Oddly, for Warm-mongering scientists, it seems predicting the future is an easier task than explaining the past

Here's an e-mail letter Lex fired off to JG reporter Ron Shawgo in response to his front page article in Sunday's JG pushing Global Warm-mongering fear. 

Dear Ron:

I read with interest your article in Sunday’s JG. Here are some thoughts on the subject.  

I do not know the reputation of this Purdue University Climate Change Research Center.  If they run true to the Global Warm-mongering form they are more likely to be politically motivated activists adjusting their study to conform to the political correct outcome than evenhanded scientists searching for truth.  My hope is that the Center is the latter, an outlier on the subject in sea of studies engaged in conformation bias.  Color me skeptical.

I’m willing to stipulate that “climate change” in 2018 is real if the Global Warm-mongers will stipulate that “climate change” has been the norm since Genesis. I’m old enough to remember when all of the hysteria from people who allegedly were “experts” about such things was that we were headed into another ice age.  Somehow humanity dodged that ice bullet, but before we could get our arctic parkas off, the “experts” whipsawed us into a dire warming scenario.

My experience with regard to the debate on the subject has been that the Warm-mongers, with absolute certitude, blame the entire “climate change” phenomenon on human activity.  Ironically the Warm-mongers are so sure of themselves that they have been caught over and over again lying about, manufacturing, covering up and manipulating the data from scientific studies on the subject in order to ensure that the results conform to their preconceived notions – science be damned.  If you search "climate change data manipulation" you'll find more than 37,000,000 results.

The Warm-mongers avoid honest debate by mimicking their Global Warm-mongering icon AlGore (who is such a subject matter expert that he has won a trophy case full of awards for his work, but is so daft that he once maintained that the Earth’s core was nearly as hot as the surface of the sun) insisting that “the debate is over”.  Meanwhile scientists like Robert Spencer, Kiminori Itoh, Myron Ebell, etc., who are Warm-mongering skeptics, are willing to debate the subject anytime – anywhere. 

So why is it that one side is willing to debate and the other, supposedly so sure of its position, hides behind the anti-scientific mantra – “the debate is over”?  You can be sure of this: When someone insists that the debate is over it’s usually because the debate is raging and they are losing - badly.

The odd thing about the Warm-monger’s fear of debating  skeptics is that most Warm-mongering skeptics accept that the climate is in fact changing, they are just uncertain as to the extent that human activity is responsible for the change.

Now, the Global Warm-mongers are so certainly uncertain of themselves and their crooked studies with manufactured results that they have gone past refusing to debate the subject to wanting to criminalize the thoughts of anyone who might have a differing point of view on the subject.

Here are some immutable facts about climate change:

The climate has always been changing. The medieval warm period took place between the years 800-1300, well before greenhouse gasses could have caused the phenomenon.  It was followed by the little ice age that lasted until the early 1900s. It’s possible, if not likely, that today’s “climate change” is the result of a naturally recurring warming cycle.

The extent to which humans are affecting climate change today is unknown and probably unknowable.

Neither Indiana nor the United States are planets. Imposing economically crippling Warm-mongering solutions on either will do little, if anything, to affect global temperatures.

Global warming stalled 20 years ago.  There has been no appreciable rise in the Earth’s surface temperatures since 1998. Even the most ardent Warm-Mongers agree.  What happened?  No one, not even the most hysterical supposed know-it-all among Warm-mongers, offers a clue.  

So now we’re supposed to believe that the Warm-mongering “experts” are capable of predicting climate disasters in the next 20-30 years, but they haven’t the slightest clue or logical explanation as to what has happened in the last 20.  It seems to me explaining the past is a much easier task than predicting the future.

While the Global Warm-mongering swells leave one of their half dozen mansions in a fleet of gas guzzling SUVs to head to the airport to hop a private jet to fly half way around the world to accept their “environmentally conscience” awards, the “solutions” (higher fuel prices, lower living and eating standards, less reliable and convenient means of transportation, population control, etc.) that they wish to impose on the world to curb warming will adversely affect mainly the poor.

Last, if people who actually believe the Global Warm-mongering spiel are unwilling to adjust their own lifestyles in accordance with their beliefs, why should anyone who is a skeptic take their boloney seriously and adjust his? 

At a glance: Global Warm-mongers have poisoned their own well with their decades long Chicken Little hysteria, their ham handed attempts to manipulate their own studies, their unwillingness to defend their work in debate, their blatant “do as I say not as I do” hypocrisy and their anti-science approach of first “climate shaming” critics into silence and now attempting to criminalize critical thought.

Thanks for your consideration.                 

Study: Climate change to alter state's landscape

RON SHAWGO | The Journal Gazette

At a glance

With a 1.2-degree increase since 1895, Indiana temperatures are projected to rise 5 to 6 degrees by midcentury and continue to climb, according to the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment.

Some other key findings:

• By midcentury, northern Indiana will average six days a year below 5 degrees, down from 13, which will allow disease-carrying insects to be active longer and expand their ranges.

• The number of days 95 degrees or higher will increase significantly.

• Longer growing seasons can increase productivity and expand crop opportunities in the northern region.

• Injuries and deaths from extreme heat are projected to rise, while those related to extreme cold will decline. Temperature-related deaths overall are expected to increase.

• Habitat for more tree species is expected to grow.

• By midcentury, more heat and less water is expected to reduce corn yields for current varieties by 16 percent to 20 percent and soybean yields 9 percent to 11 percent.

• Growing season will start about a month earlier but spring rains will prevent early access to fields.

In 30 years, northern Indiana summers could feel like those of southwest Kentucky today, and the southern half of the Hoosier State could mimic the Deep South.

A more dramatic path, and the one we're on, would place Indiana in a climate similar to that of southeastern Texas by the 2080s if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, according to reports from Purdue University's Climate Change Research Center.

Titled the “Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment,” the reports use the latest scientific research about the impact of global warming on areas including climate, health and agriculture. The goal is to better understand “climate change-related risks and build more effective plans for a more productive future,” according to the project's website.

While blowing the clarion alert, the reports note a range of climates is possible depending on future greenhouse gas emissions and how the climate system responds. At minimum, the reports point to a shift from the past and urge Hoosiers to prepare for various climatic conditions.

The fifth of a planned 11 reports was released in late July.

By mid-century, climate change is expected to bring hotter days for Hoosiers, less snow, more disease-carrying pests, poorer air quality, an extended allergy season, increased medical costs and more premature deaths, the reports state. 

Warmer weather will provide farmers a longer growing season but with no additional rain and possibly reduced yields from increased crop heat stress. Wetter winters and springs could increase flooding and wash fertilizers from farm fields.

Northern Indiana will experience fewer extreme cold days; furnaces will run as often as southern Indiana today, but air conditioners will be running far more often. The number of days with frozen ground is expected to drop by more than a third. A longer growing season will provide the chance of double-cropping or a wider variety of crops. Sweetgum and pecan trees will find northern Indiana hospitable. Some weeds, however, will migrate to frustrate northern Indiana farmers.

Roger Hadley, Allen County president of the Indiana Farm Bureau, hadn't read the July report about the effects of climate change on agriculture but had heard about it.

Farmers talk about abnormal growing seasons, he said, but many don't know how much weight to place on the dour predictions.

“As we look at the last eight or 10 springs and summertimes we shake our heads and say 'Well, this isn't what we remember as normal.' And then we say, 'I guess what's normal is actually the average of the last eight to 10 years, so it's the new normal,'” he said.

While there seem to be more abnormalities than decades ago, it's hard to believe Indiana weather could resemble that of Texas in 60 years, Hadley said. Many farmers believe climate is cyclic.

“Am I saying it can't happen? No way I can say that. Is it unrealistic to believe that's gospel? Yeah,” he said. “Part of me says they're a little bit overreacting.”

More than 100 experts and more than 50 organizations, including many Indiana universities, contributed to the research, which strives “to increase dialogue about Indiana's changing climate among the public and decision makers.”

The 2017 global average temperature ranked third-warmest, and that year marked the 41st in a row with above-average temperatures, according to the initial report, issued in March. “If the climate were not warming, the chance of randomly having 41 above-average years in a row would be less than one in a trillion,” it states.

The speed with which climate changes are occurring has increased significantly in recent decades, the report says.

“Projections show the pace picking up even more speed as heat-trapping gases, produced by humans burning fossil fuels, continue accumulating in the atmosphere,” the report states. “Indiana will continue to warm, more precipitation will fall, and extremely hot days will be common in many parts of the state. These changing climate patterns affect us individually and affect many aspects of our society, including human health, public infrastructure, water resources, agriculture, energy use, urban environments and ecosystems.”

James Wolff, agriculture and natural resources educator with Purdue's Allen County Extension office, said in the last couple of decades professionals like him have seen a pattern of heavier rains in May and June and more drought-like conditions in July and August. “That seems to (be) becoming more of a trend than individual year-to-year weather patterns,” he said.

While in the last couple of years it's been easy for farmers to get out in fields in early April, it's been wet or fields flood and they have to replant, he added.

“While the weather has gotten warm and you want to move up the planting date,” Wolff said, “it's really challenging and sometimes frustrating when you've got to wait into the season to make sure that you're able to get in the fields, and then if you do get in the fields that they don't get flooded out and your crops can survive some of those wet conditions.”