Eleanor Clift is out with a puff piece praising senator Udall of new Mexico for his valiant fight against the evil of man made climate change. Clift is one of a diminishing group of true believers who still describe man made global warming as settled science. Udall is certainly one of the true believers.
The problem, of course, is that the science supporting global warming theory is far from settled. Indeed, essentially all of the models that predict warming due to human activity rely on the data supplied by East Anglia University in the UK. That data is the same information that was revealed to have been "adjusted" to meet the end requirements in the e-mail that hackers released on the web a few years back. Since that release, no one has come forward to offer a coherent explanation for the e-mails. Instead, the more folks have looked at the underlying data, the further the results got from supporting any sort of man made global warming conclusion. Indeed, things have moved so far from the old global warming meme that Al Gore and friends now talk about climate change rather than global warming. Of course, it also helped change the name when the world cooled for a few years in a row during the second half of the last decade.
Right now, rather than putting forth a new transparent set of data to support the climate record for the last hundred, five hundred or on thousand years, the Gore group (or as I call them the Gorenishts) have just moved forward with attacks on all who oppose them. It is "settled science" don't you know. Opponents are like flat earthers or those who deny the holocaust. In other words, the Gore group has gone to political invective since it has no new scientific data to offer.
Clift's piece on Udall needs to be read with this point of view in mind. She is preaching to the converted. Nothing in her article would convince a sceptic with an open mind. Indeed, the more I look for proof, the less I find.
The truth is that there are a certain number of incontrovertible truths that we do know about the world climate:
1) A thousand years ago, the earth was warmer than it is now. At least that was the case in the areas that kept records. There were vineyards in Sweden and Norway. Greenland was capable of supporting human agricultural settlements. All of the European records indicate a warmer climate than is currently the case.
2) About 800 years ago, the earth entered a cooling period; some would call it a mini ice age. All over the world the climate got colder. those same Viking settlements in Northern Europe were nearly wiped away by the cold. People driven indoors by the cold became available for attack by fleas that spread the plague which wiped out about a third of the inhabitants of Europe. This cold period continued for centuries. Indeed, at the time of the American Revolution, the climate was still quite cold. Remember the winter in Valley Forge, the ice floes in the Delaware river at Christmas at the time of the Battle of Trenton, etc. The cold culminated in the early 19th century when volcanic activity resulted in one final cold snap that lasted for an entire year.
3) Since about 1820, the earth has been warming. Temperature records in Europe, North America and elsewhere support this. We also know that human activity that would release greenhouse gases was much too small to have been the cause for this global temperatur rise. The warming has continued as a general trend since 1820 until today. There are ups and downs, but the overall trend has been up.
Given these facts, it is not difficult to explain global warming as a natural occurence which is not man made. The truth is that there needs to be clear evidence that the warming that began before man was producing the greenhouse gases that Gore and friend find so alarming was, in fact, caused by those gases.
My mind is open, but unless and until someone comes forward with something other than a computer model based upon assumptions about the effect of the human activity, I will not be a believer. In other words, it will not convince me that there is man made climate change until someone has proof that does not depend on the assumption that there is man made climate change.
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