Climate Change Observations and Metrics

• This article was originally written in 2019 and will be updated. The author is pursuing looking at the IPCC models’ source code. In addition, there are new publications that expound upon the Sun’s effect on climate. Nevertheless, this article contains foundational information that is unlikely to change.
  

Introduction

Before launching into the details of the subject, I must point out that perspective is everything. One liar will take a segment of the graph and say, “See. Nothing to worry about.”. Another liar will take a different segment of the same graph and say, “See. We are doomed”. Both will proportion the view of the graph to exaggerate the message.

You are the first and most important stakeholder in “climate change”. If you believe that climate change is a myth and you are wrong, you doom your future. On the other hand, if you believe that climate change is a real problem and you are either wrong or the proposed “green” solutions that do not work, you destroy your modern life style for nothing. Even worse, you will have given up your liberty. That modern life style has saved lives.[1] Destroying it is guaranteed to cost lives. Steven F. Wayward is a scholar who compares the current climate change movement to prohibition.[2] His perspective is that history will look back on it as either a comic or tragic misadventure. All of the other stakeholders are trying to convince you that they know the truth. The simple fact is that anyone who claims to know for certain is lying.

Trying to discern political influences requires taking Pournelle’s Iron Law into account. That is, in any institution, the group that will grab power and make the rules promotes the institution (and themselves) instead of the goals of the institution. Institutional prestige and money are on the line. This means that institutional publications need to be tempered with this observation. It does not mean automatic rejection of positions that are self-serving. It does mean that we should expect the bias and factor that into our own assessments.

There is an important separation of concerns with respect to the climate change argument. It is important to remember that the Bill of Rights protects us from the government, but it does not protect us from each other. Shutting down someone for raising a legitimate question as a “denier” and claiming he or she does not believe in science is not just a violation of that person’s right of free speech. It is also destroying the quintessential element of the superiority of a republic – taking multiple perspectives. That is the political angle of the argument. Even worse, on technical merit, it is a violation of the scientific method by the perpetrator, and the exclaimer is exposing himself or herself as being the one who is opposed to science. The notion of “settled science” is oxymoronic. Mathematical theorems are proven. It is called the “Theory of Relativity”, not the “Theorem of Relativity”. The idea behind science is to acquire knowledge by rigorous skepticism. A theory is accepted until it is disproven. We think we know. We do not know. Many very good scientists have been marginalized by this medieval practice of shaming. It is a case of bad politics overriding good science.

The Assertion

The controversy about climate change is based upon the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The belief is that greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are increasing and that they trap heat in the atmosphere. The concern is that this effect is accelerating at an alarming rate that is going to melt polar ice and raise sea levels all over the globe. One of the big implications is that polar bears will become extinct.[3]

We are told that 97% of scientists agree that our burning fossil fuels is causing global warming. Likewise, we are told that “radiative forcing” will bring forth catastrophe by magnifying the greenhouse effect.[4] We are also told the problem is so severe that the world as we know it is going to end in twelve years by a high-profile Congresswoman. Should we believe her?

Preliminary Technical Observations

There is no doubt that the climate is perpetually changing – just as the tectonic plates are constantly moving under our feet. The climate is a complex system that is both a nested complex system, and one that intersects with many other complex systems. One of the complex systems within the climate is the cycle of human and plant life. As such, it is an inescapable fact that man affects the climate to some degree – but he always has.[5] An even larger complex system that affects the climate is the Solar System. Face it, without the Sun, the entire question of global warming would not exist because it is the source of that warming. The Sun itself behaves with cycles that are somewhat erratic but somewhat predictable. It also will end some day and take the Earth with it.[6] To make clear how incapable we are of projecting the behavior of such large systems, some projections for the Sun’s end range from 3.5 billion years to around 7 billion years.

It is true that the Earth has been warming since the end of the “little ice age” at the beginning of the nineteenth century – by about one degree Celsius.[7] The measured curve of temperature to date shows no significant variation from the previously known ice age-interglacial periods going back more than 300 million years.[8] In other words, climate history is repeating itself as it has for millions of years.[9] On the other hand, there does appear to have been an unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide – as we measure it. The first question is how dramatically this increase will affect the climate.

Not having sufficiently studied the problem before, I am struck by a couple of what I see as foundational observations that lead me to question some accepted assumptions. The pre-collection data (prior to 1876) is derived from ice cores. Recent data is measured by multiple sensors. This means that historic data is relying on a small trapped sample as opposed to the averaged results of multiple sensors. The atmosphere is very large and not uniform. Densely populated areas will have different tropospheric compositions from isolated areas. Averaging results will vary according to the mix of sensor placements due to a lack of atmospheric uniformity. Using sensors predominantly in densely populated areas will result in higher carbon dioxide results than remote readings. The pre-collection data are like looking through a soda straw. That means that comparisons are being done between apples and oranges. As such, there are accuracy and precision issues that should qualify any conclusions because of the disparity in measurement techniques. Averaging masks these qualifications. The NASA website shows the complicated mapping of surface heat on the Earth today.[10] Are we to believe that such disparity did not exist before we started measurements?

The other difficulty I have is the assumptions about date range of concern. The underlying assumption that the start of the industrial age is the first point at which man could have significantly influenced carbon dioxide levels is certainly sensible; however, not analyzing prehistoric data for unexpected elevated levels might mask other underlying causes of carbon dioxide increases. These then can become false positives in the timeframe of accepted man-made interference. In addition, I am bothered by the assumption that we had no ability to adversely affect the atmosphere until 1960. Are two World Wars to be ignored? It is known that the first part of the twentieth century saw an increase in temperature but it was followed by cooling. The cooling is not an independent event, but how adequate of it is our understanding? I have not seen sufficient analysis.

A responsible position is to honestly assess our overall effect upon the atmosphere. But it is dishonest to believe we know more than we do. When it comes to complex systems like the climate, there is no closed-form solution that can possibly account for all of the variables in play. As Judith Curry points out, the atmosphere has millions of degrees of freedom.[11] Therefore, projecting the future relies on computer simulations, and simulations are no better than the individual programming them. All simulations make simplifying assumptions. And they are no more precise than the data fed into them. As such, we are bound to a large degree by the Hraire Limit of the number of parallel threads our brains can handle at one time. That number is seven, give or take two. Likewise, we can only feed in the data from a finite number of sensors. At some point, we accept inaccuracies in any simulation model.

As with any complex system, climate is prone to catastrophe, but no one knows for sure where that fatal point is. It is not a linear effect. We can project certain catastrophic events based upon temperature, but the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is another issue. A relationship between carbon dioxide and warming is widely accepted, but there is a question as to which one is the cause and which one is the effect.

The Atmosphere

We should be concerned about the atmosphere because the physiological layer is the foundational layer of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. We need oxygen to live. The oxygen we breath is a part of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere. In general, the Earth’s atmosphere contains the following profile of gases:[12]

• 78 percent Nitrogen
• 21 percent Oxygen
• .93 percent Argon
• .04 percent Carbon dioxide
• traces of neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, and water vapor

The plant and animal life cycle depends upon oxygen and carbon dioxide. Animals breath in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen. There is over 500 times the oxygen in the air than carbon dioxide. Apparently both animals and plants can sustain this balance. But also notice that more plants in relation to the number of animals would reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Given the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide, it would appear that plants are more effective at removing carbon dioxide than animals are at emitting it. This could have a profound effect on what we should do as custodians of the planet.

It is important to note that the atmosphere is not uniform, nor is the distribution of either temperature or moisture.[13] One number does not tell the entire story.

Carbon Dioxide Emission Metrics

Here is the overview of annual carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.[14] All totaled, approximately 808 tonnes[15] of carbon dioxide are emitted annually. The vast majority is natural emissions (>95%). The man-made (anthropogenic) carbon dioxide is less than five percent. Each of categories can be further broken down into subcategories. For example, fossil fuels can be further defined by their uses – 41% for electricity and heating.

Natural sources of CO2	Tonnes CO2	% Natural CO2	% Total CO2
Ocean	330	42.84%	40.82%
plants/animals	220	28.56%	27.21%
soil/decomposition	220	28.56%	27.21%
volcanos	0.23	0.03%	0.03%
TOTAL	770.23		95.27%

Table 8 Table 8 Annual Natural CO2 Emissions (in billions)

Anthropogenic CO2	Tonnes CO2	% Anthropogenic	% Total CO2
fossil fuels	33.2	86.91%	4.11%
clear cutting/land	3.3	8.64%	0.41%
industrial	1.7	4.45%	0.21%
total	38.2		4.73%

Table 9 Annual Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions (in billions)

Further Technical Observations

Looking at the percentages in the previous two sections, we would intuitively think, “how can carbon dioxide be a big deal, it’s less than one twentieth of a percent of the atmosphere?”. Also, how can man-made carbon dioxide be a big deal because it is less than five percent of the total annual emissions? In this case, our intuition might be wrong because complex systems do not act linearly. The assertion is that man-made increases are growing enough to ruin the balance in the atmosphere, and that is a reasonable assertion to explore; however, it is definitely not something be worried about without compelling proof.

Continuing with scientific skepticism, what happens if carbon dioxide increases by .01 percent, from 400 ppm (parts per million) to 500 ppm. Which element(s) are diminished? Given the animal and plant life cycle, it only makes sense that an increase in the number of animals versus plant life would drive up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It would seem logical that the oxygen level would recede – from 78 percent to about 77.99 percent. Of course, there is a difference in molecule sizes, so there is no doubt some imprecision here. And, of course, the atmosphere is not uniform, so this is a very crude view. But the question goes to what part of human activity is leading to the increase. Certainly, either depleting the rain forests or overpopulating the Earth can lead to this kind of imbalance. Of the 808 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, about thirty-eight tonnes[16] are caused by man. That means that man is responsible for less than five percent of carbon dioxide emissions.[17] The metrics gathered combine clearcutting with land use to account for 3.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted annually. That amounts to about 8.6 percent of the anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission (0.43% overall). But does it account for the loss of potential reduction caused by plants being removed from the system?

Weather predictions have improved over the years because we have both refined the models and we have more historic data to feed into these models. But our techniques are confined to the assumption that past behavior is a valid predictor of future behavior, and that is logically unsound. According to NASA and NOAA, the difference between weather and climate is “a measure of time”.[18] Do you want to bet your entire life style on the weather report for tomorrow? How about making that bet for a projection of the weather for twelve years from today? That is what you are being asked to do, and it behooves you to take a sober, intelligent look at the situation rather than taking someone else’s word for it. The fundamental theory behind radiative forcing makes sense, but measuring it is another issue. The IPCC labels its carbon dioxide function as an approximation.[19] A rough sketch of the mathematics behind the function can be seen on https://physics.stackexchange.com.[20] There is a great potential for inaccuracies, and those inaccuracies are used to project a small portion of the atmosphere.

We all want a single metric. With weather, we are first concerned about the daily temperature. But there are other concerns – rain, wind, and clouds. The climate is more complex. There really is no single technical number that will satisfy our concerns. On the other hand, there are political numbers that will engage our fight or flight mechanisms.

Consensus

The source of the assertion that 97% of scientists agree that burning fossil fuels is causing global warming is a website called theconsensusproject.com run by an Australian named John Cook.[21] As a mathematician, I am obliged to point out that everything on this website is promoting what is called the consensus fallacy, or argumentum ad populum from a logical or mathematical perspective. As Michael Crichton put it

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.[22]

In other words, none of Cook’s conclusions mean anything at all. What Cook has done is to promote the compliance principle of social proof to convince us of his vision of how things are. He is one of the compliance practitioners against whom Cialdini encourages us to use a forceful counterassault.[23] But it gets worse.

Cook has his finger on the results. He started with 11,944 abstracts of scientific papers associated with climate. To start with, he eliminated two-thirds (7,930) of the papers because they expressed no opinion on causes. Of the remaining papers, 3,896 held the conclusion that man may contribute somewhat to global warming but how much is unknown. There were only forty-one (0.3%) papers that endorsed the view that human activity was very likely causing most of the global warming. And none of the papers speculated that a manmade catastrophe was pending.[24]

Before addressing the claims about radiative forcing and twelve years to Armageddon, let us look at the stakeholders in building these consensuses.

The Lindzen Model

Richard Lindzen is an atmospheric physicist who taught at M.I.T. for thirty years. Whether you agree or disagree with him, his approach to the set of stakeholders to the problem makes sense.[25]

1. Group 1: scientists who believe man’s burning of fossil fuels is the problem. These scientists are mostly associated with the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
2. Group 2: scientists who are skeptical of man being a problem. They see many other factors such as the sun, oceans, clouds, and orbital variations are understood well enough to draw conclusions.
3. Group 3: people who are not climate physicists
   1. Politicians
   2. Environmentalists
   3. Media
   4. Crony capitalists and others

According to Lindzen, the climate physicists in groups one and two agree on the following:[26]

1. The climate is always changing.
2. Carbon dioxide is a necessary greenhouse gas that should lead to some warming.
3. Carbon dioxide has been increasing since the “little ice age” in the nineteenth century.
4. Between 1800 and 2000 the global mean temperature has been increasing slightly and erratically by about one degree Celsius (1C).
   • But only since the 1960s has man’s greenhouse emissions been sufficient to play a role.
5. No confident prediction about future global mean temperature or its impact can be made.

Importantly, neither group one nor group two believe that man’s burning fossil fuels will lead to catastrophe. According to Lindzen, the only real disagreement is to what extent the burning of fossil fuels is affecting the climate.[27] The real problem is that no one knows what the catastrophe is nor when the final straw breaks the camel’s back.

More on Lindzen’s group 3

Politicians gain money and power by catering to fear. People contribute when they fear extreme loss. Complete death on the planet is the ultimate fear, so if that doesn’t drain pocket books, what will? We should not put too much stock in the notion that they actually believe what they are preaching. They will use anything that is successful at gaining power and separating you from the contents of your wallet. This is why James Freeman Clarke’s distinction between a politician who is thinking of the next election and a statesman thinking of the next generation is so important. We need to heed Franklin’s warning about ambition and avarice aligning. The system we have does not make it easy to draw the distinction; however, the fundamentally cynical view that all politicians are lying to us is not a bad default position. But, the American public is too easily seduced by the compliance principle of liking. Just because someone is pleasant does not mean he or she is nice. More importantly, just because you like someone does not mean that he or she is looking after your best interests.

Environmentalists get money in the same way that politicians do from this subject – fear. Unlike politicians, environmentalists are true believers. They are constantly reinforced by the compliance principle of social proof that their devotion to the idea that man is a destructive force within nature. These folks are convinced that they are right; however, their beliefs are grounded in emotion, not facts. They are also naïve. Most are either too young or too urban to understand nature in the way that rural people do, let alone how earlier generations of Americans understood it. Growing up in a modern urban community insolates one from the realities of nature. Michael Shellenberger is an example of someone who grew out of his naiveté.

If the motives of politicians are suspect, those of the media are known. Just like environmentalists, they are inculcated by compliance to social proof into the ideology of “climate change”. Like politicians, the media wants money, power, and headlines. Whereas politicians do what politicians do, the media is sticking its nose into the power game by only exposing one side’s viewpoint – and that is corrupt. There is a reason that the eleventh chapter in Hayek’s Road to Serfdom is entitled “The End of Truth”. No government can endure if the decision maker(s) are fed bad input data. Bad data includes qualified data that is presented as fact without the required qualifications to make a truth. A republic degenerates into a democracy, and a democracy will degenerate from rule by the people to some form of oligarchy.

 Lindzen does not enumerate academia in his group three, but he should. Like the media, academia needs to be unbiased for a healthy republic, with perhaps a little slant toward national patriotism. Without that, generations can grow up to hate their nation. That is a recipe for national failure. Ironically, national failure is exactly what socialists want. The fact that Marxism is being taught in schools should be an alarm that academia has become corrupted and has, in fact, produced the current biased media. There is further irony in that like politicians and the media, academia is money-hungry.

James Payne’s material illusion is being used just as effectively to waste your money on schools as well as political campaigns. By definition, if your money buys votes, the political system is corrupted – just as Franklin feared. As for buying more advertising time, there is a point of diminishing returns with regards to effectiveness. Likewise, schools waste an incredible amount of money on things that do not go toward effective education. Sports and extracurricular activities are important for a well-rounded education, but they need not be done at the level of a professional who is not funded by tax dollars.

Crony capitalists, like Solyndra, have jumped at the opportunity to gain financially from all the subsidies provided by governments around the globe. Government agencies benefit by getting increased portions of the national budget because it “needs further study”. As a result, “group 3” intersects with the first two groups. So, the question really becomes “who does not benefit from promoting the climate change agenda?”.

A Nobel Laureate’s View

Ivar Giaever is a Nobel Laureate in Physics who had a falling-out with the American Physical Society over the issue. Giaever claims that climate change is “pseudo-science”, which he defines as follows:

Begin with a hypothesis you want and only look for supporting information.

In other words, he considers it a religion. It is a violation of the scientific method. In a thirty-minute YouTube video, he lays out a compelling case for skepticism of a number of the claims made about global warming.[28] In particular, he eviscerates the “famous curve” used for supporting the fear and panic over climate change. He points out the following

• From 1860 to 2000, the temperature varied by very little: .8 Celsius (1.44 Fahrenheit)[29]
• He questions if the measurements are valid because of the sensors used
  • Thermometers were moved in 1800, 1900, 1950, and 2000
  • There are only eight sensors in the entire southern hemisphere
    • Data shows that Southern hemisphere is getting colder
    • Data shows that Northern hemisphere is getting warmer
  • CO2 is not pollution – it’s plant fuel
    • The big trees in Bad Schachen Bavaria are starving because the atmosphere used to have more carbon dioxide.
    • Historic statistics show that the temperature rises before CO2
      • He acknowledges a correlation, but he disputes which is the cause
      • This is an important point that Lindzen did not make
    • Greenland coast is melting, but inland ice is increasing (Norwegian)
    • Ocean level rising
      • ~50 feet in 8,000 years
      • 9 inches in 100 years
      • sea level has actually fallen over the Great Barrier Reef in last 5,000 years
        • we’ll get more corals if the sea does rise
      • More Spitzbergen Polar bears now because it is now illegal to hunt them
        • 1972: ~1,000
        • 2015: ~4,000

After resigning from the American Physical Society, a gentleman named Ilan Samson posed the following problem to Giaever:

Consider a really large room – twenty feet square by ten feet high. Imagine you wanted to create in this room the same carbon dioxide emission that all the cars in the world belch into the atmosphere during a whole year. How many matches would you need to burn, daily, weekly or in total over the whole year, to inflict on the big room what all the world’s evil cars do to our atmosphere in a year?

He used the estimate that there are approximately 800 million cars in the world. The answer ended up being that one match lit in the room would be equivalent to all the world’s car emissions into the atmosphere for three years. The point is that the atmosphere is much larger than one might think.

He poses one final question:

What is the optimal temperature of the earth?

He answers that “no one know, but it is not today’s temperature”. Notice that this conclusion is consistent with the fact that the climate is a complex system about which we know little.

Climate Computer Models

After reviewing all the data for climate change, it appears that the strongest evidence of pending catastrophe is derived from computer simulation. The argument for extinction of Polar Bears appears to be unraveling.[30] The potential for anthropogenic emissions causing imbalance in the climate seems reasonable; however, there are counter-arguments that it is outweighed by water vapor and atmospheric flow from the tropics.[31] I have written and debugged more than one computer simulation for companies like Digital Equipment (DEC) and Lockheed Martin, as well as government agencies like NASA and DoD. All simulations make simplifying assumptions and must be checked against reality. And then, the results must be taken with a grain of salt. Weather and climate projection are particularly detail-challenged.

In December of 2011, Dr. Judith Curry and P.J. Webster published an article entitled Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster for the American Meteorological Society. In the article, they describe the complexity of modeling climate and how imperfect the models are:[32]

Climate model complexity arises from the nonlinearity of the equations’ high dimensionality (millions of degrees of freedom) and the linking of multiple subsystems. Computer simulations of the complex climate system can be used to represent aspects of climate that are extremely difficult to observe, experiment with theories in a new way by enabling hitherto infeasible calculations, understand a system of equations that would otherwise be impenetrable, and explore the system to identify unexpected.

Model imperfection is a general term that describes our limited ability to simulate climate and is categorized here in terms of model inadequacy and model uncertainty. Model inadequacy reflects our limited understanding of the climate system, inadequacies of numerical solutions employed in computer models, and the fact that no model can be structurally identical to the actual system.

In other words, there is no model that is guaranteed to accurately predict the future. The best we can do is to project our best guesses with computer models that are highly parameterized. Those parameters are tuned to fit the temperature increases in the early twentieth century.[33] To better understand how much voodoo is really going on, consider a quote from Frédéric Hourdin’s The Art and Science of Climate Model Tuning[34]

One can imagine changing a parameter that is known to affect the sensitivity, keeping both this parameter and the ECS in the anticipated acceptable range and retuning the model otherwise with the same strategy toward the same targets.

That is, they are tinkering. In the world of mathematics, this is called “begging the proof”. That process can take various forms, but the climate models have been around long enough to sanity check them to actual temperatures. There are thirty-two different United Nations climate models, done by various countries around the world. There is only one model that has not been seriously off the mark from reality since the 1980s.[35] All of the others have a high slope for global warming, as shown by the line labeled “Model Runs in 21 Groupings” on Figure 7. The actual observations are labeled “Observations”. Clearly, the models were above reality almost from the start, but they really started to diverge from the observations about 1995. In 2015, the models projected an average increase of one full degree Celsius, while 0.4 degree was observed.

Figure 7 Computer Models vs. Observations

A prevalent term used in the computing world is “GIGO”. It stands for “Garbage In. Garbage Out”. Computer simulations are no better than either the programmer(s) (and those who develop the algorithms) or the data that is fed into them. The only conclusion I can draw is that the current arguments for imminent catastrophe are unsupported. The logical conclusion is that they are driven by money and power.

What are the consequences?

So, how bad are the consequences of climate change? The extent of our technology has not prevented natural disasters, but it helps reduce the impact on our lives.[36] We will have time to adapt – as man always has. Higher ground is always an alternative. Rising sea levels could pose a problem, but the city of New Orleans is actually below sea level in a number of places now. If sea levels do rise significantly, it will not be like the “great flood”.

It is inevitable that there will be another ice age, but glaciers move slowly. Man-made carbon dioxide might hasten an ice age by a few years, but there is no evidence it will affect its severity. Ice ages come on gradually, and we will be better able to cope with one than humans during the previous ice age because of our technology.

What Can Be Done?

If we accept that we need or want to do something about climate change, what can be done? Can a radical plan work without causing mass death? As with all past totalitarian regimes, mass death is almost assured if we give the state more power over our lives and give away our rights as Americans. We would be throwing away the “good life” as described by Aristotle for mere existence.

The central problem is that no one has identified a quantity that would have a profound impact because no point of catastrophe can be established. But reasonable things can be done that will probably have more positive effects than proposals concocted from emotion. And who doesn’t want a healthy planet?

Michael Shellenberger is an environmentalist who Time magazine named a “Hero of the Environment”.[37] He cofounded Breakthrough Institute and has taken a measured look at the situation.[38] His analysis appropriately considers the balance between costs and benefits of various approaches to the problem, with the assumption that climate change must be addressed. He has concluded that neither solar nor wind energies are capable of replacing fossil fuels to maintain our modern life style.[39] He has determined that neither one has the energy density to replace fossil fuels effectively. They actually have a more negative impact on the environment than fossil fuels. Likewise, they are unreliable because the wind does not always blow, and the sun is not always shining. Windmills kill really big, rare birds. Solar is totally ineffective at night – as well as in cloudy states.

His conclusion is that even with the few nuclear power plant accidents in history, the lives saved by having adequate, reliable power to heat homes far outpaces those lost in accidents. He has shed his fear of nuclear power, and points to France as an existence proof of the positive of nuclear over other forms of energy. When France caved to Germany’s insistence at reducing nuclear power, the results were poor.

These are compelling arguments.

 

[1] Ritchie, Hannah, and Max Roser. “Natural Disasters.” Our World in Data. June 03, 2014. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://ourworldindata.org/natural-disasters.

Crawford, Charles. “The Modern Hospital: Using Technology to Save Lives.” Lifehack. May 01, 2016. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://www.lifehack.org/396105/the-modern-hospital-using-technology-to-save-lives.

[2] College, Hillsdale. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Global Warming.” YouTube. November 11, 2014. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZlICdawHRA.

[3] “Polar Bear.” WWF. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear.

[4] News, KUSI. “The Experts Explain the Global Warming Myth: John Coleman.” YouTube. February 05, 2010. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA3OA_2S4QY.

[5] Monckton, Lord Christopher. “Debunking the Climate Consensus.” YouTube. July 06, 2018. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uma-w6caJhY.

[6] ALI SUNDERMIER, Business Insider. “The Sun Will Destroy Earth Sooner Than You Might Think.” ScienceAlert. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://www.sciencealert.com/watch-here-s-how-the-sun-will-eventually-destroy-earth.

[7] “World of Change: Global Temperatures.” NASA. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/decadaltemp.php.

[8] News, KUSI. “The Experts Explain the Global Warming Myth: John Coleman.” YouTube. February 05, 2010. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA3OA_2S4QY.

[9] Taylor, David, PhD. The End Of The Sun. Accessed April 07, 2019. http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~infocom/The Website/end.html.

[10] “World of Change: Global Temperatures.” NASA. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/decadaltemp.php.

[11] this may be hyperbole, but it makes a valid point.

[12] Sharp, Tim. “Earth’s Atmosphere: Composition, Climate & Weather.” Space.com. October 13, 2017. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.space.com/17683-earth-atmosphere.html.

[13] “World of Change: Global Temperatures.” NASA. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/decadaltemp.php.

[14] “Main Sources of Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” What’s Your Impact. July 08, 2017. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/carbon-dioxide-emissions.

[15] Metric ton = 2204 pounds

[16] metric ton = 2204 pounds

[17] “Main Sources of Carbon Dioxide Emissions.” What’s Your Impact. July 08, 2017. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://whatsyourimpact.org/greenhouse-gases/carbon-dioxide-emissions.

[18] Dunbar, Brian. “What’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate?” NASA. March 09, 2015. Accessed April 07, 2019. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html.

[19] Shine, K. P. “Radiative Forcing of Climate.” IPCC. Accessed March 31, 2019. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapter_02-1.pdf. Table 2-2. pg. 52.

[20] Diger. “Radiative Forcing.” Physics Stack Exchange. May 01, 1969. Accessed March 31, 2019. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/419461/radiative-forcing.

[21] “The Consensus Project.” The Consensus Project. Accessed March 24, 2019. http://theconsensusproject.com/.

[22] “Crichton on “consensus Science”.” Aristotle The Geek. October 27, 2009. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://aristotlethegeek.wordpress.com/2008/09/12/crichton-on-consensus-science/.

[23] Cialdini, Robert B. Influence: Science and Practice. Pearson Education, 2009. pg. 232.

[24] Monckton, Christopher. “Debunking the Climate Consensus.” YouTube. July 06, 2018. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uma-w6caJhY.

[25] PragerU. “Climate Change: What Do Scientists Say?” YouTube. April 18, 2016. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwqIy8Ikv-c.

[26] Ibid.

[27] Ibid.

[28] 1000frolly. “Nobel Laureate in Physics; “Global Warming Is Pseudoscience”.” YouTube. December 17, 2015. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXxHfb66ZgM.

[29] this is essentially the same as item 4 under stakeholders

[30] Crockford, Susan J. “Polarbearscience.” Polarbearscience. Accessed April 15, 2019. https://polarbearscience.com/.

[31] Limited, Foxxweb Design. “Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Lacks Power to Cause Dangerous Global Warming.” Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide and Global Warming. Accessed April 16, 2019. http://www.anthropogenic-carbon-dioxide-global-warming.net/index.htm.

[32] Curry, Judith, PhD. “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster.” AMS Journals. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://journals.ametsoc.org/ doi/pdf/10.1175/2011BAMS3139.1.

[33] Michaels, Patrick, PhD. “The Truth about Global Warming.” YouTube. October 21, 2018. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA5sGtj7QKQ.

[34] Hourdin, Frédéric. “The Art and Science of Climate Model Tuning.” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-15-00135.1.

[35] Michaels, Patrick, PhD. “The Truth about Global Warming.” YouTube. October 21, 2018. Accessed April 08, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA5sGtj7QKQ.

[36] “Why Natural Disasters Are More Expensive-But Less Deadly.” U.S. News & World Report. Accessed April 16, 2019. https://money.usnews.com/money/business-economy/articles/2010/03/24/why-natural-disasters-are-more-expensivebut-less-deadly.

[37] Walsh, Bryan. “Heroes of the Environment 2008.” Time. September 24, 2008. Accessed April 16, 2019. http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1841778_1841779_1841804,00.html

[38] “Why Renewables Can’t Save the Planet.” Quillette. March 07, 2019. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://quillette.com/2019/02/27/why-renewables-cant-save-the-planet/.

[39] Talks, TEDx. “Why Renewables Can’t save the Planet | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxDanubia.” YouTube. January 04, 2019. Accessed March 24, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-yALPEpV4w.