by Timothy Imholt
My name is Timothy and I am a scientist. And I believe in climate change.
Of course that’s a little like saying I believe the earth is a sphere. The word climate is all but synonymous with the word change. Always has been, always will be.
In the SOTU, Obama said man made climate change is a fact and everyone agrees.
Except the data. Data doesn’t care. Data doesn’t care about grant funding. Data doesn’t care about tenure granted by leftist review boards made up of English majors and political scientists. Data doesn’t care that you have an agenda to control the economy, or rich contributors who make “green” energy products that you have to pay back.
Data just is.
Data says that the biggest factor in our climate is this little trivial thing known as our Sun.
Politicians– and so-called scientists looking for tenure or grants– seem to treat the Sun as irrelevant to our climate. This, of course, is silly. Experience a sunny day sometime.
Or think of it this way. Is it just a coincidence that the coldest part of our globe is the farthest from the Sun, and the warmest is the closest? Out of 92 MILLION miles, a few thousand miles makes the difference between tropical dangerous heat, and unlivable deadly cold. There are other climate forces at work but at the basic level that is the difference. Should the Sun be considered a force in climate? I say yes, it should be at least put into the model, yet sadly in some models it is not.
Now, this would be irrelevant if the Sun were a constant, if it didn’t have cycles or never changed its intensity. But that is NOT the case.
And the inconvenient data says that Earth’s temperature cycles mirror the Sun’s fluctuations.
About 10 years ago I published a paper, along with several very well-known theoretical physicists, in the peer reviewed journal Physical Review E. In that paper we compared solar irradiance to global temperature cycles. There was a shockingly accurate match. Sun’s irradiance goes up, temperature goes up. The alternative is also true.
Oops.
Perhaps Barack Obama should forget holding back the tides like King Cnut by cutting back on coal-fired power plants and get his Solyndra pals to start working on a giant thermostat for the Sun.
It would do just about as much good. Call it shovel ready rhetoric.
In science we always look for the fundamentals. What is really behind some action or reaction.
In politics I say we should apply the same problem solving technique.
Let’s look at the proposed Carbon Credit Exchange. In order for that entity to be viable from a financial perspective one must have the government requiring businesses and individuals to participate (sound familiar?).
Who owns it?
Well, not surprisingly Al Gore owns a large percentage of it, as do some investors he now works with. I am all for profit making entities. However, I am also for full disclosure.
Does former Vice President Gore bring this up when he is out pushing for these types of things? I have never heard of him doing so. Yet if the laws pass requiring the use of this exchange, VP Gore will become a billionaire, not just a multi-millionaire overnight.
Anyone see a motivating factor here for the former VP?
What I propose is that there is a REAL discussion on climate. In that discussion both sides must be heard and both sides must bring real (not hockey stick faked) data. Any data proven to be false must immediately throw the conclusions drawn on that data in the dust bin.
Once real, scientific, not emotional, non-political conclusions are drawn, then we decide a course of action. But, as long as those pushing the agenda are taking campaign contributions or stand to directly profit I will continue to have doubts.
Now that I have written all of this, someone is probably saying I am pro-big business, pro-pollution, and the like. Well, I am pro-big business because they employ people. I am NOT pro-pollution because I like to go hiking, kayaking, etc as well. But there must be honesty in our government. There must also be financial responsibly in our government. This issue of climate change is starting to look more and more like the worlds largest Ponzi scheme. That must not be allowed while conclusions are NOT agreed upon by all scientists, contrary to the repeated statements by our elected officials.
Timothy Imholt PhD
Physicist by training, Engineer by paycheck, fiction writer for fun, and co-author of the critically acclaimed novel Forest of Assassins, as well as the China Bones series available now on Amazon.
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Doctor Tim, your writing implies that the poles of the earth are farther away from the sun than the equatorial regions, thus the poles are colder because of the greater distance. This is false. The parts of the earth that are warmer, or colder, due the physical locations that we call equatorial or polar, are warmer or colder not because of their distance to the sun, but because of the angle of incidence of the sunlight. The overall average distance of 92 million miles, between the sun and the earth, is not a constant, as the orbit is not circular, it is significantly elliptical. During wintertime in the northern hemisphere, the earth is actually closer to the sun than it is during the summertime of the northern hemisphere. It is winter in that hemisphere because the earth is tilted, 23 and a half degrees, relative to the orbital plane, and this tilt induces a seasonal change of the angle of incidence of the warming insolation. Oh, and the earth is not a sphere, any more than the orbit is a circle. The orbit is elliptical, and the earth is an oblate spheroid (bulging at the equator, and flattened a bit at the poles, because someone over-tightened the wing nuts that hold the globe on the stand) er, because the earth spins…
I’ve waited a week to read your reply, Doctor Tim. No satisfaction, so I thought I’d beat the dead horse a bit more. You wrote, “Is it just a coincidence that the coldest part of our globe is the farthest from the Sun, and the warmest is the closest? Out of 92 MILLION miles, a few thousand miles makes the difference between tropical dangerous heat, and unlivable deadly cold.” Well, the eccentricity of the earth’s orbit has the earth about five million miles closer to the sun during the time of the winter in the northern hemisphere. Not “a few thousand miles” but a few million miles, and in the opposite direction (or the opposite result) of your rant. Oh, and the average distance to the sun is about 93 million miles, not 92, but what’s a million miles among friends?
Brian you are correct in some ways.
The point to the Blog post was to get people to think which you have obviously done. I would never publish such a thing in a scientific peer reviewed setting. That isn’t what this was meant to be. This was meant to get people to think and to see that not all people agree…Period..But you do bring up some valid arguments to the way I phrased things.
Of course distance isn’t the only concern. There is also a total number of hours that they get sunlight (for one example). The sun precesses and in the northernmost parts of the globe during certain times of year there is no sun at all (and thus it is MUCH colder). Same is true for the south.
So while distance was offered as a talking point it was just that. One of MANY influencing factor. The point to climate (or really environmental change) is that there is never ever one thing that causes the entire effect. That was the point. We need to determine is man responsible for 0.00000001% global warming or 99.9999999999% of global warming or are humans responsible for absolutely none.
I have seen no rational arguments based in solid science offered by either side of this argument. What I would love to see is rational science done on this. Not this ponzi scheme act now sort it out later technique being offered up by the folks in Washington DC.
Please see the work of 6000 scientists that agree climate change is occurring faster than ever before as a result of humans since the industrial revolution.
http://www.ipcc.ch/news_and_events/press_information.shtml#.UvQdz0JdXDg
1). Follow the money.
2). There was a time when most scientists swore the Sun orbited the Earth.
3). Why would we not look at alternative theories?
Natalie Cannon from Brian: I clicked on your link to read the six thousand; the link takes me to a page of very short press-release headlines by the IPCC. Post links to the six thousand papers. Certainly, you’ve read them, haven’t you?
Help me out here, is it Global Warming or Climate Change? Al Gore said the planet has a fever. He also wrote “Inconvienent Truth”. Al Gore has made MILLIONS on Global Warming. He is the 1 PERCENT!
Al gore and his wife Tipper live in a 28 THOUSAND square foot home/MANSION, yet AL wants to TAX (take away) money from you so he can “redistribute” these funds all in the name of Global Warming/Climate Change.
If Al Gore was so concerned about his “carbon footprint” why does HE live in a MANSION?
Al Gore is the 1 %! Not because he “worked” for it but because he committed FRAUD!!!
Obamacare is Global Warming on Steroids! It’s nothing more than another means of Income Redistribution.