A Convenient Culprit

Let me try explaining things one more time.

Yesterday at a party I was engaged in conversation with a well-educated man. The subject of global warming came up and I asked him what percent of our atmosphere was carbon dioxide? He answered, "3 or 4 percent." When I told him he was 100 times too high he was shocked. "You mean it is 0.04%?" I answered in the affirmative and added that plants on Earth are on a starvation diet of CO2 relative to the past when levels were ten or more times higher ... see Earthguide Article -- the source of the above chart. And levels were even two times higher when, exactly where we were then sitting, 650 thousand years ago we would have been covered by ice a mile thick.

The global-warming mania around the world exists because of ignorance ... ignorance of history and ignorance of science. Yes, according to recent satellite data (ground-based temperature measurements are now useless), our planet's temperature has increased a bit during our Industrial Age with the burning of fossil fuels. But this has only increased CO2 levels by at most 10 parts per million (+33%) over the last 150 years ... a mere bagatelle. And global temperatures have not increased at all for the last 17 years. This is embarrassingly known by scientists as "the pause" and is only discussed sotta voce. Politicians who claim that we are now hotter than ever are lying ... because they are conveniently basing these claims on ground-level measurements which are seriously biased by the recent effects of urbanization ... or, even worse, they are using altered raw data ... a scientific taboo.

My sincere hope is that, over the coming election year, politicians who wring their hands over global warming or climate change or climate extremes need to be asked the question I asked my party friend ... and, if they answer incorrectly, should be laughed off the stage. If they get it right, then should be asked what five other things might ever contribute to our planet's warming (like back when the Ice Age retreated)? And, if they can't name at least five other things (hints: solar cycles, slight changes in Earth's orbit, wiggles in the Earth's tilt, altering ocean currents, atmospheric particulates from vulcanization, methane level changes, water vapor changes, changes in our solar system's place in the Milky Way, tectonic plate shifts, any many more), they should again be ridiculed. If they can list five or more things, then they should be asked why carbon dioxide is then the primary suspect? This question can only be truthfully answered by the admission that it is the only convenient culprit that man might possibly control ... obviously a reducto absurdum and shows how unscientific the current climate science is  ... at which point this pol's eyes should brighten and his/her mind be changed ... otherwise he/she is a charlatan.

Wouldn't that be a seminal moment?