The “Global Warming” Gaffe—a chronology

There have been many articles and books explaining the rather fuzzy science behind “global warming”, such as this one titled Climategate. I shall now try to assemble a primer on same, to whet your appetite for further research.

1. A scientist (he will probably want me to mention his name) attempts to assemble data proving that the earth's temperature is rising, and that it is the result of human industrial activity that produces unusually large amounts of CO2.
2. Using an Excel spreadsheet, he consolidates his data and lets the spreadsheet draw a graph. This is the famous (infamous?) “hockey stick” graph. It shows and predicts an alarming increase of global temps.
3. In 1990, the IPCC (a UN related NGO) endorses same. This results in treaties and protocols demanding that the developed (read “rich western”) countries reduce their CO2 emissions.
4. Developing countries, namely India and Communist China, refuse to sign same. They argue that these will retard their economic growth, and demand to be exempted so they can have a chance at the economic brass ring.
5. Developing and emerging countries demand a carbon tax on developed economies that shall be remitted to the former to help them combat carbon pollution.
6. The US refuses to endorse or sign any of these proposals.
7. Although the US has not signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocols, she nevertheless meets the proposed reductions in CO2 emissions. This is the result of “fracking”, since the US becomes awash in cheap natural gas. Coal-fed power plants are shut down in favor of those powered by natural gas. Not only does this reduce costs, it emits less CO2.
8. Communist China powers its industrial growth with electricity generated by coal-fired power plants using obsolete technology that generates more pollution than American ones. As a result, she generates greater amounts of CO2 than the US, despite the fact that Red China produces way less stuff (i.e. GDP) than the US.
9. An independent researcher is given access to the spreadsheet that produced the original “hockey stick” graph, and discovers several mathematical errors.
10. At some point, proponents of global warming become concerned, and change the phenomena's name to “climate change”.
11. Accurate thermometers, much less temperature records, are at most a few decades old. The spreadsheet has global temperatures that date back centuries. It turns out that the original researcher used tree rings as a proxy to estimate historical temperature data. Botanists point out that the main influence on tree rings are: nitrogen availability in the soil and (drum roll please...) rainfall, not ambient air temperature.
12. Clever observers (ahem...yours truly) realize that the original researcher has been the victim of a well documented human fallacy known as “confirmation bias”. That is, accepting only that data that confirms your theory, and rejecting data that does not fit. This is not the first, nor will it be the last time for this behavior, nor is it limited to scientific matters.
13. Politicians attempt to make hay of this situation. Those who are doubtful of the original hockey-stick graphs are called “science deniers”, attempting to draw an ugly parallel to “holocaust deniers”.

Global Warming—The Next Generation

it is quite possible that anthropomorphism is causing global warming. It is still a valid hypothesis, and shall remain so until solid scientific evidence proves that either: human industrial activity does not increase CO2 levels or that an increase in CO2 does not increase mean global atmospheric temperatures. However, current scientific evidence does not support either proposition.