Trump Climate Scare

With the incoming Trump administration composed of climate skeptics the main stream media has gone into over-drive with their climate scare propaganda.  Tonight NBC nightly news reported that 2016 was the warmest since records have been kept and that it followed two years with temperatures warmer that previous year records.  They had Michael Mann state unequivocally that climate change was due to man's contribution to green house gasses.  The problem with this reporting is that while on the surface it has some portions of truth, it intentionally avoids telling the entire story.  The facts are relatively simple and backed by evidence to which most scientists agree.
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First, the planet's temperature appears to be warmer.  That is because we have just had a very severe El Nino event.  The same thing happened in 1998 with the same scary apocalyptic stories.  After that period the planet had 18 years of lower temperatures.  It appears that the same will occur after this latest El Nino event.  Temperatures of this last El Nino were higher than the 1998 because there appears to be a gradual warming of the planet.

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Second, reasonably accurate temperature records are fairly recent achievement in the last 50 years.  Still, we do not have an accurate measure of the planet's temperature.  As recent as a couple of years ago, the climatologist were adjusting what THEY thought the planet temperature was. When in the past 18 years the planet did not appear to be warming, they adjusted their accounting to make warming appear more evident.
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Third, there is ample evidence that the climate of the planet has been changing as long as the earth existed.  Man does not cause the climate to change.  It is a natural occurrence.  The people who try to pretend otherwise seem to ignore the several glaciations and the more recent warm period in Roman time and in the Middle ages.  There is no reason to expect climate to be non-changing.
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However, it is reasonable to expect that man contributes to the most recent change.  The degree of that contribution is what all the argument is about.  The climate scare mongers want everyone to believe that man caused the current change and that man can stop the current change.  Both are lies.
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The scare mongers have tried to halt all attempts to debate the science.  They claim anyone who disagrees with their dogma is anti-science.  Good science demands debate.  Only politics and religion demand blind obedience.  With Trump, at least the politics are changing.  Maybe again good science will prosper with healthy debate.
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So, is the planet warming?  It appears so.  Will it continue to warm?  Computer models of the scare mongers say, "Yes, it will as long as green house gases increase in the atmosphere.  How good are these models? They're terrible.  The average of the couple of dozen models predict a more that triple of the rate at which the planet appears to have warmed even with the scare mongers' attempt to adjust the results to match what they want.
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So what is the problem?  The models depend on a considerable amount of confirmation bias.  When all the calculations failed to show significant warming due to increased CO2 alone, the scare mongers fixed this deficiency by introducing fudge factors.  They claim CO2 provides  positive feedback with increased water vapor which is hugely dominant greenhouse gas.  They have no science to backup this claim.  There are credible theories that even suggests this feedback could be negative by increasing reflective cloud covering.  That is why continued debate is important. Maybe the Trump appointments will again allow that science.