I recently sat next to a woman on a flight from Houston which began with pleasantries regarding the purposes of our trip. When asked whether mine was for business or pleasure, I said that it combined a bit of both. I explained that I was on my way to do a media interview.
That led her to ask what it was that I do, to which I answered that I’m in the habit of writing quite a lot about topics that vary considerably, but frequently address stuff about climate and energy . . . often many politically incorrect aspects.
She asked, “You aren’t like that guy in Ohio that doesn’t believe in climate change, are you?”
I responded that I don’t personally know anyone who doesn’t think that climate changes, but there may be one in Ohio that I have yet to meet. Seems to me that climate change has been going on for quite a while . . . billions of years in fact.
Global temperatures were at least just as warm about 2,000 years
ago during the “Roman Warm Period” when popular fashions featured cool-looking sandals and togas. Conditions were much the same again during the “Medieval warm period” about a thousand years later. That was when Eric the Red and his Norse pals, sans-sandals, raised sheep and goats on southwestern Greenland’s coastal grasslands.
Around 1350, Red’s Viking descendants pulled up stakes and high-tailed it out of there for friendlier climes with the coming of a “little ice age.” That big chill lasted until shortly after Washington’s troops spent a brutally cold winter at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s beat a brutally frigid retreat from Moscow in 1812.
Incidentally, the warming that followed began before the Industrial Revolution brought CO2-belching smokestacks and SUVs, and has continued in fits and starts ever since.
Still, U.S. temperatures between 1910 through the mid-1940s were warmer than now, and then cooled again for about three decades. By the late 1970s many “climate experts” heralded the arrival of the next real ice age. That alarm vector reversed entirely about a decade later when Sen. Al Gore’s steamy 1988 Senate hearings concluded that the planet is on fire and we are causing it.
She: “We must be. How can anyone deny the influence of the record levels of CO2 we are polluting the atmosphere with?”
Me: Satellite temperature records which have been available only since 1979 show that other than naturally occurring 1998 and 2015 El Nino temperature spikes, no statistically significant global warming has occurred for nearly two decades. On the other hand, satellite imagery shows that the plant-fertilizing CO2 “pollution” you referred to has increased global greening by 25% to 50% since then . . . lots more veggies for all God’s creatures.
She: “Then why are glaciers melting faster than ever, and causing oceans to rise and coastlines to flood?”
Me: Yes, the Arctic, which goes through regular 60- to 70-year-long warming and cooling cycles, has most recently been losing some ice mass, while most of the vastly larger Antarctic continent has been gaining.
A National Academy of Sciences report attributes a primary cause of those thunderous West Antarctic Ice Sheet iceberg collapses we often see featured in the media to geothermal heat from seabed volcanoes below.
This coastal melting has been operating at time scales of hundreds to thousands of years.
There’s also no reason for feverishly overheated concern regarding glacial melting causing a rapid sea level rise. It’s another natural phenomenon that has been occurring over eons.
The rate of that increase has stabilized over the past few hundred years at about seven inches per century.
She: “Why then are increasingly frequent and severe weather events occurring which scientists predict will become even worse? How can you possibly claim that we aren’t causing all of this to happen?”
Me: If we are, might we then also take some credit for good news too?
No category 3 to 5 hurricanes have struck the U.S. coast since October 2005, a record century-long lull since 1900. And according to both NOAA and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there has been no increase in the severity or frequency of floods, droughts, thunderstorms or tornadoes in recent decades either.
She: “Well what about all of the real climate scientists who say otherwise? Al Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize for telling us differently. Do you think you are smarter?”
I admitted to real professional limitations on that last point. Being more a rocket scientist than true climate scientist like him, I falsely assumed he got the award for inventing the Internet, along with an Oscar for his sensationally dramatic science fiction horror movie acting performance.
That abruptly ended our chat. My seatmate promptly returned to reading a Rolling Stone magazine Bernie Sanders feature. The rest of that flight was very quiet. I even got some sleep.
NOTE: This article first appeared at:
http://www.newsmax.com/LarryBell/energy-gore/2016/08/08/id/742569/#ixzz4Gl3l4Htc
Well she might just check out the truth and logic now. Well done
Global temperatures were at least just as warm about 2,000 years ago during the “Roman Warm Period”
U.S. temperatures between 1910 through the mid-1940s were warmer than now, and then cooled again for about three decades. IOW: 2% of the planet as a sample.
the late 1970s many “climate experts” heralded the arrival of the next real ice age. Balderdash.
Satellite temperature records … show …no statistically significant global warming has occurred for nearly two decades Dishonest cherry-picking.
most of the vastly larger Antarctic continent has been gaining. Hogwash.
A National Academy of Sciences report attributes a primary cause of thunderous West Antarctic Ice Sheet iceberg collapses we often see featured in the media to geothermal heat from seabed volcanoes below. No they do not.
So much error, so little time.
Politically and scientifically incorrect. SHOCKER
Best,
D
This will be encouraging with respect to your data….;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh-DNNIUjKU&sns=fb
Is this that guy who spoke to a fossil fuel meeting and never published his…erm…”findings”?
Best,
D
In this speech he was speaking to medical doctors who seem to be taking him quite seriously. So what are you trying to say exactly?
I’m trying to say exactly that this isn’t a link to a science site, but rather some speech at some place by a disinformer who doesn’t influence the scientific community in any way, therefore meaningless.
If you want to show that there are data problems, show their quantification in the literature, not a meaningless presentation by one of the most inept disinformers on the Internet .
Best,
D
Please believe what you will……Don’t let me try to confuse you! ;-)
You won’t confuse me.
Best,
D
“When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.” – Socrates…..
Disgraced fake expert with zero credibility is what you are going with here? Aren’t you precious.
Best,
D
Thanks for your logical contribution Dano, folk will see the truth for themselves and ignore your baseless propaganda
True.
You can’t show a single byte of what I typed is propaganda.
Best,
D
Well reference to a guy as a disinformer without explaining how C02 is a viable cause qualifies as propaganda.
You two…three?… Are contributors…
Be respectifu
I would be careful about the Antartica….nothing keeps the snow from arriving…nothing melts it.
…and yet, Antarctic ice is decreasing in mass.
Best,
D
A good article covering many of the myths. BTW – The Nobel Peace Prize was intended for Irene Sendler who actually did something good for humanity. https://www.truthorfiction.com/irena-sendler/
Seems those who hand out the Nobel Peace Prize these days are doing it for political reasons.
It’s sad how well the propagandists have brainwashed a generation. Loads of government money is quite effective.
What proof do we have of “government” money?
Just count number of people employed by government in climate related positions, and you’ll see the revenues they earn to be a huge gravy train. Not to mention all the carbon taxes they collect. Its on a par with the fossil fuel industry now (who are also in cahoots with government now, all wheeling & dealing in the carbon trade).
The media brainwashing runs deep. It’s so pathetic that people refuse to do their own research.
Good article, Larry. Well done.
Reality Mocks the Climate Cult Daily!!! Great job! Eco hypocrisy is a Cancer on Responsible North American Industry and working together, optimization of the Capables is far more effective that restricted implementation of the Incapables!
North America has Fossil Fuels and Oil for a strong future! We have far more to fear in a life without fossil fuels than we ever need to fear our life with them!
We have them, they are used by everyone, everywhere, for EVERYTHING!!! In 2016 AGW is now best defined as Al Gore’s Wrong!!!
Let’s get busy North America! Working together, the World is our Oilster!!!
Yes Fossil Fuels are not the Curse, they are the CURE to anything that the Earth’s Climate throws at us!
I live in Canada, here in North America and we have a Cold Climate, we have the right to use fossil fuels! Obviously the Earth is in Charge and the Globe is NOT warming catastrophically at all, in fact our Federal Liberal Government should simply issue two cards. #1 says ‘I support CDN fossil fuels/Oil’, #2 says ‘I do not support CDN fossil fuels/Oil’. You can only sign one of them! But in order to use a Highway, or get gas at the pump, Natural Gas for your furnace, or propane for your BBQ, or travel by jet, or use plastic, or buy Bananas, Oranges, or anything produced farther away than a Horse and Buggy can deliver, you MUST have a signed #1 card! That will weed out many hypocrites! What card is in our PM and Premier’s Wallet?
The same can be done for the USA!
Yes we need MORE safe, new, controlled, maintained, integrity tested, known design-life pipelines! Let’s get busy, build them Safe, Strong and Soon!