overthe transom.JPG

Beach Betty peers over the transom of a sailboat. "Over the transom" is an expression journalists use for unsolicited material, such as the helpful email on climate change I got from a reader. It's also the label I use for my occasional posts on diverse topics.

(The Captain)

I recently received the following email from a reader by the name of John Murray:

Check out the 6/23 issue of Time.

On the cover: "Scientists labeled fat the enemy. Why they were wrong"

On Page 22 of the same issue, in an article on climate change: "Really, the debate should be over." Why? Because scientists are never wrong, of course.

Those two contradictory positions did indeed appear in Time. All of this fits in with what I wrote in my April column headlined: "Is Carbon Dioxide the New Cholesterol" which should be required reading for all those journalists writing about climate change.

In it, I pointed out that what was once called a “consensus” on the role of dietary cholesterol and fat in causing heart disease has now been debunked, as that Time headline pointed out. I was an editor at a health magazine back when this consensus was being pushed, and I witnessed as it was slowly discredited by more research - the same as is happening with climate alarmism.

Here’s an excerpt from that column:

I also pointed out that “consensus” is a political term, not a scientific term. Scientists are always open to the possibility that today’s theories may be discredited by tomorrow’s observations.

Or in other words, the question is not what the consensus is today. It’s what the consensus will be 20 years from now.

That's how science works. But you couldn't tell it by the writer of that time piece on climate change. He is a complete scientific illiterate. Check this passage providing "proof" of climate change:

“Scientists have already documented 5 in. to 8 in. of sea-level rise around South Florida over the past 50 years.”

For one thing, those scientists must be pretty sloppy if they can’t determine sea-level rise within three inches. For another, if the lower number in that range is accurate, then sea-level rise has actually slowed down in the past 50 years as more and more carbon enters the atmosphere.

Check the accompanying chart of sea-level readings at the Battery in Manhattan. It goes back to 1850. Note that the rate of rise has remained the same while carbon dioxide levels were soaring due to human activity.

This chart of sea levels at the Battery shows a constant level of rise since 1850, unchanged as atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels increased.

The average rise is about 11 inches per century, or roughly 5.5 inches per 50 years. So that alleged 5-inch rise in Florida would not even equal the rate of rise in the era before man was introducing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Also read this other profoundly silly article from Time headlined "Climate Change Could Sink Statue of Liberty, Report Warns."

The English majors who edit Time are actually afraid that the sea level in the New York Harbor – with in sight of that gauge that shows no significant rise due to man – will consume the Statue of Liberty, which is 305 feet tall.

My calculations show that if we go by the rate of rise of the past 50 years, that will indeed happen – in 332 centuries. But over the next century, the sea would rise a mere 11 inches. By 2114, Lady Liberty won’t even be getting her toes wet.

Such stupidity and ignorance is common in the world of climate reporting. Recently there was a contest at the Liberty Science Center on building climate-resilient structures. The reporters who covered it repeated without question the inanities put forth by a Boston firm called Sasaki Associates, such as this ridiculous overestimate of sea-level rise:

“It is projected that sea levels will rise two feet by mid-century and six feet by 2100.”

Projected by whom? When I called the company for a source, they promised to get back to me. That was a month ago and I still haven’t heard from them. (See note below; they e-mailed me to say that after I called they had sent an e-mail with the source.)

But that estimate is absolute nonsense. Nonetheless the media reported it as if it made sense. My advice: Take everything you read in rags like Time Magazine with a grain of salt.

Oh, by the way, the scientific consensus on salt’s dangers is falling apart as well. So don’t hesitate to sprinkle some of it on that steak that we now know isn’t bad for you – despite the former scientific “consensus.”

All of this alarmism is based on a misunderstanding of science - one that sucks in even a large number of scientists, such as this physicist who's offering a $10,000 prize to anyone who can prove human activity isn't causing climate change.

The liberal ThinkProgress blog reported that as if it made sense. But the scientist who put up the dough has to be aware of the obvious fact that it is impossible to prove a negative.

Here's a bet that would make sense. Let a group of climate experts pool their cash and make bets on what the global temperatures will be 10 years from now based on some agreed-upon measure.

Then wait 10 years and see who's right before we take any action. That would be fun.

If the scientists had made that bet back in 2000, a so-called "climate denier" would have won.

That's Don Easterbrook, whom I've interviewed on occasion.

Easterbrook is an expert on Pacific Ocean currents, which he says are the true drivers of climate change. Based on that knowledge, he predicted in 2000 we'd be entering a cooling period:

When I interviewed him in 2011, Easterbrook predicted the snowy winters we've since been having:

Not that he's infallible. All scientists are, espcially when the subject is something as complicated as the interaction between the Earth's surface and the vast atmosphere surrounding it.

Anyone pretending to be able to reduce that activity to some simple computer model is guilty of hubris in the extreme.

In fact, even highly controlled studies in medicine are often wrong. Here's a study I came across pointing that out:

Or in other words, Time had it right the first time. They should have quit while they were ahead.

ADD: Sasaki Associates has gotten back to me concerning the source of those projections of sea-level rise. It's a report from the New York City municipal government that certainly makes for some fun reading.

On Page 27 you will find this rather remarkable assertion:

"By the 2020s, sea level is projected to rise 4 to 8 inches (middle range)

and 11 inches (high-estimate) relative to the 2000 to 2004 base period.

By the 2050s, sea level is projected to rise 11 to 24 inches (middle range)

and 31 inches (high-estimate) relative to the 2000 to 2004 base period.

The future flood maps illustrate how this sea level rise will expose additional

areas of New York City to flooding during extreme storm events."

The city is contending, in other words, that sea level will rise as much between 2004 and the 2020s as it has in the past half-century. That gauge at the Battery says otherwise. I've asked the Sasaki people for more information on the scientific source to back up that claim. I also asked them to square their many dire predictions with the NOAA sea-level chart above, which shows on such trend.

Instead they asked me to follow up with the authors of the New York study. I intend to do so. In the meantime, I invite you to peruse both the Sasaki report and the New York report linked above and see if you can find anything that casts doubt on the NOAA information.