Why Skeptics are Losing the Climate Change Battle

Why Skeptics are Losing the Climate Change Battle
By Anthony Bright-Paul 2/05/2016
American Thinker 

I am a climate skeptic. Many skeptics know that and have even contributed to my book Climate for the Layman. But we are losing the argument and for one simple reason. We keep, - or at least some of us - keep up the illusion that there is such a thing as a Global Temperature. 

There is no such entity and never has been. Furthermore there is no such thing as an average Global Temperature either. Peace be to Dr. Christy of the University of Alabama, for whom I have the greatest respect. He assures me that there is an average Global Temperature arrived at by inference from remote sensing from satellites. This is done by counting the number of joules, which as you all know I trust, are units of energy.

But may I humbly beg to differ. It is manifestly impossible to put in all the data in order to arrive at an average. It is clear that an average such as NASA provides based upon some 3,486 weather stations situated at 5ft above the ground is just nonsense. Why? Because in the whole of this sacred Planet of ours to determine the temperature based upon such a sparse amount is truly ridiculous. 

Moreover of the 3,486 stations 3,269 are situated in the relatively warm areas of Europe, America, and Africa. How many stations are there in the vast continent of Antarctica? Merely 8. Read that again – merely 8.

This is not an average at all. In no way is it scientific. In no way does it make clear that had the temperature been taken at 10ft above the ground the readings would have been different. The fact is these are atmospheric temperatures that are measuring the tiniest possible part of the atmosphere. 

The atmosphere that we live in has a thickness of some 66 miles or 100 kilometres not just 5 ft. So in no way is this a truly atmospheric temperature.

Within one column of air rising up 66 miles to outer space there is a huge range of temperatures. So it would make more sense to average a column. But who can average a column over the poles equally with a column over the tropics? And who can do it systematically on a grid system taking into account night and day?

The trouble is that nothing is static and yet both skeptics and warmists behave as if it were so. Any average that was taken right now would already be wrong the minute thereafter. We are hurtling through space, we are winding round the Milk Way, we are being bombarded by cosmic rays and by Solar winds and Solar storms, yet we have allowed the warmists to dominate the argument and propose that man is warming the globe by emitting too much carbon dioxide.

That argument alone is ridiculous and the skeptics know that. But they have built themselves a hole by going along with the warmist idea that there is a Global Temperature, which can be manipulated down by man, even to 2 degrees Celsius. Such an idea is also absurd, but dear skeptics, we have given it credence by acknowledging that there is some sort of mysterious Global Temperature or even an average Global Temperature. There are no such entities.

The whole of the warmist argument collapses once we declare roundly that there is no Global Temperature and neither is there such an entity as an average Global Temperature either. There is such a mass of data constantly on the move that it is impossible to infer an average. What is even more absurd is that the warmists claim that 2015 was the warmest ever and the skeptics reply that it was only the third warmest. Game, set and match to the warmists.

And as to remote sensing by satellites the data obtained may be of some scientific interest, but can counting units of energy likewise tell us the temperature of the planet? Well, the answer is no, for the very simple reason that there is not one temperature, but a huge mass of ever changing temperatures. Radiation may be energy but it is not heat, is it? Not till it encounters mass. Besides which what is being counted?  We need to be yet more skeptical.

The vast majority of employed scientists apparently support the warmist view, namely that man is warming the Planet, that that warming is dangerous, and that the warming is causing climates to change. Yet it is no surprise that the vast majority of scientists who contest these claims are retired, no longer dependent upon funding from the state. The warmist arguments are riddled with holes and can easily be shot to pieces, but only if the skeptics are truly skeptical!