Rarely do outside events reach into Kent in a meaningful way. A business failure or downsizing in New Milford will cause some of our residents to lose their jobs. A crash on the stock market will cause the second-home market to dry up. Yet, except for our soldiers, international events seem far removed from every day life here. However, such is not the situation with recent events in global warming science.
Professionally, I am, first, a trained physicist, (atomic and molecular physics), second, a working statistician specializing in stochastic models, and, lately due to illness, the editor of a local on-line newspaper. And, being naturally curious, I have followed the scientific debate over global warming.
- I understand the measured increase in background CO2 concentration, and the concerns there from.
- I understand the decrease in the carbon isotope ratio, and the possible causes.
- I understand the correlation of measured temperatures with CO2 concentration, albeit with no correlation in the last decade. (Mind, correlation is not cause and effect.)
- I understand the importance of good models, or lack thereof, for cloud formation. Reflection of sunlight by clouds aids cooling, and water vapor is the predominant greenhouse gas by far.
- I understand the measurement of emissivity of the earth over time, and the contradiction that poses for many climate models.
- I understand the erroneous statistical model used by climate scientists to evaluate historical temperatures over the last few millennium.
- I understand the dearth of chaotic and stochastic processes in climate models that produces a false robustness. (insufficient computing power)
I understand, and I am still learning, as any scientist would. But I cannot explain my knowledge to lay people; I lack that skill. Even my neighbors laughed at me when I tried, so little did they understand of what I said. So I have remained silent.
But I cannot remain silent when important climate scientists are found to be dishonest in their work. And this is what happened with the release of over 1000 emails from Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. In those emails, the scientists admitted to falsifying temperature data and jury-rigging their models. They admitted choosing to hide, or possibly, destroy original data rather than release such data to the public. (Why hide data unless it condemns your work?) They blackballed their critics, forcing them out of peer reviewed journals, even to the point of having journal editors removed who would not cooperate. One scientist even celebrated the death of a critic.
What makes this important is straightforward; these are the very scientists who wrote a good part of the United Nation’s latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). That report is the reason for the EPA’s regulation of CO2 emissions, the basis for the cap and trade legislation before Congress, and the driving force behind the proposed Copenhagen treaty. Any one of those governmental changes will drive the cost of energy, and transportation, up astronomically. And Kent is a town whose economy depends on transportation.
Of course, my voice is small and inconsequential in the face of such a political juggernaut. But the total lack of personal and scientific integrity in these men requires whatever amplification I can give it.
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