Top 10 Bogus Statements of the Climate Debate

Anonymous, above, has his own bogus statements about how it's all just a normal natural warming cycle.

I wonder if he's ever heard of the carbon cycle and what happens to it when you take 65 million years of accumlated carbon, in the form of coal, and put it into the atmosphere, and hence onto the short term carbon cycle.

That coal was formed by carbon precipitating out of the short term cycle and being "sequestered" away in the long term carbon cycle in the form of coal. This took 65 million years. That helped keep the short term carbon cycle in a balance that makes life as we know it possible on this planet. We are now reversing that process in a few hundred years, or a geological nanosecond. That is not a natural cycle. In fact it is unprecedented, as far as we know, in the history of the planet. Oil is basically the same story.

You know that it is not genuine (a synonym for bogus) to dismiss CCS. A Belfer Center report released today argues that CCS costs can drive down enough for it to play a role in GHG reductions. Some serious mitigation advocates believe coal with CCS will have an essential role to play. To call this solution wedge bogus rather than questionable is itself a distortion.

I fully support your argument that a cost-effective renewable energy ecosystem is the right goal, and achievable if the social cost of coal is factored into its price. But when vested interests distort reality to say coal and nuclear are our only scalable solutions, it only muddies our understanding to distort reality in return.

For all the good intentions expressed at this website, the fact remains that "climate change science" is not true science but rather an attempt to prove a hypothesis that climate change is forced principally by anthropogenic emissions - without the benefit of validation. The study and prediction of climate change is, by necessity, an evaluation of the past and the assumption that similar relationships will hold going forward.

Because of the immense scale, long time periods, and non-linearity of the very complex processes of long-term climate change, controlled experimentation to prove a hypothesis that climate change is (or is not) the product of anthropogenic carbon emissions is impossible. Therefore, the relationships that go into any climate change model are the product of historical data and the model developer(s) interpretation of that data going forward. In other words, this climate change science is more of a 'belief system' than 'true science.'

I have spent most of a 35-year engineering career in the research, development, and commercialization of renewable energy and environmental technologies and have followed the path to today's 'climate change' legislative initiatives over that time period. I find the 'science' that serves as a basis to legislatively limit GHG (particularly CO2) emissions greatly lacking by virtually ignoring the natural phenomena that have occurred over the past 40-50 years - the same time period over which the 'global warming' phenomenon has been patterned.

Just one example - One of the most signficant oversights has been the role in climate change of the increase in seismic activity during this period. In 1964, there were nominally 5700 (global) documented seismic events. In 2004, there were over 120,000 (global) seismic events with the increase between 1964 and 2004 approximating an exponential profile. Many of these seismic events occurred in the oceans contributing to new thermal vents and underwater volcanos. While an accurate count of the new thermal release formations is not available, oceanographers continue to be surprised by findings of new underwater volcanos.

Yet, the climate change models reflected in the work of the IPCC give no credence to this input of energy and GHG into ocean waters. Every unit of energy and every molecule of GHG released from the earth's core into ocean waters sooner or later has an impact on atmospheric conditions. Yet, several noted climate change scientists have made the outrageous statement that there is no thermal contact between submarine volcanic activity and surface water temperature due to density differences in ocean waters at different depths. Since when did heat transfer become driven by 'delta density' instead of 'delta temperature?'

In 1999, a high level of submarine volcanic activity occurred in the Arctic Ocean. Observations of decreasing Arctic ice begin to surface shortly thereafter. Yet, 'global warming scientists' have dissed the relationship calling any correlation as 'coincidence'. I have even read articles where 'global warming scientists' have referenced ocean water temperature increases in the vicinity of underwater volcanoes as further evidence of man-made 'global warming.'

The promotion of renewable energy and energy conservation should be made in the name of 'domestic energy security' along with the proper use of fossil fuels and nuclear. Climate change will always be with us from natural phenomena.

Let's not force the public to pay for the 'belief system' of 'global warming' any more than they should be forced to pay for a 'state church'.