Quick, someone call 911. A robbery is in progress. The police better bring a lot of backup because the thief must be enormous. On second thought, maybe the Air Force is needed. After all, the missing items are — hurricanes.
Global warming proponents have been pounding the doom and gloom drum for nearly 15 years. The drumbeat intensified following Katrina’s devastation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Al Gore warned that “unless we act dramatically and quickly” all heck would break loose. “In Churchill’s phrase,” the former Vice President said, “this is only the first sip of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year…” Mr. Gore had previously warned that seas levels could rise some 20 feet, inundating thousands of seaside cities. Many Americans assumed science had settled the debate.
But Big All has a problem. Despite the fact that virtually nothing has been done to curb green house gas emissions, scientists are now telling us that Mother Earth is experiencing a cooling trend. Average folks around the world have arrived at the same conclusion as record low temperatures have been recorded in locations as disparate as Baghdad, Beijing, and Chicago. This has proved embarrassing to the Global Warming crowd, so much so they’ve change the coming catastrophes’ name to Climate Change. Now, regardless of trends, any and every alteration in climactic conditions is sighted as proving the original Global Warming hypothesis.
Such duplicity really doesn’t hold up. Just a little investigation reveals that the earth’s climate has always been in flux with warming and cooling swings occurring since the beginning of time, long before 6+ billion people began spewing gobs of CO2 into the atmosphere. Compounding Vice President Gore’s position — and this is so sweet — is the utter failure of his dire predictions. Case in point: where have all the hurricanes gone?
Contrary to Gore’s predictions of hurricanes increasing in frequency and intensity, just the opposite has happened. Ryan N. Maue, a Florida State University student seeking a PhD in Meteorology, posted this on his school’s website on October 29th: “The North Atlantic hurricane season has not produced a storm in over 3 weeks and, if no more develop, the season would rank as the slowest since the El Nino year of 1997.” Worse from Gore’s perspective is this little addendum, “Hurricanes Bill and Fred accounted for over 82% of the Accumulated Cyclone Energy…The remaining storms were weak, rather short-lived and unremarkable.”
Throughout the hurricane season other weather watchers have noticed the conspicuous lack of storm activity. ”As of July 20, 2009,” reported the Farmer’s Almanac online, “there hasn’t been a single named storm in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico or Caribbean waters.” That’s down from 8 named storms by August 3rd of 2005, the year Katrina flooded New Orleans. On August 6th of this year, National Geographic News admitted, “Before the 2009 Atlantic hurricane season kicked off on June 1, forecasters were calling for 12 named storms, with about half developing into hurricanes. Now, about two months into the season, zero storms have formed in the Atlantic.” What’s a forecaster to do?
Computer models are used to generate weather predictions, and similar systems are used by global warming proponents. With the proven inability of forecasters to accurately predict the weather scant months or even days into the future, perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to accept the results of similarly suspect computer models that show the oceans rising some 20 feet decades hence.
The inescapable problem with computer analysis of future climate conditions is that someone has to input data that a computer can then act upon. Dozens of factors are taken into account, and a small error on the side of “global warming” in each individual input will result in a huge error on the bottom line.
Conclusions drawn from this manifestly imprecise method have been used to call for the virtual demolishing of America’s energy sector, an unnecessary self-demolition ensconced in Cap and Trade legislation. Before America hamstrings its energy producers and renders its manufacturers uncompetitive in world markets, perhaps we should wet our fingers and hold them to the wind. That approach, primitive though it may be, is just as reliable in predicting future climate changes as the most powerful supercomputer.
But before you step outside with moistened finger, you’d better bundle up. It’s cold out there.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Global Warming