The problem with man-made global warming theory, illustrated.
I know you’ve all heard about the calamity which is about to descend upon the human race. The visions of death and destruction are downright Biblical. The seas will rise, the plants will die, the four horsemen of the apocalypse will reap a mighty harvest of flesh and bones. It’s the coming of man-made global warming!
I know that you’ve all seen the temperature graphs showing the steady rise of global temperatures over the last 100 years. If you haven’t, allow me to introduce you to the infamous roller coaster of potential devastation, the rise in global temperature!
(Fig. 1)
The graph shows a rise in average global temperature over the last 100-150 years. The scale of the graph is -.7 degree Celsius up to .7 degree Celsius. It’s a regular toaster oven here on ye olde Terra!
Now, this is a graph that has been used to hype a religion based on junk science, and there is a serious flaw we all need to understand. The Mainstream Media won’t discuss it, the politicians are too stupid to know anything about it, and the communists the world over ignore it in their haste to destroy progress.
Here’s the dirty little secret: The Earth is 4 billion years old.
In geologic time scales, 100 years isn’t even the bat of an eyelash. It’s certainly not a long enough period of time for us to have gathered enough data to yield statistically significant values for historical averages or the historical standard deviation of temperatures.
Let’s examine this with the promised illustrations. I’ve picked an illustration which, unlike the HAD CRU’s version of climate change, has easily accessible, original data.
This is the graph of the US’s economic growth from 1945 to 2005 (source):
(Fig.2)
This graph shows 60 years worth of economic growth in the US. See all the peaks and valleys? The rises and the falls? The line of best fit (average) is somewhere between 3% and 3.5% growth per year.
Now, imagine that Fig. 2 is the graph for the average global temperature, across all 4 billion years that the Earth has been spinning around the sun.
But this isn’t the graph the man-made global warming communists are showing you. Their graph looks something like this:
(Fig. 3 Data source)
Based on the graph of 1961’s GDP growth, if that was all you knew about the US economy, it would look as though the US had roughly 105% growth, on average. Not even close to the truth, is it?
But that’s not even right because they’re only showing you the 100 years worth of data, out of 4 BILLION years worth of climate.
That’s .000000025% of the total graph of global temperatures.
In reality, giving you the year of 1961 as all of the economic data for the US economic growth over that 60 year period gives too much information compared to the hoax that is man-made global warming.
Over 60 years, we have 21,900 days. In each day, there are 1,440 minutes. Thus, in 60 years we have 31,536,000.00 minutes, which would represent .0000000315% of the total time.
In other words, 1 minute’s worth of economic data would be more information about the US economic growth over that 60-year period than the 100 years worth of climate data gives us about the Earth’s historical global temperature.
Over that 60-year period of economic activity, for this illustration to hold, we would have to look at roughly 3/4 of a single second’s worth of economic data to approach what the man-made global warming crowd is urging you to get upset about.
That would be similar to seeing the stock market ticker now, and 3/4 of a second later, seeing it go up less than a single point, and then advocating the complete destruction of the world’s economic system.
Wake the **** up, people!
The best scientists can determine, the Earth’s temperature in the Cretaceous Period was anywhere from 5 degree C to 8 degrees C warmer than it is today. During the last Ice Age, the best guess is that the global temperature was about 5 degrees C cooler than it is today. Thus, a graph of global temperatures that tries to reflect reality would show a range on the Y axis of at least 5 degrees C down to -5 degrees C.
We have a graph that goes from .7 down to -.7, or 14% of the total variation in temperature we believe the Earth has seen.
And that graph is based on manipulated data, as everyone who doesn’t live under a rock and has heard about Climategate, knows.
Junk science and fear mongering, all the way around. Al Gore is like the liberal version of Hal Lindsey.
Latest posts by Mike McGowan (Posts)
- From one single father to the next - July 20, 2012
- Why isn’t anyone talking about the man - February 13, 2012
- Questions about the power of precedent - February 8, 2012
- Suffer not the Innocent to find relief - February 2, 2012
- Romney v. Newt: How the GOP and the conservative media killed the TEA Party - January 31, 2012
Print This Post
We actually have measurements that go back farther than 150 years or so, and they both indicate the warming.
Borehole data gives us data for a 500-year timeline, and it shows that temperatures have not been as consistently high as they have been recently for that entire time period.
There are also many forms of proxy data such as tree-rings, ocean sediment, and coral growth that indicate temperature over a long period of time, as much as 1000 years.
So, the data shows last century has been warmer than the previous 500 years, and 1000 years.
Now, I grant you that even 1000 years is a blip on the geological scale, a tiny fraction of the lifetime of the planet, but that’s totally irrelevant.
Technological civilization began at some point in the past 150 years. Many of our massive coastal cities were founded in the last 1000 years. (All of them in North America.) The geological life of the planet doesn’t enter into it. Yes, of course the Earth has been warmer in the past, but we weren’t around then, and we certainly weren’t around right before it warmed up, building cities on coastlines and ramping up the population to 6 billion plus.
The Earth will continue whether our civilization collapses or not, so it doesn’t make any sense to frame the argument that way. The question is — are WE having an impact on the climate, and will the changes caused by that affect our lives, or more accurately, the lives of our grandchildren?
The data says “yes”.
Having my degree in forestry, and more than a decade’s worth of experience working as a forester, I have problems with using tree rings to establish temperature patterns. There are many factors that go into tree ring growth such as water, shade, defoliating insects, I mean, I can go on for days about trees if you want me too. Trust me. Trees are literally my life.
Plus, tree rings would only measure temperature during the growing season, rendering an incomplete data set. If a tree grew year round, without stopping, it wouldn’t have tree rings…
Site specific conditions also make tree ring measurements problematic.
As to the fact that data shows that temperatures have been warmer over the last century than they have been over the last thousand years? That’s:
1) misleading. Temperature began falling in 1000 AD from a high temperature which was greater than what we have today (commonly called the “medieval warm period”), and we entered into what is known as “the little ice age”.
http://www.plusaf.com/pix/2000-years-of-global-temperatures.jpg
You’re asking us to compare our current temperature readings to that of the coldest period in the last 2000 years? And ignoring the higher temperature the world was experiencing the 500 years before that? Hardly a reasonable request.
And
2) not reliable. You want us to think that only temperature would be responsible for changes in the amount of ocean sediment build up and coral growth? That’s ridiculous.
You want us to trust temperature readings from 100 years ago? These people were still pooping in holes out in the woods 100 years ago. And I can promise you they didn’t have nearly as many data collection points, nor the high level equipment we have today, thus, you’re not really getting a true reading of global temperature .
But none of that was the point of my piece.
My point was that we do not know if we’re experiencing abnormal temperature changes. We don’t have a large enough data set to know if any warming is happening faster than it usually does when the Earth warms up after a cold snap.
Go back to the link I posted earlier in this response, look at the period of time between 1450 AD and 1500 AD. That’s a pretty steep rise in global temperatures there, much sharper than what we’re seeing these days. What happened from 1500AD to 1550 AD? It dropped off again. This is a natural cycle, coming in a wave form. It goes up, it comes down, and we haven’t seen enough of these cycles to have concrete measurements on their duration or amplitude.
Try to defend the theory of AGW all you want, but it doesn’t meet normal standards of meaningful scientific research. We don’t have nearly enough repetition and our sample size is way, way too small to generate statistically valid predictions about the change in temperatures in the future.
Thanks for the comment though! :-)
What the …..? Was that just a civil exchange on the topic of Global Warming? Without anybody shouting or screaming?
I must be dreaming.
Just to echo one of Rayner’s important points which seems to be dismissed without any justification by climate skeptics.
It may be true that Earth’s climate was ~8 degrees warmer during the Cretaceous, but did you notice that reptiles were the dominant life form then? Mammals didn’t find a niche until the dinosaurs were removed via meteor and Earth cooled off. Hominids didn’t find their niche until even more recently which means there is an even more narrow range of climate that were are adapted to.
The climate may be somewhat shifty but if we humans want to survive as a species for a great deal of time, we have to start thinking about Earth as Spaceship Earth like Buckminster Fuller said. We have to start functioning like a harmonious crew and realize that we now have the responsibility of maintaining our life-support system (the climate and ecosystem).
I beg to differ.
Humans survive quite well at tropical temperatures, and at Artic temperatures. I do not think there is any kind of narrow range of temperature which we must have to keep on kicking. Simply doesn’t fit the known reality.
I would think that reptiles would have a harder time in hotter or colder temperatures than humans, considering they are cold blooded and cannot regulate their body temperatures.
I’m more concerned with the general footprint I leave on this Earth than the specific idea of global warming, whether it’s true or not.
If you see those different graphics on global warming what’s the conclusion?
http://www.hnwmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/1000-years_0600px.jpg
http://www.plusaf.com/pix/2000-years-of-global-temperatures.jpg
http://www.hnwmagazine.co.uk/the-judas-goat-warmageddon-or-just-nature-acting-natural/
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/images/models.gif
I think the grafics are manipulated! But which of them?
I think the best thing is to look at graphics as showed up in books in a library of before 1950. As we all know there are lies, damned lies and statistics …