The History and Ignorance of “Sky Is Falling” Theories
with Special Emphasis on Anthropogenic Global Warming

Part 3 - "Perfect Storm Scientific Consensus"

While most of these predictions (if not all of them) look ridiculous now, back in the late 80s until around 2010 they were scientific gospel; there were only a few of us that were shouting “fraud” and “hoax” from the very beginning. The rest of the world were convinced that humanity was in the process of burning down its home, like two spoiled kids whose iPhones were taken away from them because they misbehaved. Here’s what happened and why we are in the shape we are in today.

Initially, the idea that fossil fuels were playing a role in the warming of the planet made an excellent hypothesis. There’s no doubt that we were putting more and more CO2 into the atmosphere and it was also clear that the planet was warming. So, the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) hypothesis was created. This hypothesis stated that as we pumped more and more CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, the global temperature would rise accordingly.

In 1999 Mann and associates took this concept to an entirely new level with models and the hockey stick graph showing that the warming would not only increase, but increase exponentially. This is a scary proposition and is best explained with this scenario.
Let’s say a pond has a cell of algae in it and the algae and future cells of algae divide once a day. If the pond is completely full of algae on day 30, when is it half full? Obviously, on day 29. This potential screams about the danger of global warming if we wait too long to fix it. If we wait until day 29, we will have waited too long.

Because of this, the urgency was shouted to the world before the hypothesis could be proven to be correct. This action completely nullifies the scientific process that demands proof of concept before the hypothesis is proven to be correct. It is interesting that it is the “warmists” (the term used to identify fanatics who see the AGW hypothesis literally as gospel), who scream that “deniers” (we actually prefer “realists”) are anti-science, when it is their behavior that is totally ignoring the scientific process essential in order to obtain valuable scientific data and research. But, they had their reasons that they believed were essential to save the planet and the human race.

The idea the world was about to end and that humanity was the cause appealed to many groups: environmentalists, the main stream media, progressives/globalists, governments, and ultimately a large portion of the scientific community.
Environmentalists thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Finally the world was recognizing the danger humanity was to the planet. They’d always believed this and some the real nuts in this community had actually become eco-terrorists. According to the FBI, these people caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage between 2003 and 2008. There is at least one murder blamed on eco-terrorism. Regardless, the scientific hypothesis that humanity was destroying the planet was music to the ears of environmentalists across the globe.

The Main Stream Media was almost giddy. This was the story of the millennia, only the second coming could outdo it. The world was going to end, the sky was actually falling, and, best of all, we were at fault. Our greed, our raping of the environment, our ignoring the signs that we were going too far, testing the ability of the earth to handle our misdeeds. They, too, believed they had died and gone to heaven. They couldn’t get enough of this bad news; nothing sold the media, be it print, TV, or Internet any better. The last thing they wanted to hear was that the hypothesis was wrong. Not only would they have egg on their respective faces, but the story would die and they would never have another so juicy, so bad.

Progressives and globalists embraced the hypothesis with open arms. This was a problem only governments could solve, in fact, a worldwide government. They had been dreaming of this potential for decades, if not centuries. The ultimate power of a worldwide central government that could lay down the law, make decisions that the hoi polloi could not be trusted to make. They would have ultimate power more than the pharaohs of Egypt could even dream of. The progressives didn’t want a constitution that limited the power of the central government, they wanted to be able to expand the power of the central government to the extreme and the AGW hypothesis gave them the excuse they needed to demand that the central government take over every aspect of living thing on the earth. They, too, believed they had died and gone to heaven.

With the AGW hypothesis governments finally had “reasonable” reasons to increase taxes (hidden taxes) on the poor and middle classes. They might make a showing by lowering  income taxes or providing certain tax breaks for those classes. But , they could soak them by taxing energy companies, the carbon tax, who would be forced to pass the added expenses on to their customers, and the poor and middle classes would suffer the most because of the resulting increases in the price of energy for cooking, heating, cooling, driving, and on and on. This never ends because everything we consume depends on energy either to produce it or deliver it. But, that’s only one of boons the federal government gains. They also gain immense power over people’s lives as is best demonstrated by the massive rules and regulations created by the Obama EPA. Power over the people, finally the end of that ridiculous old-fashioned saying, a “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.” They, too, felt they’d died and gone to heaven.

With these groups firmly on the side of the AGW hypothesis, things began to develop rather rapidly. The people wanted to know what global warming meant in their lives and they turned to the government to tell them. Governments gladly took on the responsibility and began handing out what ultimately was billions of dollars to research facilities that were willing to embrace the hypothesis and answer the question. What does this mean? Those in the scientific community that were concerned that the hypothesis was still unproven were shut down and didn’t receive any government funding. What funding they did get from organizations that wanted to know what was really going on, quickly dried up as public opinion turned against those that opposed the hypothesis. Any research that desired to test the hypothesis and/or offer opposing views was taken to the woodshed or made to sit in the very back of the bus. In essence it was a career-destroying decision to go against what had become not only a “scientific consensus,” but a “perfect storm, scientific consensus.”

As I stated earlier, we’ve had “scientific consensus” before and in almost every case they tend to hamper research, setting it back decades if not centuries, destroy reputations, cut off the funding of those opposing the consensus, and, ultimately, they are proven to be wrong. But, this was different, this was the first time in literally centuries that the consensus had the support of governments, the media, and the people. The last time this happened was when the consensus insisted that the earth was the center of the universe. That time people were burned at the stake, not allowed to publish or lecture, and scientific research was put on hold for decades. This is why I have dubbed this “scientific consensus” as the “perfect storm” consensus.

But it gets even worse. A entirely new industry to support the consensus has been created—the “green” industry is worth a trillion and a half dollars worldwide. For governments and progressives their greatest fear is the AGW hypothesis being proven wrong. If this hypothesis fails, their world will come crashing down around them. Science will lose massive credibility, that will take decades to regain; the green industry will collapse and along with it some very important research, especially the research on new battery technologies; environmentalists will be laughed at and organizations like Green Peace will lose funding, governments will lose their ability to over-tax the masses (this is a good thing); and, most important, the effort to form one, powerful, and ultimately immoral world government will be set back decades, hopefully forever. Essentially, all of these groups will discover that it wasn’t heaven but hell that they had created. Is there any doubt why all of these groups are so afraid of a Trump administration? He is the kink in their armor, the leak in their dam, he represents the end of their world. They will do anything to destroy him and his administration, and I mean anything.

So, with literally trillions of dollars at risk and many special interested groups depending on the money, the “perfect storm scientific consensus” was born.  Again, it’s a perfect storm, because other groups and organizations supporting it are so very powerful, so influential. There’s a saying that a lie can make it around the world before the truth can get its pants on. In this instance the lie has the complete support of those scientists and scientific organizations whose funding and reputations depend on it; it has the support of the new media who thrive financially and emotionally on everything but good news; it has the support of worldwide governments who see this as an excellent opportunity to gain power, influence, and funds to support those activities that are demanded by the rich that are looking to influence the laws and regulations that are passed. And it has the support of a large portion of the entertainment industry that has its own reasons for wanting a global society, and don’t forget those that honestly believe that humans are the problem and therefore we are obligated to fix it. This time, the lie had a personal jet and the truth was left with a kiddie car.

So, that’s how it all began, but there is another side of the story, the opposing side those of us private citizens, scientists, and politician who are denigrated and called “deniers” (again, we prefer “realists”). Why do we doubt the consensus? This is why.
First and foremost, the proper scientific process was completely ignored and a dangerous (to human life and our nation’s socioeconomic health) hypothesis was allowed to influence governmental policy around the world, from the smallest countries to the U.N. itself. The way science happens is that scientists notice something and that sparks their curiosity.

I remember reading Dr. Richard Feynman’s, book, You’ve Got to be Kidding Dr. Feynman, and in it he describes his inspiration for one of his discoveries. He was at a circus theme restaurant, having dinner, as he watched the professional plate twirler, twirl plates on the end of a stick he notice a wave pattern that he’d never seen before. His curiosity was peaked and the research that he did to satisfy that need led to his receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Again, the scientist notices something; his/her curiosity is sparked; after some research a hypothesis is formed that attempts to explain what has been observed; models are created that are designed to prove the hypothesis is correct. Once the hypothesis is proven to the scientist’s satisfaction, a paper is published, usually in a peer-reviewed scientific journal that defends the hypothesis and fully describes the research and provides all of the necessary data. This is done so that other scientists can have a crack at it, try to duplicate the results. If it passes muster, their hypothesis gains some credibility, but it is still not considered to have reached the level of an acceptable theory, not especially scientific fact.

There are times when the honest scientist discovers the hypothesis is completely wrong, even if it has been an accepted hypothesis. For example, the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, and Adam G. Riess for discovering that the rate of expansion of the Universe was increasing. The interesting thing was that their research was designed to determine how much the expansion rate was slowing. That was the current consensus: the rate of expansion of the universe was slowing down. However, they actually proved the opposite and the results surprised them as much as it surprised the scientific world. This is an excellent case of scientific research being done honestly, of not being afraid to challenge a current belief, no matter how much acceptance that belief has, when the data seems to be showing that something else is going on, that another, unbiased, look is needed if the truth is to be discovered.

This essential, scientific process was ignored in the case of the AGW hypothesis. Again, the climate “scientists” had, what was for them, a reasonable, even responsible, excuse. There wasn’t time to wait for the hypothesis to be proven scientifically. That would take at least a decade and could take even more. They “knew” that we didn’t have a decade, the hockey stick graph showed that global warming was on an exponential curve. There was literally no time left, the train was leaving the station, the conductor sounded the alarm, and the world jumped on board for a trip to fantasy land.

Ultimately, of course the hypothesis was tested and honest, accurate, scientific data proved that global warming essentially halted in 1999, with 1998 being one of the warmest years on record (due to a very powerful El Nino). Temperatures have not increased at anywhere near the rate that the hypothesis predicted, definitely not exponentially, and actually, really not at all. In addition, the Antarctic ice sheet is growing and the Artic has yet to see a summer without ice. In addition, there’s still plenty of snow around, with this year showing records for California, the upper Mid-West, and the East Coast. Powerful storms seem to be declining again, definitely not increasing. And, let’s not forget the polar bears, who have a great resurgence since the late 1960s when the polar bear population was about 12,000, the latest estimates put population at about 26,000 worldwide. In addition, as shown earlier, it appears that polar bears have survived, over the past million plus years, periods of warmth much greater than we will experience in the next decades and probably much longer.

There’s no doubt that you can find opposing views to those that I just mentioned and, different from the warmists, we welcome opposing views and welcome opportunities to debate warmists. However, keep in mind that trillions of dollars are at stake, as well as the reputations and credibility of many organizations and other groups of individuals. There is nothing that will make a person ignore the truth more than a fact that will take dollars out of his back pocket. A fact that will take all his dollars and his reputation too, is a fact that must be ignored.

As realists, our major issue is that we don’t ignore the scientific process in order to support an unproven hypothesis. When government policy is created based on the unproven hypothesis that adds insult to injury and when those with an opposing view are shut out of the conversation, that’s adding potential disaster to injury, and nothing good results.

Secondarily, it needs to be understood that, in reality, there is no such thing as a “scientific consensus.” In fact, one of the major objectives of science is to prove that the current accepted scientific “truths” are essentially wrong. This includes everything from the big gang theory to the theory of gravity to our understanding of molecular processes within the human body. The AGW hypothesis does not get a pass. This quote by Einstein is one of my favorites, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.”

Potential Dangerous Results (or the Unintended Consequences)

This is not just a scientific argument, it has become a major societal decision that will affect millions of people’s lives and well-being. There are at least three potential dangers to staying on the AGW hypothesis path: major damage to our nation’s socioeconomic health, Immense suffering and loss of life worldwide (already happening), being totally unprepared should the world enter a mini ice age, the rise of a world government and the end of nation states; the end of the United States as we know it (many are striving for just this to happen), and decades of delay in discovering the actual processes that drive climate change.

The many billions of dollars that must be spent to, theoretically halt global warming will greatly damage our socioeconomic health by wasting funds that could be used in much more realistic ways. The gentleman who has studied this issue for the past decade is Bjorn Lomborg. In 2007, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine after the publication of his controversial book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which challenged widely held beliefs that the environment is getting worse. While supporting the basic concept that humanity is causing global warming, he realizes that there is basically nothing that we can do about that and that the trillions of dollars needed would be much better spent in other areas which includes research in technologies that will minimize the impact without disrupting life on the planet. I encourage you to do a Google search and learn about some of the ideas that this brilliant man has to “save the planet.”

What major development has taken a major segment of humanity from day-to-day suffering to a relatively comfortable successful life, and has allowed us to feed more people than experts ever believed possible? The answer is simple, the energy that comes from fossil fuels. Fossil fuels drive the engines of progress and make the world a safer place to live. They have brought light to the darkness, given warmth in the winter, and cool on a hot summer day. They bring food to the table and medicines to the hospitals. They provide a level of individual freedom to billions of people that, not too long ago, was only available to the very wealthy.
The hope was to spread this boon throughout the world so that everyone would at least have light, warmth, and a hot meal and possible everything else the energy brings. The need is great, millions are dying from the burning of biofuels to cook and heat homes.

The policies put in place by the U.N. are not allowing the distribution of the relatively inexpensive energy that comes from fossil fuels and, therefore, these countries, these areas of other countries are stuck in a third world environment. But, warmists don’t care, all they care about is their precious belief that humanity is destroying the planet. This is happening right now, but, as the price of energy increases, alternative energies are not inexpensive. There are many others even in countries like the United States that will suffer a loss of freedom and, potentially, loss of life, as they can no longer afford to buy the energy they need to heat their home or buy the food they need for sustenance. This is just the beginning of where the unintended consequences of global warming policies are causing more suffering than global warming will ever cause; there is no present danger of human-caused catastrophic global warming.

Solar scientists around the world are verifying a link between a “quiet sun” (when the sun has a lack of sunspots) and global cooling. This link has been known for decades because we have sunspot data that goes back centuries and the climate data to associate with that. Our sun is currently entering one of the quietest phases that science has ever observed and some solar scientists are predicting that a mini ice age will begin in 10 to 20 years. If they are correct, this will result in shorter growing seasons and a much greater need for energy. China seems to recognize this danger and they are buying up fossil fuel energy sources around the world, plus adding many more coal plants and refineries. In other words, they are making the right decisions and we are making exactly the wrong ones. Our efforts to halt climate change are exactly the opposite of what we should be doing if we believed that the mini ice age was a strong possibility. Right now, we are less that prepared for this eventuality and the suffering that could result will not be pleasant to experience or observe.

I’ve talked enough about the dangers of a worldwide government. There is little doubt that it would quickly devolve into a worldwide dictatorship. Additionally, if this took place it would guarantee that China would soon rule the world. There’s no doubt in my mind that they are planning for the eventuality, however it may come about. Regardless, the dream of America and the peace and prosperity that we have literally brought to the world will be forgotten. This is not a future that I wish on my progeny.

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Copyright 2017 Brad Fregger