Jim Steele
The formula for Hollywood horror films is simple. Take a normal sized creature and magnify it into a gigantic threat suggesting we’re all going to die. Just consider King Kong, Godzilla, Alien, Jaws, Alligators, Frankenfish. To give credibility to those monsters, scary movies include a few scientists claiming those giants are “existential threats” due to pollution or radiation created by humans. Similarly, Biden fearmongers climate change is an existential threat, and Al Gore fabricates the “oceans are boiling”.
Here, Dr Richard Lindzen, atmospheric physicist extraordinaire and emeritus professor from Harvard and MIT, describes how alarmist scientists have scared the bejesus out of people by turning a very small temperature change into a monster.
First understand, averaging winter and summer temperatures produces a useless number that would totally obscure local weather dynamics. Barrow, Alaska averages a summertime high of 47°F (8.3°C) while the winter high averages -18°F (-27.8°C). Miami, Florida averages a summertime high of 86.3°F (30.1°C) and a winter high of 74°F (23.3°C). Averaging Miami and Barrow’s annual temperatures would be equally worthless. So, scientists don’t calculate a globally averaged temperature, but instead show the average anomalies.
Dr. Lindzen graphed the average seasonal anomalies for each weather station in the BEST temperature data base from 1900 to the present. A station’s anomaly is defined as any deviation from its 30-year mean. The results are not very scary. On any given day about half the weather stations experience warm anomalies while half experience cooling anomalies.
Most anomalies cluster between ± 4°C (+/- 7.2°F) causing each data point to merge into the thick black band of the graph. Still, larger anomalies are not uncommon, so the y-axis of the above graph scales between ± 12°C (+/- 21.6°F). The yellow dots represent the average for those anomalies on any given day. We see a small trend that is relatively tiny compared to the variation in actual temperatures. Not very scary either.
So, the showtime graphs isolate the average anomalies from reality, as done in the bottom graph. Now the scale on the y-axis only spans from -0.8°C (-1.4°F) to 1.2°C (2.2°F), turning a small 1°C (1.8°F) rise over 120 years into the illusion of a monster increase. That allows click-bait media, alarmists scientists and politicians to claim that climate change could lead to mass extinctions.
But any critically thinking person who is not so easily frightened realizes all living creatures adapt to far greater temperature changes over much smaller time spans. Typically, they experience an 8°C (14.4°F) to 20°C (36°F) change between morning and noon, and a 10°C (18°F) to 30°C (54°F) change between summer and winter. Humans escaping the cold New England climate migrate to Florida for better health and experience an increase in average temperature of 11°C (20°F).
Hopefully all critically thinking people will ask “why are these politicians and internet influencers trying to manipulate us with such a fearful Hollywood representation of climate?”
Indeed, there has been a slight warming. But there are many hypotheses explaining why. Watch: Why the Sun, Not CO2, Heats the Oceans:
Or read transcript at https://perhapsallnatural.blogspot.com/2022/07/revisiting-debate-does-greenhouse-back.html