The Swamp

INTRODUCTION

Swamp issues are any issues that claim to be proof of “Global Warming” yet do not overcome all the failed predictions that have falsified the Green scientists’ theory. Nor do they overcome the lack of correlation between carbon dioxide and global temperatures. See the website page titled “The Crux” .

Without doing that – they prove nothing.

The three most popular swamp issues, to be discussed on this page, are; catastrophic sea level rises, catastrophic weather events and that “All the scientists agree” – on what, we don’t know – but we are encouraged to guess.

CATASTROPHIC SEA LEVEL RISES

In this section we will find that there is not enough “available” ice to cause catastrophic sea level rises.

The discussion will be split into four areas, reflecting the order in which they were presented by the Green’s Public Relations (PR) people and supported by Green scientists. These four areas are; melting Arctic ice, melting mountain ice in the temperate zones, melting Antarctic and Greenland ice, and melting glacier ice.

Melting Arctic Ice

Half fill a glass with water and add a lot of ice. Then making sure the ice is floating and not jammed, fill the glass with more water right up to the top. Leave it , and come back when the ice has melted. This simple exercise is often used in schools to demonstrate one of the buoyancy laws of physics.

The law states that ice that is floating, has already displaced its own weight in water, so water levels will not change when the ice melts. When you look at the glass after the ice has melted, you will see the water level has not changed which supports the buoyancy law. Those not understanding this law would expect to see a significant amount of water spilt from the glass after the ice had melted.

Consequently, if we wiggled our nose right now causing the 14 million square kilometres of floating Arctic ice, and the nineteen million square kilometres of floating ice surrounding the Antarctic landmass to melt, there would be no sea level movements at all.

However, there have been in excess of 20 Green scientists who have publicly told us that if the floating Arctic ice melted there would be catastrophic sea level rises. The first scientist to publicly make this claim could have made a mistake and then corrected it after being reminded about the buoyancy law. He didn’t, and he repeated it , and neither did the others who also made the same claim during the next forty years. Unsurprisingly, most of us, who trust scientists, now believe and fear catastrophic sea level rises as the Arctic ice melts.

These scientists have lied to us.

More unsettling, are the thousands of other Green scientists who have remained silent when these fallacious claims are made. Their silence is taken by the public as an indication that they support the claim. So forty years later, most Western citizens believe melting Arctic ice will cause catastrophic sea level rises. This belief, by most, is a good indication of our growing irrationality and our lack of critical thinking skills.

In telling us their alarming story about melting Arctic ice, Greens tell us that during winter, when there is no sun, the ice forms and, in the following summer, between 40-70% of this ice melts. Then they tell us that once all the ice melts there will be catastrophic sea level rises. If we were rational and still used our critical thinking skills, we could challenge this claim.

If that was true, then why don’t we see 40-70% catastrophic sea level rises each summer followed by 40-70% catastrophic sea level falls in winter as the ice regrows. If this claim was correct, the sea levels should be going up and down like a yo-yo each year. Finding out why this is not happening would eventually have us discover, or re-discover, the buoyancy laws.

Reading 3.1.1.1 shows again how little we use our critical thinking skills, which results in us being easily misled about what is happening in the Arctic region. The Green scientists, using their theory, predicted that this area would be warming 3-5 times faster than the global warming rate. It isn’t, and this failed prediction falsifies the Greens’ modified theory.

Melting Mountain Ice

Moving on from melting Arctic ice, the Green’s Public Relations people would generally take us to the Himalayas and show us 15 glaciers that were melting, claiming that this ‘proved’ global warming was real. This irritated Indian scientists who had spent their life studying more than 100 glaciers in the Himalayas. They pointed out that these were the only ones that were melting and more than 100 remaining glaciers were either static or growing.

To make their claim, the Greens were using the illogical argument of composition. As an example “I met a Scotsman who was seven foot tall, so all Scotsmen must be seven foot tall.”. Claiming that all the World’s glaciers were melting by finding some that were melting is illogical. Then to claim that such ‘meltings’ would cause catastrophic sea level rises was foolish.

Most people do not understand how much ice is needed to significantly raise sea levels.

Reading 3.1.1.2 gives an example of trying to find enough ice to raise sea levels by two metres – it is impossible.

Most people understand that two thirds of the surface of this planet is covered with oceans and the remaining third is covered by land. You would need ice that was four metres high covering every square metre of land to then melt and cause the sea levels to rise two metres. The Reading asks you to use Google Earth to visualise how you could cover the land mass with four metres of ice.

Even using all the ice, and just not glacier ice in the mountains, still doesn’t provide enough ice. This reading also explains what ‘available’ ice means, which is used in the next section.

Antarctic and Greenland Ice

The average temperature, where the bulk of the ice is in both the Antarctica and Greenland, is minus 33^oC and minus 15^oC respectively. Since our average global temperature rises in a century is measured in tenths of a degree (i.e. 0.7^oC ), we will never get warm enough to make this ice “available” to melt and be used to raise sea levels.

Remember that most inter-glacial periods last for 10-12,000 years. We are more than 11,000 years into our present inter-glacial period, so we are overdue to go back into a very cold glacial period. In the next 200 years we will see the last of any warming for more than 120,000 years.

So once again, there is not enough “available” ice to cause catastrophic sea level rises.

We should remember that the Green scientists, using their theory, predicted that warming in the Polar regions would be five times greater than the average global warming. This led Al Gore to comment that “The Polar regions will be the canary in the coal mine” warning us as global warming took hold.

Unfortunately, this did not happen. Without making any changes in the science, Green scientists then downgraded their prediction – first to four times more, then three times more than the average global temperature rise. The fifty years of cooling in the Antarctic continued and the floating ice around the landmass continued to grow. In the norther Polar regions, there was no consistent warming or cooling at all, let alone an accelerated warming.

Another failed prediction falsifying the Greens’ modified greenhouse gas theory.

However, as we will see in Reading 3.1.1.3, this did not stop the Green PR machine from going to the Antarctic Peninsular and, by using the illogical argument of composition, declaring that the Antarctic was warming as predicted – “proving global warming is real“.

Because of our growing irrationality and our reluctance to use our critical thinking skills, most of us blindly and unthinkingly accepted this assertion – which the Green movement knew was a lie.

Melting Glaciers

Because of the discussions above, more focus is now being given to ice from glaciers in the Antarctic and Greenland ‘calving’ into the oceans. Unfortunately, many readers are overexcited when they see very large figures of tonnes of ice going into the oceans without realising they are being deceived in two main ways.

Talking large impressive numbers without converting them into something useful is a deception tool that is often used. Once the very large figure is converted into sea level rises of less than a millimetre rather than metres, the alarm dies quickly.

Antarctica’s average rainfall is 381mm per year. If you want to be impressed with a large number, then this ‘rainfall’ weighs 5,334,000,000,000 tonnes per year. That number of tonnes coming off the oceans would lower sea levels. But it does show that for sea levels to remain steady, there is an equally large number of tonnes of water going back into the ocean.

The second major deception which seems to be used all the time by the Greens, is not being balanced, that is not “looking at the other side of the coin”.

Every piece of ice that is on Greenland or Antarctica, has come from the oceans and fallen as snow. To calculate sea level rises, only net flow figures (ice off subtracted by ice on) should be used. We should not be deceived into only looking at one side of this equation. Often there are negative flows with ice accumulating in Antarctica or Greenland. Reading 3.1.1.4 covers this ground and shows examples of several other deception tools being used.

Conclusion

There is not enough “available” ice to cause any rise of sea levels that could be called catastrophic.

CATASTROPHIC WEATHER EVENTS

In this section we will find that there is not enough additional energy to cause man-made catastrophic weather events.

The three primary elements of weather are; temperature, winds and precipitation. These will be discussed in turn. Before doing so, we will calculate how much additional energy has been added to our weather system since 1900. This additional energy will be needed to create catastrophic weather events which many say “are happening now and it will get worse“

Additional Energy

The Greens tell us that the additional energy to drive catastrophic weather events is supplied by the global warming that has occurred since 1900. This is thermal energy which is measure using the Kelvin scale. At zero Kelvin (minus 273.15^oC) there is no heat. In 1900 the average global temperature was 14.5^oC which is 287.65^oK .

By 2020, average global temperature was 15.2^oC, a rise of 0.7^oC. This rise as a percentage in Kelvin is 0.7^oK / 287.65^oK = 0.243%. We will use a quarter of a percent increase in thermal energy to calculate the effect this will have on our weather. We also should remember that Man has only contributed a small fraction of this increase, if any.

Temperature

We should keep on reminding ourselves that we are being asked to be scared of a temperature rise that is measured in tenths of a degree over a century (0.7^oC) , hundredths of a degree over a decade (0.07^oC) , which we might be able to remember, and a thousandth of a degree (0.007^oC) each year. Can we really feel the difference at this level of accuracy when we see much larger temperature rises during a day (e.g. 15^oC) and larger again in a year (e.g. 45^oC)

If we travel around the World we find a much larger temperature range again. The hottest temperature measured in the World is believed to be 58^oC (136 Fahrenheit) at El Azizia in Libya on September 13^th, 1922. The coldest temperature measured in the World was -88^oC at Vostok Station in Antarctica on July 21, 1983.

At the UN Meeting at Paris in 2016, World leaders were told that if average global temperature rose by 0.5^oC to 15.7^oC, the human race would become extinct by 2035. Even though we are becoming increasingly irrational and rarely use our critical thinking skills, we might have hoped that no one would believe this “Sky Falling In” tale – unfortunately many do.

A young man leaving Hobart to get a job in Melbourne who later flies to Brisbane to join friends before going on a holiday in Bali, experiences more than 2^oC average temperature rise on each stop in his journey. This is four times the “lethal” Paris temperature rise. Do we really believe he will die at each stop in his journey?

Finally, there were higher average temperatures seen in the Medieval Warming Period, the Roman Warming Period and the Climate Optimum Period than today. The human race not only survived , but thrived in these warmer temperatures.

Winds

Under perfect conditions, to double the wind speed of any volume of air you will need double the energy. In less than perfect conditions (e.g. friction), you will need marginally more than double the energy. Unfortunately, we have only a quarter of one percent increase in energy to increase wind speeds. So a cyclone in 1900 that had wind speeds of 400kph will now have a wind speed of 401kph.

This increase of wind speed of 1kph can hardly described as a Man made catastrophic wind.

Precipitation

Thermal energy is required to evaporate water. This water vapour goes into the atmosphere and under perfect conditions forms a cloud. When enough water accumulates it may then fall from the cloud as rain in the right conditions.

To double the evaporation, and then under several different perfect conditions, to double the rainfall, we need to double the thermal energy. Unfortunately we have only a quarter percent increase in our thermal energy. So, the annual rainfall in Canberra might have been 600mm per year in 1900. By the year 2020, this annual rainfall may have increased to a maximum of 601.5mm.

This increase of annual rainfall of 1.5mm can hardly be described as catastrophic, and is unlikely to cause catastrophic Man made flooding.

Conclusion

There is not enough additional energy from global warming to create catastrophic weather events. The effects are better described as trivial or insignificant. Remember Man only contributes a small amount to this trivial total effect.

Post Script

The Greens rarely if ever define the term “catastrophic”, leaving it up to the vivid imagination of each person. Let us define it as a 30% increase in average rainfall and wind speeds. This would see Canberra’s average annual rainfall increase from 600mm to 780mm which is still less rain than in areas 100klms away. A 15kph wind would rise to 19.5kph or the 400kph cyclone would rise to 520kph.

To have any chance of delivering this “catastrophic” weather, the average global temperature of 15.2^oC in 2020 would have to rise to over 100^oC. That would be a catastrophe, but not because of weather events. Lakes and the oceans would be boiling.

No alarmist Green predictions of temperature rises have ever been higher than a 10^oC rise – so Man will never cause catastrophic weather events.

The Green PR Drumbeat

This area in The Swamp is a goldmine for the Greens’ PR machine for the following reasons;

• There is always a nasty storm somewhere in the World that they can point to,
• The number and severity of storms never remain steady, they are always changing often in a cyclic fashion.
• The length of these cycles are different in different parts of the World.
• One of the major drivers of hurricanes/cyclones etc is not CO₂ or global temperatures but ocean currents.
• Some of these ocean currents have long cycles so we have a problem identifying what is normal (e.g. the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation [AMO] is sixty years – we need observations over 1800 years to identify what is normal – before claiming something abnormal is happening.)
• The definitions, categories and ways of measuring severity of storms is changing which allows anyone to pick any sort of report or graph or numbers to support any argument.
• The ability to cherry pick data is unlimited and, of course, no one will challenge the Greens to “look at the other side of the coin”.
• You will drown and the gators will eat you if you are drawn into a discussion of localised storm measurements.

Having said that, no one who claims that the number and severity of storms – globally – is increasing can explain how this is happening when there has only been a rise of a quarter of one percent in energy to drive theses storms in the past 120 years. Reading 3.1.2.1 discusses this point.

Reading 3.1.2.2 shows some of the local variations around the World that do not support this tale. However, if you are looking locally you will always be able to find other “evidence” that supports the Green drumbeat. You might also note that no Green will tell you what percentage of the increase in numbers or severity of storms is natural, and what is caused by CO₂, and then what is caused by Man’s small contribution to the CO₂.

In Australia, we have been told, and people have imagined, that the number and severity of storms have been increasing – and it will get worse. The CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) graph below shows that in the past 36 years the opposite has occurred. Why have we believed this lie without checking?

Tomorrow, this natural decline in storms could be reversed. So what? Keep reminding yourself this is a swamp issue which cannot un-falsify the theory, or rewrite history causing a tight correlation between global temperature and CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere.

• 

Can I hear you drowning now!

ALL THE SCIENTISTS AGREE

“It’s completely immoral to question the global warming consensus”.

– UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland.

In this section we will find that this statement is wrong – not even close to being right. It also shows how far our irrationality has come for us to believe this statement, and to be told it is immoral to question it.

When the Green movement abandoned its Ice Age campaign and introduced its Global Warming campaign, it came “out of the blocks’ fast. The World was told “The science is settled, the debate is over, all the scientists agree, and it is now time to take action”. This surprised most scientists and one said;

• This was the first we had heard of this campaign and the ‘science’ that supported it.
• Then we were told there was a discussion about the science – a discussion we had never heard of, and we were not involved.
• Then we were told a debate that we hadn’t heard of and, once again, were not involved in had taken place.
• Surprisingly, in science, this debate was now over and every scientist now agreed – with something that was not clearly identified.
• Since then the “settled science” has been falsified on a regular basis.
• More surprisingly, this was in a field of science that is in its infancy, with little settled science at all.

In the period from the late 1980s to 1995, the Green movement kept on insisting “Every scientist agreed” which progressively irritated a growing number of scientists. Their voices began to be heard so the Green PR machine then changed the ‘drumbeat’ and said “All the scientists agree, except a handful of scientists who weren’t real scientists.”

On giving up this ground, the Green PR then started an aggressive campaign denigrating any sceptical scientist. We were told “Do not listen to them because they have; a long nose, their ears stick out, they walk with a limp and talk with a lisp. Then we were told they were aligned with the devil, that is; big business, big oil, big tobacco, big coal and any other “big’ that could be found with nasty connotations.

These irrational ad hominem attacks were not recognised as such by most citizens – once again supporting the assertion that there is a growing irrationality in our society.

One sceptic spent three hours inadequately searching three countries on the internet to try and find out how many scientists made up the ‘handful’ who did not agree. Fifty thousand scientists were found, indicating how big a lie this was. It is estimated that there are hundreds of thousands of sceptical scientists with the number growing with each falsification of the Green’s theory.

“The so called ‘consensus’ was reached before the research had even begun.” – [US] MIT’s Richard Lindzen.

Readings

Reading 3.1.3.1 details a survey where over 30,000 scientists made it abundantly clear they did not agree – signing the following statement;

We urge the United States Government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments on Earth.

You probably could not have a stronger disagreement than that!

Readings 3.1.3.2 to Readings 3.1.3.6 give us more words from sceptics about the disagreement on this issue.

But What About the “97% of Scientists” Stories

They are just that – stories.

If we are logical, our focus should be on the performance of theories about global warming and not about “beliefs” on the topic. The Greens use the illogical argument that if everyone agrees it must be right. Not so. To support their claim that all scientists agree – to something – they have produced at least two surveys. Both have been poorly designed and taken – one not even talking to the scientists.

Reading 3.1.3.7 shows just one pitfall in surveys and in day to day conversation. Using loose language can give you very different answers.

Reading 3.1.3.8 discusses one “97%” survey detailing just some of the faults.

Reading 3.1.3.9 discusses the dangers of being misled while focusing on consensus statements.

The web link below discusses some, but not all, of the problems of such surveys in a video;

Conclusion

It is obvious to anyone, who does only a little research, that the Greens assertion that “all the scientists agree” is wrong.

WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE?

“That mankind is capable of affecting the climate is trivially true and numerically insignificant.”  Richard Lindzen

There are some disturbing trends occurring in this discussion about the global warming campaign. On this page of the web site alone we have found;

• Dozens of Green scientists have lied to us about melting Arctic ice.
• Thousands of other Green scientists, by their silence, have contributed to deceiving and misleading all of us about melting Arctic ice.
• The Green leadership and their PR machine have not hesitated to reinforce this deceit.
• The Media, who touts the idea they are the “Seekers of the Truth”, have also hidden this from us for forty years.
• Sceptical scientists who have attempted to alert us to this deception, have been ignored, marginalized, ostracized, and generally vilified.
• We find that there is not enough available ice to create catastrophic sea level rises. Yet Green leaders, their scientists, and their PR machine hide this deception from us, encouraging us to become emotional and irrational fearing that their tale is true.
• We find that there is not enough additional energy to create catastrophic weather events. Yet Green leaders, their scientists, and their PR machine hide this deception from us, encouraging us to become emotional and irrational and seeing examples of catastrophic weather events everywhere.
• Once again we have been lied to by the whole Green movement claiming that “All the scientists agree, except for a handful of discredited scientists.”

Why is the Green movement deceiving us? And why do we still want to believe them? Incorrectly, we assume the Greens are environmentalists. We like and trust environmentalists, and believe that we are environmentalists. To criticise them, will in effect be criticising ourselves.

Naturally, environmentalists who think they are Greens will not like criticising themselves, and are likely to avoid critically examining these claims. Remember, we are all environmentalists, but only a few are Greens.

We need to understand this differences between Environmentalists and the Greens to keep an open mind in this discussion. Reading 3.1.4.10 introduces this topic with more detailed explanations made on page 4 of the “Misbehaviour” section of the site.

Having read the difference, who is the Green and the Environmentalist below.

Where to From Here?

By now we might start to realise that after 70 years of honing their skills, the “Green Machine” is an expert at deceiving and misleading us. If we are going to continue to “swim in the swamp” – that is to be distracted from the crux of this issue – we need to improve our general knowledge on this topic and improve or refresh our critical thinking skills.

There are hundreds of swamp issues that claim to “Prove that global warming is real”and, without this knowledge and critical thinking skills we will not survive. We will be worn down, chewed up, and spat out by the professional alligators in the swamp. The remaining Swamp Pages on this web site hope to help us survive.