The global warming alarmists are at it again. You know the hypothesis. Humans are using so much energy and releasing so much carbon into the atmosphere its causing the planet to heat up via the “greenhouse effect” and our climate is changing catastrophically. If we don’t allow the government to institute huge energy taxes to curb energy use and carbon generation, the planet will quickly become uninhabitable.
This year the alarmists are citing a warmer than normal March as evidence, and as far as I can tell, many -- perhaps most -- Americans are buying the story hook, line and sinker.
Does a warmer-than-normal March provide any kind of reasonable evidence that mankind is causing catastrophic climate change? In a word, no.
Climate is basically the behavior of the atmosphere over time -- time measured not in months or years or even decades, but over millennia. Actual evidence of human-caused climate change would have to show a clear change to the normal variability of Earth’s climate and would have to show clear evidence of a man-made mechanism, which is causing the change. Neither of those things is in evidence.
What the alarmists use for evidence are computer models and statistical analyses, both of which are designed to show the predetermined result of climate change. When these models and analyses are compared to what the climate is actually doing, they don’t even come close to describing reality. These techniques cannot even match up with what the climate has already done, let alone predict what it will do.
There are a lot of reasons for this, but chief among those reasons is the simple fact that none of us understand how climate works. There are simply too many elements and too many interactions. We’re very gifted in our thinking and reasoning abilities, but we’ve not yet learned enough to tell the future. When it comes to predicting weather only six months into the future, astrology, tea leaf reading, and the study of goat entrails are equally as accurate as modern meteorological science.

Now, as for the warmth of March 2017 is concerned, ;ast month’s average temperature at Kimball, 44.96 degrees, was warmer by nearly four degrees than last year’s 40.19 degrees. Indeed, it was almost nine degrees warmer than the 123 year average of 36.0 degrees. But here’s the problem. When you look back at the March average temperatures over the last 123 years they range from 22 degrees in 1912 to nearly 50 degrees in 2012.
At first glance, warm and cool March average temperatures seem to cluster in groups. But, when you look more closely, they really don’t. Sometimes five or 10 warmer Marches will follow five or 10 cooler Marches. Often a couple of warm will be mixed in a string of cool and vice-versa. There’s simply no pattern.
The geologic record tells us the climate has been warming since the end of the last ice age, about 15,000 years ago. It tells us the climate was very much warmer and very much colder at times over the last several million years, and that some of the cold and warm periods were roughly correlated with atmospheric carbon levels, while just as many were not.
Now, given the facts as we actually know them to have existed in reality rather than in computer models or statistical analyses, do you honestly believe global warming alarmists are correct in their assertion that mankind alone is presently -- today -- causing the climate to spiral out of control?
Here’s the simple scientific test. If the human-forcing mechanism is true, then there must be actual evidence to support the claim, else it is false. The climate must be warming in a different fashion than ever before, and a clear, easy to understand man-made mechanism must be shown to be the direct cause.
Neither of those things are in evidence.
So when the reporters say that March, 2017 was the nth hottest on record, what exactly do they mean? What numbers are they using over what time scale? How is this information different from the norm? How is it not different from the norm? These are questions that every human should be asking when presented with extraordinary claims. It’s only common sense.
Much of the news which we are bombarded with each and every day is at best poorly and incompletely reported and at worst an outright deception. GMO’s, antibiotics, cancer rates, heart disease, vaccines, pink slime, animal welfare, societal violence, racism and intolerance, and the list goes on and on. You’re not getting anything like the straightforward, honest and objective truth about any of these things.
People often tell me that they feel vulnerable in a world that is out of control. That they don’t know what to believe, what to do, how to behave.
Like it or not, the answer to this problem falls squarely on each and every one of us. The only way to get closer to reality, truth and objectivity is to use our individual brains to study the issues, to think things through, and to put issues into a reasonable scale, context and perspective.
As far as how to behave, when was the last time you sat down and quizzed yourself on the fundamental principles you hold dear? Is it important to be honest, to treat others as you would be treated, to hold yourself to the same standard you hold others to? If these things are important, then why are they important? Why is it important to not violate your principles?
This is nothing new. Human civilization has always featured swindlers and charlatans. And the answer has always been the same.