Disclaimer: Both of us appreciate the fact that the media exists to spread useful information to people on a daily basis. However, when there are bias and poorly conducted journalism, it needs to be addressed seriously.
Introduction
Time and time again, media outlets and our elected officials misrepresent various social, economic, and/or environmental issues to boost their ratings, gain political power, and/or create mayhem and hysteria among their viewers and constituents, respectively.
The climate change debate is no exception, as the issue is constantly conveyed to the public eye as a ‘crisis,’¹ (Figure 1) when in fact, good scientific analysis and data say otherwise.
H.L. Mencken said it best; “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”²
If one can exercise power, then that person has the ability to control you through your actions.
Agree to Disagree
While many people have the perception that there isn’t any common ground on climate change, this simply isn’t true. Dr. Judith Curry, a climatologist noted that there are a few key things most ‘skeptics’ and ‘alarmists’ agree on.³
- Global average temperatures are warmer than they were 100 years ago.
- Man-made fossil fuel combustion has contributed more or less to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
- Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and water vapor, should cause some warming.
However, there is widespread disagreement and differing opinions on these two things…
- How much warming we have seen is or isn’t a result from man-made processes (including urbanization and land use) and what exactly causes the climate to change.
- How much more warming, if any we will see observe century (considering lower tropospheric temperatures have plateaued since the very strong El Niño of 1998) (Figure 2).⁴
Disagreement is actually good for science because it opens the door to new ideas, debate, and research. Without debate, advances in science would simply not occur.
Name-Calling Tactics
One of our biggest pet peeves in the entire climate change debate is the constant use of name-calling, and this name-calling primarily comes from those on who preach AGW.
If you’re skeptical of the ‘climate crisis,’ you’re shunned and labeled as a ‘climate [change] denier.’
This use of name calling is not only unreasonable, but it also couldn’t be further from the truth. Nobody I have ever met or talked to denies the fact climate change itself exists in natural form.
Climate has been in a state of constant change for 4.5 billion years, and it will continue to do so in the future.
Even those who have openly stated that global warming is the biggest scam and hoax ever, such as Donald Trump (Figure 3),⁵ don’t really deny climate change – they’re usually just referring to anthropogenic climate change.
Misleading Information From the MSM and Politicians
Mother Jones, a left-leaning news website apparently had nothing better to do with their website’s bandwidth, than compile a list of every single one of President Trump’s Tweets mentioning “global warming” or “climate change,” calling them “insane” (Figure 4).⁵
In all fairness, Mother Jones should have also done an op-ed on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘tornado rant’ on Instagram last Thursday, May 23.
What she said on her story made her “end of the world”⁶ claim believable… (just a joke, don’t take me seriously).
1. AOC Has A Tornado Rant About Tornadoes
Last week, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to her Instagram story (Figure 5) stating that tornadoes are getting worse due to climate change: “The climate crisis is real y’all… guess we’re at casual tornadoes in growing regions of the country?”⁷ ⁸
First and foremost, tornadoes are not casual. Most tornadoes are spawned from highly organized thunderstorms known as supercells, and as a matter of fact, most thunderstorms don’t even produce them (see the tropics for instance).⁹ ¹⁰
As Dr. Roy Spencer of UAH and Joe Bastardi of Weather Bell Analytics have been saying for years,¹⁰ ¹¹ one of the key components of tornado outbreaks are the ‘clashing’ of warm and cool air masses.
When there is a lack of ‘clashing’ – as such has been the case in recent decades¹² (Figure 6) due to predominately warmer springs – tornado outbreaks and thus violent tornadoes (EF4-EF5) become more infrequent.
Because of the lack of clashing, wind shear is inhibited, which would otherwise be vital for tornadogenesis.¹⁰ The end result of this setup is a decrease in violent tornadoes, which has indeed been observed over the past 69 years.¹³
In fact, last year was the first year on record with no violent tornadoes (Figure 7). This totally destroys AOC’s theory.
2. The New York Times Ignores Weather History
Two summers ago, The New York Times stated¹⁴ (Figure 8) that extremely hot summers are becoming increasingly common, and that it’s not our “imaginations.”
They say, “Extraordinary hot summers – the kind that was virtually unheard-of in the 1950s – have become commonplace.
Had the authors of that piece done any actual research, then they would have known that summertime temperatures used to be much hotter in the U.S. prior to the 1980s.
Raw NOAA data¹⁵ shows that the percent of days above 90, 95, and 100°F have been plummeting for over 100 years, and the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s, without a doubt, had the worst summers on record in the U.S.
3. The Des Moines Register and Elizabeth Warren Fail to Address Iowa Flooding Seriously
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat running for President in 2020, visited Iowa this past spring to address the flooding that was widespread across the state.¹⁶
She stated, “I’m very worried about seeing the floods again. Climate change is real, the problem is urgent and we are running out of time.”¹⁶
The entire problem with her statement is that recent flooding in Iowa had nothing to do with climate change. In fact, it was ‘just the weather.’
February, March, and April of this year were among the coldest on record across the western 2/3 of the U.S., especially the Northern Plains.¹⁷
Temperature departures from normal were a good three to six degrees below average in Iowa, which meant that the ground was frozen from both the winter and first half of spring.¹⁸
With the two large storm systems that rolled through the region in March and April dropping a nice, solid snowfall and rain, the combination of frozen ground and melting snow meant that the water had nowhere to run off to, thus creating the flooding.¹⁸
In Summary…
In each scenario shown above, it is clearly evident that both journalists at media outlets and politicians have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to climate science, simply because they are too ignorant to look back at the past and look at statistical data that derails their hysteria train.
And perhaps they purposefully don’t look at the data in order to gain power and control over the American people.
These politicians are trying to implement policies that would put intense regulations on fossil fuel companies and the American people. If they can implement these policies, then that’s one more thing they can control.
While I’m all for renewable energy (if it were sustainable, dependable, and effective), fossil fuels are our ‘way of life.’ Without them, we’d suffer consequences far greater than has ever been known to man.
It’s important we educate the youth about the non-mainstream view of climate change because our weather history and actual statistics are important for not only setting the record straight but for our country’s well being.
REFERENCES
[1] Sullivan, Kate. “Bernie Sanders says climate change is an ‘existential crisis.'” CNN. February 25, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/bernie-sanders-climate-change-existential-crisis/index.html.
[2] Mencken, H.L. “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” BrainyQuote. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_l_mencken_143263.
[3] Steele, Jim. “Dr. Judith Curry and Dr. Patrick Moore demolish Michael Mann in climate debate!” A Walk on the Natural Side. June 12, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. http://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2018/06/dr-judith-currys-debates-climate-change.html.
[4] “UAH Version 6.0 with Trendline.” Wood for Trees. Accessed May 30, 2019. http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah6/plot/uah6/trend.
[5] Schulman, Jeremy. “Every Insane Thing Donald Trump Has Said About Global Warming.” Mother Jones. December 12, 2018. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/12/trump-climate-timeline/.
[6] Shorts, TheDC. YouTube. January 22, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHk8nn0nw18.
[7] Fredericks, Bob. “Meteorologist takes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to task about climate change message.” The New York Post. May 24, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://nypost.com/2019/05/24/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-chided-by-dc-meteorologist-about-climate-change-message/.
[8] Bastasch, Michael. “‘It’s Just the Weather’: Meteorologist Fact-Checks Ocasio-Cortez on Climate Change.” The Daily Caller. May 23, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/23/ocasio-cortez-weather-fact-check/.
[9] “Thunderstorm Hazards – Tornadoes.” National Weather Service – JetStream. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/tornado.
[10] Bastardi, Joe. “Some cold hard facts on tornado activity.” CFACT. May 23, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.cfact.org/2019/05/23/some-cold-hard-facts-on-tornado-activity/.
[11] Spencer, Roy. “Roy Spencer: Why so many tornadoes this year? It’s not what AOC, Bernie Sanders (or maybe even you) think.” FOX News. May 29, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/roy-spencer-tornadoes-ohio-ocasio-cortez-sanders.
[12] ERSL: PSD: US Climate Division Maps. March to May 2008-2018. Accessed May 30, 2019.
[13] Livingston, Ian. “2018 will be the first year with no violent tornadoes in the United States.” The Washington Post. December 26, 2018. May 30, 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2018/12/26/will-be-first-year-with-no-violent-tornadoes-united-states/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.8eb032ca52a1.
[14] Popovich, Nadja and Pearce, Adam. “It’s Not Your Imagination. Summers Are Getting Hotter.” The New York Times. July 28, 2017. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/28/climate/more-frequent-extreme-summer-heat.html.
[15] Heller, Tony. “UNHIDING THE DECLINE FOR WINDOWS.” The Deplorable Climate Science Blog. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://realclimatescience.com/unhiding-the-decline-for-windows/.
[16] Norvell, Kim. “Farmers should be part of the solution to climate change, Elizabeth Warren says in Iowa.” Des Moines Register. May 3, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2019/05/03/iowa-caucus-election-2020-elizabeth-warren-climate-change-farmers-flooding-missouri-river/1094532001/.
[17] ACIS Climate Maps. High Plains Regional Climate Center. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://hprcc.unl.edu/maps.php?map=ACISClimateMaps.
[18] Hassan, Adeel. “Why Is There Flooding in Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin?” The New York Times. May 18, 2019. Accessed May 30, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/us/nebraska-flooding-facts.html
“Man-made fossil fuel combustion has contributed more or less to the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.” This also is not necessarily true. Depending on your source, man contributes 2 to 4% of the carbon dioxide emitted each year. It seems very unlikely that such a small percentage could be a factor for increasing carbon dioxide.
Most of the MSM are scientifically illiterate . The promoters of the world’s largest scam know it and exploit it . The MSM can appear virtuous by lining up with the promoters because most in the MSM are liberal globalist . . The more regulation , the bigger government and more red tape the better .
If your whole service offer consists wiping out whole forests for a 15 minute product you are going to play ball . Why wouldn’t you want to sound virtuous
and keep doing what you have always done ? No ?
Then why haven’t most of the big papers just stopped producing a newspaper and gone !00% electronic ? They would rather appear to be deeply concerned even bullying but carry on hoping someone will do their switch over for them or not at all .
I agree with everyone’s comments to this point. Global warming/climate change is the invention of UN/Globalists. There is no doubt it’s all about global governance—-
don’t think it has any connection to science. If you think it’s science you’ve lost the argument.
Just a thought…. if tornadoes are produced by warm humid air meeting cold air, and considering global warming’s role, shouldn’t we be looking at where they occur. If tornado alley moved further north, that might be significant. This year’s crop of April – May twisters is where we expect them to be. Seems to me that northern twisters are late July – August phenomena. If anything is happening, it’s that the colder northern air is more persistent than normal.
“Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and water vapor, should cause some warming.”
This is an invalid assumption. All climate models have daytime only and are flat earth, no less. Such gases, correctly called “radiative gases,” have no effect as they are saturated with IR and absorbing and emitting IR constantly and thus having no effect. They do not warm the atmosphere. In fact, no gas at any concentration can warm the atmosphere
It is at night that these gases convert kinetic energy (heat) in the atmosphere to IR, which is radiated in all directions. With no solar energy input, these gases convert in one direction only, heat to IR radiation. IR downward is reflected back upward, as the surface is warmer than the air. This is also why these gases cannot warm Earths surface during the day, as the surface is ALWAYS hotter than the air and any downwelling IR would be reflected back upward.
IR going upward is lost to space. This effect is why the air chills so quickly after sundown and why small breezes kick up so quickly in the moving shadows of scudding clouds on a sunny day. They are very effective when not saturated. If anything, these gases cool the plant at night.
“Greenhouse gas” was a term created to house junk science form the 19th century that has never been proven or confirmed.
The New York Pravda and Lizard Warren the nuts they just wont stop falling from the Green Nut Tree