The Way I See It
By Joseph C. Phillips

What did Daddy Learn?  Climate Realists Part 2

I had barely stepped off the plane before my eldest son began peppering me with questions.  “Daddy, what did you learn about global warming?”  I had just returned from the two and a half day International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute.  During the conference, I listened to speakers, read stacks of pamphlets and papers and had several fascinating conversations with other attendees.  In two days, I had mountains of information squeezed into my head. I love that my son is so curious and I was eager to share with him, but I needed time to catch my breath. 

So, I guess the short answer to my son was that Daddy learned a great deal. 

One such lesson is that skepticism is not a bad thing.  To doubt the prophecies of the global warming Cassandra’s is to demand further research.  Skeptics argue that there is much we do not know and we ought to increase our knowledge and understanding prior to dedicating trillions of dollars to policy that will in fact have very little impact. Skepticism is in short an effort to further science.  It is of course the alarmists that have announced the science settled and taken to depicting skeptics as a bunch of wackos -- people obsessed with conspiracy theories, sleeping with one eye open and speaking in low tones lest the CIA over hear what they say.  Contrary to such characterizations, the people I met and listened to in New York were rational folks with a love of clean water and air, a passion for science and a simple request that alarmists produce evidence – not theories -- to support their claims of man made catastrophic global warming.   

Evidence is, alas, what alarmists are short on.

There are a couple of inconvenient problems alarmists have encountered and their computer models have not been able to answer them.

First, there is the missing hot spot.  The computer models predict a pattern of temperature changes that would be associated with greenhouse gasses induced warming that just isn’t there.  If green house gases were causing the earth to warm, scientists agree that the first signs would appear in a patch above the tropics about 10 kilometers above the earth.  However, weather balloons measuring the global atmosphere from 1979-1999 found no sign of the predicted hot spot.  Alarmists claim that there is some “fog in the data.”  But fog is not a hot spot.  It simply isn’t there. 

Another inconvenience is that ice extracted from Greenland reveals that carbon levels rose after an increase in temperature.  Twenty years ago, scientists gathered data going back 150,000 years from ice cores.  The initial conclusion was that temperature and CO2 were locked together.  However, more recent science has revealed that there is an 800 year lag between CO2 and temperature.  In other words, contrary to what we are being told by alarmists, carbon levels do not increase temperature; an increase in temperature leads to an increase in levels of carbon.

Most inconvenient is that fact that the earth is not warming anymore.  For all the hysteria of runaway warming and the coming catastrophic effects to the environment, the fact is that satellite data show that the world has not warmed since the year 2001 even as levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased.  The computer models that we are supposed to rely upon to predict the climate 100 years from now failed to predict the current cooling period we are in.

The lack of current warming does not mean that the earth will not warm or that the climate will not change.  The climate will change; it may be changing now because, well, that is what the climate does – it changes.  Temperatures too will change during the course of time.  It is a fact of history that temperatures around the world have been higher and lower than they are currently and men have survived and even thrived.  That, however, is beside the point.  The question before the world is:  is the modern production of CO2 a driver in climate change?  The current scientific data suggests the answer is no.

Looking at the evidence and suggesting that more research is necessary and that the science needs to be depoliticized does not make one anti-science or a whack job.  Pronouncing the science closed and the debate over is in fact what is anti-science.  That’s what Daddy learned.

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Joseph C. Phillips is the Author of "He Talk Like A White Boy."  Now available wherever books are sold."