In the area of climate research we have a serious problem of which the public is unaware. No research will be funded by the government unless the research proposes a study intended to prove dire consequences of the continued use of fossil fuels. Fuels that produce carbon dioxide which is creating that widely quoted existential threat to mankind. Ronald Stein, who promotes energy literacy cast a bright light on the problem in an essay he placed on the internet last March. He has given me permission to widen the audience to this scandal by crafting a similar explanation of the problem in my weekly articles here at CFACT.
Our government has been spending billions of your tax dollars annually for two decades to support the premise that the earth is warming as a result of the carbon dioxide we have placed into the air from the burning of oil and gas since the end of World War II. As Ronald Stein said, if a young climate researcher wants to build a career today, “their chances of getting government funding for thieir research proposals is directly proportional to how seriously they portray the threat of global warming.” If their intended research offers a hint of skepticism of man’s role in the temperature of our planet, they need not have wasted their time submitting their proposal. If you think this is being too harsh on the keeper of the governments research budget, think again. Check the news each day about the money advanced to shift our energy to wind, solar and electric cars.
President Eisenhower’s 1961 farewell address to the nation, warned of the dangers of the trend toward government sponsored science. He predicted that when the politicians have the ultimate say over who gets money for research, one can expect that political motivations and desired policy outcomes will inevitably result in biased efforts. Additionally, he feared that scientists eager to keep funds flowing might take control of public policy to benefit their own careers.
Unfortunately, this all but complete shift from private to government funding of research resulted from Eisenhower’s Science Director Vanovar Bush’s misreading of the success of the Manhattan Project, that brought scientists together under the governments direction to produce the atomic bomb which ended World War II. Bush did not recognize how the united spirit to save our country made that effort so uniquely productive. Eisenhower realized too late, the mistake he had made putting his confidence in the well-meaning but wrong- headed Science Director Vanovar Bush. The die was cast, and the nation has suffered from it ever since in many areas of research including medicine. What government official that holds research purse strings does not want his beliefs or inclinations proven correct by the folks he or she gives money to. Who wants to be proven wrong?
The result of this scandal is that little has ever been done to understand the natural causes of climate change over the billions of years that humans did not exist on earth. Why was the Earth a few degrees warmer than now 700 years ago? Why, after General Washington’s troops were freezing at Valley Forge in the Revolutionary war our country began to warm naturally for the next 200 years? Why for the last half of the 20th century the slight amount of warming is said to be due to human activities?
In contrast to the alarmist view that our thermostat is currently controlled by carbon dioxide emissions, climate change is unpredictable and misunderstood. Therefore academic researchers go only where the money is. Where results are expected to conclude with doomsday predictions. This is the ultimate cash cow where NASA, NOAA, DOE, EPA and NSF can all drink at the trough. As the news media are only interested in covering these dire research predictions the public cannot be blamed for buying much of it.
Whatever the scope of what our readers know about climate change (aka) global warming, many have become familiar with the term “climate model”. A term that stands for a mathematical equation whose variables are said to interrelate in a manner simulating the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, they are said to be able to predict the future temperature of our planet.
Now, with the intent to shock you, I shall list numerous variables that you would think could play a role in determining these outcomes. None are considered in any of the government financed climate models, which number over one hundred.
*Changes in seasonal solar irradiance
*Energy flows between the oceans and atmosphere
*Energy flows between land and air
*Balance between the earth’s water, water vapor and ice
*The role of the the planets ice sheets
*Exchanges between ice sheets, sea level and glaciers
*Roles of Hurricanes and tornados
*Impact of vegetation on temperature
*Tectonic movement on the ocean floor
*Differential rotation between the earth’s crust and core
And believe it or not we do not understand,
THE ROLE OF CLOUDS
Their climate models use only variables they believe they can make an educated guess at and are likely to produce warming a number of degrees that will cause life to suffer.
Sensible people know we like warm weather better then cold, vacation in warm climates and have our crops increase their yields. Yet the alarmists have their predictions repeated daily by their wholly owned propaganda machine, the media.
This is a scandal of the first order, that all researchers must drink the same “Kool-Aid” to obtain research funding. Tell your friends who are taken in by this “existential threat”.