Right to Opine

When you have an agenda, you can never let facts get in the way of your conclusion. NASA’s most visible global warming alarmist, James Hansen, is banging his drum again with the assistance of a compliant media. As reported by Wendy Koch of USA Today,

The Hansen-led study, published in the December issue of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, said the magnitude of the Earth’s energy imbalance is fundamental to climate science. If the imbalance is positive and more energy enters the system than exits, the Earth warms. If the imbalance is negative, the planet cools.

His conclusion?

This provides unequivocal evidence that the sun is not the dominant driver of global warming.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that this is correct—that the energy imbalance described by the report has a greater effect on global temperatures than the sun. The problem is that, while the imbalance predicts warming, we haven’t seen any for the last decade or so, even as CO2 levels have risen.

Ms. Koch tries to refute this fact, but facts are hard to refute:

On the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page, 16 scientists recently said there’s no need for drastic action to “decarbonize” the world’s economy. “Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now,” they wrote without providing data.

Not so, according to U.S. government records. In December, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that all 11 years of the 21st century so far (2001–2011) rank among the 13 warmest in the 132-year period of record.

[Note the italics and links are hers.]

She opens with a smear of the scientists who wrote the WSJ piece. While it’s true that they provided no data, they didn’t need to. It’s widely and publicly available. Her insinuation that these scientists’ claims are unsupported by facts is truly a below-the-belt blow. Consider some of their identities, which she conveniently omits:

• Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; Crafoord Prize for geology, Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London, Gold Medal of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
• J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting
• William Happer, Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University; Alexander von Humboldt Award, Herbert P. Broida Prize, Davisson-Germer Prize, Thomas Alva Edison Patent Award
• William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology
• Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; American Meteorological Society’s Meisinger and Charney Awards, American Geophysical Union’s Macelwane Medal, Wallin Foundation’s Leo Prize
• Rodney Nichols, former President and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences
• Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service
• Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva

Not exactly a bunch of yahoos. Yes, I realize that appeal to authority is a logical fallacy, but it’s important for the reader to know that there are some rather eminent scientists in the list. Fortunately, Ms. Koch supplies the necessary data in her next link, simultaneously displaying either an ignorance of what the data show or a willingness to hide it.

First note that while the scientists in the WSJ point out that warming has been absent for more than a decade, Koch replies with a standard global warming talking point about the last 11 years being among the warmest on record. That’s not a rebuttal. It’s a non sequitur. The point made was that global temperatures aren’t increasing. Koch either doesn’t understand the difference—in which case she’s ignorant of logic—or she does but thinks you’re not smart enough to notice her sleight of hand.

Now consider the following sequence of numbers: 0.54, 0.60, 0.61, 0.56, 0.64, 0.59, 0.58, 0.50, 0.58, 0.64, 0.51. Would you characterize the sequence as increasing or decreasing? Well, a least squares analysis tells us the slope of a line approximating those data points is -0.0024, so the numbers are ever so very slightly decreasing.

Why am I boring you with a math exercise? Those numbers are the published deviations (from the NOAA report Koch cites) of the annual global temperatures from 2001-2011 from the average for the 20th century (in degrees C).

Global warming alarmists are insisting we dismantle our economy in order to combat a threat that can quickly be shown to be non-existent using their own data. Global CO2 emissions have increased significantly over the last decade as emerging economies like India and China have ramped their use of “dirty” energy sources, primarily ultra-evil coal. Global temperatures have not increased—they’ve flat-lined.

Do us all a favor and check the agenda at the door.