It is the sun! (not)

I am doing a personal escape. I have been to Australia and I love the eucalyptus forests and its marsupial wildlife. I do not care to dwell on the climate induced forest fire Armageddon. If someone else is up to writing about it, be my guest.

I will escape by writing about the second most voiced climate denial myth, “It is the sun!”. This has been repeated often and I wonder why because it is easy to disprove. The total heat coming from the sun is called Total Solar Irradiance, (TSI). Scientists have been measuring TSI by satellite since 1978, with earth instruments prior to satellites, and they can reconstruct TSI from proxy evidence going far back in time.  Basically, the average TSI has remained steady since 1960. Earth temperature, in the same time period, has rocketed up. Thus, it is not the sun. https://climate.nasa.gov/blog/2910/what-is-the-suns-role-in-climate-change/ Climate column over? No.

There are 197 climate denial myths all thoroughly dismissed. “It is the sun”, is a myth easily proven wrong which resurfaces on a regular basis. Veteran climate scientist, Ray Pierehumbert, said of the sun myth, “That is a coffin with so many nails in it already that the hard part is finding a place to hammer a new one.”

Why do we keep falling for the con over and over? Next week I will bring you some science and my opinion but now I invite you to investigate the science of climate change. This is the most critical issue facing man today and most likely the most critical we have ever faced.

When posed with an important question I try not to form strong opinions until after doing the equivalent of a high school or college research paper. In any research paper you search out experts. The alternative is to go back to school and become an expert yourself.

My research has been steady and intense for six years. If I have come up with wrong conclusions, then most of the world’s experts are wrong too. To form an opinion, with reason, we are compelled to look for consensus and consilience among the best experts and institutions.

Here is an analogy from my biathlon days. A biathlete must shoot well. When getting ready to compete he or she zeroes their rifle so it hits dead center. They also examine how the bullets land. If the rifle barrel is clean and the biathlete has steady hands the bullets are not only centered but grouped with the holes touching one another.

If you randomly chose 100 climate scientists and asked them if climate change is anthropogenic (human caused) you would get two groups. One group would have 97 or more scientists and one would have 3 or less.

If the group with 97 climate scientists were picked randomly from around the world,  from different cultures, from different countries, and all experts in  different climate specialties you would have enough diversity and expertise that, if they agreed, you could walk away confident you base your opinion on reliable information.

These are scientists who study tree rings, atmospheric gas concentrations, the sun’s TSI, ice cores from glaciers and polar ice caps, bog and ocean sediment layers, clouds, coral, cave stalactites, and arctic permafrost.

Picture it this way, if you asked this diverse group, by shooting, to show their confidence that burning coal, oil and gas are the main culprits causing rapid global warming, all their rounds would be in the bullseye touching each other. This diverse group would demonstrate consensus and consilience. This is what six years of diligent study has taught me.

If you took the remaining three and gave each 33 rounds to shoot, what would be the result? The holes would be all over the target paper with none touching. If you gave them 33 more rounds each to shoot the results would, again, be no bullseye none touching.  The few dissenters, at most 3% of the active climate scientists, do not show consensus or consilience. There are 197 climate denial myths, many amusingly, in conflict with each other. All are appealing but baseless.

My research informs me Americans and Australians often side with the 3%.  This is a root cause of the unfolding tragedy.  

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