Peak summer arrives with temperatures that, it turns out, are hot, and climate change is now responsible in some areas for rising house insurance costs that soared as much as 21% faster than temps.
I like the economic material and common sense thinking generally. However, I wonder if a little more integrity could be applied to climate science. I submit the following recent paper (Oct 8, 2024) authored by mainstream, recognized (especially Michael Mann) climate scientists for your consideration.
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth:
Here are some of the integrity issues I have against the climate-change argument. First off, I used to believe in it because I could observe it. Summers felt increasingly hot; winters had less snow; glaciers were retreating. Of late, winters have felt a lot colder, and some glaciers have started rebuilding while others retreated, but the lack of integrity regarding summer temperatures among the climate-change crowd has been hugely off-putting.
Everywhere now I read articles that use heat index measures, rather than raw temperatures, and rarely do they note the truth that raw temperatures did not break records in areas where their heat index did. Nor do they talk honestly about how historic temps in the last hundred years were revised downward on the presumed basis that thermometers were off then.
As with the problems I point out in economic stats, the same kinds of problems are immense in the use of these indices. They have so many ways of manipulating the "real feel" of temperatures that I don't trust them at all. Stick to the raw temps we have used for years so we can compare apples to apples. We all know what temperature is.
The integrity problem has become much worse of late. A year ago, weather articles would tell you that they were using an index of how heat feels to a human being and not raw temps. Then they started burying that truth with just a note of where their data came from; but, if you took all the time to chase that down and read through the website, you could eventually uncover the fact that all the data that organization provides to media is based on their index, and then you'd have to do more searching to find what their index comprised for measures and adjustments. Now they often don't mention anything about using an index anywhere or about the source of info.
I took all that time and found the opportunity for human manipulation of the numbers over just raw data was immense and that, in many places where they were now reporting "record temperatures" or using the misleading term "record heat" the actual raw temperatures were below any past records reached because they were using index values.
The other big problem I have with the integrity of climate science, which to me has become far more political than scientific to a level that looks more like religious dogma, is that they always talk about CO2 as if it is a pollutant AND talk about today's temperatures as if they are high and today's sea level as if it were getting high. Fact is, sea level has barely budged compared to the three feet of rise we were told in the 70s we'd see by now. Fact is that temps are far lower than they have been for most of earth's existence. Fact is that CO2 is extremely healthy to the earth and most of the earth loves and craves it. There is a reason it is called a "greenhouse gas." Plants don't just love it; they have to have it. It is the oxygen they breathe.
Earth was not covered with desserts when CO2 was higher and temperatures were much higher than they are today. In fact, on the grand scale of time, earth's average temps right now are in the bottom quarter of all temps. Earth was a terrarium at higher temps and higher very healthy CO2 most of the time. Plants were abundant and animal species that thrive under higher temps (such as reptiles) thrived. In fact, all that carbon we worry about coming from fossil fuels was free carbon that became trapped in buried plant and animal remains. Burning it now, releases the carbon and takes the earth back to where it was for many millions of years, versus the recent thousands of years..
An HONEST argument--one with the integrity you want--would point out routinely that HUMANS (and mammals in general) do not do well in the higher temperatures we would have if we just existed at earth's historic mean temperature, but that other species would thrive even better. Today's concern is an anthropocentric argument, and I would agree that I would not like higher temps; but the idea that they are largely human caused (which has become a dishonest narrative) is likely not true because higher CO2 and higher temperatures were abundant long before humans ... and lasted vastly longer than the present period, and the rate of temperature change has slowed down a lot from some periods.
Here is one core problem. Almost none of the scientific models is honest in factoring in how much a rise in CO2 creates a rise in plant life, particularly plankton, and how much that rise in plants that grow much faster in that oxygen-rich CO2 environment consume CO2 and return it to being O2, buffering the gains. The more CO2, the more it self-corrects by growing more plants more quickly.
You see, CO2 is merely the oxygen that plants breathe; while O2 is the oxygen animals breathe. While I have no doubt you are aware of that, it is COMPLETELY left out of all conversations about CO2 that, with zero integrity. constantly talk about it like it is the worst pollutant out there. It's just the oxygen that MOST of earth loves.
So, while studies like the one you linked to put out hyperbole, such as "Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled," they lack the integrity to note that earth actually THRIVED under higher temperatures and greater concentrations of CO2, but that it is less conducive to the life of the Johnny-come-lately mammals. Now, naturally the life of those mammals matters more to me since I am one, but the idea that "earth is imperiled" seems hugely overstated. Humanity may be emperiled, but earth may actually do better without us. Maybe it's true to say the FABRIC of life is imperiled, if by that you mean that the "fabric" of all life would have fewer mammalian threads and more reptilian threads, but life, overall, would do fantastically.
So, it is the lack of transparency and total honesty in the climate-change stories that are suddenly abounding with every weather story told (sure evidence of being agenda driven) that bothers me. You almost cannot read a story about extreme weather without reading the words "human-caused climate change." That scream propaganda.
What really gets me is how they use that term with no evidence in the story to back up the claim that humans are causing it and how they contradict themselves. For exsample, they say that Hurricane Milton is what we get from human-caused climate change and, as evidence, which they fail to note is completely self-contradictory, they say the evidence of that is that Tampa hasn't been hit by a hurricane this bad for over a hundred years. Read between the lines of that statement and you quickly realize (as research will back up) that a hurricane of equal or greater size passed through the Tampa area a little over a hundred years ago when only about 150 humans lived there. So, worse hurricanes happened with virtually no human influence. The only reason the damage is vastly greater today is that there were almost no buildings to damage at all when the last big one came through and few humans to die in the limited rubble.
So, could some of it be human caused? Sure. It COULD be. However far worse temps dominated the earth for MILLIONS of years before humans crawled the surface and hurricanes as bad as we see today happened before the Industrial Revolution. And CO2 is self-limiting on earth so long as we make sure plants are allowed to thrive because the higher it rises, the more plants consume it and spread more quickly and turn it back into O2, and almost no one on the climate-change side even talks about that, except just enough to gloss over it.
The first part of this statement, for example, is an outright LIE:
"We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus."
Only the second part is close to true. Perhaps such a rapid rise has not been witnessed by MODERN humans, but that is all that can be said. Look aT A timeline of earth's temperature, and you see several rises that were more rapid and climbed far higher. Look at the graph at the top of the following page that tries to make a case for human-causes climate change, and look honestly in order to bring in that integrity you want:
What you see is that a far, FAR more abrupt and higher change occurred 12,000 years ago. Our species DID supposedly experience that one. So, it is not even honest, at all, to say that our species did not experience anything like this. It experienced FAR WORSE coming out of the ice age. Notice also that there was a LONG plateau after that climb and only a small rise compared to the massive steep rise that took us out of the ice age. Note that the actual rise is a mere uptick while the MASSIVE rises they show are all future projections (based on their highly biased political science).
In objective truth, we've seen a modest rise since the Industrial Revolution that is a tenth the size of what we saw climbing out of the ice age and not nearly as steep. That's the truth with real integrity. We're not even out of their "ice house" temperatures yet!
Wow. Thanks for the substantial reply! I'm afraid mine won't be so long and likely be indirectly responsive:
I don't think click-bait headlines, or their integrity, is worth anyone's time.
There is plenty of scientific evidence showing that there is a significant Earth Energy Imbalance, the earth is heating up. I don't think it is reasonable to argue that it is happening, only how fast it is happening.
We have lots of reviewed science as well as organizational bodies such as the IPCC that is showing the reality.
For example, the science says that higher temperatures will let the atmosphere hold more water (each 1C allows 7% more water vapor in the atmosphere if I recall correctly). Hotter oceans have also been measured (the heat from the EEI has to go somewhere). Hotter temperatures in the oceans produce more weather activity, such as hurricanes - meteorology.
In geologic time, there are plenty of periods where CO2 was much higher, or much lower.
The urgency we have is that our burning of fossil fuels has helped cause such a rise in CO2 in such a short time that there is small chance that we, anthropogenically, will be able to adapt to and survive the resultant heating of the earth.
We, as a civilization, need to address our future. We are consuming the earth's resources much too fast. We are acting like there is no tomorrow. We live unsustainably as a whole. Greed, as usual, drives our civilization.
I may be wrong, but I see you arguing against headlines and talking heads, inaccurate models (they're models, come on), or someone else's poor analysis or changing usage of numbers. It is easy enough to go to the sources; scientists and bodies are making the data and results very accessible.
I like your economic analyses and commentary on changing numbers by the government. But I don't think it is fair to suggest scientists are doing the same thing (vs click-bait and so on). This is a real issue that will affect us and I believe we should be addressing it - a topic for much more difficult conversations.
And they are not just raising insurance rates on just coastal areas. My house insurance went up 20% and I live in the heart of the Midwest. No previous claims and have been a steady customer with the same company for 40 years. Must be due to those dreaded corn stalks breaking lose in high winds. Straight up ripping people off and blaming climate disasters for it. In the meantime they are dropping a lot of people in the high risk areas, Ka-Ching!!!!!!
Oh, and if you bundle your other insurance (car, life. etc.) with the same company then we may lower your rate some. Which means they have been essentially overcharging you since Day One!!!
Well, you know how fast that corn grows during global warming so long as you throw a little water on it. It can be a real terror, I'm sure. Thanks for the perspective!
I like the economic material and common sense thinking generally. However, I wonder if a little more integrity could be applied to climate science. I submit the following recent paper (Oct 8, 2024) authored by mainstream, recognized (especially Michael Mann) climate scientists for your consideration.
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth:
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595?login=false
Hi Joel,
Here are some of the integrity issues I have against the climate-change argument. First off, I used to believe in it because I could observe it. Summers felt increasingly hot; winters had less snow; glaciers were retreating. Of late, winters have felt a lot colder, and some glaciers have started rebuilding while others retreated, but the lack of integrity regarding summer temperatures among the climate-change crowd has been hugely off-putting.
Everywhere now I read articles that use heat index measures, rather than raw temperatures, and rarely do they note the truth that raw temperatures did not break records in areas where their heat index did. Nor do they talk honestly about how historic temps in the last hundred years were revised downward on the presumed basis that thermometers were off then.
As with the problems I point out in economic stats, the same kinds of problems are immense in the use of these indices. They have so many ways of manipulating the "real feel" of temperatures that I don't trust them at all. Stick to the raw temps we have used for years so we can compare apples to apples. We all know what temperature is.
The integrity problem has become much worse of late. A year ago, weather articles would tell you that they were using an index of how heat feels to a human being and not raw temps. Then they started burying that truth with just a note of where their data came from; but, if you took all the time to chase that down and read through the website, you could eventually uncover the fact that all the data that organization provides to media is based on their index, and then you'd have to do more searching to find what their index comprised for measures and adjustments. Now they often don't mention anything about using an index anywhere or about the source of info.
I took all that time and found the opportunity for human manipulation of the numbers over just raw data was immense and that, in many places where they were now reporting "record temperatures" or using the misleading term "record heat" the actual raw temperatures were below any past records reached because they were using index values.
The other big problem I have with the integrity of climate science, which to me has become far more political than scientific to a level that looks more like religious dogma, is that they always talk about CO2 as if it is a pollutant AND talk about today's temperatures as if they are high and today's sea level as if it were getting high. Fact is, sea level has barely budged compared to the three feet of rise we were told in the 70s we'd see by now. Fact is that temps are far lower than they have been for most of earth's existence. Fact is that CO2 is extremely healthy to the earth and most of the earth loves and craves it. There is a reason it is called a "greenhouse gas." Plants don't just love it; they have to have it. It is the oxygen they breathe.
Earth was not covered with desserts when CO2 was higher and temperatures were much higher than they are today. In fact, on the grand scale of time, earth's average temps right now are in the bottom quarter of all temps. Earth was a terrarium at higher temps and higher very healthy CO2 most of the time. Plants were abundant and animal species that thrive under higher temps (such as reptiles) thrived. In fact, all that carbon we worry about coming from fossil fuels was free carbon that became trapped in buried plant and animal remains. Burning it now, releases the carbon and takes the earth back to where it was for many millions of years, versus the recent thousands of years..
An HONEST argument--one with the integrity you want--would point out routinely that HUMANS (and mammals in general) do not do well in the higher temperatures we would have if we just existed at earth's historic mean temperature, but that other species would thrive even better. Today's concern is an anthropocentric argument, and I would agree that I would not like higher temps; but the idea that they are largely human caused (which has become a dishonest narrative) is likely not true because higher CO2 and higher temperatures were abundant long before humans ... and lasted vastly longer than the present period, and the rate of temperature change has slowed down a lot from some periods.
Here is one core problem. Almost none of the scientific models is honest in factoring in how much a rise in CO2 creates a rise in plant life, particularly plankton, and how much that rise in plants that grow much faster in that oxygen-rich CO2 environment consume CO2 and return it to being O2, buffering the gains. The more CO2, the more it self-corrects by growing more plants more quickly.
You see, CO2 is merely the oxygen that plants breathe; while O2 is the oxygen animals breathe. While I have no doubt you are aware of that, it is COMPLETELY left out of all conversations about CO2 that, with zero integrity. constantly talk about it like it is the worst pollutant out there. It's just the oxygen that MOST of earth loves.
So, while studies like the one you linked to put out hyperbole, such as "Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled," they lack the integrity to note that earth actually THRIVED under higher temperatures and greater concentrations of CO2, but that it is less conducive to the life of the Johnny-come-lately mammals. Now, naturally the life of those mammals matters more to me since I am one, but the idea that "earth is imperiled" seems hugely overstated. Humanity may be emperiled, but earth may actually do better without us. Maybe it's true to say the FABRIC of life is imperiled, if by that you mean that the "fabric" of all life would have fewer mammalian threads and more reptilian threads, but life, overall, would do fantastically.
So, it is the lack of transparency and total honesty in the climate-change stories that are suddenly abounding with every weather story told (sure evidence of being agenda driven) that bothers me. You almost cannot read a story about extreme weather without reading the words "human-caused climate change." That scream propaganda.
What really gets me is how they use that term with no evidence in the story to back up the claim that humans are causing it and how they contradict themselves. For exsample, they say that Hurricane Milton is what we get from human-caused climate change and, as evidence, which they fail to note is completely self-contradictory, they say the evidence of that is that Tampa hasn't been hit by a hurricane this bad for over a hundred years. Read between the lines of that statement and you quickly realize (as research will back up) that a hurricane of equal or greater size passed through the Tampa area a little over a hundred years ago when only about 150 humans lived there. So, worse hurricanes happened with virtually no human influence. The only reason the damage is vastly greater today is that there were almost no buildings to damage at all when the last big one came through and few humans to die in the limited rubble.
So, could some of it be human caused? Sure. It COULD be. However far worse temps dominated the earth for MILLIONS of years before humans crawled the surface and hurricanes as bad as we see today happened before the Industrial Revolution. And CO2 is self-limiting on earth so long as we make sure plants are allowed to thrive because the higher it rises, the more plants consume it and spread more quickly and turn it back into O2, and almost no one on the climate-change side even talks about that, except just enough to gloss over it.
The first part of this statement, for example, is an outright LIE:
"We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence. We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus."
Only the second part is close to true. Perhaps such a rapid rise has not been witnessed by MODERN humans, but that is all that can be said. Look aT A timeline of earth's temperature, and you see several rises that were more rapid and climbed far higher. Look at the graph at the top of the following page that tries to make a case for human-causes climate change, and look honestly in order to bring in that integrity you want:
https://scitechdaily.com/66-million-years-of-earths-climate-history-uncovered-puts-current-changes-in-context/
What you see is that a far, FAR more abrupt and higher change occurred 12,000 years ago. Our species DID supposedly experience that one. So, it is not even honest, at all, to say that our species did not experience anything like this. It experienced FAR WORSE coming out of the ice age. Notice also that there was a LONG plateau after that climb and only a small rise compared to the massive steep rise that took us out of the ice age. Note that the actual rise is a mere uptick while the MASSIVE rises they show are all future projections (based on their highly biased political science).
In objective truth, we've seen a modest rise since the Industrial Revolution that is a tenth the size of what we saw climbing out of the ice age and not nearly as steep. That's the truth with real integrity. We're not even out of their "ice house" temperatures yet!
Wow. Thanks for the substantial reply! I'm afraid mine won't be so long and likely be indirectly responsive:
I don't think click-bait headlines, or their integrity, is worth anyone's time.
There is plenty of scientific evidence showing that there is a significant Earth Energy Imbalance, the earth is heating up. I don't think it is reasonable to argue that it is happening, only how fast it is happening.
We have lots of reviewed science as well as organizational bodies such as the IPCC that is showing the reality.
For example, the science says that higher temperatures will let the atmosphere hold more water (each 1C allows 7% more water vapor in the atmosphere if I recall correctly). Hotter oceans have also been measured (the heat from the EEI has to go somewhere). Hotter temperatures in the oceans produce more weather activity, such as hurricanes - meteorology.
In geologic time, there are plenty of periods where CO2 was much higher, or much lower.
The urgency we have is that our burning of fossil fuels has helped cause such a rise in CO2 in such a short time that there is small chance that we, anthropogenically, will be able to adapt to and survive the resultant heating of the earth.
We, as a civilization, need to address our future. We are consuming the earth's resources much too fast. We are acting like there is no tomorrow. We live unsustainably as a whole. Greed, as usual, drives our civilization.
I may be wrong, but I see you arguing against headlines and talking heads, inaccurate models (they're models, come on), or someone else's poor analysis or changing usage of numbers. It is easy enough to go to the sources; scientists and bodies are making the data and results very accessible.
- https://www.ipcc.ch/
- https://www.co2.earth/
- https://gml.noaa.gov/
- https://climatechangetracker.org/igcc
- https://ed-hawkins.github.io/climate-visuals/indicators.html
- https://zacklabe.com/climate-change-indicators/
- https://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/GHGs/
I like your economic analyses and commentary on changing numbers by the government. But I don't think it is fair to suggest scientists are doing the same thing (vs click-bait and so on). This is a real issue that will affect us and I believe we should be addressing it - a topic for much more difficult conversations.
I'll let you have the last word and let readers decide for themselves as I've already said plenty.
And they are not just raising insurance rates on just coastal areas. My house insurance went up 20% and I live in the heart of the Midwest. No previous claims and have been a steady customer with the same company for 40 years. Must be due to those dreaded corn stalks breaking lose in high winds. Straight up ripping people off and blaming climate disasters for it. In the meantime they are dropping a lot of people in the high risk areas, Ka-Ching!!!!!!
Oh, and if you bundle your other insurance (car, life. etc.) with the same company then we may lower your rate some. Which means they have been essentially overcharging you since Day One!!!
As Eric Peters @https://www.ericpetersautos.com/ always says, the insurance companies are like the Mafia.
Linking as usual tomorrow @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Well, you know how fast that corn grows during global warming so long as you throw a little water on it. It can be a real terror, I'm sure. Thanks for the perspective!