GUEST COLUMN: ‘Anything Else is Just Unscientific’
My recent letter regarding global warming has been incorrectly described by one reader as inaccurate. It was accurate.
Regarding Dr. Michael Mann’s data manipulation being “debunked,” Dr Michael Mann, in 2001, very skillfully statistically manipulated global temperature data to produce his “hockey stick” graph in which the left, flat part of the stick represents historical temperatures: 1950-2000 temperatures on the graph increase dramatically, resembling a hockey stick. This graph is widely regarded among man-made global warming advocates as proof of rising temperatures in recent times.
Dr. Mann’s graph departed from previous temperature graphing methodology that used United States Historical Climate Network (USHCN) and tree rings data. Rings are wider in warm temperatures and narrower in cold temperatures, showing direct valid evidence of what the climate was like in the specific year’s ring.
There are 1,221 USHCN temperature observation points, many with data starting in the 1800s. Most USHCN locations have remained relatively pristine, with excellent data largely uncontaminated by nearby heat sources. One exception: Started in 1835, New York’s Central Park USHCN site, encroached upon by development, blacktop roads, parking lots, etc., shows a temperature increase of +4F. The nearby, nearly unchanged, West Point Military Academy site shows +0.5F, demonstrating “Urban Heat It’sland effect” (UHI), which frequently produces higher temperatures in such locations.
Mann’s hockey stick graph included the data from about 1,000 sites in the Automated Surface Temperature Observation System (ASOS). These were started in the 1980s with another 400 added after 1998. The ASOS sites in urban locations, including airports and downtown areas, are more likely to see UHI effect and, therefore, higher temperatures.
The later ASOS higher temperatures, added to the USHCN and other customary data, creates the “hockey stick” graph. Mann’s university employer exonerated him from “wrong doing” because he didn’t manufacture the ASOS data, he just included it in with the other data to nicely yield the hockey stick. Nevertheless, his hacked emails revealed he conspired with other leading man-made global warming theory leaders like Phil Jones at the University of Anglia, to suppress publication of research by scientists opposing the man-made global warming theory.
Addition of the new ASOS data overcame a major obstacle to producing the hockey stick graph needed to “establish” global warming: elimination of the peaks and valleys from the Medieval Warming Period (MWP 900 -1400 AD), which was the warmest period on record, when man made CO2 was not an issue, and the Little Ice Age (1500-1900 AD), much colder than today.
In the MWP, Vikings landed in warm, glacier-free Greenland and lived there for hundreds of years, growing grapes, which invalidates one reader’s comment about the narrow range of our temperatures over the last million years. Speaking of temperature variations in modern times, there’s also a great photo available of the U.S. Navy submarine Skate floating in the open water at the North Pole in March 1959.
Regarding the “decreasing number of people who are skeptics,” consider the Heidelberg Appeal, which 4,000 scientists signed, including 72 Nobel prize winners, and the Oregon Petition, signed by 30,000 U.S. scientists, all man-made global warming skeptics. This flies in the face of the erroneous statement by global warming advocates that “97 percent of the world’s scientists agree” that man is responsible for global warming. Science by consensus, regardless of which side you take, is not science at all. That is called politics.
Regarding CO2 as the cause of global warming, very recently it was established that CO2 concentrations increase after temperature increases. Attempts to draw conclusions and create models, without consideration of the lag time between temperature change and CO2 concentration change results in widely divergent forecasts. This has been seen in University of East Anglia (UK) and the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and forecasts. (Principia Scientific International, Dr. Latour, June 2014.)
This extremely significant finding is based on global CO2 mass balances, air and water circulation/mixing, CO2 solubility and chemical/physical kinetics. Failure to do so violates not one, but two laws of thermodynamics; you can’t create energy!
As Dr. Latour puts it, “Chemists and chemical engineers understand this, man-made global warming advocates do not, even if they are radiation astrophysicists.” As it turns out, I do happen to be a chemist.
Scientific American, November 2015, reports the UN IPCC in 1990 predicted global temperatures would rise +0.5C per decade. The most recent IPCC report says temperature increased by +0.2 per decade, which was then adopted as their newest forecast.
The new IPCC report downplayed fears of abrupt climate change from sudden methane release from the ocean, slowdown of the Gulf Stream or West Antarctica or Greenland ice sheet collapse, using the exact language “exceptionally unlikely.”
Those concerned about melting glaciers should consider that temperatures above glaciers rarely exceed -4F. Glaciers grow and recede based largely on precipitation, which appears to be diminishing in tropical areas with icy mountains. When precipitation declines, glaciers shrink.
Additionally, Nature Journal, July 2016, reports that Antarctic Peninsula temperatures are cooling and have been doing so since the late 1990s.
Concentrations of CO2 have been much higher than present levels at many times in the past, especially the Mesozoic era when the first coral reefs were found. Then CO2 concentrations may have been as much as three to six times higher than today. Increased CO2 concentrations in sea water is not the cause of “bleaching” coral. That is caused by increased temperature, which as we have recently learned, precedes increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Finally, to one reader’s comments, while I do read books on the subject, I vastly prefer to read the actual journals and research itself, then evaluate its conclusions relative to the researchers’ adherence to the scientific method.
Anything else is just unscientific.
James R. MacNeal
Troy Township
