The Swamp Page 4

Remember the crux of this issue.  The theory has been falsified and without correlation you cannot have causation.

A Pause For Reflection

As you have gone to each page on this website, an elephant has been following you. It is about time we stopped pretending he doesn’t exist, and we look him in the eye.

The elephant reminds us to go to The Crux for answers. The theory has been falsified dozens of times with all the failed predictions.

There s no tight correlation between global temperatures and CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere. Without correlation there cannot be causation. Man is not causing catastrophic global warming. This is another Green Armageddon story.

The global warming issue is a “The World is Coming to an End” story. In four thousand years of written human history there have been hundreds of such stories believed by many. During those four thousand years not one of these stories has ever came true. Not even a little bit, with most not being able to distinguish the difference between the day before and the day after when the World was meant to end.

Within the Age of Reason, most people were quick to identify such stories and dismiss them – and even mock them. It was only the irrational who continued to believe them. Fables, such as “Henny Penny” (Chicken Little” in America) were created to teach young children not to believe in such stories.

Today, with our growing irrationality, we have gone back into the ‘Dark Ages’ and millions now believe these stories. When challenged, these believers admit that Man made catastrophic global warming is an Armageddon story like all the previous failed Green campaigns, but will tell us “This time it is different – and it is real!”. In other words we should “never say never”.

In that case, we could expect such people to be overly sceptical and critically examine every facet of the latest Armageddon story. They don’t.

They are misled by the very same deceit tools used in all the previous campaigns. When all the predictions start failing they bury their heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge them and crave for more alarming predictions to occur in the future. The Green Machine is more than happy to meet this craving.

Not only that, but they fail to look at the crux of the issue that tells them this is more nonsense. Instead, spending hours studying swamp issues that prove nothing.

It is hard not to call this behaviour – irrational. Such behaviour supports the assertion that Western citizens are a growing more irrational by the day.

Now let us look the elephant in the eye, and truthfully answer the following questions.

Question 1

Did we really believe the following predictions that were meant to have occurred already?

• By the year 2000, the human race will be extinct except for a few thousand breeding pairs eking out an existence in the Arctic regions.
• Run away global warming would kill four billion humans by the year 2000.
• Two thirds of Australia would be under water by the year 2000.
• By 2010, the East coast of Australia will be under six metres of water.
• By 2010, there would be 50 million climate refugees fleeing rising sea levels as hundreds of islands disappear and most of Bangladesh goes under water.

Four more Questions

Did we ignore the failed predictions mentioned in question one, and are now happy to believe in more alarmist predictions that will avoid “prediction failure embarrassment” as their dates are several years in the future? Why do we still believe in this Armageddon tale and fail to critically examine any such claims?

What makes the following future predictions more believable than those in question 1? Are we really that irrational?

• By 2070 the human race will be extinct.
• By 2050 the human race will be extinct
• By 2035 the human race will be extinct
• The human race cannot survive a 0.5 degrees rise in average global temperatures.
• Our grandchildren will see lakes boil and forests self combust.
• By the year 2050, eight story buildings in Sydney will be under water.

And please don’t give a “Solomon answer” by saying it won’t be that bad but it will be very bad – about half of the above!!

We need to wake up and face reality.

“I would rather have a question which cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.”

Introduction

We aren’t still here in the swamp, are we?  So much to read so little to learn.  Instead of gaining clarity, we are becoming confused, uncertain, lacking confidence and we are growing tired.  We are thinking of throwing in the towel.  Look behind us, this is when the ‘gator’ gets us!

Why don’t we pull our heads out of all the ‘yuk stuff’ in the swamp, and look at the elephant in the room. Remember the crux of this issue.  The theory has been falsified and without correlation you cannot have causation.

On that last point here is an exercise for us.  In 1980, the Green scientists predicted that global temperatures would rise by 3-5 degrees by the year 2000 as CO₂ concentrations rose by 40ppm.  In reality, all that was seen by the year 2000 was a natural rise of 0.3^oC. 

However, for this exercise, let us believe the green scientists using a conservative temperature rise of 2^oC after CO₂ concentrations have risen by 40ppm.  The highest CO₂ concentrations hundreds of millions of years ago, was 8000ppm.  Using the Green formula let us work out the global temperature at that time.

At that time the temperatures, should have been 395^oC.  I hope we brought our suntan oil.  This seems improbable, so let us turn the coin over and start at that time in the past and find out how much cooling has taken place as CO₂ concentrations fell from 8000ppm to 400ppm today.

According to the Green’s scientists’ CO₂ dominant heating ability theory, the temperature today should be minus 365^oC.

For the whole life of this planet average global temperatures have moved between approximately 10-30 degrees Celsius – not the hundreds of degrees the Green scientists’ theory is inferring.

At this stage, the elephant in the room wants to remind us that;

“Without correlation there cannot be causation.  Man’s small contribution of CO₂ cannot cause catastrophic global warming”

Remember, the Swamp issues were created to deflect our attention away from “The Crux”. Resolution of any swamp issue will not get rid of the theory’s prediction failures or have global temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere moving “in lockstep”.

Meanwhile Back in the Swamp

On Page 3 we were given an exercise to find the several deception tools used in a Green tale about rising sea levels which we repeat here.  Below that, are the answers.

The Page 3 Exercise

Read the commentary below (in italics) and use your critical thinking skills to identify any misinformation and deception tools being used in George Schultz discussion.

First, he was introduced “...as a well known Washington person, with vast knowledge who would have valuable insights on this matter“. In a nut shell George Schultz made the following points;

• When the floating Arctic ice melted there would be a catastrophic sea level rise,
• When he was told that there would be no sea level rise, he half accepted this saying there would still be a small rise.
• Moving onto safer grounds, George then told the Inquiry that for twenty years scientists had been measuring the amount of Greenland’s glacier ice going into the ocean every year. On average, each year 140 billion tonnes of ice were going into the oceans and melting. If this continued, there would be catastrophic sea level rises.
• He added, the same was happening in the Antarctic compounding the problem
• He finished by stating that by embracing alternate energy sources much of the rising sea levels would be stopped.

The Answer

• This “as a well known Washington person, with vast knowledge who would have valuable insights on this matter” is an illogical argument – Appealing to Authority – Argumentum ad Acturiate
• This “When the floating Arctic ice melted there would be a catastrophic sea level rise,“ is scientifically incorrect.
• This ” saying there would still be a small rise. ” is still scientifically incorrect, and tries to support a Green factoid that claims salt water does not obey the buoyancy laws.
• ” each year 140 billion tons of ice were going into the oceans and melting.” Impressing with a big figure to encourage our imagination to go wild. George was talking about sea level rises so why didn’t he say “140 billion tonnes raises sea levels by 50cm or 5 metres?” What is he hiding?
• “for twenty years scientists had been measuring” but to date no sea level rises have occurred. When are the sea level rises going to start, or are the sea level rises so small that they cannot be detected after 20 years?
• He hasn’t looked on the “other side of the coin” and found out how much ice (precipitation) falls on Greenland each year and then considers net loss or gain of ice.
• Glacier movements are not driven by air temperature changes above the glacier – There are other much bigger influences on glacier movement.
• He uses the surrogate goal of alternate energy reducing CO₂ (on a small scale) on the expectation that the lower CO₂ levels will slightly reduce global temperatures and somehow stop glacier movements.
• There are several different assumption made – most of which are fallacious – stepping from alternate energy reducing CO₂ , then CO₂ reducing global temperatures, and then being enough to stop/slow glacier movement, – especially when CO₂ is not a dominant driver of global temperatures.

What should be looked at is;

• Establishing a baseline say 1800-1900 to find out the “normal” amount of glacier ice going into the ocean resulting in no sea level rises.
• Then the ‘abnormal’ additional amount of ice that went into the oceans in 1900-2000 when global temperature rose 0.7 degrees – which might have contributed to sea level rises and of course what sea level rises did occur during that period – actual and not computer model predictions.
• Most of that 0.7 degrees was natural warming, so a GUESS needs to be made about Man’s small contribution.
• Then we might have a smaller sea level rise in 1900-2000 that might be attributed to Man’s contribution.
• Then a cost benefit review needs to be taken to justify the billions of dollars spent on alternate energy that might reduce a small fraction of Man’s small contribution and more importantly how we adapt to the much larger natural sea level rise which we cannot stop.
• On reading 3.4.1 we might find we are spending billions in the hope of preventing a small amount of this, which is not metres of sea level rises, but millimetres of sea level rises caused by Man. Is it worth it? Why not save the dollars and spend them on adapting to known problems rather than imagined problems.

Reading 3.4.1 expands on George Schultz’s ideas.

A Moment for Reflection