Plain Dealer: Example of Worldwide Editorial Disgrace!

By Rich Kozlovich

On August 23, 2013 the Editorial Board of the Plain Dealer published an editorial titled, Time to stop dragging our feet on climatechange and acknowledge the imperative of international cooperation, citing a United Nations report saying:

“Climate change is real and it's our fault”.

I would like to know exactly what climate change are they talking about?  Is “Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)” the change they are discussing?  Clearly that can’t be the case because the Earth stopped warming over 15 years ago. 

Perhaps they are unaware that atmospheric temperature readings never supported the AGW position from the beginning, and the ground readings were so corrupted by placement and equipment failures that those readings became scientifically worthless.  That makes this statement - "human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010,” - by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meaningless. 

Let’s take a look at this anyway. 

James Taylor recently published an article titled, More Global Warming Alarmist Games: Doctoring The Temperature Record where he asserts that that:

“alarmists claim we should trust their computer models even after the models have been proven inaccurate when measured against real-world data. As shocking as that assertion is, it pales in comparison to another common tactic employed by global warming alarmists: doctoring the real-world temperature data.”

So is this just a big mistake, or is it fraud?  There are things that all scientists (no matter which side of this issue they are on) must absolutely know for sure, and one of those incontrovertible facts is:

 “for more than 30 years now satellite data and surface station data have been available for analysis. Surprisingly, the scientists who oversee the collection of surface temperature data report more warming than the satellite data report. This tells us either that sources of artificial warming have not been properly filtered from the surface temperature data, or the warming of the past 33 years is not due to increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

Taylor goes on to say:

“Climate scientist Roy Spencer, who oversees the NASA satellite instruments measuring global temperatures, reports that virtually all of the warming claimed by the overseers of U.S. surface temperature stations is the result of adjustments government-employed scientists make to the raw data. The objective, unaltered temperature readings show essentially no warming since 1973.”

In short, all of the projected steep temperature increases have failed to occur!

Then the PD goes on to state:

“denial about the human role in climate change has to end if the world hopes to keep major coastal cities such as New York and London above water. 

There have been articles that make truly alarming statements such as; “by 2100, scientists and computer models estimate that sea levels globally could rise as much as 3.3 feet,” and this study predicts that the East Coast could see “8 to 11 inches more” than this, hence “putting one of the world’s most costly coasts in danger of flooding….”. 

 I can understand how that would scare the average reader, but journalists are at the center of the information world; there is absolutely no excuse for them accepting this kind of scare mongering. 

It's all baloney!

All these numbers are made up based on computer modeling –Game Boy Science – and just as in programming a game they make adjustments that fit the scenario to which they subscribe.  In some video game that's no big deal, but in science it's - garbage in, garbage out.  In the real world of real observations, such as satellite measurements, no such rise is being detected at all.  Jo Nova reports in an article titled, Man-made sea-level rises are due to global adjustments, saying: 

“It’s well known and often quoted that sea levels have been rising by 2-3mm a year every year for the last 20 years. But it’s not well known that the original raw satellite data doesn’t show that at all. 

What astonished me was the sea levels first recorded by the Topex Poseidon satellite array showed virtually no rise at all from 1993-2001. Surely not, I thought. I asked sea-level expert Nils Axel-Morner, and he confirmed: “Yes, it is as bad as that.“ Now, given that Envisat (the European satellite) showed no rise from 2003-2011 (until it was adjusted) that means we have almost 20 years of raw satellite data showing very little rise. 

We thought satellites would finally give us a definitive answer on sea levels. Instead, like the tide gauges, and every other tool available to mankind, apparently satellites systematically underestimate the rising trends. And despite the speed of light being quite quick and all, it can take years for the data to finally arrive. Sometimes 4 or 5 (or 10 years) after the measurement was made scientists “discover” that it was wrong. 

Now of course, any one of these adjustments could be for very legitimate reasons and give us results closer to the truth. But the adjustments always bring data closer to the modeled trend. It’s decidedly non-random. Either there is a God who thinks teasing climate scientists is spiffy, or else there is something fishy going on, and some investigative journalists need to ask some investigative questions. Is that sea-level rise due to global warming or is it due to global adjustments?”

The PD editorial went on to claim:

“The Nobel Prize-winning group's fifth assessment on climate change declares that it is 95 percent certain that the burning of fossil fuels worldwide is making the planet warmer, melting ice caps at the poles and raising water levels throughout the world. (Its 2007 report made similar assertions with 90 percent certainty.) Avoiding that catastrophic scenario should be a top priority for all nations.”

Baloney is now being followed by horsepucky! 

That 95 percent certainty is based on what?  Not on CO2 measurements surely; because the CO2 levels have risen dramatically over the last 15 years and the so-called warming trend ended over 15 years ago.   That is one of the absolutes all these people must know.  If that is the case we have to conclude CO2 has no bearing on global temperatures, and that rationale is in harmony with history and what we see going in reality. 

I don’t think “New York, London, Shanghai, Venice and other cities” are going to have to worry about being “threatened by an almost two-foot deluge by 2100”, and as for the world erring on the side of caution…that is a plea for acceptance of the Precautionary Principle, which is a plea to return to the primitive.  It always sounds so reasonable, but it’s also irrational because we are totally incapable of correctly predicting the weather a week from now, let alone predicting what climate changes may or may not occur in ten, fifty or one hundred years from now.

Admittedly, weather isn’t climate; but since climate is far more complex than mere weather we need to get over this idea that we're going to predict it with computer modeling - or crystal ball gazing - nor do we have the ability to control it.  The natural forces that control the Earth’s weather patterns and climate are powerful and unpredictable.  Most importantly; our ability to alter either may make for a great science fiction story; but make no mistake about this.......it’s still fiction. 

The PD Editorial Staff concluded that if we didn’t accept the conclusions of the United Nations IPCC disaster was in the making, and “That would be a worldwide disgrace.”

What is really a disgrace is the Plain Dealer’s quality of journalism.  Journalism of this order may create bigger problems for the PD than merely cutting down on how many days they publish.  Their continued existence as a publishing entity may become their next big concern; and if this is the best they have to offer....it should be!