post column I am doing, because there is nothing else left to argue about. The simple fact is this: A test that can be evaluated objectively is underway. That test matches the ideas of people like me that nature is in control (i.e., sun, oceans, stochastic events) vs. the idea that CO2 is the control knob. We have the objective way at looking at it by satellite and that measure started in 1978 after the Pacific was in its cold cycle for 30 years. The game is now in the second half. The warming that occurred from the late ‘70s to mid '90s was correlated almost 1 to 1 with the Pacific warming, and this large body of water with tremendous stores of energy warming the air till the global atmosphere adapted, and the temperature rise leveled off. We could not observe nearly as accurately before similar events, we did not have the satellites to do so! The Pacific flipped into its warm cycle in 1978, for the first 30 years of satellite era temps, and is now turning cold. The Atlantic is in its warm cycle, but will soon turn colder. So we simply watch the global temperatures while the downside of the cycle occurs and see what they do.
If they warm to where the other side says they should be when they ramped up their hysteria back in the late '80s and '90s, then they are right (in spite of the warming that had occurred, they are way behind now, as it did not continue once the atmosphere adapted. The oceans have 1,000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, so naturally warm the ocean and you will warm the air). If they cool to where we think they should be (back toward where they were in the late 1970s), we are right. The side that is right has the reasons, the side that is wrong has excuses.
But the whole thing is now a waste of time and treasure to our nation. Look at these (you owe it to yourself to read these and come to your own conclusion) and keep in mind for the last almost 18 years there has been no warming, and even some trending down since the Pacific flipped to colder:
Funding for Federal Climate Change Activities
White House: Federal Climate Change Expenditures Report to Congress
The demonization of my side of the debate – like we are on the take of the fossil fuel industry – is pure deception. The fact: TREMENDOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY have been poured into the climate change issue by our nation, and that is where the money is! And it is taxpayer money. Look at this:
Since fiscal year 1993, $165 billion has been spent on climate change, $35 billion of it on climate science. The total cost of the Apollo project was $130 billion. You wonder why there is no base on the moon, or perhaps why NASA is so intimately involved in climate issues.
The entire report is here and I strongly advice you read all of this.
Another take on this
This is a strong reason to believe science takes a back seat to money and funding. The amazing irony, people on my side of the debate are accused of doing it for money. That’s rich (though we are not).
But there is a second reason, and its even more bothersome – again having nothing to do with what is right or wrong with weather and climate, but goes to the heart of motivation. Again, YOU HAVE TO READ THESE QUOTES FOR YOURSELF so you understand why I have simply turned this into a big forecast, which is already underway and simple enough to score. I can DO NOTHING about motives and money, but I can test myself to what is right and wrong in what I was made to do.
To me, this is scary, for the motivation in the words of these people is well beyond science or even money.
Finally, and this breaks my heart: I graduated from what I consider to be the greatest meteorology school on the face of the planet, Penn State. I make no secret of my love for my school. The people that taught me are people I looked up to, and still do. It was like the Gods of Meteorology walked among the students at PSU and taught us. I think of Al Blackadar, Hans Panofsky, John Cahir, Charles Hosler, Joel Myers, John Dutton, Vince Olivero and a host of others. Yes, they were the cream of the crop in the 1970s and why PSU graduated 2/3rds of the nation’s meteorologists. I used to tell football players we were better in weather than we were in football, because every year, we were the number one school back then. But when I see one of the profs there now labeling the head of another atmospheric science Department (GA Tech), Dr Judy Curry, A “serial climate denier,” I’m simply stunned.
It hit me that this is way beyond what I was taught. It’s not a matter of giving up, but a matter stepping up. I simply cannot believe what I am seeing nowadays. In the movie, “No Country for Old Men,” which I have quoted at times, Sheriff Ed Bell faces a moment where what he knows and believes in no longer applies to the behavior of people he is involved with. I know exactly how he feels. That to continue to take part in a debate that truly is not about weather and climate, but about money, control, and Lord knows what else is not something I can write anymore about. His words describe my thoughts:
“A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He’d have to say, 'O.K., I’ll be part of this world.’”
I won’t be part of a world that uses what I love to try to gain power, money, control, and enhance their self esteem by demeaning others. I have found myself at the brink, many times, of wanting to use these tactics. Well, what is the good of gaining anything if you sell your soul?
It’s not a price I am willing to pay, as I have said all I can say about this matter in what my walk through the field of weather and climate has taught me. Nature, as she always does, will decide. It’s dark and cold, but the truth will always be there.
Again from the final lines of “No Country,” talking about his dad, going before him through the dark and cold to light the way:
“It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin’. Never said nothin’ goin’ by. He just rode on past… and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin’ fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. ‘Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there….”
You have to use the light of truth to ride through the cold and the dark in all these issues today. But if you stay true to what you know to be true, when you get there, what you search for will be there.
I would hope that is truth, freedom and all the things that made this nation great.
I thank The Patriot Post for giving me the forum to lay out the reasons I have for the stand I am taking on global warming, but on that issue, there is nothing more to say. The test is underway and my side is right, the other side is wrong. But I really don’t think they care, for that is not what this is truly about to them.
Joe Bastardi is chief forecaster at WeatherBELL Analytics, a meteorological consulting firm.
