Can you feel the chill?

Can you feel the chill?

This is the Part 2 of 2 response on comments to my recent article, “The dirty little secret about climate change

There seems to be lots of hullabaloo about the U.N.’s February 2019 statement that the last four or five years are the hottest on record. Well hello. What’d you expect? We should all know by now that we’re right in the middle of an inter-glacial warming period — which by the way — means it’s supposed to get warmer.  Additionally, it got even warmer during prior inter-glacial warming periods.

The first problem with this claim is that the data record only goes back 140 years.  Here the alarmists use “tunnel vision” to exaggerate a lie. While documented temperature data from thermometers only goes back 140 years, the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and other scientists routinely use proxy data (from tree rings, glaciers, fossils, etc) to reconstruct historical data.  Below is a chart of Earth’s historical temperature data during the past 600 million years.  (The light blue region reflects temperatures colder than today, while the upper white portion is hotter than today.)

So … what about those “last 5 years are the hottest on record”?  Baloney! According to the above chart, nearly 500 million of the last 600 millions years were much hotter than today.  Notice how life flourished during all temperature climates, especially development of monkeys and apes during the hottest climates.  Bottom line … we are living in a relatively cold time in our earth’s long history … and the long term trend indicates a cold future.

Now you can see one of the many tricks the climate hoaxers play. What they don’t tell you is more important than their narrative. So let’s move on to the recent U.N. news regarding the last five hottest years. Just look at the bar chart below created by the climate alarmists. This is a classic case where they attempt to dumb-down the casual reader. Can you see the visual scare tactic?  Look at the sequence of “years” labels. What the data actually says is … “the earth has notably cooled the last two years.”    

 Better yet, notice the missing “years” of data. Where’d they go? Gone with the Polar Vortex? This folks, is called cherry-picking the data. Do ya think the past few years of global cold temperatures, record snowfalls, and glacier growth has anything to do with the missing data?  Can you feel the chill?  I won’t even go into the data manipulation that goes on behind the scenes — as that’s a whole nother story. 

The alarmists are hoping you only “hear” the story, but if you do “see” the bar charts, then reader beware.  Most will see the bars, run out of the room, and scream the earth is on fire!  But in reality, the earth is actually cooling down.  Try out these charts on your grandkids.  You’d be surprised how smart they are.  And while you have their attention, ask them to demonstrate the chart’s temperature scale on a thermometer. 

Yes, I know, we haven’t even addressed CO2.  That’s because it’s an insignificant part of climate change.  But just for fun, that will be a future topic.

Villager John Shewchuk is a frequent contributor to Villages-News.com