SECULAR LEFT-WING "SCIENCE" SWITCHES ATTACK, FROM CREATION SCIENCE TO SCIENTISTS SKEPTICAL ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING: NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON & COSMOS ATTACKS GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICISM:
Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey episode 12 is entirely devoted to
convincing viewers that dangerous man-made global warming threatens to
destroy our planet. If we as a world fail to act soon, Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson warns, we will tip ourselves beyond the point of no return and destroy life as we know it.
Truth and Consequences
As Bible-believing Christians we know that we are responsible to be
good stewards of the earth God created, protecting both planet and
people from preventable destruction. While there is good evidence that
the overall temperature worldwide has risen slightly over the past four
centuries, is that a catastrophic trend? And is human burning of fossil
fuels the cause? Could Cosmos host Tyson be wrong in his emphatic
declarations that the carbon dioxide produced by humans is the cause of
rising temperatures and will propel us toward destruction?
Dr. Tyson paints a dire picture of our future, parading the planet Venus
as the poster-child for a runaway greenhouse effect. At the end of the
program, he offers “a breathtaking vision of the magnificent future that
is scientifically and technically within our grasp, if we will only
awaken and seize it.”1
Concerned, conscientious people might then ask, “Why take a chance? If
there is even a possibility we are hurting our planet, shouldn’t we
change our way of life just in case?” The answer is “no.”
The repercussions of drastic action would hurt a lot of
people, especially the poorer among us. Therefore, if the problem is not
perilous, man-made, or man-fixable, a worldwide civilization overhaul
is neither necessary nor advisable. We must be sure of our facts. And
those “facts” are neither as easy to come by nor as clear to interpret
as Dr. Tyson claims.
Dr. Alan White, 2who holds a PhD in organic chemistry from Harvard University, has
authored 18 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and travels internationally
lecturing on both the biblical and scientific aspects of climate change
and global warming, says,
Dr. Tyson seems to be implying at the end of the program
that all we have to do as a worldwide community is to accept the “truth”
of man-caused global warming and stop burning fossil fuels. He implies
that there are no consequences to the changes that he is suggesting and
that the results are certain. I believe the consequences would be
enormous and the resulting change in global temperature would be
insignificant. It seems to me that forcing all people on the earth (if
you could) to use more expensive sources of energy would lower the
standard of living of everyone. Before I would want to propose that the
world take such a drastic step, I would want to make sure that I was
right about the scientific issues. At present, the case for man being
the cause of global warming is very weak, and it is far from certain
that the global temperature will continue its slow rise.
Greenhouse Effect
As with most Cosmos episodes, observable scientific
information is placed alongside worldview dependent interpretations.
Tyson explains the basic physics of the greenhouse effect. Without some
greenhouse effect, our planet would not be warm enough for us. As the
sun warms the earth’s surface, infrared radiation is emitted from the
warm surfaces, whether land or sea, and would escape and leave us cold.
The greenhouse effect involves the trapping of some of that
warmth by a blanket of “greenhouse gases” to keep the earth and its
lower atmosphere warm.
Carbon dioxide, which is utilized by growing plants and released from
burning fossil fuels, is just such a greenhouse gas. Tyson describes
Charles Keeling’s discovery of the seasonal trend in atmospheric carbon
dioxide. Levels tend to fall in the spring as forests widespread in the
northern hemisphere take in large quantities of carbon dioxide and to
rise in the autumn as fallen leaves decay. But this seasonal variation
has not been the only observable change in carbon dioxide levels. Carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere has been systematically measured at the South
Pole, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory, or both since 1958. There has
been a generally upward trend.
The greenhouse effect as well as these variations and trends in
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are observable. But whether the
generally upward trend in carbon dioxide levels is causally related to
observed temperature changes over the same period is highly speculative.
Chief of the Greenhouse Gases?
Dr. Tyson claims that carbon dioxide is “the chief climate-regulating
gas of our global thermostat,” a blatantly incorrect claim that ignores
the overwhelming importance of water vapor. Cosmos spends its
television hour focusing on anthropogenic carbon dioxide as the culprit
stalking our destiny. But the gas with the greatest contribution to our
blanket is water vapor. Water vapor and clouds are responsible for the
bulk of our greenhouse effect. Dr. Tyson neglects this inconvenient
fact. Dr. White points out,
You have been led to believe that the most important
greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. It is not. Water vapor and clouds are
actually responsible for about 80 to 90 percent of the total greenhouse
effect. That’s right, at least 80 percent. That is why clear
mornings are usually much colder than cloudy mornings. On clear
mornings, we do not have that blanket of clouds to hold in the heat.
The percentage of the greenhouse effect attributable to CO2
is believed to be as high as 20 percent by some and as low as 4 percent
by others. Almost everyone agrees that the percent of CO2 that is man-made is only about 4 percent of total CO2. Therefore, the greenhouse effect caused by man-made CO2 is less than 1 percent of the total and may be a small fraction of 1 percent. (Quote from “Should We Be Concerned About Climate Change?” in the New Answers Book 4.)
Looking Back
In most episodes of Cosmos, the worldview-based
interpretations juxtaposed with observable scientific fact have involved
millions-of-years evolutionary scenarios. What in the world could overblown interpretations of earth’s age
have to do with concerns about climate change? Here too, it turns out,
as climate scientists try to define trends and extrapolate them to the
future, what they believe about the unobservable past does make a
difference. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has only been measured for a few
decades. Temperature measurement records have only been available since
1880. Even at that it is very difficult even with modern technology to
accurately measure the average global temperature of the earth or the
average global carbon dioxide concentration due to variation from place
to place and from time to time.
Moreover, efforts to obtain estimates of past temperature and
atmospheric conditions depend upon worldview-dependent assertions in
what Dr. Tyson calls earth’s “diary.” Yet claims about global
temperature and carbon dioxide levels in the past “800,000 years” are
based on a circle of unverifiable assumptions. Tyson says, “The earth
keeps a detailed diary written in the stones of yesteryear. Climate
scientists drill ice cores in the depths of glaciers in Greenland and
Antarctica. The ice layers have ancient air trapped inside them. We can
read the unbroken record of earth’s atmosphere. It extends back over the
last 800,000 years.” Yet the vast ages assigned to these ice cores are
based on dates assigned to compressed layers of ice presumed to be millions of years old.
Comparisons with the temperatures and atmospheres of climates in the
deep past cannot be reliably assessed from ice cores. Past global
temperatures deduced from the compressed layers of these ice cores are attributed to a series of historical ice ages
and correlated with isotopes in seafloor sediments by evolutionary
thinkers. Yet all these interlinked “events” stem from a web of circular
reasoning and unverifiable worldview-based assumptions. (You can read
more about these assumptions in Institute for Creation Research
physicist Dr. Jake Hebert’s article “Ice Cores, Seafloor Sediments, and the Age of the Earth.”)
Historical Climate
Without reliable information about past climates or even about the
global temperature averages and atmospheric conditions in recent
centuries, can we compare any past climates to the present in an effort
to predict the future? Actually, history serves this purpose in the
absence of direct scientific measurements. Dr. White explains,
Historical accounts of the Medieval Warm Period (around a
thousand years ago) reveal an era where there was farming in Greenland
and little Arctic ice in the North Atlantic. This was before the
Industrial Revolution, therefore, man-made CO2 should not
have been a significant factor. How could it have been so hot back
then? Our climate models would not have predicted this.
Causality?
Granting that atmospheric carbon dioxide has risen in recent decades,
can we demonstrate a causal link to global temperatures? We cannot, as
the inconsistencies and limitations of the current climate models
attest. Dr. White says, “One of Dr. Tyson’s main points is that there is
a direct link between the concentration of CO2 in the
atmosphere and the global temperature. The facts don’t bear that out.”
In addition to the testimony of history that tells of us of a
pre-Industrial Medieval Warm Period that cannot be attributed to man’s
carbon footprint, Dr. White explains,
Dr. Tyson makes a big deal about how accurately we can measure the CO2
concentration in the atmosphere and that it shows a steady increase
since we have been able to measure it. However, the global temperature
over the past several years has not correlated with that. One would
think that now that we can more accurately measure both the global
temperature and CO2 concentration that these would correlate, IF the theory were correct. But they don’t.
All of these facts point to the inaccuracy of our current climate
models. Dr. Tyson implies that we understand climate better than we do
weather when he leads his meandering dog on the beach.3
While weather and climate are clearly different, both are poorly
understood today. It really doesn’t matter whether you watch the man or
the dog.
We just don’t fully understand all basics of climate yet. Climate
changes are incredibly complex. We just do not have enough accurate data
over a long enough period of time to model it accurately. Tyson implies
that we understand all the important factors. If we did, our current
models would work. They don’t.
Feedback Loops
Positive feedback loops, Dr. Tyson warns, will take the rise in
temperature that the earth has already experienced and propel us past
the point of no return if the trend is not interrupted. Thawing
permafrost will rot, he says, releasing more carbon dioxide and methane
gas to further heat the atmosphere and lead to a runaway positive
feedback loop of hot destruction. Additionally, replacement of
sunlight-reflecting Arctic Sea ice with heat-absorbing dark ocean water
will, he warns, create a positive feedback loop driving earth to ever
hotter temperatures if the world’s population fails to stop burning
fossil fuels. But we know our world has survived climate cycles and
swings for the 6,000 years since God created it. Man does not really
understand earth’s climate very well, despite Tyson’s claim to the
contrary. Could earth, like Tyson says of Venus,
fall into the grip of catastrophic positive feedback loops like this,
or are negative feedback loops in place to stabilize our world’s
climates? Commenting on Venus’s positive feedback climate loop and the
negative feedback loops protecting earth, Dr. White comments,
None of us can know for sure what either planet [Venus or
Earth] was like in the beginning. They are clearly very different
today. One of the major differences is the presence of our oceans. The
310,000,000 cubic miles of water on the earth’s surface today act as a
massive heat sink that helps to stabilize our planet’s temperature. To
me it makes sense that the earth’s temperature has been so stable over
its recent history due to the presence of an enormous amount of water
and the hydrologic cycle.
One possible negative feedback system involves the hydrologic cycle.
A higher temperature on earth would cause more evaporation (which cools
the earth’s surface), more cloud formation, and likely more sunlight
reflected away from the earth. This negative feedback could help to
stabilize the global temperature and could easily overwhelm any of the
positive feedback systems. At present we don’t understand the relative
magnitude of these different feedback systems.
Engineers familiar with control systems are well aware that control
systems dependent on positive feedback easily go out of control whereas
those based on negative feedback generally do not. Since the earth’s
temperature has been relatively stable for many centuries, it seems more
likely that the earth’s climate is moderated by one or more powerful
negative feedback systems.
We have not seen the earth rocketing upward to catastrophically hot
temperatures. In fact, in the 1970s many scientists feared earth had
entered a catastrophic cooling trend! There is not—despite Dr.
Tyson’s statements to the contrary—a consensus among climatologists that
man’s contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is a significant cause
of climate change or that atmospheric carbon dioxide is the cause of
the modest rise in global temperature that seems to have taken place in
recent years.
#Cosmos #NeildeGrasseTyson #GlobalWarmingAlarmism #CarbonDioxideIsNotAPollutant #ClimateChange #GlobalWarming #JudithCurry #RoySpencer #ClimateCounterConsensus #ScienceSaysSo #ScienceSaysNO
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