YEAH, AND SUMMER IS HOTTER THAN WINTER

On Thursday last week the Grand Rapids dutifully toted the official line on global warming.  In a Page 3 article the Press reported the conclusion of the National Academy of Sciences that recent years have been the warmest in the last four centuries.  Nowhere is reported the well-known fact that four hundred years ago our planet was in the grip of a cold spell known as "The Little Ice Age".  Indeed, this is no esoteric climatological matter.  The Little Ice Age has been fodder for a number of popular television documentaries including a two-hour special within the past year on the History Channel.

So, the conclusion of the NAS is no more news than the fact that June's temperatures have been the hottest in the past six months.  After all, summer is always hotter than winter.  Likewise, the Earth has been warming and cooling since the last ice age ten millennia ago in a six- to seven-century cycle.  Following that pattern temperatures last peaked during the early 14th century, sometimes referred to as the Medieval Climate Optimum, then bottomed out three centuries later in the Little Ice Age, and have been rising since then.  We may well be at the peak of the current warm spell, if you can call an average increase in temperature of less than one degree Celsius over the past hundred years a warm spell.

In fact, the real news is the scandal of the NAS flogging this crap as a significant scientific finding.  The NAS was chartered by the U.S. Congress to advise government officials on scientific matters, which in effect means that it exists to tell politicians what they want to hear.  So no surprise that the NAS presented no news as new news of global warming at the request of a New York congressman, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee, who rails against global warming as a major threat to us.  Does anyone seriously think that the NAS is going to bite the hand that feeds it?

No, but what is stopping the Grand Rapids Press from informing the public of this conflict of interest?  After all, the Press saw fit on the next day to expose in another Page 3 article the secret wartime measures our government has taken to monitor and track down the financial transactions of terrorist organizations.  What sort of watchdog makes it a priority to compromise the safety of the public over a cozy arrangement to distort science and squander taxpayer dollars?  If the media can't get something that simple right, what good is it?

Comments

[Steve Goulet]

While I respect your opinion on a number of matters outlined here on your blog, I cannot agree with your broad dismissal of climate science with respect to global warming. I would suggest that you familiarize yourself with conversations such as these before you attempt to portray the media as distoring science when they report the results of scientific consensus:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10

While I don't claim any expertise in this domain of science, I do put my trust in the global consensus that has grown out of peer reviewed scientific due process. Claiming some sort of global conspiracy involving our Republican led congress, the "liberal" media and climate scientists is just not cutting it. To sow a seed of doubt you'll need to show me some independent factual evidence that has been peer reviewed and is accepted by more than just a think tank funded by Exxon.

[The Executive Director]

Steve,

It is a matter of thinking for yourself. No one disagrees that the Earth has been in a warming trend since the last ice age. No one disagrees that this trend has occurred in the form of warming and cooling cycles, lasting about six or seven centuries. No one disagrees that the last warming peak was in the Middle Ages (the Medieval Climate Optimum) and that the last cold spell (the Little Ice Age) bottomed out around 1700. No one disagrees that there has been a less than one degree Celsius increase in average temperature over the past one hundred years, and most of that increase occurred before 1940.

So, the fact that we are presently in the upswing of an established climate cycle is unremarkable. We may even be near the peak if the cycle holds. Furthermore, the increase in temperature that has actually been measured is mild to say the least -- less than one degree Celsius over the past century.

Moreover, people overlook that the average RANGE of temperatures over the same period is huge in comparison. Heck, the difference between night and day alone is usually ten degrees or more. In other words, the normal variation in temperature from year to year has not produced disaster. So even if the scaremongering models of global warming are correct (and they're not, because they cannot even replicate what has historically happened within a factor of ten), we have no reason to believe that the results will be adverse to us.

And you don't have to take my word for it. Read all of the peer-reviewed works of scientists receiving grants or salaries from governments and organizations who have, a priori, determined global warming is a threat. Note how their conclusions are hedged. There is a reason why so few make firm statements about this phenomenon as a threat. They really don't know.

And this brings me to my final point. Scientists may practice science, but they are also human beings. There is no valid reason why I should not apply my knowledge of human nature to what they do to evaluate the reliability of their work. Calling it science doesn't make it so. It is the responsibility of the layman to consider such things critically and not just take the word of the authorities.

Regards, Bill

[The Executive Director]

By the way, Steve, I did take a look at the link you gave me. You need to be more critical. RealClimate is a forum for Michael Mann whose been flogging his thoroughly discredited "hockey stick" analysis of temperatures for several years now.

Even the National Academy of Sciences, in doing their flunky work for Congressman Boehlert, disavowed Mann's "hockey stick" nonsense and reasserted the fact that the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Little Ice Age had happened.

Heck, I'm no mathematician, but I could tell you that you can get any type of graph you want if you chuck out the data that doesn't fit.

Regards, Bill

[Mark]

Bill:

Thanks for the refreshing facts in your article and in your response to Steve, another "Man is bad" kool-aid drinking, Global warming nut job!

Keep up the Great work!

Mark