Is The Global Warming Story Over?

A Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic (Man-Made) Global Warming

Updates

April 13, 2013: I can only see this much without a subscription to Petroleum News, but one can probably find the rest of the story by googling if interested:

As the climate warms and the Arctic sea ice cover shrinks, especially in the summer and fall, new economic opportunities are arising in Arctic waters. Russia is opening up a sea route around its northern coast and through the Bering Strait; tourist cruise ships have started appearing in previously i....

April 7, 2013: Everybody's jumping on board! Now another group of scientists agree -- global warming stopped some years ago -- and they have an explanation. Is it just me, or does it seem like a lot of D+ students (like Algore) and non-science students (like Algore) all of a sudden started reading a few books on geography, biology, weather, science -- all the subjects they skipped in high school and college -- and are now fascinated with the subject -- and surprised to see that climate change is pretty normal, has been occurring ever since the earth got an atmosphere? If they had gone to Sunday School they would know who set the universal thermostat. Smile. It wasn't man. As much as they would like to think.

Original Post

I had planned three rambling posts for the weekend. I completed the first two, subject to tweaking and editing:

• heavy oil, Gulf coast refineries, and the failure of policy
• the jobs "miss" this past week

This is the third, on global warming. All three are common themes for the MillionDollarWay and all relate to the Bakken.

First, the irrefutable facts as they apply to global warming. If you cannot get past these irrefutable facts, there is no reason to read further. I won't list these irrefutable facts here; they are at the link.

It was purely coincidental that I had planned this post for this weekend. Forbes magazine has a similar article out this week, asking whether global warming was just a beautiful dream. Dream? More like a nightmare, being singularly responsible for another lost decade for the United States.

The lede:

But I’ve grown old waiting for the promised global warming. I was 35 when predictions of a looming ice age were supplanted by warmmongering. Now I’m 68, and there’s still no sign of warmer weather. It’s enough to make one doubt the “settled science” of the government-funded doom-sayers.

Remember 1979? That was the year of “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, of “The Dukes of Hazard” on TV, and of “ Kramer vs. Kramer” on the silver screen. It was the year the Shah was forced out of Iran. It was before the web, before the personal computer, before the cell phone, before voicemail and answering machines. But not before the global warming campaign.

In January of 1979, a New York Times article was headlined: “Experts Tell How Antarctic Ice Could Cause Widespread Floods.” The abstract in the Times archives says: “If the West Antarctic ice sheet slips into the sea, as some glaciologists believe is possible, boats could be launched from the bottom steps of the Capitol in Washington and a third of Florida would be under water, a climate specialist said today.”

By 1981 (think “Chariots of Fire“), the drum beat had taken effect. Quoting from the American Institute of Physics website: “A 1981 survey found that more than a third of American adults claimed they had heard or read about the greenhouse effect.”

The writer says he is 68. I'm almost 62 so we are contemporaries, and it turns out, we have some of the same experiences and most likely a similar world view.

It's impossible to identify a specific point in time when an all-pervading myth came to an end, even in hindsight, but predicting that specific point in the future is even more problematic.

But it looks like 2013 may be the turning point, the cusp, the tipping point, the beginning of the end of the myth.

[Random note: the population of the Maldives is 320,000. That is half the population of North Dakota. It may be an important data point sometime in the future. The Maldives consists of 1,192 islands grouped in a double chain of 26 atolls. Maldives is the lowest country in the world, with a maximum natural ground level of only slightly less than eight fee, that according to wiki. At worse, the ocean levels might rise 23 inches by 2100, well below 8 feet. The Maldives have decided this is so serious they are eliminating or offsetting all of its greenhouse gases by 2020. Something suggests this is not the emergency Maldives suggests. They are waiting until 2020, although probably starting earlier. One can imagine the amount of greenhouse gases Maldives is responsible for.]

Some data points that make me think 2013 will be the year of the beginning of the end for the global warming myth.

First, the environmentalist himself: Bjorn Lomborg, a leading expert on global warming, recently noted that Germany spent $110 billion to delay global warming by 37 hours.

Then, there's the science: the British Met office and the lead NASA scientist both agree that global warming has ceased. The debate now centers around a) why; b) when did the earth stop warming; c) will it start warming again; d) is cooling a greater threat than warming; and, e) if so, do we need to start pumping out more CO2. I made up (e).

Another automobile manufacturer using battery technology as a spin-off of the global warming scare appears to be weeks, if not days, from declaring for bankruptcy protection. The delay is probably only to give time to the company to get its "ducks in order" before making the announcement.

If Fisker does declare bankruptcy it will only be the most recent in a list of almost 40 companies riding the global warming wave that have gone bankrupt, or nearly so. Ironically, that list began with another automotive manufacturer: Bright Automotive.

This winter, 2012 - 2013, was one of the longest and coldest. In the United States the winter is lasting well into spring. I just learned that Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota are bracing for another winter storm (it's April, spring time; Easter was last week) and southwestern North Dakota might see as much as eight (8) inches of snow. That's a lot of snow for North Dakota, but a heck of a  lot of snow for North Dakota in April. I won't bother looking for the link to the story that said the is was the second coldest March on record in Northern Ireland, stretching back to 1919. Great Britain, Europe, and Russia all had a tough winter this year.

Everything points to 2013 as being the year the global warming myth begins to end. It will be interesting to see how many more policy decisions will be made, based on a myth.

As for me, it will be interesting to look back in 2033 to see if 2013 was indeed the year.

P.S.

Just as I was finishing this post, a reader (thank you very much) sent me a link to a story in which Russian scientists are predicting that the earth is entering another cooling period. This was posted in Germany's #1 media outlet yesterday. For those who feel more comfortable reading English, here is the link to an English media outlet:

Yesterday Germany’s No. 1 daily, Bild online, carried the shock headline story: “Russian scientist sees next ice age approaching. Starting in 2014 it will start getting colder and colder +++ migration of people cannot be excluded."

Like me, the Russians and the Germans are starting to see stories on global warming from a historical context:

Other media outlets are reporting as well, see here, here, and here.

Stories in Germany about global cooling, hard winters, and ice ages have been popping up faster than dandelions in May lately. Global warming is beginning to look historical.

Bild starts by reporting that finally the snow and ice gripping Russia since October are beginning to thaw. “That’s why most Russians shake their heads skeptically when the topic of global warming pops up," Bild writes.

American politicians are always a day late and a dollar short, as we used to say. 

The important piece to this article is not whether the Russian scientists are correct or not. This is what is important. If Russian public policy is now based on this assertion, it changes completely how that country approaches fossil fuel. The playing field is not a level playing field.