The more things change, the more they stay the same, at least in terms of the climate. I have roughly 50 years of personal observation that confirms to me, every time I open the door and step outside, that NOTHING has changed. Not the temperature, the weather patterns, the length of seasons, nothing. The poles have melted and penguins are sweltering, but LA has a gigantic snow pack. Sure.
Weather has always been weird. Living in Los Angeles, I can say that the most common thing said about the weather in LA is, “We’ve never had weather like this before!” It’s never been this hot, this cold, this rainy, this dry, this cloudy... Yeah, sure. But strangely, I remember other years that were exactly like this one. Note that in 2021, people think it was hotter than usual, but LA was actually colder than average.
http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we04a.ph
Part of the problem is that people have the memory capacity of a gnat. And part of the problem is that the media is hyping every hot, cold, or variously unpleasant day as proof of a changing climate. Fires, yes they have always ravaged California. Dryness, yes we are always in a drought. As I write this there is a giant snowpack in the mountains behind downtown, but in a week we will be told this is still a drought.
Before diving into this subject, I want to express a few things. First, I believe human caused CO2 is causing warming. And that I have always been a dogged climate alarmist. I wrote scathingly about an idol of mine, James Randy, when he penned a short essay opining that Climate Change would likely prove to be a hoax. I am a devout skeptic, but there are limits! I excoriated him for several years over that, despite believing he’s “amazing”, not just in name!
When I say I am a skeptic, I should explain that I grew up in Brooklyn and the prevailing view on every topic held by virtually every one of my role models growing up was, ‘Bullshit.’ Politics, war, science, history, you name it, the response was uniformly the same. My role models were not particularly well educated, but they were to a person of the suspicion that we should believe half of what we see and none of what we hear. Why? Because pretty much everyone is full of the previously noted substance.
So my heterodox consensus bashing views developed young. And through my years of school, self-educating, and switching coasts, I have never lost that New York attitude. Still, I never wanted to take on Climate. Had it not been for witnessing the expert class fail so stunningly on Covid, I would probably never have taken a deep dive into the data on Climate.
Covid showed that the credentialed expert class is effectively insulated from all confounding data and conflicting theories. They actively contribute to censorship and double down on their initial data free declarations instead of engaging in debate with dissenters. This also is the prevailing rule in political discourse. When Bill Clinton destroyed Welfare and kicked welfare mothers into the street, protected Credit Card companies at the expense of poor people, locked black men away for life with the Crime Bill, and let Wall Street run amok by repealing Glass-Steagle, I was done with the Democrats. That’s why I’m a GREEN — Being a Green makes it even more painful for me to embark on criticizing the consensus on Climate Change. But here goes!
First, I want to make clear that I am not a climate scientist. I cannot fish through raw data or design studies. But I do have a solid math and science background so that after experts differ, I can read and evaluate which of their stated positions best matches good science.
Covid the Cow is not a scientist. But she is outstanding in her field. I suppose I should also confess that I am not actually a cow, in case that was in doubt. Sorry to disappoint everyone! But realistically, hooves would after all make typing somewhat difficult, and wifi on cattle ranches can be spotty.
In no way am I disrespecting the work of climatologists and scientists who deeply understand this material. I’m simply looking at their published work, as a layman, and I’m piecing together existing elements from their work, that is all. I should also acknowledge that I have not made any of the included grids, though I did some “crayon” scribbling.
Below is the NOAA Average Global Temperature Grid from 1880-2021. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, is a part of the US Government and is the official keeper of the temperature data.
FROM THE NOAA GRID:
1) From 1904-2004 the temp increased by .15 degrees per decade. From 2004-2022 the temp increased only .117 degrees per decade on average. It has slowed down! All I did was take the most recent 17 years and then went back a full 100 years to demonstrate that the increase in temp has slowed. (SEE BELOW)
From 1911-1041, then from 1941 to now, the slowing is even more evident.
2) In the last 6 years the Average Global Temperature is down .1 degrees, but for the entirety of the last 80 years from 1941-2021 it has only gone up .6 degrees total. So down .1 degree is significant.
3) The Solar Cycle correlates to the high and low years. 2015 was this highest temperature year while 2014 was the height of the solar cycle. And 2020 was the low point of the solar cycle while 2021 is the lowest temperature year.
The 11 year SOLAR CYCLE hits a high point of sunspot activity during which it sends .1% more solar radiation to hit the Earth. You can see that it peaked just before the high temperature year in 2004 and just before the high temperature year in 2015. The next Solar Cycle is predicted to be LOW so that is good news for warming. However, that’s simply a prediction. If it is low, we should see lower temperatures. This is not controversial. Climate Scientists all agree that the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth impacts the amount of heating and well as effects the climate in general.
4) Oceans absorb or vent CO2. The increase in CO2 is rising less in the last few years while temps are rising more slowly. Again, this is not controversial. The NASA article I quote below describes the ocean absorbing and venting CO2 because of changing conditions.
5) Weather conditions like El Nino and La Nina generally correlate to Lunar and Solar Cycles.
6) The mechanism by which the solar cycle heat variation impacts climate is still being learned about, but soon scientists may be able to show that the weather events spurred by solar radiation continue their impacts for years after the initial solar radiation hits Earth. In one 2009 study, climate scientists modeled the mechanism for high solar cycle radiation increasing La Nina and El Nino conditions.
7) While the Solar Cycle variations in temperature happen only for a year or two, could the additional heat impact climate for decades after due to complex intersections of weather?
NYT - “Last year was Earth’s fifth hottest on record, European scientists announced on Monday.” That is the 5th hottest year out of the last 7 years. That’s not exactly an upward trend. But they find a way to express it so it sounds menacing…
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/climate/2021-hottest-year.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
I also read an article that proposed you CAN’T check if solar activity is the driver behind warming unless you drastically reduced the amount of carbon in the atmosphere so you can see the impact of solar radiation alone. We can’t actually do that today, but I found that a very interesting idea. So the THOUGHT EXPERIMENT is going to be IF WE REMOVE CARBON IMPACTS ON WEATHER, CAN WE DEMONSTRATE A MECHANISM BY WHICH SOLAR RADIATION COULD DUPLICATE THE RISING TEMPERATURES WE HAVE SEEN?
BUT FIRST SOME OBSERVATIONS:
Some people think I cherry picked the start dates to make warming sound less alarming. Yes, I did. That’s because alarmists choose dates the same exact way. For instance, why does the NOAA grid I begin in 1880? NOAA calls that the start of the industrial age.
“Since the beginning of the Industrial Age in 1880…” The Industrial Age actually started in 1760, not 1880. But global temperatures didn’t start going up until the late 1970s. Maybe 210 years was too many for NOAA’s tastes. Why did temperatures wait so long after industrialization to begin to rise?
Clearly, the delayed start is due to CO2 needing time to build up in the atmosphere. That makes perfect sense. But how much CO2 in the atmosphere is man made? CO2 comprises .04% of the atmosphere. And man made emitted CO2 has a fingerprint that is recognizable in testing. So we know CO2 increase is caused by man and is correlated to temperature rise. No question.
The level of carbon in our atmosphere is now 410 parts per million. But if you look at the below grid, it gives a very easy way to see a ballpark of how much CO2 human activities have added. Not 410 parts per million, but about 110-130, because natural C02 routinely oscillates up to 300 parts per million over time. So, whether the CO2 in the air was swapped out with manmade or not, it seems unreasonable to assume that nature is putting in less than 280-300 parts per million based on the historical record.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/how-do-we-know-build-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere-caused-humans
Also note this chart above only goes down to 100 and make it look like Human caused CO2 is the majority, when actually natural caused is about 300 and human caused is about 110. Very misleading.
According to the same NYT article (again linked below), "The rate of increase in carbon dioxide levels appears to have been down somewhat from a few years earlier, the Copernicus analysis found." Why? Have humans stops emitting CO2? Lockdowns made CO2 levels increase less? Maybe, but it’s also possible that lowering temperatures allowed the Ocean to absorb more CO2. Maybe CO2 increases or decreases because of temperature and not the other way around.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/climate/2021-hottest-year.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur
From the below NASA article.... "Over decades, natural cycles in weather and ocean currents alter the rate at which the ocean soaks up and vents carbon dioxide." And this… "For eons, the world’s oceans have been sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and releasing it again in a steady inhale and exhale." https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OceanCarbon
If all the new CO2 in the atmosphere were man made, where did the CO2 from the ocean venting go? The ocean covers 70% of the planet, while cities cover 3% of the planet, don’t we think ocean should have a contribution to weather and the content of the atmosphere? Natural climate variations should not be ignored. That’s just not good science. Obviously, natural causes of CO2 continue apace, as shown in the above grid. So we know about how much is human caused CO2 there should be just by looking at the overall picture. About 110-130 parts per million. And natural caused should be about 208-300 parts per million. So man made CO2 is causing a little over 1/4 of the warming generated from CO2 contribution to the greenhouse effect.
HOW DOES THE SOLAR CYCLE INFLUENCE WARMING?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090716113358.htm
The Science Daily 2009 study linked above, shows the mechanism by which the Solar Cycle heats the Pacific and contributes to La Nina and El Nino conditions. "Over the following year or two, the La Niña-like pattern triggered by the solar maximum tends to evolve into an El Niño-like pattern…"
"La Niña and El Niño events are associated with changes in the temperatures of surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean. They can affect weather patterns worldwide. More research will be needed to determine the additional impacts of these events on weather across the world."
"…the sun's output reaches a peak, the small amount of extra sunshine over several years causes a slight increase in local atmospheric heating…" And, "That small amount of extra heat leads to more evaporation, producing extra water vapor. In turn, the moisture is carried by trade winds to the normally rainy areas of the western tropical Pacific, fueling heavier rains. As this climatic loop intensifies, the trade winds strengthen." Also, "If the system was heading toward a La Niña anyway," the researchers add, "it would presumably be a larger one."
This study demonstrates a mechanism by which increased solar radiation at the height of the Solar Cycle impacts climate by making stronger La Nina and/or El Nino effect. Right now in 2021, climatologists say the relative lack of warming we are seeing is due to a La Nina effect. "One big reason for 2021’s lower mean temperature was the presence during the early part of the year of La Niña conditions, a recurring climate pattern characterized by lower surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean."
But when you look for what the causes are for a La Nina effect, guess what? Scientists don’t know. So perhaps they are caused by Solar Cycles, Lunar Cycles and ocean currents/winds, etc., which all trace back to the heating from the high portion of the solar cycle. Basically, the argument against this currently proffered is, ‘Because sometimes La Nina and El Nino conditions come one after another and are not so neatly aligned with the Solar Cycle, nor Lunar Cycle.’ But is that a strong argument if Solar Cycle impacts compound and extend beyond a few years?
"Scientists have known for years that long-term solar variations affect certain weather patterns, including droughts and regional temperatures. But establishing a physical connection between the decadal solar cycle and global climate patterns has proven elusive." The mechanisms are now starting to be found and modeled as the study from 2009 indicates.
"The total energy reaching Earth from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the solar cycle." That's actually a lot! But then how can it accumulate into something going dramatically up and replace the CO2 impact we are removing for our thought experiment. Can solar radiation hitting the Earth be the #1 reason for warming? What percentage is solar radiation and what percentage is CO2 we put in the atmosphere? The IPCC says over 50% of warming is caused by man made CO2. But if only just over 1/4 of atmospheric CO2 is man made, that seems an oddly high estimate, even if CO2 were to turn out to be the main driver of warming, nearly 3/4’s of it would be naturally forming.
One reason scientists are skeptical about the Solar Cycle being a main driver of warming is, "NASA satellite observations show that over the last 40 years, solar radiation has actually decreased somewhat.” And, guess what, this is likely why temperature increase has begun to SLOW. We may be approaching the apex of warming.
"The amount of incoming solar radiation has increased only slightly over the past century and is therefore not a driver of Earth’s current climate warming." But solar radiation had increased and was more than it had been for 8,000.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041030221144.htm
“As the scientists from Germany, Finland, and Switzerland report in the current issue of the science journal "Nature" from October 28, one needs to go back over 8,000 years in order to find a time when the Sun was, on average, as active as in the last 60 years.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/10/041030221144.htm
Even granting that the increases in solar radiation have been slight compared to the temperature rise, slight increases magnify by multiplier effects like La Nina and El Nino and other effects around the globe which interact with one another. We know that energy doesn’t just go away, it takes other forms or spurs other events.
Another argument against the Solar Cycle being the main driver of warming is,"If Earth’s current warming was due to the Sun, scientists say we should expect temperatures in both the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and the next layer of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, to warm. Instead, observations from balloons and satellites show Earth’s surface and lower atmosphere have warmed but the stratosphere has cooled." This is a fairly speculative and weak argument because we would just need to look at other reasons why the upper atmosphere would not remain hot to refute it. I have not yet done this research as I did not find this argument to be particularly strong. And we know the Thermosphere is higher up and is much hotter.
"…the Milankovitch cycles predict our planet should be cooling, not warming, continuing a long-term cooling trend that began 6,000 years ago..." Small dips over a few years are most often caused by the ENSO cycle (El Nino Southern Oscillation). But what causes the ENSO cycle? Could ENSO be caused by Solar Cycles (heat) and Lunar Cycles (wind)?
"Although the exact initiating causes of an ENSO warm or cool event are not fully understood, the two components of ENSO – sea surface temperature and atmospheric pressure are strongly related." -- NOT KNOWN? So why rule out solar cycles and lunar cycles?
The below study argues that winds on the Pacific caused by the pull of the lunar cycle create the temperature shifts which appear to cause the ENSO cycle. "This circulation, known as the Walker circulation, is caused by the sharp contrast in sea surface temperature across the tropical Pacific Ocean."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006JC003671
Another possibility is that the North Atlantic Ossillation contributes to ENSO effects. The link below explains that. And, again, the NAO could be caused by natural climate variation in Solar Cycles, Lunar Cycles, etc.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/98GL01936
This study suggests that we are in the high temperature phase of a weather cycle traced to the sun, which is starting to wane. In other words, there are many possibly weather and climate explanations for the significant upswing in temperature we are experiencing.
But what I find the most persuasive is that the Solar Cycle, the Lunar Cycle, the Oceans and other weather patterns extend the impact of solar radiation over longer periods of time and make the temperature rise more than would be expected by the high point of the solar cycle alone. So let’s try a possible solution to our THOUGHT EXPERIMENT.
First, we know we are starting to see the temperature rise more SLOWLY, perhaps because of low solar cycles and La Nina events. Probably not because of less CO2 being emitted, because we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. So, we need to established how the slight rise in solar radiation for a few years per cycle can build up into a steep rise. How can small variations in Solar radiation make steep changes to the global temperature?
If increased solar radiation during the height of the solar cycle continues to interact in rippling impacts, and these regional impacts happen in various ways all across the globe, why couldn’t a chain reaction continue to process the heat from the sun for a much longer time than a couple of years? Energy does not disappear, it just takes other forms or spurs other events.
If the El Nino and La Nina conditions are traceable to the Solar Cycle, and perhaps the Lunar cycle, that means chain reactions from the slight changes in heat and wind can continue for longer than for the year or two when the high solar radiation is bombarding the planet. Are the high solar cycles of the past still having impacts during the lower solar cycle we have now?
The lower solar cycle we have now may only be just be beginning to show its impact in temperatures rising less. And that trend could continue for a long time, with occasional bumps up and down. Of course, we don’t know what the next Solar Cycle will bring.
Look at the below grid. Essentially, the impacts at the height of the solar cycle could have rippling and multiplying effects which continue for decades but are too complicated to model at present. This would mean that higher solar cycles may be cumulative and the weather cycles they create could multiply their impacts.
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: Let’s ignore CO2 and postulate instead that a few years of a high solar cycle could be being felt for say 22 years instead of a portion of 11 years, because that radiation keeps impacting weather and does not go away. If you heat a glass of water by .1 degree, and then it returns to normal temp, you know that heat moved on from there. So if the impacts of the heat from solar radiation causes weather patterns like ENSO, then that is where it moved. So it is not gone. So the next rise of .1 degree is ADDED to an accumulation in the climate system. And if so, then it’s easy to see why the .1 degree rise and fall of the solar cycle can turn into a building effect as it piles on top of previous effects. If its impacts last 22 years, that means 3 cycles have overlapped. This TRIPLES the effect of the .1 - .15% rise in solar radiation hitting the Earth. So it could be .45 in just 22 years, and go up from there. In 44 years, it would be .9 degrees, which would account for ALL OF THE WARMING we have seen in 80 years, even with some dissipation. If you keep compiling this additive effect for 60 years, even allowing for a lot of dissipation, you can see how it could easily add up to the .6 degrees of increase we have seen.
Why hasn’t this happened before the 1970’s? Well, it actually HAS if you look back far enough. Glacial and Interglacial cycles have been going on for roughly a million years. Every 100,000 years we have a glacial period of extreme cold. As part of that cycle, we also have about 10k years of an interglacial period with temperate weather as we have now. We’re headed to an unsurprising peak of temperature.
Why is this happening now and not 100 years ago? These are solar cycle and Milankovitch cycle related questions. Some argue the Milankovitch orbital Cycle should indicate a low temperature part of his cycles. But I think we can use common sense to see that revising Milankovitch makes more sense than ignoring empirical evidence.
In the graphs below, you can see that temperature is actually DOWN when viewed on a long term time scale. And the rise in temperature we are experiencing does not look unusual nor catastrophic.
But regardless of the cause of warming… If man made CO2 is only slightly over 1/4 of the CO2 in the atmosphere, then it seems odd to blame all of the warming on man made CO2. The SUN could certainly be a driver of climate change, which is not to say that CO2 has no impact. And methane and every other gas in the atmosphere do also. But we all know that the heating of the Earth pretty much ALL comes from the sun, so why are we discounting it as the source of the warming? It’s wildly counter-intuitive to say all the heat originates with the sun, but it is not the source of the warming. When only 3% of the Earth’s surface is cities and 70% of the Earth’s surface is oceans, and CO2 is just .04% of our atmosphere, doesn’t it seem odd to assert that man made CO2 is a bigger driver of climate changes than the natural climate variations of the sun, the moon and the oceans.
Some have suggested that CO2 increases in the atmosphere following rises in temperature, instead of CO2 causes rises in temperature. I’m not sure we can affirmatively determine this. Though I am more than open to criticism of what I have stated here and am willing to be convinced of the error of my ways.
But… Let’s put that aside for the moment and try another THOUGHT EXPERIMENT!
I would like to suggest two predictive scenarios and ask the reader to evaluate for yourself which is more likely.
The IPCC says over 50% of warming is human caused and 2 degrees to 2.5 degrees of warming is expected by 2100. So, does that amount of warming (a huge reduction from previous predictions of 5 degrees of warming) mean that man is destroying the world through CO2 emissions from cities that cover 3% of the Earth’s surface. We are nearing drastic tipping points where the polar ice caps melt, but Los Angeles hillsides are still covered in snow, sea level rises massively to flood the coastlines, though we see very little unusual rise in sea level so far, landmasses dry and become uninhabitable, though they are current more and more green and lush, a mass extinction ensues, which is currently only evident on islands where man’s incursion is damaging habitats, and the Earth becomes dead much like Venus.
The Earth turns out to be what it has always been, which is a massive and powerful self-correcting system which casts off heat into space or uses heat and CO2 to make warmer oceans, and thus more evaporation and rain inland, which means longer and warmer growing seasons and more CO2 for plants and trees to use to grow, which sequesters more CO2 and keeps more water on land, thus mitigating the worst impacts of Climate Change and continues the GREENING of the planet.
Yes, the planet is more green. It’s about 17% more green than it was 60 years ago. Because it’s warmer, wetter and there is more CO2, which plants use to grow.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
This fact on its own proves to me that Climate Change is not the dire emergency we are often told it is. Obviously, we should be conservationists, protect habitats and reduce pollution. There is nothing wrong with being more green. But alarmism which makes us overcorrect is unwise and unjustified. If you are piloting an airplane and you overcorrect, you crash. Not one dire prediction of global climate doom has come to pass. It’s time to take a more measured look and rethink.
Seriously… Go outside and look around! The planet is green and lush and healthy! Why the doom and gloom? The Earth is massive and amazing. We need to solve the issue of a warming planet gradually and wisely.
Mooo!
— Covid the Cow
I welcome any and all comments. I have made this article freely accessible to all. I look forward to any thoughts, corrections, well wishes, etc.