A Response to Charlie Smith

Mr Smith penned an article which appeared here on December 3, 2011. He referred to human induced climate change skeptics as the Neville Chamberlains of our time. Not quite sure what he is referring to there. Chamberlain failed to confront Hitler and chose a path of appeasement in order to maintain peace. Hitler took advantage of that sign of weakness to continue his aggression. Climate skeptics are not failing to confront the warmist agenda and are maintaining a constant policy of holding the mirror of truth before the alarmists so that they can see the error of their ways. No appeasement here.

In his article Mr Smith dismisses criticism of his warmist views by pointing out that anyone can see that the earth is warmer than it was because 13 of the last 15 years were the warmest on record. No reference was provided. Mr Smith seems to suffer from confirmation bias as he failed to mention that the warming has  been absent for the last decade or more while the alleged driver of global temperatures, CO2, has continued to rise. This creates a disconnect between cause and effect. Mr Smith has chosen to ignore this reality. When we put the last 15 years in historical context we find that the Holocene Optimum, Minoan, Roman and Medieval warming were all periods whose average global temperature was higher than the temperatures that we are currently experiencing. And these warmer temperatures occurred at CO2 concentration levels lower than those of today. This is another disconnect between cause and effect. When we look at the last century we find several periods where temperatures rose for a time and then declined, then rose again all while CO2 was increasing in the atmosphere due to human and natural occurrences. This is another disconnect between the alleged cause(CO2) and its effect (increasing temperatures). When we go back even further into the geologic past we find times when CO2 was ten times what it is today and this happened when the earth was in the middle of an ice age in the late Ordovician era. This is yet another piece of evidence which is contrary to the theory being promoted by present day alarmists. Human CO2 emissions do not drive the earth's temperature. This was recently confirmed via the Japanese Ibuku satellite which determined that the NET emitters of CO2 were the undeveloped countries of the world and NOT the big emitters in the industrialized world.

If that last statement is true then the policies that governments are following that aim to reduce CO2 to pre-1990 levels are, at great and unnecessary expense, doomed to failure. We do not need to deprive ourselves and the current poor nations of the world of cheap and plentiful fossil fuel sources. We can turn on our lights, A/C and drive our SUVs without guilt. This is good news. Poor countries will have access to cheap energy which can aid their development toward more prosperous times for their citizens.

Mr Smith cites 9 authors whose books have convinced him that human induced global warming/climate change is real. While I have read some of the authors he cites I have also balanced my reading by reading what is being said by the other side of the issue. Here are 9 f them: Ian Plimer, Henrik Svensmark, Fred Singer, John Zyrkowski, Patrick J. Michaels, Roy W Spencer, Roger Pielke Jr., A.W Montford and Christopher Booker. Should Mr Smith wish to add to his list I will be happy to match him author for author. What the foregoing comparison should make clear to everyone is that where climate change is concerned there is NO CONSENSUS and that list of references should dispel that popular but false belief. 

Mr Smith insults those who dare to disagree with the 'obvious' conclusion that CO2 emissions from human sources are contributing to climate change. As can be seen from reading the above authors there is much room for disagreement on this contentious issue. People who are driven by a political agenda often suffer from confirmation bias and will disregard legitimate contrary information like the person who closes her eyes, covers her ears and stomps her feet while yelling 'I can't hear you' to avoid being confronted with the truth.

 Mr Smith has described the work of those he disagrees with as dreadful, rubbish, nonsense and crappy. This approach alone is enough for me to discount Mr Smith as biased beyond belief and married to an agenda like a Nun to Jesus. He selectively presents the evidence he considers to clinch the case for human induced climate change (aka, CAGW). In his list he cites receding glaciers, summer sea ice melting, droughts in the tropics, huge fires in Greece, Australia and Spain as well as "the years of careful scientific research that has made the case that" humans are "creating a potential catastrophe". The links provided for each 'proof' of his contention reference the contrary evidence that Mr Smith is either unaware of or chooses to ignore no doubt because he believes that skeptics are "so full of hubris" that they can't admit that they are wrong. More on that in a moment but first let's deal with the 'receding glaciers' claim. 


Receding glaciers do not prove that it is the CO2 put in the atmosphere by humans that is causing their retreat. In fact, some glaciers have been receding long before CO2 became an issue. The glaciers at Icy Strait in Alaska have been disappearing since the late 1790s. Humans and their fossil fuel burning could not have been the cause of the retreat because widespread use of fossil fuels did not begin to add significant quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere until the second half of the 20th century. So we must come to the conclusion that there are natural forces which cause glacial fallback. Besides, not all glaciers are retreating in a world of increasing atmospheric CO2 which is contrary to the theory. This includes the nearby Hubbard glacier and growth on Canada's Mount Logan. That disconnect to the theory of man-made global warming is obvious. We have growing and receding glaciers in an atmosphere increasing in CO2. How do we account for that? You can see from this one example that the climate is more complicated than alarmists heretofore are prepared to admit. Local weather anomalies might be a place to start an investigation.


The claim that years of careful scientific research have built an unassailable case for human induced global warming has come apart at the seams with the release in 2009 and 2011 of the Climategate emails which take us on a behind the scenes tour of the thoughts of the principal climate scientists responsible for the temperature data sets relied upon for the IPCC assessment reports. The emails detail the data manipulation, cherry picking, ad hominem attacks against scientists skeptical of their conclusions, attempts to conceal their methods, to block open access to their data by skeptics and the expression of their own doubts about the strength of their data. The research has been anything but careful except for the careful selection of what to include in the IPCC assessment reports in order to support 'the cause'. References to 'the cause' in these emails belie their scientific nature and expose the explicitly political nature of the reports. The Climategate II emails are the final nail in the coffin of CAGW. Mr Smith just hasn't realized it yet. The references in the initial Climategate link above will keep you very busy for a very long time.


There are many incentives for those who have bought into the CAGW scenario to continue to ignore the fact that the Emperor has no clothes - all expenses paid parties like the recent one in Durban, funding for their research, their jobs depend on there being a perceived crisis so let's keep it up but mostly it is the annual parties in exotic places that must expend a lot of fossil fuels to get to. Hypocrites! The recent release of the book by Donna Lafromboise:  The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate  Scientist does not inspire confidence in the UN IPCC, the organization in charge of reporting to the world on the state of the earth's climate. CAGW does not exist. Catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is another non-problem in a long list of environmental non-problems. 

Ideas have consequences. It took 40 years to unravel the Piltdown Man hoax; in 2006 the WHO reinstated DDT as a pesticide in the fight against malaria after it had been banned in 1972; that's over 30 years to correct for that one with the cost in lives beings over 30 million. Do we want to make the same mistake again  by accepting CAGW that is so obviously wrong? The rising cost in energy to combat it with no measurable effect on the planet's climate will condemn millions of already poor to a future of poverty. The continued use of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels will continue to raise the living standards of all with no possibility of CAGW. We need to stop growing food to propel our conveyances. We need to stop subsidizing more expensive sources of energy for coal and oil and gas.

Back to hubris. This is where I get to agree with Mr Smith. His words on the subject capture exactly how I feel about warmists who cannot see that CO2 is not a major driver of the earth's climate change. They haven't and won't look hard enough to search for the scientific truth on the subject. And yet, they do not need to bury their heads in obtuse scientific journals or the mathematical formula of atmospheric physics. A little Google searching through its online newspaper archives for climatic events of the past will convince anyone that bad weather has always been with us. We are more aware of it now because of the false CAGW issue and people are paying more attention to it, we have better technology to detect it and we can spread the news about it much further and quicker that at any time in the past. But is it any worse? The evidence says no. Visit a web site called real-science.com and see for yourself. Their credo was adopted from a quote by the famous physicist, Richard Feynman when he said: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts". We learn by questioning everyone.Yes, it is a site that is skeptical of CAGW. They are having much fun with the stupidity that passes for astute weather commentary by intelligent people who ought to know better. Indeed, Charlie, I too have a "hunch that history isn't going to be kind" but to warmist alarmists as it wasn't to the ice age fear mongers in the 1970s. Could the mantra "it's a cycle, it's a cycle, it's a cycle" actually be the truth? We live in a dynamic atmosphere. Change is what the climate does. Always has. Always will. To think that humans can or know how to control the climate or can redirect it back to how it was is the height of human hubris. "According to the COP17 website, the main objective of the convention is “to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system”." Wow, they do think we know how to do it. Human hubris at its silliest. Good luck with that!

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to experience that when the Sun is eclipsed by the moon or a cloud it feels cooler. When the sun sets the earth's atmosphere gets a chance to vent the daytime heat into space and it cools off at night. In the summer we do not check the CO2 index before going outdoors; we check the humidex. It is water vapor that is the main greenhouse gas and the energy we get from our Sun has a lot to do with how warm it is outside. Isn't that why it is so hot during a Mojave desert day and why you can shiver there at night?  

The writers whose opinions you denigrate are not sponsored by big oil nor am I. But that is a spurious argument anyway. It is used to deflect attention away from what is said to who paid for the study as if the results could be automatically invalidated by the source of funds rather than the content of what was found. Scientists work by challenging each others methods and results. To bring in the source of the funding for a study is an emotional ruse and not a valid argument to falsify the results. It is heartening that you do not use it. 

In late Aug. and early Sept. 2011 I was in your beautiful province of BC and noted the snow capped mountains. I don't want to be alarmist but isn't that how ice ages start? Snow stays over the summer and more accumulates the next winter. Repeat

CO2 is a harmless trace gas essential to life on earth. Plants love it. Good thing. We need our vegetables. We should celebrate the abundance of fossil fuels available to us. This is good news. Be warm. Enjoy the interglacial and Merry Christmas.