A Dissenting Commentary:

Science requires an open mind, and a spirit of exploration.  When Dogma enters, dissent is condemned and science disappears.  Just ask Bruno and Galileo.

The first half of the Arcadia Rotary presentation by NASA JPL Oceanographer William Patzert on Friday, August 14, 2009 seemed to have more the flavor of ecclesiastical inquisition than of scientific inquiry.

Although Patzert (like his idol Al Gore) took pains to highlight and ridicule politicians and commentators skeptical of anthropogenic global warming theology, he disingenuously failed to acknowledge the fact that, of actual scientists outspoken on the issue, the skeptics far outnumber  the believers.  “The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.”  *  (Note:  It was the UN IPCC report which was the basis of Al Gore’s fraudulent claim of a scientific “consensus” in favor of global warming, bringing back memories of the global cooling “consensus” of the 1970s **  which may soon be making a come-back. )    

Reference 1          Reference 2       Reference 3

An even greater number of scientists (31,478, including 9,029 with PhDs) have signed the Oregon petition.  That petition states in pertinent part, “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses 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 of the Earth.”

Skeptical scientists include, inter alia, such notables as Dr. Richard Lindzen, Meteorologist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, Associate Statistics Professor, University of Aarhus, Dr. Fred Singer, Climatologist, The Competitive Enterprise Institute, Dr. William J.R. Alexander, Professor Emeritus, University of Pretoria, Dr. Timothy Ball, Canadian Climatologist and Former Professor, University of Winnipeg, Dr. Reid Bryson, Meteorologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor and Climate Scientist, The University of Auckland, Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser, Physicist/Meteorologist, Formerly with Livermore National Laboratory, Dr. Vincent Gray, Expert Reviewer, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Dr. Garth W. Paltridge, Director, The Cooperative Research Centre for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, Dr. Henrik Svensmark, Climate Scientist, Danish Space Research Institute  and countless others too numerous to mention.  

Patzert’s only hint at the existence of such scientific skeptics was a vague dismissal of the viewpoint of “the Russians.”  This would appear to be a veiled reference to Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of a space research lab at the Pulkovo observatory in St. Petersburg.   Abdusamatov points out that despite the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere – more than 4% in the past decade – global warming has nearly come to a halt. This fact confirms the theory of “solar” impact on changes in the Earth’s climate, because the amount of solar energy reaching the planet has drastically decreased during the same period.  According to Abdusamatov, “By the mid-21st century the planet will face another Little Ice Age, similar to the Maunder Minimum, because the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth has been constantly decreasing since the 1990s and will reach its minimum approximately in 2041,”   

The Russian scientists can claim support from British scientists featured in the anti-Gore movie, “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”  It is pointed out “that the same ice core analyses [relied upon by global warming ideologues] show that global temperature changes have led CO2 concentration changes by as much as 800 years.”   Thus instead of carbon build-up causing warming, it is warming that causes carbon build-up.  As Czech physicist Luboš Motl summarizes:  “However, the most popular – and the most straightforward – explanation of the direction of the causal relationship is the fact that in all cases, the CO2 concentration only changed its trend roughly 800 years after temperature had done the same thing. There have been many papers that showed this fact and incidentally, no one seems to disagree with it…”

At the outset of his talk, Patzert presented Mann’s infamous “hockey stick” graph, which purports to show a dramatic rise in global temperatures during the 20th century after a millennium of supposedly little change in global temperature.  However, Patzert failed to acknowledge that the graph has “has been criticized for many reasons, including its reliance on dubious estimates of historic temperatures based on the size of tree rings. Not only is temperature merely one factor that contributes to tree growth (as evidenced by the ring size), but a 15th century portion of the hockey stick graph is based on tree ring measurements from a single tree.”

“Two Canadian investigators, McKitrick and McIntyre, re-did the study using Mann’s data and methods and found dozens of errors. When they corrected the errors, they came up with sharply differing results.  . . .   It turns out that Mann and his associates used a non-standard formula to analyze his data, and this particular formula will turn anything into a hockey stick—including trendless data generated by computer. . . .The U.S. Congress asked a team of statisticians to investigate the matter.  They found out that indeed the graph was the result of poor statistical procedures.”

The discredited “hockey stick” graph – which omits the Medieval Warm Period (AD 700 – 1300) and the Little Ice Age (AD 1560 – 1830) – has been answered by a more honest graph by John Daly, a British scientific investigator.  As Daly points out, “This graph asserts that temperatures during the Medieval Warm Period were higher than those of today (as suggested by the opening lines to the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer), while it was much cooler during the Little Ice Age (as suggested by John King). Historical records from all over Europe, and Greenland attest to the reality of both events, and their profound impact on human society. For example, the colonization of Greenland by the Vikings early in the millennium was only possible because of the medieval warmth. During the Little Ice Age, the Viking colonies in Greenland collapsed, while the River Thames in London often froze over, resulting in frequent `frost fairs’ being held on the river ice.”

Patzert also failed to acknowledge proof that the global warming dogma relies on faulty data. 

This includes data used by NASA (a politicized governmental agency which controls Patzert’s JPL).  In August, 2007, Canadian climatologist Steve McIntyre re-examined the temperature records used to support global warming claims.  After making adjustments to NASA’s data, McIntyre found that the hottest year on record in the U.S. is 1934, not 1998 as NASA previously claimed.  Furthermore, based on his re-examination, he concluded that four of the top 10 hottest years are now from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939.  Conversely, it now appears that only three of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999). Several years (2000, 2002, 2003, 2004) fell significantly down the list, even behind 1900. As a result of McIntyre’s findings, NASA had to correct its data of temperature records.  As a result of the correction, NASA records now show no discernible trend, no obvious recent warming.

Two years later, as recent as June of this year (2009), the EPA (another politicized government agency) was confronted with a preliminary report written by some of its own climate experts.  “Carlin and his co-authors believed that the EPA and other government agencies were ignoring science that is coming to light calling into question the entire manmade climate change theory. . . . [P] The report went on to cite a number of discrepancies and inconsistencies in the science behind arguments made by Al Gore, James Hansen, and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”  Among such are the facts that “[g]lobal  temperatures have actually declined in the last 11 years, despite increases in CO2,”  that projected increased tropical storm activity, loss of ice in Greenland, etc. has not occurred, that IPCC global climate models are not supported by empirical evidence, that “new research shows that “up to 68% of the increase in Earth’s global temperatures” could be caused by solar variability,” that surface temperature monitoring stations were placed too close to “urban heat islands” with resulting inaccurate measurements, and the fact that “Satellite temperature measurements taken from 1978 to 2008 do not show an increased rate of warming over the 30 year period.”  An agency under control of Obama’s “cap and trade” enthusiasts could not be permitted to issue such a report and so it was suppressed.

Certainly, a NASA-JPL employee (such as Patzert) would not wish to suffer the fate of dissenters (such as Bruno, Galileo, or the EPA’s Carlin).  Never mind the fact that climate cycles have existed from the time of the earth’s fiery origin and gradual cooling down into a series of 100,000 year ice ages  interspersed with 10,000 year interglacial periods.  All of this started long before the arrival of man, or the Industrial Revolution.  Thus, Patzert used receding glaciers to blame man for global warming, ignoring the natural consequences of an interglacial period, or a drop in precipitation or atmospheric   moisture.  Of course, we are not to know about the numerous expanding glaciers around the globe (Arctic, Antarctic, Norway, New Zealand, South America, Himalayas, etc.), including the Hubbard glacier off the coast of Alaska, and the Pio XI  and Moreno glaciers in Patagonia.

No wonder that the official terminology has been changed from “global warming” to “climate change.” No wonder John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel ,  calls global warming “the greatest Scam in history.”    Perhaps now natural climate cycles will be allowed to return, and the solar orb can be restored to its rightful place as the ruler of meteorology in the solar system.  Hence “climate change” and “global warming” on other planets (Mars, Jupiter, Triton, Neptune, Pluto, and others)  Hence the temperature significance of planetary proximity to the sun, geographic climate zones, annual seasons, differences between day and night, etc.  Man must take a back seat.  Despite the efforts of human-centered solar deniers and environmentalist counterparts to Bernie Madoff, Copernicus rides again!