Following up on their complaint about Democrats’ lying about President Biden’s condition, the editors of the Washington Examiner follow up with a complaint about lies with respect to the climate:
Climate change is real. The world’s average temperature is rising. It is just not rising as fast as Democrats claim and is not causing the damage Democrats say it is.
Take Biden’s statement about heat, deaths, and extreme weather events. Not one claim in that paragraph is true. In the U.S., extreme cold kills twice the number of people as extreme heat. Internationally, the numbers are even more stark, with extreme cold claiming nine times as many victims as extreme heat.
Turning to “extreme weather events,” hurricane frequency and intensity have not increased since 1900. Floods have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1950, and tornadoes have not increased in frequency or intensity since 1950 either.
I wish they were devoting that kind of attention to how the Republicans are lying as well.
My own view about climate change is that I think that climate change is a risk but not an issue by which I mean that is something which needs to be considered but is not an emergency. Furthermore, there is a fundamental flaw in the notion that we can combat global warming due to carbon emissions by buying solar panels and batteries from China. Chinese manufacturing is beyond our ability to regulate and the sad reality is that there’s a direct causal relationship between increasing Chinese manufacturing and increasing carbon emissions.
Cold deaths have long outweighed heat deaths, but heat deaths are climbing. It’s the trend that is important. Flooding is interesting because we are definitely seeing more frequent severe rain events which cause more flooding. However, we are seeing less flooding from snow melt so the two have balanced each other.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01539-7
Steve
Question, what happens if all the polar ice melts away, what effects might this have on the balance of the planet, polar shift?
Thermodynamics.
@Larry
Actually, you might want to look up the Pangaea or tectonic plate change.
Quiz time:
What would happen to all the thermal energy required to melt the northern polar ice cap, and how would it affect the air temperature?
The northern ice cap is floating. So, will the sea level rise, fall, or remain the same?
(By-the-way, your high school physics teacher lied to you. Gravity is not a force.)
Just a couple observations, since minds won’t change.
1. AGW is a theory that doesn’t predict. In fact, it misses widely. Florida is not 2/3 under water. The ice caps have not melted. Billions of people have not died of famine. Minor deviations from prediction. Snicker
2. The temperature data is really messy. Urban hot spots. Poorly placed sensors etc. T may, or may not be up.
3. Even if T is up, there is absolutely no real evidence it is due to greenhouse gases vs our normal climate fluctuations, or emergence from the little ice age.
4.. I have a report in a file. About 6 natural disaster types were studied for severity and frequency. Hurricanes, tornadoes, severe thunder storms, earthquakes and on. Only one was declining or increasing: wildfires. The oft cited increase in hurricanes is BS. The trend line is very slightly down, but not statistically significant. So flat.
5. Although this is not science, it is common sense. All the climate change people argue for anti-growth, special interest solutions, or taxes ands wealth redistribution. No strident calls for nuclear, a real solution. Tells you something.
6. Even if you buy into the BS, there is not a damned thing we can do about it. China and India overwhelm our domestic efforts, at great cost to our wellbeing. And I just read an article. The electricity need for the emerging AI industry is staggering. We have no chance of meeting that need without fossil fuels. No chance. And whatever you think about AI, it’s a locomotive gaining steam.
From what Dave wrote I think his view most closely aligns with Bjorn Lomborg. Lomborg believe climate change is real, but believes 95% of what what we read about it is hysteria or nonsense. A very long term problem that should be planned for, but nothing close to the idiocy and opportunism we see from politicians and zealots. I have seen a number of interviews of Lomborg. A sensible man. Worth looking up and listening to.
Pretty much. With a couple of additions:
1. Any carbon reduction measure in the U. S. which requires more imports from China or India is actually counterproductive.
2. The smartest approach to reducing carbon emissions was the initial product offering of the Tesla—convince the wealthy that a measure which reduced carbon emissions was chic, cool, and cemented their status as elite. Most of the measures that have been proposed are regressive which means that they won’t work but WILL make the lives of people who aren’t rich harder.
Dave –
Yes, on 1 implicit in “at great cost to our wellbeing.”
On 2. A feature of zealotry, not a bug. Don’t you think? Eg. These mandates for Ev’s are pure folly.
To tie it in to current issues, Joe Biden decided to capitulate to the Greens, with wild assed spending that was inflationary, and since energy permeates the economy in so many ways, his energy stance has also been inflationary.
That, plus his obvious mental decline, cost him his presidency.
Climate change is real. The earth is warming, and the earth will continue warming for until the next ice age starts.
AGW is based upon statistics. We have 500 years worth of data on Newtonian Physics, and yet, we have tossed it out the window. Einstein won with a photo.
If you want to get worried, study plate tectonics. Then, you might understand why your beach front property will get dragged into the ocean.
We have 500 years worth of data …
I had a Biden moment. It should be 300 years.
@Drew
Regarding your point 2: reach back into the CE part of your brain, and recall significant digits. I doubt all or most of the instruments have the precision needed for the statistically derived result.
The data are not robust in other ways as well. For example, the height (altitude) at which ocean measurements are taken vary from site to site.
@Dave Schuler
Nothing makes any sense about the topic. The earth is warming. It has been since the end of the last ice age, and it will continue until the next ice age.
If the concern is fossil fuels burned since the Industrial Revolution, the thermal heat produced should be included in the accounting, but it never is.
The earth is not a closed system, and I assume the use of CO2 is an attempt to make it one. In any case, it is not a one way barrier, and electromagnetic energy from the sun will be blocked, as well.
I saw some nonsense about the outer atmosphere cooling causing the lower atmosphere to warm. Again, earth is not a closed system. I am to old, tired, and mush-brained to dig back into thermodynamics.
Maybe I am wrong, but nothing I have seen is actual Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, etc. science. It is statistics rebranded as science, and now the pretty pictures are called “computer models”. Falsifying my beliefs requires thermodynamics, and I hate thermodynamics.
(If you skip the equations, the principals are not too bad.)
The only way to achieve what you or any climate believers want is to return to the pre-industrial world. Now, you understand what that means, but their understanding of history begins at WW2 or the Great Depression. They assume we will have B&W iPhones, at worst.
It is not just reasoning, but there is a lack of knowledge. You and I have a somewhat common base of knowledge. I was taught by too kind Dominican nuns and too soft Lasallian brothers. Most likely, I would have done better under the Jesuits, but honestly, I doubt I would have passed the entrance exam.
Most of my knowledge is self-taught, and I suspect it is the same for you. Can you imagine anybody today reading the amount you have? I cannot. When I read an author, I try to read everything, from the beginning. Otherwise, you cannot understand his/her development. Today, snippets ripped from their context are considered “high brow”.
I guess the Biden thing has kept the usual suspects from jumping in and turning it into a food fight.