(Image copyright M. Ramos).

It is snowing again this morning. A little heavier version of what happened yesterday, which made the sixth or seventh “significant” snow in DC this winter cycle. We all know about the Polar Vortex weather pattern that has driven colder and snowier airmasses across the midsection of America. We used to call them Alberta Clippers, but whatever this is, I don’t like it, and was happier than hell to have avoided the last major dump of snow two weeks ago.

Weather is not climate, of course, though the average of weather over time is. That is why I have been so amused at the improbable explanations for why a warming world should get colder. When you laugh at them, the proponents of what used to be called “Global Warming” get all hissy on you, and call you stupid (or worse).

Famous Anthropomorphic Catastrophic Global Warming flack Mr. Al Gore briefly blipped the news the other day when he suggested that “fertility management” was the key to “fighting global warming and promoting economic development in poor countries.”

I know Mr. Gore is famously hypocritical- he sells his cable channel to Big Oil, flies all over spewing carbon dioxide to tell others not to, buys beachfront property while saying that sea-level rise will drown us all, and all that that nonsense. He is so famous for his alarmist line that there is now a name for unexpected snowfall: “The Gore Effect.”

All that is necessary for the elements to do something unusual (except warm) is to have him show up. Remember the blizzard in Copenhagen at the 2009 Climate Summit? That might be when this all started to fall apart, and the True Believers had to start calling whatever it is “Climate Change,” rather than global warming, since the “pause” in global temperatures began in the later Clinton Administration.

You would think that people would wake up and notice, and maybe they have. Most people put Climate Change about dead last on the list of issues of great concern. It is undeniable that the continued increase in Carbon Dioxide concentrations (it is scraping 400 Parts per million at the moment and continuing to increase) doesn’t appear to have a direct linkage to temperature.

That has caused a bit of a scramble in the climate change community, since the “greenhouse gas” argument is central to the whole scheme. For the record, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and greenhouses like it, since it increases plant growth among other things. The problem for the theory is that if the level of CO2 in the air (it is a trace gas, after all) actually has a direct relationship with temperature, it would have to be based on observations, rather than the shaky computer models whose results have predicted wildly erroneous warming. Even the UN’s IPCC had to apologize for their poor performance last year in their fifth report on the state of the climate.

But oh well. I was disconcerted the other day when someone dismissed my observations as saying the debate was a train that had long left the station- “Everyone knows that Climate Change is happening.”

Well, yes. Of course it is. This is a large, chaotic and constantly changing world. But I was reminded of the famous 97% survey, the one touted by everyone from the President on down as part of Why We Have to Do Something Right Away. Every scientist agrees!

James Taylor, writing in Forbes summed it up nicely:
“Scientific truth is determined by facts, evidence and observations – not a show of hands. If a show of hands determined scientific truth, medical doctors would still be bleeding people with leeches and we would still believe the sun revolves around the earth. Nevertheless, there may be times when political leaders feel compelled to give special consideration to an overwhelming scientific majority when that overwhelming majority reaches strong agreement on a matter of serious public concern.”

And, of course, this is about politics much more than it is about science. Let’s take a quick look at the ’97 percent number’ Secretary of State Kerry was quoting after he flew to Indonesia (12 tons of carbon dioxide produced on his trip) to castigate the flat-earthers of the world. Mr. Kerry is a pompous and irritating fellow on his best day, so I took a look at the origin of his statistics just to remind myself where it came from.

The 97% number came from a paper which explored the results of a poll performed in 2008 by Dr. Peter Doran and then-graduate student Margaret R.K. Zimmerman at University of Illinois at Chicago. This is the crucially important number, since it is the first talking point in speeches by all sorts of bloviating people (which now includes me!). The study arguably has had more influence on the global-whatever-it-is debate than any other project of its kind anywhere.

Which is sort of sad, since during the survey itself, hundreds of responders from the Climate Science community told Doran and Zimmerman the poll was fundamentally flawed and could be easily misinterpreted. You can read the paper yourself. It is blissfully short and you have to really twist it around to make the 97% claim:

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

Here is the methodology: Zimmerman sent the survey to 10,257 Earth Scientists of various stripes. Of those, 3,146 responded. Of those, Ms. Zimmerman excluded all but 77. That fact alone should have your bullshit meter on overdrive, but look at the two questions which lead to the headline the President (or rather his Gopher) tweeted about the debate being over, and the consensus near unanimous:

Q1: “When compared with pre-1800s levels, do you think that mean global temperatures have generally risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant?” 76 of 79 (96.2%) answered “risen.” So, it would be equally valid to say that the vast majority of all those who were asked didn’t answer at all. Of the ones who did answer, the vast majority expressed no opinion.

Note: I agree that global temperatures have increased .8 (point eight) degrees Celsius since 1840. We are still coming out of the Little Ice Age of 400 years ago. I hope we are not headed in the other direction.

Q2: “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” 75 of 77 (97.4%) answered “yes.”

Note: I agree that humans are a contributing factor to changing the climate, look at any land-use issue in any urban area. But that is a long way from defining what the word “significant” means, and that was why so many professionals did not answer at all.

Anyway, sometime someone tells you that “everyone knows” that “97% of scientists” agree about anything, whether it is Al Gore or noted climatologist George Clooney, just tell them that most scientists didn’t answer the question because the questions wasn’t phrased with anything like scientific accuracy.

Or you could go with “Everyone knows.” Whatever. I am just hoping it is going to stop snowing soon.

Oh, even Dr. Zimmerman started to show doubt about what is going on after doing the survey. She said: “This entire process has been an exercise in re-educating myself about the climate debate and, in the process, I can honestly say that I have heard very convincing arguments from all the different sides, and I think I’m actually more neutral on the issue now than I was before I started this project. There is so much gray area when you begin to mix science and politics, environmental issues and social issues, calculated rational thinking with emotions, etc.”

Duh. Everyone knows that.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303