Excerpted from The Energy Advocate February 2020.
Causal Chain of Events Howard Cork Hayden Let us begin this discussion with the famous picture from Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. He parades in front of a huge screen displaying the temperature and the atmospheric CO2 concentration of the earth for the last 700,000 years or so. Both rise and fall together, showing long 100,000-year glacial cycles interspersed with 10,000-15,000-year interglacials, such as our present one. He implies that the stupidest kid in a 5th-grade class could easily see the fit, and that increasing CO2 is the cause of the warming. In the 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental report on Climate Change (AR5 of the IPCC) we read, There is high confidence that orbital forcing is the primary external driver of glacial cycles. [Emphasis in original.] Here, “orbital forcing” in AR5 refers to three orbital parameters well known to astronomers: the varying eccentricity of the earth’s orbit, the varying tilt of the Earth’s axis, and the precession of the tilt axis. We needn’t concern ourselves with the numerical details; suffice it to say that the IPCC states in no uncertain terms that the periodic variations in those three parameters (the Milankovitch cycles) are the cause of the glacial cycles shown by Mr. Gore in the famous picture. Two notions above—that the Milankovitch cycles drive the glacial cycles, and that CO2 changes cause temperature changes—imply a causal chain that is apparently neither recognized nor explained by Mr. Gore, the IPCC, or other alarmists. The implied chain of events is this: 1. 2.
Milankovitch cycles change the atmospheric CO2 concentration; CO2 changes then cause temperature changes. 1
To my knowledge, no ‘climate scientist’ in any institution, with any amount of funding, with any amount of computing power available, has ever asked, let alone answered, how this chain of events could happen. How could variations in the orbital parameters change the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere without first changing the temperature? As you might suspect, the orbital variations result in variations in sunlight (in this case, at latitudes north of the 65th parallel), which cause changes in the temperature. Furthermore, detailed looks at the data show unequivocally that the temperature changes have occurred before the CO2 changes. To summarize the first several paragraphs, during the last several glacial-interglacial cycles, increasing CO2 concentration did not cause the earth to warm up, and decreasing CO2 concentration did not cause the earth to cool down. Nor did CO2 keep the earth from cooling down. CO2 concentration was an effect, not a cause. One is entitled to ask how CO2 concentration is now the cause and temperature is now the effect. Of course, the orbital changes are slow, and they have precious little to do with the climate during the short time since (say) 1900. Locally, climate is considered to be the 30-year (or longer) averages of many weather phenomena, whereas global climate is considered to consist of such weather phenomena averaged over the entire earth and averaged over at least 30 years. To the extent that we have such data, we’re talking about four 30-year-average data points since 1900. The only world-wide temperature data we have is measured by satellites, and that system has been in existence only since December 1978. By December 2038, we’ll have logged two 30-year-average satellite data points. To alarmists, these very few data points are enough to demand that all use of fossil fuels come to an immediate halt. _____________________ Howard "Cork" Hayden corkhayden@comcast.net NEW! Energy: A Textbook, $25 at www.energyadvocate.com and www.valeslake.com 785 S. McCoy Drive Pueblo West, CO 81007 Consensus is the enemy of science
2