Introduction
In this episode we are going to give you an alternate perspective on the temperature increases supposedly caused by climate change. The media and the climate crusaders would have you believe that it is causing irreparable harm to our world, that we are driving up temperatures beyond livable levels and dooming the future of younger generations. Is it really happening? Is any of that true? Is it really that bad?
Current state of Climate and Temperature.
We are being told that mankind is raising the temperature of the world with the burning of fossil fuel and an increase in CO2. How much have we changed it? The number I have been able to dig up is about is about 1 to 1.25 degree C which translates to about 2 degrees F. That increase is over the last 150 years. Now another question you should be asking is what is that temperature rise relative to and how do we know that the reference temperature itself is any good.
Has the current warming caused anything “bad” like increased hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires? The answer to that question is no, at least not yet. Everyone that has taken a serious look at the data has failed to show any correlation, in fact, the trend for all those calamities is downward not upward. Here in 2022, we have only seen 7 named storms during the hurricane season by the end of September and that number includes tropical storms. The number of hurricanes has been on the decline for years. Forrest fires have been going down since the 1930’s. Has sea level been rising? Only for the last 20,000 years. It has been averaging about a 3mm rise per year so in a thousand years it might be up about 10 feet and if that happens, we will have plenty of time to react and accommodate it.
Predictions of Future Climate Doom
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) evaluates scenarios of future conditions and plugs those in their models. These scenarios include the technical aspects of how much solar energy is trapped in the “greenhouse” of our planet and those are expressed as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). These scenarios also include the political and social aspects they call Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) which include predictions of population growth, GDP per capita, energy use and type used, public policies, etc. They fire up their models and plug in their guesses on what is going to happen in the world in the future using the SSPs and then they parameterize their guess, using the RCPs, on what the reaction of the environment and climate will be to the level of greenhouse gasses in those scenarios.
What’s the result? Well at best case with RCP1.9 it seems that we will stay about where we are which is a little over 1 deg C versus the pre-industrial base and at worst case with RCP8.5 we will see about 5 degrees C above the pre-industrial base. The table below is from the Wikipedia page on RCP’s and references a 2021 study on most likely emission scenarios. Remember these temperature predictions are above the pre-industrial base so you need to subtract about 1.25 from these to get at the increase above current temperatures.
Most scientists now believe that RCP 8.5 is way larger than will happen and the most accurate future is probably RCP 3.4 or maybe even RCP 2.6.
Let’s put this in context. We have a huge range of temperatures across the US which vary mostly by geographic latitude but also whether they are coastal, in high humidity areas, desert, etc. Just looking at the state of AL the average daily high temperature varies from 78.4degs F in Montgomery to only 73.8degs F in Huntsville at the northern edge of the state. That’s almost a 5deg F difference or about 2.5deg C. So, we could have Montgomery temperatures in Huntsville by the year 2100. But since there is already about 1degC baked into the current temperatures (versus the pre-industrial days) it’s really like only half of that. So maybe we would have Birmingham like temperatures in Huntsville. That doesn’t sound so scary to me.
Just to be clear, mankind mostly prospers during warm periods and struggles during the cooling periods. The Vikings inhabited parts Greenland and raised crops and livestock only to have to depart a few hundred years later due to not being able to sustain a livelihood in the cooling climate. The Romans were reported to have raised grapevines for wine at northern latitudes not accomplished since.
You also have to ask the question about how good our historical temperatures pre-industrial temperature records really are. How good is the reference that we are comparing to. We didn’t have gee whiz automated computerized collection systems back in the 1700’s and 1800’s, heck even the early 1900’s. They depended on people walking outside at predetermined times and writing down a temperature they read off of a mercury thermometer onto a piece of paper. Did they actually catch the high and low? Most probably not. This image below is an example of a collection sheet where they recorded the highest temperature ever in Death Valley. Was this thermometer calibrated? Who knows.
They didn’t take these temperatures everywhere and why would they. There are very few long temperature records. The longest is probably the Central England Temperature record (CET) which begins at 1659 and runs until today. This graph from Patrick Moore shows the long-term temperature record versus CO2 levels. It looks to me that the slow rise in temperatures doesn’t correlate very strongly to CO2. Someone needs to tell CO2 to get busy and drive those temps up more. As Dr Roy Spencer points out, the assumption that CO2 is causing this warming is predicated on the belief that the climate was in equilibrium before we started burning fossil fuels and putting carbon into the air which is a really bad assumption. There is also no reliable way to know how much of this CO2 in the atmosphere is from mankind versus a natural source such outgassing from the oceans.
Significance of a Temperature Average
I have never really understood what this fascination with the average worldwide temperature was about. What is it supposed to tell me. Seriously, if you know please leave a comment. If you average the temperature of, say Miami and Cleveland, what do you get? If you average the entire global temperature and you get a number then what is the significance of that number? Does it tell you whether you can plant crops, grow timber or raise animals because that’s what’s really important.
Mathematically we can always compute an average but is it meaningful and does it tell an accurate story. If I take a black and white checker board and average the color across it, the result would be gray. While that is technically correct it doesn’t accurately represent the checkerboard. When I average the temperature data from Minot, ND with Miami, FL what does that mean? Seriously if you know leave a comment.
For studying climate wouldn’t it be better to study a 100mi x 100mi area and see how that has been affected over time? Wouldn’t it be better to look at a daily max or a daily minimum temperature for a location rather than an average of the two numbers aggregated together. Our local media told us that we just had the hottest July on record this year. They said it was because the night time lows were higher than normal. When you average the two together voila…a hotter than normal July.
If we have really had this almost 2deg F rise in average temperature, would we really feel it? Our daily temperatures vary by 20-30 deg’s F between the daily high and low, and it is usually around 20 degrees. Our daily highs can vary by almost 50 degrees from summer versus winter. If some environmentalist or climate scientist hadn’t told us we have had “global warming” since pre-civil war times I doubt anyone would know…or care.
Scary or Meh
If we are causing warming you have to ask the question, is it bad. I would like to give you the example of Yuma, AZ which is one of the hottest desert areas in the country but it is also an agricultural mecca. The average daily high is 88.1degs F. They grow all types of crops, all year long, summer, winter, spring and fall, using the soil, the warmth of the sun and irrigation from the Gila River. Much of the lettuce you eat comes from Yuma, AZ. You can grow food in the desert but you cannot grow food on a glacier. If you get to pick, pick warmer. Extending the growing season for northern climates might be a good thing.
The average high in Yuma almost 18 degrees F warmer than Des Moines, IA in the mid-west region where much of our corn and wheat is raised. In the worst case for global warming all they are “predicting” is a few degrees. Way less than 18F. Mankind and animals have adapted to much warmer and cooler temperatures through ice ages and warm periods. It is much easier for humans to live where it is warm. So, to answer one of our initial questions “is it bad”, personally I don’t think so.
I know the counter argument to this will be about polar ice caps melting, habit and biodiversity of flora and fauna and how this “rapid” change will not allow for adaptation. Don’t forget that alligators survived the ice age. That could be true but most plants and animals have a fairly broad range of conditions that they survive and flourish in. There is no way for “scientists” to predict these things with reliability and precision. Most if not all of the doomsday predictions are merely speculation. Rapid climate changes have happened before. They are called Dansgaard-Oeschger events. In a DO event the temperature goes up between 5-8 degs C (9 – 14degs F) over about 30-40 years and scientists believe that those events have happened about 25 times in the past with a cycle of about 1470 years.
You can see this cycle of warming and cooling in this graphic which begins at the end of the last glacial event. You can also see that it was much warmer for much longer 7,000 years ago. If you still believe we have any influence in all of this you should ask yourself, would you rather live when its warm with higher CO2 and thriving food plants or would you rather live when its icy and cold with lower CO2. Remember, you can’t grow food on a glacier.
Conclusion
In conclusion, you get to decide how scared you want to be by the guesses from the scientists that get more funding by scaring you with dire predictions. You get to decide if the supposed 2deg F rise in temperature since the 1850’s, by the way it’s relative to a pretty sketchy set of reference data, is bad for your life. You get to decide if you had rather have a warmer climate or cooler climate, which assumes of course you and I have any influence in climate. You get to decide if you want to believe in hyperbole, assumptions and predictions of doom…or… if you want to live in a greening landscape with less hurricanes, drought, and wildfires. You also get to decide if you want to believe what you are experiencing and seeing or what you are …hearing… from the main stream media and the various groups that prop up the “climate change” narrative because they make more money by selling you solar cells and windmills and electric cars all in the name of saving the planet from doom.