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Global Warmists make a Big Deal out of hurling the epithet "denier" at anyone who doesn't accept their claim that the world end in 10 or 12 years if we don't stop emitting CO2.
This is ironic, because we've noticed that there is a lot of denial in the warmist camp, just as there is a great deal of racism clearly on display in the groups who specialize in accusing their opponents of racism.
At the time of this writing, many parts of the world are experiencing severe drought.
AccuWeather, which claims to know a lot about instantaneous weather, published "Chilling warning messages unearthed as Europe's drought worsens."
Dating back to the 15th century [that's the 1400s, around 600 years ago], the messages on these boulders marked record low water levels and were "horrifying" warnings from ancestors about famine, Koens shared in his tweet.
Translated, the message reads, "If you see me, weep."
In a muscle-powered farming society without modern transportation, low water in the river meant that the crops couldn't have gotten enough rain to grow properly, and there'd be mass starvation,hence, read it and weep.
Droughts revealing underwater history is not limited to Europe. AccuWeather also reports "Plunging Yangtze River unveils 600-year-old statues"
It is not the first occurrence of submerged Buddha statues seen across China. In 2017 a separate Buddha carving was found in China's Jiangxi Province, Xinhua reported. It was determined that the statue dated back to the Ming Dynasty. Locals told Xinhua that due to the Buddha's placement at the intersection of two rivers where boats have commonly overturned, it was believed that it was carved there so that people could pray for safety as they traveled the waters.
These artifacts have not been seen in the clear air for hundreds of years - but, obviously, at some time in the past they were above water as they are today, since scuba gear and diving suits did not exist centuries ago. The climate has, indeed, changed, and quite drastically at times!
In fact, nobody we know believes that climate doesn't change. What warmists mean by a "denier" is someone who believes that climate changes naturally on its own, and that what we do has little if any effect.
The carvings show that climate changing to dry years, which have unfortunate effects on humankind, have been a part of the normal climate change cycle for centuries. Anyone who claims that this sort of climate change is the work of humans is a denier - it's been going on for a long time all by itself. There were no internal combustion engines in 1400, but there was a drought the equal of what we have today, brought on by anything but human technology.
Evidence of pre-technological climate change can be seen the world around. The Vikings ranched cattle in Greenland in the Middle Ages, when it was a lot warmer than it is now. We know that "Ancient Greenland was much warmer than previously thought."
Geology gives us an opportunity to see what happened when the Earth was warmer than today.
Although researchers have long known these two periods - the early Holocene and Last Interglacial - experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in the Earth's orbit, the mix of fly species preserved from these times shows that Greenland was even warmer than previously thought. [emphasis added]
The UN tells us that a temperature rise of 2 degrees will spell disaster.
Today, northwest Greenland hovers in the 30s and low 40s Fahrenheit and weathers snowstorms in summer. But average summer temperatures in the early Holocene (8,000 to 11,000 years ago) and Last Interglacial (116,000 to 130,000 years ago) climbed well into the 50s. [emphasis added]
This confirms controversial geological records constructed from ice cores taken nearby, which also indicated significant warming during these time periods.
"Well into the 50s" means the earth was 10 to 15 degrees warmer then. We "experienced warming in the Arctic due to changes in the Earth's orbit" [emphasis added] and the Vikings and the rest of the world got along just fine.
Anybody who says 2 degrees will bring disaster is a denier of unarguable scientific facts of history and historical climatology.
The article says "Well-known changes in Earth's orbit caused warming during the early Holocene and Last Interglacial periods" then switches to say that today's warming is man-made. What an obvious contradiction! The Vikings didn't use engine-powered ships, cars, or anything else, yet their world was quite a lot warmer than ours is right now. Anyone who says that human activity accounts for most of climate change is a denier.
Indeed, NASA published "Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth's Climate" which has a detailed explanation of how changes in the earth orbit, its axial tilt, variations in the sun's output, and other factors have affected long-term climate. Since that explanation won't support the current narrative, they link to another article which, surprise! surprise! blames warming on CO2!
Since 1750, the warming driven by greenhouse gases coming from the human burning of fossil fuels is over 50 times greater than the slight extra warming coming from the Sun itself over that same time interval.
There's a problem with simply blaming CO2. The MIT Program on Global Change points out that CO2 accounts for very little greenhouse-driven planet warming:
"I want to comment that the way-dominant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is not mentioned, namely water vapor," writes Ken Saunders of Pacific Palisades. "Water vapor accounts for about 97 percent of the total (natural plus man-emitted) greenhouse warming of the planet. See, e.g., John Houghton's 'The Physics of Atmospheres, 3rd edition,' Cambridge University Press, 2002." [emphasis added]
Put another way, CO2 and all other gases account for 3% of the warming. If CO2 all by itself had warmed earth 50 times as much as changes in the sun's output, and CO2 accounts for a mere 3% of warming, we should have seen a much bigger temperature increase than we have. Their stories don't add up.
CO2 and all other gases account for 3% of the warming; water vapor causes the rest. That's why, as we've pointed out, trees increase global warming by putting water vapor into the air instead of leaving it in the ground.
Their argument is that any increase in CO2, by increasing temperature even a little bit, will evaporate more water and have a multiplier effect. So will planting lots of trees, since that's what trees do, but planting trees is a way to signal virtue and create bogus carbon offsets so we have to encourage it.
We can't pave over the oceans to stop water-induced warming, so the solution is to stop putting out CO2 at vast expense paid for by you and me.
AOC notes that cows produce methane, another "potent" green house gas which is part of the wicked 3% of global warming not produced by water vapor. Lawmakers and warmists are all hot and bothered about methane leaking from cows and from poorly-maintained oil drilling equipment.
Phys.org tells us that massive amounts of methane come from the sea floor:
"It has been estimated that there are more organic carbon in the form of methane in hydrates than in all fossil fuels combined. The leakage of methane could lead to a feedback loop in which the ocean warming melts gas hydrates resulting in the release of methane from the ocean floor into the water. The warmer it gets, the more methane leaks out," explains Marcelo Ketzer, professor of environmental science at Linnaeus University.
This process is believed to have triggered and amplified climate changes in our geological past.
So we have an undersea methane source which seems to have more carbon than "all fossil fuels combined," yet reality deniers are concerned about cows?
There are other methane sources. The New York Times reports that in addition to being produced by biological processes and being found frozen beneath the sea, a great deal of "abiotic," that is, non-biological methane, is generated by chemical reactions deep in the earth:
But it doesn't come from the decay of ancient plant, algae or animal life, like fossil fuels. Instead, this gas comes from a chemical reaction inside rocks. And a series of studies published by a group of international scientists known as the Deep Carbon Observatory is showing that this source of gas is more common on our planet than previously known.
"We have discovered these unusual types of methane in many, many sites. It's not a rare phenomenon," [emphasis added]
Non-biological methane is such a new phenomenon that for many years, scientists studying Mars believed that finding methane there would indicate life on Mars. Alas, we now know that methane is not an infallible indicator of life.
How much non-biological methane is being produced? Except for finding out that it's more common than we thought and that it's coming from many, many sites and that it's not rare, nobody knows. We need special instruments to tell whether an individual methane molecule came from a cow or from geological activity. Only a deluded denier would proclaim that we need to stop eating meat to minimize methane emissions to Save the Planet.
"The West's Green Delusions Empowered Putin" discusses the geopolitical implications of letting a teenager named Greta set Western climate policy. It observes that Vladimir Putin did some back-of-the-envelope calculations:
Putin knows that Europe produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day but uses 15 million barrels of oil a day. Putin knows that Europe produces 230 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year but uses 560 billion cubic meters. He knows that Europe uses 950 million tons of coal a year but produces half that.
The former KGB agent knows Russia produces 11 million barrels of oil per day but only uses 3.4 million. He knows Russia now produces over 700 billion cubic meters of gas a year but only uses around 400 billion. Russia mines 800 million tons of coal each year but uses 300.
That's how Russia ends up supplying about 20 percent of Europe's oil, 40 percent of its gas, and 20 percent of its coal.
The math is simple. A child could do it.
Why did Europeans let themselves become so vulnerable to energy blackmail?
These countries are in the grips of a delusional ideology that makes them incapable of understanding the hard realities of energy production. Green ideology insists we don't need nuclear and that we don't need fracking. It insists that it's just a matter of will and money to switch to all-renewables-and fast. It insists that we need "degrowth" of the economy, and that we face looming human "extinction." ...
The result has been the worst global energy crisis since 1973, driving prices for electricity and gasoline higher around the world. It is a crisis, fundamentally, of inadequate supply. But the scarcity is entirely manufactured. [emphasis added]
Americans did our part. Remember Mr. Obama saying, "I'll make energy prices skyrocket"? Nobody believed him, but he meant it, and we're in his 3rd term.
We were a net exporter of petroleum products during the previous administration. The current administration shut down pipelines, stopped oil leasing on Federal lands, slow-walked permissions needed to drill, and helped the Europeans restrict worldwide oil supplies.
They can't push back too hard against Mr. Putin's Ukraine invasion because he could shut off their gas supply completely with the twist of a valve. Warmist delusions made the worst armed conflict since WW II possible.
Anybody who believes that we can engage in the pleasant fantasy of powering our grid with intermittent sources like solar and wind is a denier, and anyone who denies the geopolitical implications of this delusion is a double denier.
There have been many articles about a coming water shortage in California. Although the rest of the world is suffering a drought which is similar to periods of unusually low rainfall which have been recorded in carvings made during periods of low water since the 1400s, it's a different story in California.
Bay Nature reports on analysis of tree rings which shows that California has a weather cycle of 1,000 to 1,200 years with long periods of higher than average rainfall and periods of much lower rainfall. There are three different drought cycles which can converge and produce very long, very severe droughts.
Dawson says the redwood cores hold the first record of all three cycles. The tree ring records show that California is caught in the middle of climatic cycles that are so long, we've been ignorant of them until recently. What it also means is that the worst drought we've seen may actually be the norm when taking the long perspective.
"This drought, which we think of as very severe, definitely was not as severe as some of the past droughts that were recorded in the redwood tree ring records," Dawson says. "We have at least eleven droughts we know of that go back in time that were either as severe or more severe than the one that we're currently going through." [emphasis added]
What Bay Nature is saying is that the current "drought" isn't really a drought in the sense of an unusual period of less rain than normal, it's the "new normal." Anyone who thinks that Californians will be able to have grassy golf courses and lawns while preserving their agricultural system, at least without recourse to environmentally-unacceptable technology like desalination or nuclear energy is a denier.
Tree ring analysis shows that we were ignorant of the long-term California drought cycle until recently. We've shown how planting trees puts more water vapor in the air, and water vapor accounts for 97% of the heat-trapping effect.
We're told that a 2 degree temperature increase will be disastrous, yet Greenland cores show that the earth was 10-15 degrees warmer in the past than it is now. Heimduo tells us that Antarctica was also much warmer in the past.
Scientists drilling deep into the edge of modern Antarctica have pulled up proof that palm trees once grew there.
How much warmer was the earth when palm trees grew in Antarctica? Short Fact reports that Kumaon palms can handle temperatures as low as -4 degrees Fahrenheit, but that weather has to be consistently warm, or at least not cold, for palms to thrive. "Winter knocks them out." Palm trees do well south of Southern Florida whose average temperature is around 80 degrees in Miami.
The average temperature in the warmest part of Antarctica along the coast is 14 degrees, Kumaon palms can survive that temperature, but only for short periods. For palms to survive, the Antarctic temperature would have to increase by at least 50 degrees and perhaps by 60 degrees. Anyone who says that human life can't survive beyond a 2 degree increase is a fact-challenged denier.
Anybody who claims that we understand the earth's climate well enough to predict the precise effects of this or that climate measure is a denier - not just of science, but of reality itself.
Given the vast amounts of tax money being thrown at highly uneconomical and intermittent energy sources, the leaders of the warmist movement are politically-connected scam artists as well as deniers.