“New computer modeling suggests the Arctic Ocean may be nearly ice-free in the summertime as early as 2014″.

– Al Gore at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009“

“What we are seeing around the world is what scientists have predicted.  They’re not telling us that we may see global climate change. We are seeing it, and we’re seeing the impacts now.”

-John Kerry in Mexico City, May 21, 2014

 

In the first part of this series, I delineated six statements which must all be true for the United States to justify taking severe action to combat global warming:

• Global temperatures are rising.
• Carbon emissions from humans are why global temperatures are rising.
• The global warming will cause catastrophic environmental consequences.
• It is the proper role of the United States government to enact regulations on private companies and individuals to protect the environment.
• The actions of the United States government will effectively prevent these consequences.
• The evidence supporting all of the above is so overwhelming that we should no longer debate or delay.

Today we will look at the first statement:  Global temperatures are rising.

In 2003 the Union of Concerned Scientists put out the following temperature projections graph:

This graph shows slowly rising temperatures in the early 2000’s which will then accelerate in the mid part of the decade.

Here is a graph from NASA showing global temperature changes since 1880:

This graph from NASA shows data since 1996.

These graphs shows that global temperatures rose steadily from approximately 1960 till shortly before 2000.  Since then, global temperatures have been flat.  ABC News reported in September 2013, “The average global temperature hasn’t risen in 15 years, a deviation from climatologists computer-simulated predictions.”   Global warming theory backers state that fifteen years isn’t long enough to judge the trend, that it needs to be at least thirty years.  Scientists also theorize that the oceans are absorbing more heat which is causing the land-based temperature readings to not reflect the full story.  This may or may not be true.  It is just a theory.  The big point is that this was reflected in the predictions.   ABC went on to say:

The researchers’ problem: Their climate models should have been able to predict the sudden flattening in the temperature curve. Offering explanations after the fact for why temperatures haven’t increased in so long only serves to raise doubts as to how reliable the forecasts really are.

The key point here isn’t to argue whether or not the last fifteen years of flat temperature disproves the global warming hypothesis or can be accommodated by this hypothesis.  I certainly don’t have the expertise to pass any judgment here.  What I can say is that the predictions were wrong and we are being told we must take significant action based upon predictions .When Gore made his ice-free Arctic prediction as early as 2014, he did use the word “may” and did not definitively predict this lack of ice would be complete by 2014, if there was any validity to his claim, then there should have been some significant progress toward arctic balminess by now.  There has been none.

When Einstein proposed his theory of relativity, he said that if his theory was correct, then certain predictions that could be observed only during an eclipse would prove valid.  If the observations did not match his predictions, then his theory was invalid.  Years later researchers mounted an expedition to Antarctica to observe an eclipse there.  The observations matched Einstein’s predictions.   When global warming predictions don’t match the observed facts, why do so many scientists choose to ignore or excuse this?

Are global temperatures rising?

I don’t think we really have any idea.

 All Global Warming Posts
Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 1

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 2: Are global temperatures rising?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 3: Do carbon emissions from humans cause global temperatures to rise?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 4: Will global warming will cause catastrophic environmental consequences?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 5: Is it the proper role of the United States government to enact regulations on private companies and individuals to protect the environment?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 6: Can the actions of the United States government effectively prevent these consequences?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 7: Is the evidence supporting global warming so overwhelming that we should no longer debate or delay?

Resources:

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/patrick-goodenough/kerry-says-wrongly-some-temps-week-broke-every-record-s-ever-been

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/14/gore-polar-ice-may-vanish_n_391632.html

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/projections-of-climate-change.html

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

http://abcnews.go.com/International/warming-plateau-climatologists-face-inconvenient-truth/story?id=20375601

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so, and I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

-Barack Obama at Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

-George Will commenting on Obama’s Copenhagen pledge

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

-Carl Sagan in Cosmos, dervied from earlier statements by Marcello Truzzi and David Hume

At the Climage Change Conference in Copenhagen in 2009, Barack Obama pledged the United States to drastically reduce carbon emissions.  Obama is the most prominent of those who say that unless we take drastic action, we will suffer devastating climactic changes including rising seas and dramatically increased hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters.  While it is theoretically possible that we could make these reductions solely based upon improvements in renewable energy technologies such as solar and wind, at the current time there is no reason to believe that these technologies will progress anywhere close to the point that these advances alone will allow us to make these reductions.  This would then require Americans to dramatically reduce energy use which would severely curtail both the economy and our lifestyles.

If the climactic devastation consequences are real, then we all need to make these sacrifices, but I agree with Carl Sagan’s statement that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Barack Obama and others claim that the debate is over, that we have all the evidence we need.  Are they right?   Is the debate truly over?

The argument by those convinced that global warming will lead to climactic devastation can be broken down into the following statements:

• Global temperatures are rising.
• Carbon emissions from humans are why global temperatures are rising.
• The global warming will cause catastrophic environmental consequences.
• It is the proper role of the United States government to enact regulations on private companies and individuals to protect the environment.
• The actions of the United States government will effectively prevent these consequences.
• The evidence supporting all of the above is so overwhelming that we should no longer debate or delay.

For us to take the proposed drastic actions to reduce our carbon emissions, every one of these statements needs to be true.  In this series, I will look at each of these statements in turn.  I will say now that I agree with at least one of them.  I hope that breaking down the global warming issue in this manner will help clarify the issue.

All Global Warming Posts
Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 1

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 2: Are global temperatures rising?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 3: Do carbon emissions from humans cause global temperatures to rise?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 4: Will global warming will cause catastrophic environmental consequences?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 5: Is it the proper role of the United States government to enact regulations on private companies and individuals to protect the environment?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 6: Can the actions of the United States government effectively prevent these consequences?

Global Warming: A Step by Step Look At the Key Arguments – Part 7: Is the evidence supporting global warming so overwhelming that we should no longer debate or delay?

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/18/obama-speech-copenhagen-climate-summit

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120403073.html