What’s Wrong With This Global Warming Story?
By Mary Theroux • Thursday May 27, 2010 10:56 AM PDT • 11 Comments
Today’s test is to read the following news report, and identify its logical fallacy:
“Loss of Species After Ice Age Seen as Warning,” by David Perlman, San Francisco Chronicle Science Editor, May 24, 2010
You have 30 minutes.
...
OK, time’s up.
A) The article cited above says:
Fossils of small mammals excavated around a Shasta County cave tell a remarkable story of animal diversity and its loss when the Earth warmed abruptly after the last major Ice Age ended some 12,700 years ago.
If the earth warmed (and cooled) in the past—before human activity produced the levels of CO2 purportedly responsible for today’s—what caused it, and why is human activity deemed responsible for any “climate change” today?
B) The article cited above also quotes the researcher conducting the study:
“In fact, the degree of climate change that occurred after the Ice Age is very similar to the rise in the world’s temperature that has been predicted for the next century.”
From, “Q&A: Professor Phil Jones,” director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), chief proponent of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), and central character of Climategate:
[Question:] Do you agree that according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical?
[Answer, Dr. Jones]: ...the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other.
[Question]: Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming?
[Answer, Dr. Jones]: Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant...
[Question]: Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?
[Answer, Dr. Jones]: No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.
Meanwhile, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a lead author of the 2001 and 2007 IPCC Scientific Assessment of Climate Change, has said:
The fact is we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.
If warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940, and 1975-1998 are identical, why is the warming of 1975-1998 attributed to human activity that must be centrally controlled? If there is currently a “lack of warming”—there has been no statistically significant warming since 1995, and, while not characterized “statistically significant,” the trend has been negative since 2002—on what are predictions of continued warming based?
C) Compare and contrast the article above to those about such curiosities as medieval farm implements being uncovered as glaciers recede in Greenland.
Note Greenland’s recorded temperatures since 600:
Why do scientists—and journalists—force every finding of historical, natural warming into support of modern, anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Could it be that grants for research supporting findings for AGW are plentiful, such findings win Nobel Prizes and garner academic favor, while “skeptics” (and isn’t the scientific method supposed to require evidence proving a hypothesis prior to its acceptance?) are ridiculed as “flat-earth deniers”, and alarmist global warming headlines sell newspapers?
Tags: Corruption, Environment, Europe, Global Warming, Media, Poverty, Propaganda, Science, United Nations 
Significant cycle length is approximately 10000 years. Human effects will tend to increase temperatures but are too small to be detected in the long cycles. Check back in another 10000 years for more definitive info.
richard | May 28, 2010 | Reply
Hi, Richard.
How does one control for all factors other than human effects over that 10,000 year cycle in order to make a scientific determination that human effects were the determining factor?
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | May 28, 2010 | Reply
All the chatter about AGW is nothing but a smokescreen for the true objective: power and control. If the elites could scare people using some other hare-brained excuse, all the climate nonsense would be conveniently forgotten.
Steve Hogan | May 28, 2010 | Reply
I’m with you wholeheartedly but that chart is worthless.
daddysteve | May 28, 2010 | Reply
daddysteve:
No doubt. We should probably just agree to throw out all the temperature charts, as they’re all flawed. I’d take it down, but no revisionist posting here!
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | May 29, 2010 | Reply
For the LIFE of me, I couldn’t find (following the provided link) any article mentioning medieval farm implements being uncovered by retreating glaciers. Plenty about retreating glaciers, and more farming resulting from that, but no medieval farm implements.
?
N. Joseph Potts | Jun 1, 2010 | Reply
Potts: Here are two articles about receding ice uncovering tools from an apparently warmer time:
http://www.ngu.no/sciencepub/eng/pages/Whatsup_20_10_08.html (scroll to the bottom)
http://www.livescience.com/environment/melting-ice-reveals-ancient-tools-100426.html (from Canada)
Mike Spalding | Jun 2, 2010 | Reply
They have a very hard time telling what the weather will be the weekend after next. Who could seriously depend on these guys forcasting 30, 50, or 100 years out. The people clammering to spend money on this are clammering to spend OPM- other people’s money. They, for the most part, feel that other people have too much money anyway.
Bags Howard | Jun 2, 2010 | Reply
Is it even marginally possible that a wider variety of animals might have needed to shelter in caves during a major ice age than need to do so in the relatively warm current climate?
Rick Schunke | Jun 2, 2010 | Reply
It occurred to me, reading the article, that the author believes that in fact it is much better for us to be trapped in a perpetual ice age, so that the trauma of a little sunshine won’t cause mass extinctions.
I’m just waiting for the criminals who perpetrated this fraud to be brought to justice. All around my community, in the schools and in the government, they are STILL promoting this idiotic agenda. Perhaps a full blown criminal trial, fully exposed by the lame stream media, would convince our leaders to quit forcing the taxpayers to go along with this mess.
Margaret | Jun 2, 2010 | Reply
When was the last time in recent memory that the “climatologists” predicted tomorrow’s temperatures to an accuracy of 1C? To make their forecasts, they use sophisticated computer models. They never predict the weather beyond 15 days; it’s too imprecise. How, then, would anyone expect a prediction 50 or 100 years in advance to be anything but hogwash?
Think of all the unknowable factors that must be entered into the computer model. Imagine trying to predict the cloud cover a week from now, as just one example. Solar storm, technology advances, volcanic activity, etc. are some of the others.
With regard to the article’s suggestion that the warming caused the elimination of species, it seems more likely to me that he period of freezing temperatures destroyed them, not the subsequent warming.
This whole climate charade reminds me of the verse of a song familiar to folks of my age:
“It rained all night, the day I left,
the weather it was dry.
The sun so hot I froze to death,
Suzanna, don’t you cry.”
Bob | Jun 3, 2010 | Reply