Lies, Damned Lies and Global Warming

THE WEATHER CHANNEL (today): Recent cold weather in parts of the country has caused some people to wonder about global warming. But are all cold days the same? For more on that, we turn to the Weather Channel's resident climatologist Tom Durrow. Tom?

“That's a good question, Cynthia. Folks in Cleveland are probably thinking that if their team can't play on opening day because of snow, maybe global warming has gone away. Not so. In fact, Cynthia, Ohioans may have forgotten that Cleveland posted a record high 77 degrees on January 14. So did a number of other cities during the first month of 2007. Climatologists say there is more significance to warm weather in January than cold weather in April. So much so, in fact, that beginning this year, the Department of Meteorology at Harvard University will weight certain days of 2007 differently from others.

“So, on the one hand this year so far ranks as only the 26th warmest winter since 1950 calculated on an absolute basis of temperature averaging. However, according to climatologists at Harvard and other respected universities, this year is actually the second warmest winter ever if you assign the necessary historic weights to the warm days and cold days of 2007. This weighting, “or atmospheric reconfiguration modeling,” gets pretty complicated.

Forgetting the complex mathematics, let's take two days for illustration. On January 14, with its temperature in Cleveland of 77 degrees, scientists have assigned a weighted temperature of 77 plus 14 which equals 91 degrees. Meanwhile, April 3, which had a low temperature of 19, receives a weighted temperature of 19x3, bringing the day's low to an almost balmy 57. So while you may think it was cold this past month, the weather scientists say even the coldest days were actually pretty warm. Cynthia?”

OK, Bill, it is apocryphal... but did I have you going for just a minute?
Greg

Thanks to my good friend Greg who is smarter than your average bear. But is it more outrageous than the lies and hyperbole contained in Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, that “foofaraw of pseudo-science, exaggerations, and errors, now being peddled to innocent schoolchildren worldwide.” Britain's Lord Moncton has challenged Gore to a televised debate? Moncton suggested for a venue the Oxford Museum of Natural History, site of the famous debate between T.H. Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, because “I hope that in this lofty atmosphere the caution and scepticism of true science will once again prevail, this time over the shibboleths and nostrums of the false, new religion of climate alarmism.” Gore declined.

I could spend a day listing the lies in Gore’s movie and his public statements, as well as the alarmist subterfuge in the latest UN report. (See my post “Anthropogenic or Au-Natural?” 11/24/06)

For example, look at the hysteria over carbon dioxide, that satanic gas. Last week the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision demonstrated that they possess superior intellect in ALL matters (including atmospheric chemistry and physics), deciding that carbon dioxide is indeed a pollutant which is helping to cause global alarming, ...er, warming. Therefore, the EPA is now vested with the mandate to control the amount of that substance that is released into the atmosphere by human activity.

Most of us are aware that we, and our animal friends, “exhaust” carbon dioxide as the culmination of the O2/CO2 exchange in the lungs. The EPA, reacting swiftly, has already announced that, effective July 1st, new regulations will require that all American citizens take one less breath per minute in order to curb the generation of this pollutant. The President has requested that all Americans “make this sacrifice for the safety of the earth,” and has implored the international community to follow our lead.

Sorry,.. I couldn’t resist another spoof.

In actual fact, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is quite low relative to levels in geologic times. One hundred million years ago the level was six times higher than now and the previous low, equal to the current level, was three hundred million years ago. Before that was a peak 18 times the current level about 500 millions years ago. Those much higher levels of carbon dioxide had nothing to do with automobile exhaust. And of our current carbon loading, humans cause less than 4 percent of it. Volcanoes and wild fires cause much, much more and guess how accurately those events can be modeled.

The sad thing about all the lies, damn lies is how many good-intentioned people are sucked in by them. Yesterday at Starbucks a nice lady approached our posse with a pile of New York Times newspapers. She asked if we wanted some, but said that she had removed the Home sections since her article was in there.

Under the headline “To Fight Global Warming, Some Hang Clothes,” there was a picture of Kathy’s house in Rolling Hills with several clothes lines hanging in the back yard. Kathy said she was appalled by her $1100 monthly electric bill last summer so she decided to begin hanging out her wash. She became a clothesline activist and credits the drop of her electric bill to $575 in March as due largely to her (mostly) abandoning the electric dryer.

Poor Kathy is so deluded. The cost of drying a typical load of laundry in an electric dryer is 35 cents compared to 18 cents in a gas dryer. The typical gas dryer costs about $85 to operate annually. Unless, as Dr. Dave says, she is paying illegals to blow dry her wash, there is no way that Kathy could be spending more than about $15 monthly, assuming she has an electric dryer. Unfortunately, Kathy has not been able to get rid of her dryer. Her husband refuses to use the line-dried bath towels since they feel like sandpaper. Oh, and Kathy refuses to apply for the required clothesline permit from the Rolling Hills Community Association. Liberals don’t have to obey the law, because, in the words of her 13 year old daughter, “It looks beautiful; It looks like we care for the Earth.”