Democrats nearly had a brawl last week in California after the party’s Resolutions Committee rejected a proposed climate debate among Democratic presidential candidates. Global warming so fully occupies the thinking of some that there’s no room for information that will contradict their faith.
If they’d only open their minds they’d see:
The U.S. hasn’t warmed since 2005. America isn’t the entire world. But the alarmists gleefully point out regional heatwaves and the “hottest day on record” when cities endure summer scorchers. So let’s look at the data. The U.S. Climate Reference Network, “a sophisticated climate-observing network specifically designed and deployed for quantifying climate change on a national scale,” has found there’s been no warming in the U.S. going back to 2005.
In fact, says meteorologist Anthony Watts, the “little known data from the state-of-the-art” operation, “(which never seems to make it into NOAA’s monthly ‘state of the climate’ reports) show that for the past nine months, six of them were below normal.”
The data also tell us 2019’s average has been cooler than 2005’s, the first year of the data set.
Man’s carbon dioxide emissions are not burning down the Amazon. Empty-headed celebrities and activists have had quite a virtue-signaling feast tweeting photos from fires three decades ago, fires in Europe, and fires in the U.S. Yes, we’ve seen the claims that there are 80% more fires this year than last in South America, but we’ve also seen this from the New York Times:
“The majority of these fires were set by farmers preparing Amazon-adjacent farmland for next year’s crops and pasture.”
Of course that’s a disposable detail because it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Carbon dioxide increases historically lag temperature increases. “In 1985, ice cores extracted from Greenland revealed temperatures and CO2 levels going back 150,000 years,” writes author Joanne Nova. “Temperature and CO2 seemed locked together. It was a turning point — the ‘greenhouse effect’ captured attention. But, in 1999 it became clear that carbon dioxide rose and fell after temperatures did. By 2003, we had better data showing the lag was 800 ± 200 years. CO2 was in the back seat.”
Of course the climate crusaders have written at great length to tell us it’s all just a myth. This time, they say, the warming (which is in doubt) is caused by man. It just has to be. All those other warming periods, the alarmists tell us, can be explained by natural events, such as Earth’s orbit around the sun, which, incidentally, we have mentioned as one of many factors that influence climate changes.
Less than 5% of carbon dioxide emissions are produced by man. Web searches turn up what seems like an endless list of stories and blog posts reporting that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached or exceeded 415 parts per million. This has been almost universally treated as the tip of an imminent disaster, as man has pushed greenhouse gas emissions beyond a dangerous threshold. But has he?
The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “agrees today’s annual human carbon dioxide emissions are 4.5 ppm (parts per million) per year and nature’s carbon dioxide emissions are 98 ppm per year,” says climate scientist Ed Berry. “Yet, the IPCC claims human emissions have caused all the increase in carbon dioxide since 1750, which is 30% of today’s total.
“How can human carbon dioxide, which is less than 5% of natural carbon dioxide, cause 30% of today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide? It can’t.”
Don’t like Berry’s numbers? Consider another set of figures from the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which says that of the 750 gigatons of CO2 which travel through the carbon cycle every year, only 29 gigatons, or less than 4%, are produced by man.
Is it possible for such a small portion to have such a great influence? Despite what the hysterics tell us, it’s an unanswered question.
There are many other unanswered questions about climate, as well. An honest person would admit that they might remain unanswered forever. An alarmist, however, has his mind made up — and closed down.
Issues & Insights is a new site formed by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page.
