Climate Change and Renewables

The climate change advocates that blame mankind for emitting CO2 and thus causing the planet to warm are spewing their disinformation again as evidenced by letters and articles in the Wilco Sun.

A well known climate scientist of 40 years, Dr. Roy Spencer debunks the claim that mankind has caused most or all the temperature changes in the last 2,000 years. In his latest blog post he observes the following:

Am I claiming that there is no such thing as human-caused warming? No. I’m claiming that it is overblown. The Public Citizen memo makes much of recent record warm years clustering together, which sounds alarming — if one doesn’t mention the small fractions of a degree involved. If there was no natural year-to-year variability, and the temperature was increasing at 0.01 or 0.02 deg. F every year, then every successive year would be a record warm year…but who would care? The rate of ‘global warming’ is too weak for any one person to notice in their lifetime.

Furthermore, we already know the climate models (which are the basis for proposed changes in energy policy to get us away from fossil fuels) are producing generally twice as much warming of the atmosphere-ocean system as has been observed. The most recent energy budget analysis of surface and deep-ocean warming suggests that the climate system is only half as sensitive to our CO2 emissions as you are being told…. maybe 1.5 deg. C of eventual warming from a doubling of atmospheric CO2. At 410 ppm, We are currently half way to doubling.

Finally, the Public Citizen memo claims that today’s technology would already allow 80% to 100% of our energy to come from renewable sources. This is patently false. Solar and wind are relatively diffuse (and thus expensive) sources of energy which are intermittent, requiring fossil fuel (or nuclear) backup. It would be exceedingly expensive to get even 50% of our energy from such sources. Maybe someday we will have such technologies, but until that day arrives, the massive amount of money that would be required to achieve such a goal would worsen poverty, which historically has been the leading cause of premature death in the world.

Dr Spencer is the co-inventor of the satellite based temperature measurements of the global lower atmosphere and he collects and archives that data for all to use.

Peruse his website and educate yourself. The site has real scientific data and analysis of global temperature that laymen can understand and appreciate.