Is global warming a natural or man-made phenomenon? Well quite a few scientists seem to think that it's man-made. Are they really objective in their analysis? I doubt it.
The scientists involved are mostly college professors with PhD's in one of the fields of science. The PhD and the professorship tend to make the average person consider these scientists infallible and above reproach. Is that the case? I've seen reports saying that global warming advocates have falsified data in order to support the cause. That brings all of the science into question.
Additionally, these professors don't get paid high salaries compared to other advanced degree holders in law or medicine. They often subsidize their income by writing text books. They also subsidize their income by doing research, and a lot of that research is funded by the government. When a political agency like the EPA or the United Nations comes calling and they want to prove that global warming is real, what is your research going to find? How many scientific studies financed by the tobacco companies have proven that cigarette smoke is harmful to a smoker's health? (How's that for answering a question with a question?)
How do these studies generally work? Well, the scientist tries to create some massive computer model of the Earth's atmosphere. This is a mathematical model that uses a lot of variables. The scientist starts with data that has been collected all over the Earth of variables that are thought to contribute to global warming. They also collect temperature data from all over the Earth. Then, he or she tries to use some multiple regression technique to come up with an equation that relates each of the variables to global temperature. Wow! How many variables are there that come into play here? A lot. A whole, whole lot. Maybe even more than that. What do you do with all the variations in each of these variables at different locations all over the earth? Are there variables that you missed or that you chose not to include? You can bet that the mathematical model is extremely complex. No mere mortal human without a PhD is going to be able to successfully argue about that one. (Hey, wait a minute. I think I just did argue that it's a bunch of voodoo!)
Now, what about the data that has been collected and used to do the multiple regression computation? How good is it? I'm not sure how long we've been collecting temperature and weather data all over the world. I'm guessing that it's no longer than 150 years. Have you ever heard a weather report where they said "today we broke the high temperature record that was set on this date in 1452?" No. These scientists tell us that they can take 100-150 years of meteorological data and project back millions of years ago and tell what happened on earth. Maybe. How accurate would you expect that to be?
Those amazing computer models with a lot of interrelated variables may not be exactly right. Just making slight changes to the models or even just the initial conditions can make a huge difference in the calculation. That is true whether you are looking back at what happened on earth in the past or forward toward the global warming that might happen in the future.
Everything in this world seems to oscillate -- even the stock market. Do stock prices just rise continuously over an entire up year, with each minute and each day moving up slightly from the minute or day before? Absolutely not. There will be up days and down days. In an up year, there will be more up than down days, but the prices will oscillate up and down. The RPM of an electric motor even displays a small oscillation. Flow from a water pump increases, then slows -- up and down as the system pressure oscillates up and down.
Daily temperatures oscillate up and down as well. The sun heats us up all day, followed by cooling over night. That oscillation would have a frequency of one cycle per day. With the changing of the seasons we oscillate in a pattern with a frequency of one cycle per year. As cool fronts pass by, the temperatures will drop for a few days, then rise back up until another front passes. This oscillation has an uneven frequency with cycles that cover days or weeks. Solar activity has been mentioned as having an effect on the temperatures on Earth, and the occurrence of solar flares rises and falls over time. That oscillation may occur over decades.
With data covering such a short period of time, how can we tell if this global warming effect is a real sustained warming or just one of the oscillations mentioned above? We can't tell. That's the point. Every time the weather report says we have set a new record, the tree huggers will see that as evidence that global warming is real. I look at it a little differently though. If we had a new record almost every day of every year, that would be different. It would also be different if the record set this year broke a record set in the past couple of years, but they usually don't. When we break the record that was set in 1912, that tells me that they must have had global warming in 1912 as well. In between we had a lot of global cooling. Do we have data about the temperatures in 1412? Was it cooler in 1412 than 2012? We don't know. The scientists don't know either.
We do know that there was a major incident of global cooling a very long time ago. It was the ice age, and it was followed by global warming. What caused the ice age to end? Wasn't it global warming? At the peak of the ice age, global warming began, and the glaciers receded. They left behind the great lakes and a lot of other natural features that scientists point to as proof of the ice age. Was Neanderthal man driving his SUV and parking it in the cave after working at the coal fired power plant?
Figures lie and liars figure. Isn't that the old statistician's lament? In this case, the figures are being used to support the story that the tree huggers want to tell. Why do they want this to be true? That's a story for another day. They keep telling this particular story over and over. Today, they say that the proof is irrefutable. They've said it so many times that they believe it, and a lot of other folks are also starting to believe or, at least, wonder. The liberals in the government believe (or like Al Gore, they believe they can make a fortune from the hoax). The liberals believe they can use the story to discredit conservatives or big business and get themselves re-elected. What does all of this give us? That's right -- a big ole MessAPolitico!
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