It’s not easy being green

A $1.7 billion average increase in electricity costs is estimated to result in a $1.3 billion decrease in personal income and a loss of 13,000 more jobs in the region.
Greg Walden-politician

The anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory is tattered and in disarray. For several years, it has been one controversy storm after another.

The horrible placement and upkeep of the thousands of temperature gathering sites is known because inspections by volunteers conducted through Anthony Watts blog site: Watts Up With That? (Click link.) The erroneous high temperatures recorded within cities, know as the Heat Island Effect (HIE), caused by the retention of heat by buildings and pavement, has become so well documented it could no longer be ignored by climatologist.

Still, downplaying those problems paled compared to the alarm triggered by Climategate in November 2009. An unknown hacker, or an inside whistle-blower, posted thousands of documents and emails sent between climatologist in the University of East Anglai’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) and other climate researchers around the world. CRU is the home of one of only four temperature records used by thousands of other organizations. The emails showed apparent collusion between several organizations to adjust temperature records to “hide the decline” in recent temperatures. The other records released with the emails included computer program segments, which upwardly adjusts any information fed into them. Along with that, there were references to deliberately avoiding Freedom of Information Act (FIA) request for their methods and data (paid for with taxpayer-funded grants). The head of CRU actually wrote that he would destroy the records before he would release them. He has subsequently said they have been misplaced, or destroyed by accident, and he cannot produce them. (The scientific method of testing a theory is to have other scientist replicate the process – impossible without the original methods and data.) All the CRU admits to possessing are records extensively massaged in order to homogenize the readings and eliminate the heat island effect and other variations. It will require years to reconstruct original, un-tampered records. The emails also contained references to interfering with the peer-review process to block the publishing papers opposing global warming.

As damning as Climategate was, the global warming forces circled the wagons and tried to negate the severity of released emails. The tried to turn the conversation to scientific consensus, full knowing that “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron. Science is never settled, and a consensus means nothing. It takes only one researcher to disprove a theory, no matter how long it stood or how many believe it to be right. In any event, their protests came too late. Interest had already peaked on the process used to produce those ever-increasing global temperatures. When the mainstream media (MSM) refused to investigate, it was private-citizen bloggers who began checking the temperature records of individual stations and comparing them to the CRU’s massaged records. They found out that massaging was done to decades-old records, where the temperatures of even residential temperature sites, which should never be adjusted, were lowered. Some abnormally high city temperatures, due to the heat island effect in more recent years, were raised. All this manifested in a continuously rising temperatures over the years: global warming. It is interesting, that Phil Jones, the head of CRU, after stating temperatures have been rising year after year (up until Climategate) admitted in a recent interview that there has been no significant warming in the last fifteen years. He must have thought no one would ever check his work.

Now, with the passage of time, the early computer model projections have come to term. They now confront real-world observations. One after another, like dominos in a cascading line, they fall. The projection of a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics, which would be the absolute CO2 greenhouse signature of AGW, can not be found, even with the sophisticated equipment aboard the climate satellites. The global warming, projected by computer models, hinges on an unknown positive (upward) forcing of temperature caused by CO2 induced cloud changes. No one can describe exactly what this forcing is, how it works or how much the temperature increase will be. In the three 1988 computer-models of NASA’s Jim Hansen, the temperature projections have all turned out to be high. The closest by .3 degree, the other two by about .5 degrees, and they are being compared to CRU’s upwardly massaged observed temperatures. While .3 does not sound like much, Hansen’s projection has so far only covered twenty-two years. There has only been about .75 degree increase in the last hundred years, again, using CRU’s massaged temperatures. The climate satellites have only existed since 1978, as data continues to come in, the indication is that if such a forcing exists, it may be negative, causing the temperature to go down.

To add to the bad news, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is unraveling too. It seems the interest in Climategate temperatures did not stop with CRU. The IPCC uses the CRU temperature base; therefore, those independent bloggers began checking the IPCC’s reports. Although the IPCC purports to be the gold standard of climate information, using nothing but peer-reviewed information (even if the Climategate emails show peer review to be deeply flawed) the bloggers found something very different. Item after item in the IPCC’s report, not only had not been peer-reviewed, they were written by environmentalist groups like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Federation, college students and individuals with no background in science, much less climate science. There are now calls for the IPCC’s director to resign, and/or the disbanding of the whole organization.

As a final insult, Obama’s Democrat controlled Senate and House, arguably the most left leaning congress in history, cannot pass a cap-and-trade bill. Many of the members are from coal-, natural gas- and oil-producing states. To vote for a bill, which would damage the energy companies, raise utility prices and cost thousands of jobs during a down economy, would be political suicide. Even the most liberal of the Democrats, seeking to fund more entitlement programs, are backing away from the greatest money train in history. They recognize the warning signs of an aware constituency. The masses are learning about the Climategate, the inadequate temperature collection, the temperature massaged to show manmade global warming, the failing computer projections, the IPCC’s global control agenda, and the job losses and massive increases in the price for electricity and fuel that would be associated with a cap-and-trade bill.

I’m telling you, it is not easy being green.