Scientific Consensus 2026

I was born on July 19, 1939 in New York City. Google AI indicates that my mother was lucky that day since the temperature in pre-air conditioned New York City only reached an unseasonable 81 degrees. Three years earlier, on July 9, 1936 the temp reached 106 degrees, what would turn out to be the  high for the whole twentieth century. 

As I wondered about temperature in July,  some recent news items came to mind. Last week smoke from forest fires in Canada drifted down into the Northeast area and created uncomfortable, even dangerous air quality. No one can blame President Trump since just three years ago in 2023, during the Biden administration, Canadian fires had caused similar air quality concerns in the area. Fortunately, the latest episode only lasted a few days, and the World Cup final was held in New Jersey's Meadowlands on one of the most beautiful days of the year.

More important was the news a few weeks ago that scientists in Europe had rejected their worst case scenario for Climate Change, and said that recent developments had made it implausible. The recent developments included human efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. It is hard to credit their explanation since China and India, by far the two most populous nations in the world are not leaders in renewable energy. 

Anyway, the fact that they would discard a worst case scenario that most scientists had accepted just a few years ago led me to revisit a post that I had written in 2017 on scientific consensus, The post was in response to a video of Senator Bernie Sanders berating a Trump appointee back in 2017.

I recently saw a video of Senator Bernie Sanders grilling Scott Pruitt, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the post of director of the Environmental Protection Agency. Throughout his seven minutes Sanders repeatedly demanded that Pruitt affirm that 97% of scientists believe that global warming is a grave threat to the planet; that it is caused by human activity; and that the government must take steps to shut down the use of fossil fuels. Of course, Sanders jumped in and interrupted every attempt by Pruitt to answer his questions. He ended by saying that he could not vote to confirm him, as if there was ever any doubt.

To be fair I must say that Sanders qualified his question by adding that the 97% figure referred to the percentage of peer-reviewed papers that had appeared in climate change journals and other similar publications. I think that this qualifier is overlooked when most people consider the question of scholarly or scientific consensus. I can certainly believe that 97% of these peer-reviewed papers support the human responsibility for global warming. What is hard to believe is that 3% of the papers were able to sneak their way through the peer-review process and cast doubt on the hypothesis. 

My own experience makes me skeptical about the whole peer-review process. For years I have subscribed to a couple of scholarly journals on the Renaissance. Inevitably, they feature articles or book reviews on Shakespeare. Never have I seen one that would even hint that the great plays and poems might have been written by a man of much greater education and life experience than the man from Stratford on Avon. 

Great writers like Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Henry James raised the question in the nineteenth century. Sigmund Freud shared the view that someone else was the author as did Shakespearean actors like Orson Welles and Derek Jacobi. Dozens of books on the authorship question have appeared in the past few years but most go unmentioned in the peer-reviewed journals.

My own experience in the field of Renaissance art history has also made me question the peer-review process. In the past twenty years, I have been able to arrive at plausible interpretations of some of the most well-known but most mysterious paintings of the Renaissance. I have done the research, written up my findings but found that the peer-review process is a closed shop, only open to peers. Necessity made me turn to the web and in 2010 I put my interpretations online and also created a blog, Giorgione et al..., to explore the subject further. 

Scholars often urge their students to “think outside the box” but rarely follow their own advice. Although their politics may be liberal and even radical, they tend to be conservative when it comes to their own subject. Graduate students have to be aware of the danger of criticizing their mentors. Professors must still publish to keep their jobs, advance their careers, or gain grant monies. It is very difficult to challenge the traditional wisdom or orthodoxy.  As one art historian wrote,

“To do so would be to question the competence of most of those who have written on the subject, and this is something that no one…wants to do…the longer those views have gone unchallenged the greater the authority that they have acquired.”

Galileo is a hero to so-called “freethinkers” but in his time, he stood virtually alone against all the professional scientists and mathematicians of his time who dominated the institutions of higher learning. He used a primitive telescope to destroy the elaborate system accepted by more that 97% of the leading experts. Oddly enough, a few Jesuit astronomers were among his early supporters.

Climate change has become like a new religion and its priests can be found in the scientific establishment. Their devoted followers march in street processions to proclaim their beliefs and attack heretics. For them the issue is settled and no further debate is necessary. What are they and Bernie Sanders afraid of? Why did he find it necessary to interrupt and ignore any attempt on the part of Scott Pruitt to reply? 

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Too Darn Hot

  

                                     

 

The country is in the midst of a heat wave, and inevitably headlines are making dire claims about global warming and quoting politicians calling for emergency action. It is totally unreasonable and unscientific to confuse or equate weather and climate. Changes in weather occur routinely every year and range from summertime heat to freezing in winter. It is perfectly normal for temperatures to climb into the 90s during the summer. It is not a sign of global warming. It takes centuries to really notice changes in climate.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, temperatures have been tracked in New York City’s Central Park. Here, for example, is a list of the highest temperatures recorded at the start of each decade since the beginning of the last century

2021—98 degrees

2011—104 degrees 

2001—103 degrees

1991—102 degrees

1981—96 degrees

1971—96 degrees

1961—97 degrees

1951—94 degrees

1941—98 degrees

1931—99 degrees

1921—96 degrees

1911—100 degrees

1901—100 degrees.

The highest temperature recorded was on July 9, 1936. The thermometer hit 106 degrees that day. I know that the figures above are just a statistical snapshot, but they do illustrate that it is supposed to be hot in the summertime. Looking at the figures, the only real difference over the past 100 years is that we have done something about the weather. Air-conditioning, one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, has revolutionized life in this country.

Our homes, offices, factories, shopping centers, theaters, arenas, and churches are  comfortably air-conditioned. Actually, without air-conditioning our modern way of life would be unthinkable. We owe it all to fossil fuels which have provided the electricity that powers every air-conditioning unit. I am old enough to know what it was like to live without air-conditioning and it was not nice. I still think of my poor mother who gave birth to me in July. 

Anyway, weather is not climate. As noted above, weather goes through normal annual cycles, but climate cycles can take centuries to detect. Recently, studies have claimed  that the global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century, and that the increase is due to human activity in the industrial age. I can imagine that today scientists using modern technology can measure global temperatures, but I do not understand how they can come up with global figures from over 100 years ago. 

Moreover, modern climate studies admit that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to factor in the effect of volcanic or solar activity in calculations of global temperature. Some believe that solar activity like sunspots is a significant factor in climate change. After all, the sun is our furnace. 

But let’s assume that the studies are correct, and that global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century. Rather than disaster, it has coincided with the greatest period of human development and prosperity in history. Although headlines carry stories of heat related deaths during the current heat wave, deaths from heat have decreased dramatically over the past century. Deaths related to cold are five times greater. Starvation and malnutrition as a cause of death has also reached all-time lows in the past century even considering the well-known man-made starvation efforts in Communist dominated countries. 

So even if the global climate is changing it might not be such a bad thing. Our planet has been around for over 4 billion years. It has gone through every imaginable catastrophe during that time. It revolves around a large star 93 million miles away which is itself located on the periphery of a huge galaxy which is moving rapidly through the universe. During my lifetime, this planet has probably carried me millions of miles away from where it was in 1939. 

Human beings  have been around less than 50000 years on this planet. We certainly have the ability to make our lives better or worse but to think we can save Planet Earth seems to me the height of arrogance. In 1933 composer Irving Berlin wrote the song “Heat Wave.” In 1958 composer Cole Porter wrote “Too Darn Hot” for his hit musical “Kiss Me Kate.” Both songs referred to wickedly hot weather like we are experiencing today. Since these songs were written, human ingenuity used air conditioning to do something about the weather. But I suspect that our efforts to deal with climate change will do little good and potentially much harm to life on our planet.

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Review. Shellenberger: Apocalypse Never

 

 

Michael Schellenberger, a committed environmentalist, described how billionaires have profited from climate change activism in his 2020 book, Apocalypse Never.  Subtitled, “Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” the book offers a balanced assessment on climate change and how to deal with it. However, he also details how well connected politicians and venture capitalists have profited from government environmental spending.  

 

Shellenberger quotes John Doerr, a venture capitalist, who found an upside in climate change.“Green technology—going green—is bigger than the Internet,” Doerr said. “It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.”

 

During the administration of President Obama, Shellenberger admits that he was involved in an environmental program that could be regarded as a forerunner of the Green New Deal. But things did not work out as he expected. He writes:

 

Between 2009 and 2015, the U.S. government spent about $150 billion on our Green New Deal, $90 billion of it in stimulus money.

 

Stimulus money wasn’t evenly distributed but rather clustered around donors to President Obama and the Democratic Party. At least ten members of Obama’s finance committee and more than twelve of his fundraising bundlers, who raised a minimum of $100,000 for Obamo, benefitted from $16.4 of the $20.5 billion in stimulus loans.

 

Fisker, which produced some of the world’s first luxury hybrid vehicles, received $529 million in federal loans; Doerr was one of Fisker’s major investors. It eventually went bankrupt, costing taxpayers 132 million. … (217-218)

 

But the loans were just one program among many others that funneled money to well-connected Obama donors without creating many jobs. The most famous of the green investments was when DOE gave $575 million to a solar company called Solyndra, 35 percent of which was owned by a billionaire donor and fundraising bundler for Obama, George Kaiser.

 

Nobody wanted to invest in Solyndra because its panels were too expensive, which independently minded DOE staffers pointed out. They were overruled, however, and the loan was approved.

 

The people who benefitted most from the green stimulus were billionaires, including Musk, Doerr, Kaiser, Khosla, Ted Turner, Pat Stryker, and Paul Tudor Jones. Vinod Khosla led Obama’s “India Policy team” during the 2008 election and was a major financial contributor to Democrats. His companies received more than $399 million.

 

However, few Democratic Party donors outperformed Doerr when it came to receiving federal stimulus loans. More than half of the companies in his Genentech portfolio… received loans or outright grants from the government. “Considering that the acceptance rate in most of the Department of Energy programs was often 10 percent or less, this is a stunning record,” wrote an investigative reporter. (218)

 

Shellenberger’s research led him to conclude that nuclear power is the answer not only to creating a cleaner environment but also to providing for the world’s expanding energy needs. But he documents the efforts of pseudo-scientific activists and self- interested politicians like former Governor Jerry Brown of California to shut down nuclear power in California. Brown and his family were heavily invested in fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.

 

Apocalypse Never does offer solutions to serious environmental problems but it is also a sad story when it details how many have profited by alarming people all over the globe. He cites his own example as typical of many:

 

I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago. I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate change reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the environment.

 

Nothing is sadder that the plight of now-famous teenager Greta Thunberg who, like many other children, has been traumatized by climate alarmists. She claims that her childhood was taken from her by these fears, and truly believes that the human race will be extinct in 15 years. Who taught her that?

 

In Apocalypse Never Michael Shellenberger concludes that there is much more reason for optimism than pessimism. 

 

Conventional air pollution peaked fifty years ago in developed nations and carbon emissions have peaked or will soon peak in most others.

 

The amount of land we use for meat production is declining. Forests are growing back and wildlife is returning.

 

There is no reason poor nations can’t develop and adapt to climate change. Deaths from extreme events should keep declining….

 

None of this means there isn’t work to do. There is plenty. But much if not most of it has to do with accelerating those existing, positive trends, not trying to reverse them in a bid to return to low-energy agrarian societies.

 

Now the Biden Administration is pushing Green energy programs and subsidies that far exceed those of the Obama administration. Why is the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not concerned about  massive solar farms that destroy desert environments, or windmill complexes that kill thousands of birds each year, or the disposal problems related to toxic lithium automobile batteries? The people who use the threat of climate change to make fortunes or gain votes should be ashamed of themselves. 

 

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Review. M.J. Sangster: The Real Inconvenient Truth

     

I have been a Climate Change skeptic but after reading M.J. Sangster’s, The Real Inconvenient Truth,  a 2018 book on all the factors that make up the Earth’s climate, I now accept the opprobrious label of Climate Change Denier (CCD). It is not that I deny that the Earth might be in a warming phase, or that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing over the last 100 years. 

But in Sangster’s extremely well-researched book, he demonstrates that human-caused CO2, is a tiny fraction of the CO2 produced by nature, and that it makes up an  even tinier fraction of Greenhouse gases (GHG) which are 95% water vapor. In other words, human caused CO2, is little more than a drop in the vast ocean that is our atmosphere. Despite the claims of Climate Change Alarmists (CCA), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), human-caused or natural, is not poisoning the planet. Here are some facts from Sangster’s book.

 

“Carbon dioxide  (CO2) is not a toxic gas; it plays a vital role in plant and animal processes, including photosynthesis [CO2+sunlight+Water produces Plant food (carbohydrates) + Oxygen). Obviously, we need the oxygen, and plants need the carbohydrates.” … [199]

“That CO2 is directly correlated with temperature is not the issue however, the issue is whether or not the relationship is the dominate climate driver in the presence of other natural events and feedbacks, and clearly it is not or, as CO2 increases linearly, so too would temperature… It is just one climate forcing event in a complex Earth system… “[198]

 

The major factors in the complex Earth climate system are the Sun, Tectonics, Wind and Ocean Circulation, Oceanic Oscillations, Clouds and Aerosols, and Greenhouse Gases.  Sangster devotes a chapter to each of these factors and they are must reads for anyone really interested in following the science. Actually, his book is a fascinating introduction to Earth science. Did you know, for example:

That the Sun revolves in a relatively circular orbit around the nucleus of our galaxy at a speed of over 500,000 miles per hour. It takes 11 Earth years to complete its immense orbit, and drags us along with it although we don’t feel a thing. On route, we pass through fields of cosmic rays that bombard us. Our atmosphere protects us, but these cosmic rays still effect our climate. 

That the plate tectonics that formed our continents is still going on and generating vast amounts of energy. They also create mountain ranges. Did you know that 85% of the Earth’s volcanos are below the surface of the oceans?

That wind and Ocean circulation is a major factor in our climate. Without the warm waters of the tropical Gulf Stream, Northern Europe would be uninhabitable.

That clouds play a key role in regulating our climate. Some let in needed heat from the Sun, while others reflect it back into space. As noted above, water vapor makes up 95% of the greenhouse gas that keeps heat in, and that prevents the entire planet from looking like Antarctica. Sangster quotes former President Obama’s Science Czar, Dr, John Holdren: “a 1% increase in cloud cover would decrease the surface temperature by .8 degree C., the entire warming amount attributed to CO2 since the start of the Industrial Age.” [196]

That water vapor makes up 99% of the greenhouse gases that help regulate our climate, and that it is entirely natural. There is nothing we can do about this fact, or any of the other facts noted above. 

Finally, Sangster points out a basic truth: “Earth is the only planet in the solar system with an atmosphere that can sustain life. The blanket of atmospheric gases not only contains the air we breathe but also modulates the energy balance… “[197].

I have limited this post to Climate Science. The rest of “The Real Inconvenient Truth” deals with the politics of Climate Science. We will deal with that in a subsequent post, but for now I will just say that it appears to me that it is the height of hubris to think that humans can combat the vast and powerful natural forces that have shaped our Earth on its incredible journey through space and time. 

###  

Heat Wave: Climate or Weather?

  

                                   

 

Yesterday, July 19, I turned 84. In all my years I do not recall a July that has not been hot. Heat in July is a natural weather phenomenon that occurs every year. However, headlines are making dire claims about global warming and quoting politicians calling for emergency action. It is totally unreasonable and unscientific to confuse or equate weather and climate.

Changes in weather occur routinely every year and range from summertime heat to below zero in winter. It is perfectly normal for temperatures to climb into the 90s during the summer. It is not a sign of global warming. It takes centuries to really notice changes in climate.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, temperatures have been tracked in New York City’s Central Park. Here, for example, is a list of the highest temperatures recorded at the start of each decade since the beginning of the last century

2021—98 degrees

2011—104 degrees 

2001—103 degrees

1991—102 degrees

1981—96 degrees

1971—96 degrees

1961—97 degrees

1951—94 degrees

1941—98 degrees

1931—99 degrees

1921—96 degrees

1911—100 degrees

1901—100 degrees.

 

The highest temperature recorded was on July 9, 1936. The thermometer hit 106 degrees that day. I know that the figures above are just a statistical snapshot, but they do illustrate that it is supposed to be hot in July and August. Looking at the figures, the only real difference over the past 100 years is that we have done something about the weather. Air-conditioning, one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, has revolutionized life in this country.

Our homes, offices, factories, shopping centers, theaters, arenas, and churches are  comfortably air-conditioned.  Actually, without air-conditioning our modern way of life would be unthinkable. We owe it all to fossil fuels which have provided the electricity that powers every air-conditioning unit. I am old enough to know what it was like to live without air-conditioning and it was not nice. I still think of my poor mother who gave birth to me in July. 

 

Anyway, weather is not climate. As noted above, weather goes through normal annual cycles, but climate cycles can take centuries to detect. Recently, studies have claimed  that the global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century, and that the increase is due to human activity in the industrial age. I can imagine that today scientists using modern technology can measure global temperatures, but I do not understand how they can come up with figures from over 100 years ago. 

 

Moreover, modern climate studies admit that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to factor in the effect of volcanic or solar activity in calculations of global temperature. Some believe that solar activity like sunspots are a significant factor in climate change. After all, the sun is our furnace. 

 

But let’s assume that the studies are correct, and that global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century. Rather than disaster, it has coincided with the greatest period of human development and prosperity in history. Although headlines carry stories of heat related deaths during the current heat wave, deaths from heat have decreased dramatically over the past century. Deaths related to cold are five times greater. Starvation and malnutrition as a cause of death has also reached all-time lows in the past century even considering the well-known man-made starvation efforts in Communist dominated countries. 

So even if the global climate is changing it might not be such a bad thing.  Our planet has been around for over 13 billion years. It has gone through every imaginable catastrophe during that time. It revolves around a large star 93 million miles away which is itself located on the periphery of a huge galaxy which is moving rapidly through the universe. During my lifetime, this planet has probably carried me millions of miles away from where it was in 1939. 

Human beings  have been around less than 50000 years on this planet. We certainly have the ability to make our lives better or worse but to think we can save Planet Earth seems to me the height of arrogance. In 1933 composer Irving Berlin wrote the song “Heat Wave.” In 1958 composer Cole Porter wrote “Too Darn Hot” for his hit musical “Kiss Me Kate.” Both songs referred to wickedly hot weather like we are experiencing today. Since these songs were written, human ingenuity used air conditioning to do something about the weather. But I suspect that our efforts to deal with climate change will do little good and potentially much harm to life on our planet.

###

Carbon Dioxide Explosion

Last week much of the Eastern coast of the United States was shrouded in an orange haze caused by forest fires in Canada. A very unusual sequence of weather events caused the smoke from these fires to fill the atmosphere and drift south. The cause of these fires is debatable, but there is no denying their effects. The fires have spewed an enormous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, an amount the makes the efforts of humans to limit carbon dioxide emissions seem insignificant.

Things were uncomfortable here for a few days but eventually the sky cleared. Mother Nature cleaned things up with the help of trees and plants that have a voracious appetite for carbon dioxide. Actually, here in Connecticut we may see a banner year for crops and gardens due to the abundance of carbon dioxide from these fires. 

This latest event just confirmed my belief that Nature has more to do with Climate and weather than humans who make up just a small part of the natural world. M.J. Sangster made this point in The Real Inconvenient Truth,  a 2018 book on all the factors that make up the Earth’s climate.

Sangster did not deny that the Earth might be in a warming phase, or that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing over the last 100 years, but in his well-researched book, he demonstrated that human-caused CO2, is a tiny fraction of the CO2 produced by nature, and that it makes up an  even tinier fraction of Greenhouse gases (GHG) which are 95% water vapor. In other words, human caused CO2, is little more than a drop in the vast ocean that is our atmosphere. Despite the claims of Climate Change Alarmists, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), human-caused or natural, is not poisoning the planet. Here are some facts from Sangster’s book.

 

“Carbon dioxide  (CO2) is not a toxic gas; it plays a vital role in plant and animal processes, including photosynthesis [CO2+sunlight+Water produces Plant food (carbohydrates) + Oxygen]. Obviously, we need the oxygen, and plants need the carbohydrates.” … [199]

“That CO2 is directly correlated with temperature is not the issue however, the issue is whether or not the relationship is the dominate climate driver in the presence of other natural events and feedbacks, and clearly it is not or, as CO2 increases linearly, so too would temperature… It is just one climate forcing event in a complex Earth system… “[198]

 

The major factors in the complex Earth climate system are the Sun, Tectonics, Wind and Ocean Circulation, Oceanic Oscillations, Clouds and Aerosols, and Greenhouse Gases. Sangster devoted a chapter to each of these factors and they are must reads for anyone really interested in following the science. Actually, his book is a fascinating introduction to Earth science. Did you know, for example:

That the Sun revolves in a relatively circular orbit around the nucleus of our galaxy at a speed of over 500,000 miles per hour. It takes 11 Earth years to complete its immense orbit, and drags us along with it although we don’t feel a thing. On route, we pass through fields of cosmic rays that bombard us. Our atmosphere protects us, but these cosmic rays still effect our climate. 

That the plate tectonics that formed our continents is still going on and generating vast amounts of energy. They also create mountain ranges. Did you know that 85% of the Earth’s volcanos are below the surface of the oceans?

That wind and Ocean circulation is a major factor in our climate. Without the warm waters of the tropical Gulf Stream, Northern Europe would be uninhabitable.

That clouds play a key role in regulating our climate. Some let in needed heat from the Sun, while others reflect it back into space. As noted above, water vapor makes up 95% of the greenhouse gas that keeps heat in, and that prevents the entire planet from looking like Antarctica. Sangster quotes former President Obama’s Science Czar, Dr, John Holdren: “a 1% increase in cloud cover would decrease the surface temperature by .8 degree C., the entire warming amount attributed to CO2 since the start of the Industrial Age.” [196]

That water vapor makes up 99% of the greenhouse gases that help regulate our climate, and that it is entirely natural. There is nothing we can do about this fact, or any of the other facts noted above. 

Finally, Sangster points out a basic truth: “Earth is the only planet in the solar system with an atmosphere that can sustain life. The blanket of atmospheric gases not only contains the air we breathe but also modulates the energy balance… “[197].

I have limited this post to Climate Science. The rest of “The Real Inconvenient Truth” deals with the politics of Climate Science. We will deal with that in subsequent posts, but for now I will just say that it appears to me that it is the height of hubris to think that humans can combat the vast and powerful natural forces that have shaped our Earth on its incredible journey through space and time. 

###              

The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change

Climate Change activists date the current warming trend to the onset of the Industrial Revolution. It seems obvious to me that their alarmism about Climate has more to do with an animus against the Industrial Revolution and its effects than concern for the environment. Capitalism and free enterprise are associated with the Industrial Revolution. A recent study showed that today 50% of college students consider themselves be Socialists. The percentage of their professors must be even higher. 

Over fifty years ago when I taught a unit on the Industrial Revolution as part of a basic course in Western Civilization, I thought then and still believe today that the Industrial Revolution was one of the most significant developments in the history of the world. If you do an image search for Industrial Revolution, you will see countless images of smoke-belching factories of 150 years ago, but you will not see an image of the ubiquitous latest mobile phone pictured above. Before the Industrial Revolution life was indeed "nasty, brutish, and short."

Try to imagine a world today without the following:

Electricity

Clean water delivered by pipeline to your home

Modern sewers and waste removal systems

Automobiles

Home heating without firewood

Computers

Televisions

Air Conditioning in homes and cars

Trains, Planes, and Buses

Indoor Plumbing—before the IR there was no such thing.

Elevators

Washing Machines for clothes and dishes

Hospitals with their incredible technology

Cell Phones—most important of all!

It is hard to believe but our ancestors before the Industrial Revolution had none of these essential elements of modern life. Actually, many parts of the world today still live in the pre-industrial age without many of the items listed above. 

Industrial Revolution is the term given to the transformation of manufacturing from homes and shops to factories employing hundreds or even thousands. The transformation began in Great Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and eventually spread all over the world. However, before there could be an industrial revolution, there had to be three other revolutionary developments. 

First, there was a Demographic Revolution involving a substantial increase in population. This increase happened not so much because of a rise in the birth rate but because of a decline in the death or mortality rate due to a dramatic drop in infant mortality, a drop caused by advances in diet and sanitation. For example, in Italy in 1860, 232 of every 1000 infants died in the first two years of life but 60 years later only 127 of 1000 infants died during the same period. 

An Agricultural Revolution accompanied the Demographic Revolution. Human ingenuity devised new methods of farming, land management, and animal husbandry to feed the growing population. While doomsayers like the British clergyman Thomas Malthus were predicting mass starvation, they could not predict that the profit motive and human resourcefulness would provide for the needs of an ever increasing population. 

A Transportation Revolution also accompanied the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the great age of canal and railroad building. At the same time, steam power replaced wind power as a safer and more reliable source of energy. The revolution in means of transportation allowed mass migrations of people from rural areas to the urban centers of manufacturing and commerce. It also allowed goods and services to be delivered faster and at less cost. Lower costs meant that not only rich people could afford them.

From the beginning the tremendous social, economic, and political changes caused by these revolutions had both good and bad consequences. Rural areas lost population and industrial cities became overcrowded. Writers and social commentators were quick to point out the terrible working conditions in the factories, and the deplorable living conditions in the slums surrounding the factories. 

Moreover, critics objected, as they do today, to the incredible disparities in wealth and income between the factory owners and financiers (capitalists) who profited and the workers who toiled. The misery of the urban poor could not be overlooked. Nevertheless, in countries that did not industrialize, like Ireland or southern Italy, the poor were even worse off and literally starved to death either from actual food shortages or malnutrition. Why else would millions from Ireland and Italy leave their beautiful countries to live in the overcrowded cities of the New World?

I suspect that the Industrial Revolution still has a bad name today. Capitalist is a term of opprobrium and even capitalists shun to describe themselves as such. Even union members whose pensions are invested throughout the American industrial sector do not realize that they are capitalists. Of course, Progressives are outspoken in decrying the terrible effects of corporate greed and inequality.

It’s true that few of us will have the income or assets of CEOs, politicians, Rock stars, TV personalities, or professional athletes. But more than anywhere else in the world, we do have the opportunity to acquire and keep property. We can even buy and sell shares in the companies we work for. You may call it Capitalism but I prefer to call it a free-enterprise system. Whatever you call it, it has worked to raise the standard of living in this country to the highest level that has ever been seen in the world. 

Students today are asked to evaluate the relative merits of Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism. All three systems were responses to the Industrial Revolution. You can judge for yourself which of the three systems did the best job of providing the necessities of life listed at the beginning of this essay. Why are people still fleeing today from Socialist "paradises" like Cuba, Nicuagua, and Venezuela? 

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Road to Hell for America

In recent testimony before a Congressional panel, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon provided a rare example of a prominent banker “speaking truth to power.” Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic Representative from Michigan and a member of the Progressive Squad, asked for a simple "Yes" or "No" answer to this question: “Does your bank have a policy against funding new oil or gas products?” Dimon responded simply and directly.

“ Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America.”

Instead of asking for an explanation, Tlaib could only threaten Dimon and his bank with a kind of boycott. She suggested that people should withdraw their accounts from his bank even though she had previously claimed that banks like his were refusing to offer banking services to minorities.

Perhaps, Representative Tlaid should have issued a subpoena to President Biden to testify before her committee. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on September 23, Alexander Zemak noted that the Biden administration has so far released over 200 Million barrels of oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum reserve. That withdrawal represents about 30% of the reserves leaving us with the lowest level since 1984. Despite the concerns of climate alarmists like Representative Tlaib, these reserves are going to be burned somewhere.

What emergency prompted the President to deplete our energy reserves to such an extent, especially without asking representatives like Tlaib to even vote on the matter? It is true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has interrupted oil and gas deliveries to Europe, but we were not dependent on Russian energy. Nor were we dependent on Arab production. In fact, when President Biden took office, we were so energy independent, that we were exporting oil, natural gas, and even coal abroad.

The Biden Administration itself created the emergency. Almost immediately on taking office, the new President used an executive order to put a stop to the construction of the Keystone pipeline that would transport Canadian crude oil to American refineries. With another executive order, he put a hold on fracking on Federal lands. 

The President also did not bother to consult Congress in issuing these orders. It seems obvious that he and his handlers were out to put an end to the use of fossil fuels in America. Aside from the fact that his actions put many people out of work, they also increased energy costs for everyone. We had an energy system that worked, and they broke it. 

The real emergency came earlier this year when gas prices at the pump doubled and even tripled in some areas, and became a major factor in the rise of inflation. The Biden administration and the Democratic party saw this spike in energy prices as a serious threat to their prospects in the coming mid-term elections. The red wave threatening them would have become a tsunami unless prices at the pump could be driven down.

I have read that we have sufficient oil and gas reserves underground to supply all of our energy needs for 400 years. We have plenty of time to figure out if we are really in a climate crisis, and if we can do anything about it. Look at the technological progress we have made in just the past 100 years. There are signs that the hasty panaceas we are trying now can do more harm than good. Just this week, a large Lithium battery burst into fire in a huge battery storage facility in California. Nearby residents were urged to stay indoors, and a highway was shut down for fear of toxic fumes. 

There is strong evidence that the world is not facing an imminent climate catastrophe. China and India, the world’s two most populous countries by far, do not seem concerned. They are importing fossil fuel from Russia. China is even building its own coal plants.  Maybe Representative Tlaib should subpoena their leaders. 

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Climate Science

  

    

I have been a Climate Change skeptic but now, after reading M.J. Sangster’s, The Real Inconvenient Truth,  a 2018 book on all the factors that make up the Earth’s climate, I now accept the opprobrious label of Climate Change Denier (CCD). It is not that I deny that the Earth might be in a warming phase, or that the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing over the last 100 years. 

But in Sangster’s extremely well-researched book, he demonstrates that human-caused CO2, is a tiny fraction of the CO2 produced by nature, and that it makes up an  even tinier fraction of Greenhouse gases (GHG) which are 95% water vapor. In other words, human caused CO2, is little more than a drop in the vast ocean that is our atmosphere. Despite the claims of Climate Change Alarmists (CCA), Carbon Dioxide (CO2), human-caused or natural, is not poisoning the planet. Here are some facts from Sangster’s book.

 

“Carbon dioxide  (CO2) is not a toxic gas; it plays a vital role in plant and animal processes, including photosynthesis [CO2+sunlight+Water produces Plant food (carbohydrates) + Oxygen). Obviously, we need the oxygen, and plants need the carbohydrates.” … [199]

“That CO2 is directly correlated with temperature is not the issue however, the issue is whether or not the relationship is the dominate climate driver in the presence of other natural events and feedbacks, and clearly it is not or, as CO2 increases linearly, so too would temperature… It is just one climate forcing event in a complex Earth system… “[198]

 

The major factors in the complex Earth climate system are the Sun, Tectonics, Wind and Ocean Circulation, Oceanic Oscillations, Clouds and Aerosols, and Greenhouse Gases.  Sangster devotes a chapter to each of these factors and they are must reads for anyone really interested in following the science. Actually, his book is a fascinating introduction to Earth science. Did you know, for example:

That the Sun revolves in a relatively circular orbit around the nucleus of our galaxy at a speed of over 500,000 miles per hour. It takes 11 Earth years to complete its immense orbit, and drags us along with it although we don’t feel a thing. On route, we pass through fields of cosmic rays that bombard us. Our atmosphere protects us, but these cosmic rays still effect our climate. 

That the plate tectonics that formed our continents is still going on and generating vast amounts of energy. They also create mountain ranges. Did you know that 85% of the Earth’s volcanos are below the surface of the oceans?

That wind and Ocean circulation is a major factor in our climate. Without the warm waters of the tropical Gulf Stream, Northern Europe would be uninhabitable.

That clouds play a key role in regulating our climate. Some let in needed heat from the Sun, while others reflect it back into space. As noted above, water vapor makes up 95% of the greenhouse gas that keeps heat in, and that prevents the entire planet from looking like Antarctica. Sangster quotes former President Obama’s Science Czar, Dr, John Holdren: “a 1% increase in cloud cover would decrease the surface temperature by .8 degree C., the entire warming amount attributed to CO2 since the start of the Industrial Age.” [196]

That water vapor makes up 99% of the greenhouse gases that help regulate our climate, and that it is entirely natural. There is nothing we can do about it this fact, or any of the other facts noted above. 

Finally, Sangster points out a basic truth: “Earth is the only planet in the solar system with an atmosphere that can sustain life. The blanket of atmospheric gases not only contains the air we breathe but also modulates the energy balance… “[197].

I have limited this post to Climate Science. The rest of “The Real Inconvenient Truth” deals with the politics of Climate Science. We will deal with that in subsequent posts, but for now I will just say that it appears to me that it is the height of hubris to think that humans can combat the vast and powerful natural forces that have shaped our Earth on its incredible journey through space and time. 

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Too Darn Hot

 

                                     

 

The country is in the midst of a heat wave, and inevitably headlines are making dire claims about global warming and quoting politicians calling for emergency action. It is totally unreasonable and unscientific to confuse or equate weather and climate. Changes in weather occur routinely every year and range from summertime heat to freezing in winter. It is perfectly normal for temperatures to climb into the 90s during the summer. It is not a sign of global warming. It takes centuries to really notice changes in climate.

Since the mid-nineteenth century, temperatures have been tracked in New York City’s Central Park. Here, for example, is a list of the highest temperatures recorded at the start of each decade since the beginning of the last century

2021—98 degrees

2011—104 degrees 

2001—103 degrees

1991—102 degrees

1981—96 degrees

1971—96 degrees

1961—97 degrees

1951—94 degrees

1941—98 degrees

1931—99 degrees

1921—96 degrees

1911—100 degrees

1901—100 degrees.

The highest temperature recorded was on July 9, 1936. The thermometer hit 106 degrees that day. I know that the figures above are just a statistical snapshot, but they do illustrate that it is supposed to be hot in July and August. Looking at the figures, the only real difference over the past 100 years is that we have done something about the weather. Air-conditioning, one of the greatest inventions of the twentieth century, has revolutionized life in this country.

Our homes, offices, factories, shopping centers, theaters, arenas, and churches are  comfortably air-conditioned.  Actually, without air-conditioning our modern way of life would be unthinkable. We owe it all to fossil fuels which have provided the electricity that powers every air-conditioning unit. I am old enough to know what it was like to live without air-conditioning and it was not nice. I still think of my poor mother who gave birth to me in July. 

Anyway, weather is not climate. As noted above, weather goes through normal annual cycles, but climate cycles can take centuries to detect. Recently, studies have claimed  that the global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century, and that the increase is due to human activity in the industrial age. I can imagine that today scientists using modern technology can measure global temperatures, but I do not understand how they can come up with global figures from over 100 years ago. 

Moreover, modern climate studies admit that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to factor in the effect of volcanic or solar activity in calculations of global temperature. Some believe that solar activity like sunspots is a significant factor in climate change. After all, the sun is our furnace. 

But let’s assume that the studies are correct, and that global temperature has increased by 1.1 degree Celsius since the nineteenth century. Rather than disaster, it has coincided with the greatest period of human development and prosperity in history. Although headlines carry stories of heat related deaths during the current heat wave, deaths from heat have decreased dramatically over the past century. Deaths related to cold are five times greater. Starvation and malnutrition as a cause of death has also reached all-time lows in the past century even considering the well-known man-made starvation efforts in Communist dominated countries. 

So even if the global climate is changing it might not be such a bad thing.  Our planet has been around for over 4 billion years. It has gone through every imaginable catastrophe during that time. It revolves around a large star 93 million miles away which is itself located on the periphery of a huge galaxy which is moving rapidly through the universe. During my lifetime, this planet has probably carried me millions of miles away from where it was in 1939. 

Human beings  have been around less than 50000 years on this planet. We certainly have the ability to make our lives better or worse but to think we can save Planet Earth seems to me the height of arrogance. In 1933 composer Irving Berlin wrote the song “Heat Wave.” In 1958 composer Cole Porter wrote “Too Darn Hot” for his hit musical “Kiss Me Kate.” Both songs referred to wickedly hot weather like we are experiencing today. Since these songs were written, human ingenuity used air conditioning to do something about the weather. But I suspect that our efforts to deal with climate change will do little good and potentially much harm to life on our planet.

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Review: Apocalypse Never

During the 2020 Presidential election campaign, I wondered why some very, very rich people were not only supporting Democratic candidate Joe Biden but contributing record amounts of money to his campaign. After all, he was threatening to raise taxes especially on those making over $400000 per year.

 

Was there more to his appeal than met the eye? Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates did not become rich by neglecting to get good returns on their investments or their political contributions. You may remember that after his own campaign tanked, Billionaire Michael Bloomburg, the former mayor of New York City, invested millions to help Biden carry the pivotal state of Florida. Was it just hatred of President Trump? 

 

As the old saying goes. “Follow the Money.” Could it be that these very rich Democrats saw an opportunity to profit even more by supporting Progressive causes? After all, if you can substantially increase your assets by gaining access to government stimulus money, why not pay a little more in Federal income taxes?

 

Michael Schellenberger, a committed environmentalist, described how billionaires have profited from climate change activism in his book, Apocalypse Never.  Subtitled, “Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All,” the book offers a balanced assessment on climate change and how to deal with it. However, he also details how well connected politicians and venture capitalists have profited from government environmental spending.  

 

Schellenberger quotes John Doerr, a venture capitalist, who found an upside in climate change.“Green technology—going green—is bigger than the Internet,” Doerr said. “It could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.”

 

During the administration of President Obama, Shellenberger admits that he was involved in an environmental program that could be regarded as a forerunner of the Green New Deal. But things did not work out as he expected. He writes:

 

Between 2009 and 2015, the U.S. government spent about $150 billion on our Green New Deal, $90 billion of it in stimulus money.

 

Stimulus money wasn’t evenly distributed but rather clustered around donors to President Obama and the Democratic Party. At least ten members of Obama’s finance committee and more than twelve of his fundraising bundlers, who raised a minimum of $100,000 for Obamo, benefitted from $16.4 of the $20.5 billion in stimulus loans.

 

Fisker, which produced some of the world’s first luxury hybrid vehicles, received $529 million in federal loans; Doerr was one of Fisker’s major investors. It eventually went bankrupt, costing taxpayers 132 million. … (217-218)

 

But the loans were just one program among many others that funneled money to well-connected Obama donors without creating many jobs. The most famous of the green investments was when DOE gave $575 million to a solar company called Solyndra, 35 percent of which was owned by a billionaire donor and fundraising bundler for Obama, George Kaiser.

 

Nobody wanted to invest in Solyndra because its panels were too expensive, which independently minded DOE staffers pointed out. They were overruled, however, and the loan was approved.

 

The people who benefitted most from the green stimulus were billionaires, including Musk, Doerr, Kaiser, Khosla, Ted Turner, Pat Stryker, and Paul Tudor Jones. Vinod Khosla led Obama’s “India Policy team” during the 2008 election and was a major financial contributor to Democrats. His companies received more than $399 million.

 

However, few Democratic Party donors outperformed Doerr when it came to receiving federal stimulus loans. More than half of the companies in his Genentech portfolio… received loans or outright grants from the government. “Considering that the acceptance rate in most of the Department of Energy programs was often 10 percent or less, this is a stunning record,” wrote an investigative reporter. (218)

 

Shellenberger’s research led him to conclude that nuclear power is the answer not only to creating a cleaner environment but also to providing for the world’s expanding energy needs. But he documents the efforts of pseudo-scientific activists and self- interested politicians like former Governor Jerry Brown of California to shut down nuclear power in California. Brown and his family were heavily invested in fossil fuels like oil and natural gas.

 

Apocalypse Never does offer solutions to serious environmental problems but it is also a sad story when it details how many have profited by alarming people all over the globe. He cites his own example as typical of many:

 

I was drawn toward the apocalyptic view of climate change twenty years ago. I can see now that my heightened anxiety about climate change reflected underlying anxiety and unhappiness in my own life that had little to do with climate change or the state of the environment.

 

Nothing is sadder that the plight of now-famous teenager Greta Thunberg who, like many other children, has been traumatized by climate alarmists. She claims that her childhood was taken from her by these fears, and truly believes that the human race will be extinct in 15 years. Who taught her that?

 

In Apocalypse Never Michael Shellenberger concludes that there is much more reason for optimism than pessimism. 

 

Conventional air pollution peaked fifty years ago in developed nations and carbon emissions have peaked or will soon peak in most others.

 

The amount of land we use for meat production is declining. Forests are growing back and wildlife is returning.

 

There is no reason poor nations can’t develop and adapt to climate change. Deaths from extreme events should keep declining….

 

None of this means there isn’t work to do. There is plenty. But much if not most of it has to do with accelerating those existing, positive trends, not trying to reverse them in a bid to return to low-energy agrarian societies.

 

Now the Biden Administration is pushing Green energy programs and subsidies that far exceed those of the Obama administration. Why is the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not concerned about  massive solar farms that destroy desert environments, or windmill complexes that kill thousands of birds each year, or the disposal problems related to toxic lithium automobile batteries? The people who use the threat of climate change to make fortunes or gain votes should be ashamed of themselves. 

 

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