We are finally done with June, and can move on from being proud about some things and start muttering French phrases to celebrate our Franco-American heritage and the other four things we are supposed to recall until the school-bells start to ring. One of the Salts is just back from a trip to Paris and the big Air Show, so we are attuned to that as we start to organize the fireworks for the 4th, which are a little incompatible with sound forest management, but that is part of our new perpetual holiday celebration. The picture of Mr. Eiffel’s ‘Temporary Tower” was inspirational and had no burning autos at the base.

Out on the Patio back here there is a certain wistful celebration of the history we used to remember. Those memories go back to things we were taught long ago. Remember that that stuff?

We had a brush with it back in High School as part of the introduction to Earth Sciences. It described an event that changed world history. In very brief terms it was a religious thing. A fellow named Galileo had been looking at the heavens and noted that his new precision optical devices suggested the earth on which he lived- and us, later- revved around the solar orb. Another Italian fellow of influence in Rome disagreed, since his Holy Book srongly suggested that the Sun rose and fell centered around our globe.

Both parties were pretty adamant about the issue, which included the spice of being burned at the stake for Galileo. The result of the conflict was what we call now the “Scientific Method,” which holds that new ideas ought to be tested and challenged before being accepted as revealed truth. Seemed fairly simple at the time, that being school days time. We are now living through something now that will someday have a name assigned to describe an interlude of social madness. We will not belabor the issue here, but most Boomers share the long climate narrative that incorporates aspects of the old fight about Truth, Religion and Science.

Let’s get the footnote out of the way early to eliminate confusion: we are in favor of all three of those things. Within reason, anyway.

We were still in college when the first Earth Day occurred. It was part of the great Environmental Awakening which we support, sort of. We attached the prefect “eco” to everything. You may recall the Scientific Truth of that moment, which was notice of the disgraceful abuse of our environment with the waste produced by industry and society. One of the memorable events of the time was when the Cuyahoga River caught fire near Cleveland.

We were told that if we did not take dramatic action we were all going to die. We were already generally aware of that, but this situation was one that required action. If we didn’t, we were told it was going to get colder because of the stuff we were pumping into the atmosphere blocking the sun. Likely there was goig to be another Ice Age. We shivered in apprehension. President Nixon was concerned, and a lot of good work to clean things up resulted, including establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, which was recently dragged before our Supreme Court for bureaucratic excess. Apparently there was a slight problem with the dire predictions. It wasn’t getting chillier, but instead was getting a little warmer.

That was a better scenario for Doomsday. We have been following that narrative of impending disaster for nearly a half century. We were concerned, of course. We tried to wade through the available scientific evidence. According to old records, we had experienced a period of chilly temperatures between the 16th and 19th centuries. It was cold enough to get a name, which was “The Little Ice Age.” As a convenient end point, the year 1840 was declared to be the end of it, since things were observed to be getting a bit warmer.

We are not Earth Science Professionals, but the people who gazed at mercury thermometers each day, mostly in Europe, were happy with it. We would reasonably expect things to warm a bit after a cold snap. But since they had told us we were going to freeze shortly, the narrative requiring immediate action (and a lot of cash) needed some updating. It was a bit abrupt, but instead, we were going to boil in the oceans due to Global Warming which was entirely our fault. People are still talking about that, even though reputable sources who look at world temperatures didn’t see a great deal of change over the last decade or so. To accommodate the change without altering the narrative the term was changed to something we can all agree with. The Climate changes.

There was some strange stuff in the scientific world, though of course in a good cause. “Climategate” was an event in 2009. One of the people with access to the internal emails of the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia leaked a trove of messages which indicated the scientists were focusing on minimizing inconvenient historical events to support the boiling oceans forecast. “Hide the Decline!” waas one of the better quotes from a respected scientist. There was minor controversy not widely reported.

That is not the Scientific Method we were taught, and was an embarrassment. But it revealed that the people we trusted to be honest were having some problems with their own. This is not intended to be a detailed account of all the shenanigans that went on with global temperatures. Two recent ones demonstrate things pretty well.

As you might imagine, the old historical records were compiled by people who looked at mercury thermometers with pens and paper. That network of those records compiled all around the world. Modern technology offered a new approach, which included Platinum Resistance measuring systems. There was much more accuracy and less chance of mercury pollution with these devices. There was one little issue, though. The new technology was modestly higher in recorded temperatures. It was below the standard deviation, though, so accuracy was accepted but not reflected as a modest and artificial increase. It also helped support the boiling oceans story.

There were dozens of other equally modest adjustments, but they all supported the thesis of Man Made Global Warming. thesis.

There are other such additions, of course, the products of research directly funded by people with an interest in the boiling oceans. Which brings us around to why and where we have traditionally measured the temperature. Humans first took heavier-than-air flight in 1903. The mechanics of flight and flight safety generally recorded data in support of flight safety. That normally was done at the airports. There was a slight situational problem with that, since airports got bigger, were paved in concrete, and hosted operations by hundreds of jet aircraft each day. Some participants in the debate took the “siting” issue to heart, and invented a term to account for the fact that our growing cities created artificially warmer regions around the sensors measuring them. That effect has less to do with climate than the busy activities of man. They call them “Urban Heat Islands (UHI).”

Here is a recent example: Britain’s Meteorologic Office recently announced a new record-high temperature had been recorded in summer of this year. They did not specifically mention the other peripheral factors that contributed to the record, which we found interesting. The high temperature coincided with the landing of three Typhoon fighter jets at RAF Coningsby. The measuring thermometer was situated halfway down the long concrete runway, close to the centerline on which the dual-jet engined high performance aircraft passed within minutes of one another.

It is gratifying that the actual facts around this record include the “wiggle room” factors even if they were not mentioned in the big Press Release. The actual event was not about the temperature or climate, but the jet exhaust and the temperature of the concrete. And also about the minutes airborne the pilots accumulated for their professional resumes. But information that is useful is used for whatever purpose is deemed necessary.

The introduction of “higher moral cause” into the calculations of the temperature has been known long before Climategate. The change in thermographic measurement devices is also well known if not discussed, like airpot and urban siting issues.

If the truth were the sole object in the struggle over how hot it is, there could be a vigorous discussion about it. But that isn’t the point. The state of that discussion actually has a certain commonality with the opinion of Galileo’s opponent in Rome. Salvation is at hand, you know? At least if the government funding stays nice and steady and the Earth Science community can have decent careers! The real question is what we need to be prepared for. Galileo knew burning at the stake was going to be too warm.

We might want to apply the Scientific Method to this one, too, you know?

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com