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Where The Sun Don’t Shine: Climate Alarmists’ Thinking

‘We’re building,” reads the headline of an op-ed written by Sen. Bernie Sanders for the British Guardian, “Congress’ strongest-ever climate bill.” Why? “Because the planet is in peril.” If so, it’s not because of human greenhouse gas production, says one group of researchers.

But scientific findings are no deterrent to predatory politicians. Backed by nothing more than a bloated certitude, the Vermont socialist declares “the planet will face enormous and irreversible damage” if “the United States, China and the rest of the world do not act extremely aggressively to cut carbon emissions.”

Man-made carbon dioxide emissions – the political left’s go-to whipping boy. Human CO2 emissions, in the febrile minds of Sanders and other members of the climate doomsday cult, is responsible for a nearly uncountable number of ills: hotter temperatures, more potent storms, wildfires, melting ice caps and glaciers, armed conflict, migration, poverty, famine, drought, floods, species extinction, weeds, pests … and a host of conditions and events so absurd no half-rational person would ever think of them.

Virulent though it might be, Trump Derangement Syndrome is hardly the mental health menace that Carbon Obsession Disorder has been for decades

Occasionally alarmists will point out that methane is a greenhouse gas. Yet their fixation has long been on CO2. But let’s be clear: Other factors impact climate and temperature, and few can match the power of the sun (which Democrats should be confident in, since they worship at the altar of the solar panel). According to the researchers who recently published a peer-reviewed paper in ​​Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, whose value we’ve assessed, “is grounded in narrow and incomplete data about the sun’s total solar irradiance.”

Using different datasets than those cited by the IPCC – which chooses its datasets based on their potential to ratchet up fear – the authors concluded “that the global temperature changes since the mid-19th century have been mostly due to natural cycles, chiefly long-term changes in the energy emitted by the sun.”

One of the authors, Richard C. Willson, a NASA science team leader, says straight out that our “climate is determined primarily by the radiation” produced by the sun. He also clears up some of the misconceptions the alarmists have been spreading.

“Contrary to the findings of the IPCC,” he says, “scientific observations in recent decades have demonstrated that there is no ‘climate change crisis.’ The concept that’s devolved into the failed CO2 anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) hypothesis is based on the flawed predictions of imprecise 1980s vintage global circulation models that have failed to match observational data both since and prior to their fabrication.” 

Of course we’ve seen the claims that the sun can’t possibly be causing the planet to warm because the solar energy that’s been reaching us has been less intense over recent decades. So who is correct? The carbon-phobes? Or the scientists who believe the sun continues to affect our climate and are no less reliable than the IPCC researchers ?

The conclusion we can’t escape is that climate science, like all other science, is not settled, and to argue it is is downright unscientific. But as Ronan Connolly, the study’s lead author, says, “having a consensus view” that man’s CO2 emissions are causing harm “makes things easier for politicians.”

Which is why the Green New Dealers can disgorge “Congress’ strongest-ever climate bill,” and never have to pay politically or personally for the damage they do to the economy and our fought-for liberty. Until more Westerners catch on to the left’s “science” game, Sanders and his axis of alarmists will keep taking us down their dark road.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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I & I Editorial Board

The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

15 comments

  • Let’s analyze the climate :
    -Drought and forest fires in the Western USA-cause climate change -Torrential rains, floods, tornadoes, Mid and Eastern USA-cause climate change
    -Torrential rains, floods in Europe-cause climate change
    -Drought in Australia- cause climate change
    it is, has been and always will be Mother Nature at work and humans have no way to change it.
    Perhaps climatists could explain the lack of humans’ role in the historic cyclical climate history of the earth over the last 12,000 years which is well known, starting with the end of the last great Ice Age and in the last 1000 years the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice age of the Middle Ages, the warm dust bowl of the 1930-40s, the cold period of the 1950-70s and the warm period of the 1980s-1990s. It doesn’t take computer modeling to study the past, actually today’s computer models cannot model the past’s history,
    The IPCC totally ignored Germany’s effort to go green by shutting down their CO2 free nuclear powered stations, shutting down the coal powered stations and depend on wind and solar. That was (is)a total failure. The answer import natural gas from Russia.

  • What is exactly is or was the earth’s “normal’ climate? When was it, the ‘Great Ice Age” which ended 10,000 years ago, the ‘medieval warm period’ which lasted 500 years, the ‘little ice age ‘of the Middle Ages, the 1930s warm period or the 1950/60/70 cold period which followed? When did the earth ever experience a ‘normal’ period as its climate is effected by the earth’s distance, tilt and wobble as it orbits the sun and the sun’s solar periods.

    • “Normal” for now is what allows our current ecosystems to survive and flourish. Species can often adapt to slow changes by migration, and sometimes by natural selection. Rapid changes are harder to adapt to. Plants often can’t migrate fast enough. Animals can’t migrate if they need plants that don’t exist in the new region.

  • It is worthwhile to note the atmospheric levels of CO2 (see NOAA data) continued to rise throughout 2020 despite millions of flights not taking place and millions of cars taken off the roadways worldwide. The drop in CO2 generation by humans far exceeded anything the greenies asked for and still the CO2 rose. Climate change in all its forms is a hustle designed to part people with the fruits of their labor. It is not human caused!

    • From Nature:

      COVID curbed carbon emissions in 2020 — but not by much
      Despite sharp drops early in the pandemic, global emissions of carbon dioxide picked up in the second half of the year, new data show.

      After rising steadily for decades, global carbon dioxide emissions fell by 6.4%, or 2.3 billion tonnes, in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic squelched economic and social activities worldwide, according to new data on daily fossil fuel emissions. The decline is significant — roughly double Japan’s yearly emissions — but smaller than many climate researchers expected given the scale of the pandemic, and is not expected to last once the virus is brought under control.

      The United States contributed the most to the global dip, with a nearly 13% decrease in its emissions, due mostly to a sharp decline in vehicle transportation that began with lockdowns in March and continued as the pandemic escalated at the end of the year. Globally, the energy sector most affected by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions was aviation, where emissions fell 48% from their 2019 total.

  • There have always been a few scientists who disagree with the vast majority on climate change. However, scientific journals require peer review, and most denialist claims are debunked on review.
    Fortunately for the minority, there is a Chinese journal willing to print denialist articles: Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics, formerly the Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

  • We must never forget that when science and politics collide science always looses! Think Energy, COVID and so many more.

  • Lucy of Charlie Brown Fame to Linus: “Liberal scientist can prove that climate change is real”.
    Linus to Lucy: “They can’t even tell the difference between boys and girls”.

  • On the concern of climate change us layman are left to defer to scientific opinion regarding its cause: we can’t very well take the consideration up ourselves in looking over data, scrutinizing the computer models toward our own conclusion. So it’s a consideration of credibility and esteem of scientists in the field, and moreover in the absence of an overwhelming consensus of those scientists the question arises: What probability to the theory of human-caused climate change is needed to warrant the cost and effort of worldwide cooperative transition to green energies? What is the cost/benefit to doing this? How significant are the added benefits to transitioning from a source of energy that is a pollutant and is finite?

    That the scientific organization that published the research paper that is the basis of this editorial – Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics (formerly Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics) – is apparently an organ of the Chinese government would seem to be worth noting by the editors here to the credibility of the work, but I & I, you be you.

  • IPCC Third Assessment Report
    Chapter 14
    Section 14.2.2.2
    Last paragraph:

    “In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”

    This information was not included in the Summary Report for Policymakers given to the press and public.
    This information was not included in the Summary Report for Policymakers given to the press and public.

    If the climate is indeed a coupled non-linear chaotic system (who can doubt the IPCC) then there is no rational or scientific basis to make a definitive statement about a future state of the climate.

    At this point the coupled non-linear chaotic nature of the climate makes scientific observations academically interesting but individually they have no relevance in predicting the future state of the climate. The climate is a system which means the relationships among these observations are what is important not the observations themselves.

    All the public discourse regarding the future state of the climate has been based on the false premise that the current climate models are predicting the future state of the climate when in fact the models are merely projecting these states.

    Predictions are the purview of science. Model projections can only agree with predictions when the models duplicate the real world which the IPCC states is impossible to do.

  • Eco-Freaks tend to think that if we all dont return to living Primative Life we and sacrifice a few Children and Virgins to their Earth Gods we will all be destroyed

    • Your stereotypes just show your disconnect from reality. They have nothing to do with the majority who believe in protecting the environment.

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