Climate hysteria

The Oregonian, March 30, 2014
Climate hysteria leads to bad public policy: Guest opinion 

By Roy Ashmun

A fissure near California's Mammoth Mountain is emitting hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide per day. 

(AP Photo)

Guest columnist John Kaufmann wants us to conclude that global warming is a man-made phenomenon driven by carbon dioxide. Reports I read say the earth's temperature has been constant for the past 15 years while the level of carbon dioxide has increased. Ice core data show that increases in temperature preceded increases in carbon dioxide by centuries. Climate models have overestimated temperature increases and failed to detect warming in the deep atmosphere (up to 75,000 feet) where the carbon dioxide effect is supposed to be most direct. And “climate scientists” have fabricated and altered data and withheld information that would allow other scientists to verify their findings. Consequently, I have yet to be persuaded of man's sin of carbon pollution.

The earth's climate is affected primarily by three factors: solar output, marine currents and the occasional catastrophe. At this time the climate scientists don't know whether clouds result in adding or subtracting to temperature, let alone the effect of the primary greenhouse gas, water vapor, which is 97 percent of the greenhouse gases. Consider there is a fissure in Mammoth, Calif., that is discharging hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide a day, thousands of coal mines are burning in China, hundreds of thousands of acres of forests burn each year in the U.S. and livestock flatulence is a major additive, yet man's behavior is the transgression that must be punished.

Kaufmann enumerates the number of articles and organizations supporting the belief in man-made warming as proof of its reality. I would be cautious about relying on consensus science. Recall the sun revolves around the earth; the earth is 6,000 years old; continents are stationary and immoveable; stomach ulcers are not a disease, etc. By the way, is there any other discipline that measures orthodoxy and apostasy to such a degree?

The earth may indeed be in a warming phase, but there is no ideal temperature in this dynamic system. Greenland was green before the advent of the Little Ice Age and is likely to be so once again as the climate continuously changes. I grudgingly concede Kaufmann’s side generally wins public opinion polls because the phrase global warming/climate change has an implied link to “man-made” that is accepted without doubt. And public opinion is quick to perceive variation as a trend as in the observation, “We had (more) (fewer) cold days this year. It must be because of global warming”
I assert that mankind's role in the changing climate is minimal based on the evidence that Kaufmann finds so persuasive. A difference of opinion would be just that, but climate hysteria has resulted in public policies that squander economic resources promoting alternative fuels and distract us from issues that we do have control over.

Roy Ashmun lives in Northeast Portland