Steve A. Stone
Dear Friends and Patriots,
You who read my efforts understand I don’t like being repetitive or derivative. The reasons you hear from me less as time goes by are simple. To the greatest extent, the majority of important conversations happening now are the same as they were last year and the year before. With everyone commenting on the very same subjects almost continuously, you don’t need to hear from me. You also don’t need to read mostly repetitious variations on any theme. It just bores you and doesn’t feed your intellect one iota. It’s better for me to be quiet and let others bore you. It’s kind of an arrogant thing, I know, but which would you rather I do – reveal my arrogance or bore the life out of you?
Once in a while, though, something really grabs me. You all know I like to look for odd angles to approach subjects. That’s where I have my best times – looking at today’s stories and topics from oblique angles to see if there’s something there that other writers and analysts are likely to miss. What you’re reading now is one of those.
The article I’m going to discuss in part appeared in my early morning feed from The Epoch Times on September 9, so it’s relatively current. The article was authored by Jan Jekielek and Mimi Nguyen Li. If you’re fairly familiar with The Epoch Times, you know Jekielek has a regular podcast where he interviews very interesting people on important events and activities of the day. His is a very thoughtful podcast where he never steps on the story the interviewee is there to put forward. He nods a lot and prompts once in a while, but rarely launches into any semblance of pontification of his own perspectives. He’s does an old-fashioned interview that usually elicits great knowledge from those sit across from him. The article itself is derived from a podcast interview. I tell you all this to declare that this article you’re reading now is an analysis of a derivation of a derivation. But, because I have the right – most of this is original reactive commentary. I hope you find it worth your time.
The title of this article is itself derivative. The original Epoch Times title that appeared in my feed was:
Nobel Winner Refutes Climate Change Narrative,
Points Out Ignored Factor
That’s what I saw, and it did intrigue me. You all know I consider Global Warming, Global Cooling, Manmade Global Climate Change, and all that is encompassed under those headings to be: hokum, bunk and scams. Ergo, any negative things we hear about CO2 levels is linked directly to one or more of those. Greenhouse gasses! That's the subhead CO2 fits under. What a farce! The whole conversation regarding CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" is nonsensical and pure idiocy. The Epoch Times article starts off by pointing out the preoccupation of the radical environmental crowd on CO2. It transitions from there to a discussion of the “missing factor” in all climate models that caused the scientist in question to go public, to sign the recent World Climate Declaration, and to appear with Mr. Jekielek to be interviewed. In the interview and resultant article the scientist notes, quite authoritatively, that none of those climate models work, have ever worked, or are likely to ever work as reliable predictives, because they all totally ignore the climate moderator he discusses in the interview. While I agree with him 100% on that, I'm going to leap on the back of my own little pinto pony named "Hubris" and point out a flaw in his dissertation. I consider it a basic flaw in the logic of his thought process.
The scientist in question is Dr. John Clauser. As a Nobel Laurate he has earned the right to be considered a brilliant researcher in his own right. To make his apple shine even more, he seems to have a lot of common sense. His identification of the missing consideration in all climate models is based on a simple observation he made one day while on his sailboat. What was it? Clouds! He observed something that informed him of the power of clouds to affect both temperature and weather. He reasoned that temperature and weather are immediate phenomena and climate is the term to use when considering factors of temperature and weather over a significant span of time. Yeah, that makes sense, doesn’t it?
Dr. Clauser stored his observation about clouds in some corner of his mind. In somewhat more recent times he undertook a review of all the commonly used climate models, the very ones the people I refer to as eco-terrorists point to in justifying their opinions that we're all sitting in a frying pan of our own creation. Somewhere in that review process he had a bit of a "EUREKA!" realization. None of the models could possibly be right. There's a very real factor that everyone on the planet knows about from personal experience that's not considered in any way in any of the models. Yes, the very real effects of clouds.
Dr. Clauser’s subsequent research indicates the world’s cloud cover varies on any given day from 5% to 95% of the world’s surface. Because cloud tops always reflect white light, they’re extremely effective at preventing a significant part of the sun’s heat radiation from reaching the surface. Dr. Clauser rationalizes that no climate model could ever be proved accurate when such a significant weather factor and heat moderator as clouds is not taken into account. Anyone with a smidgeon of common sense would agree. We all know that on hot days we seek shade because shade is cooler. Among other things that clouds do, providing shade is one of the most significant. It’s sort of basic, isn’t it?
Here's where I and Herr Doktor Clauser part company. It's over one word in the article, really. In the section of the article entitled "The Missing Piece" there is a quote from the podcast interview. The quote is: "I believe I have the missing piece of the puzzle . . . " What's wrong with that? One word. A very common and simple word that points to Dr. Clauser's own hubris – the. Dr. Clauser believes his own identification of a significant missing factor in climate models is, in his words, " ... the missing piece ..." Why do I refer to that as hubris? Simply because I'm convinced it's not "the." It's "a." It's likely a very important "a" but it's still "a."
When you read the article, (which I hope you all look for and read) one thing you should note in the interview transcription is the notion of reflectivity. Where does all that heat come from, anyway? We all understand it emanates from the sun. What is it Dr. Clauser is actually pointing out? Reflectivity factors. Colors reflect light in varying wavelengths. Things that reflect white are thought to be the most reflective things in nature, but is that actually true? I'm not sure. Maybe. But, don't mirrors reflect something even brighter? Mirrors reflect the complete light spectrum, whereas white reflection can be said to reflect "most" of them, but if it was the same, why do we immediately know that reflections from mirrors are different? Taking Dr. Clauser's examples further we have to consider the effects of glaciers, high mountain snow packs, polar ice, and all other large, white reflective surfaces. We also have to understand how the seas themselves reflect sunlight and how that factors in. The seas are not white, but in certain conditions the seas reflect light in the same way as mirrors. Then, to fully account for the reflectivity of the entire palette of colors present in nature wouldn’t we need to determine the relative reflectivity of each hue, then calculate the percentage of the planet's surface that reflected within that color's bandwidth? Finally, we'd need to determine a formula that accounts for each and every one of those differing factors. All this occurs to me, someone who has no significant training in science or mathematics, someone who just sits in one room in his house and tries to think things through.
All I'm really trying to point out with my own hubristic statement is a truth that there's no one "the" that could safely be identified when it comes to understanding how and why this planet works as it does. It occurs to me that there's no single key that unlocks the secret of Earth's ecological dynamics. The Earth itself is a living organism, and every part of the planet plays its own role in sustaining it as such. If we're not all dropping dead today, it's because the Earth is in balance overall. If it ever does get unbalanced, it could happen within a nanosecond of time and we'd all know immediately. I look at such things as the Pacific Ring of Fire as part of the balancing mechanism of our planet. The same goes for weather cycles that cause short and long-term droughts, rainy spells, cool summers, warm winters, etc. It's the Earth, constantly adjusting to keep the planet's eco-systems in balance. Such things used to be understood under the umbrella term "balance of nature." I think that's where people like me depart from all of the world's climate scientists. It's fine and good that they labor for the better part of their lives in efforts to understand just how the whole thing works, but it strikes me as the most extreme kind of hubris when groups of them declare they've succeeded in their efforts, then try to scare us all with their notions of "settled science," the validity of the "consensus of scientists," and the false notion that " we're done here, and the bad news is – unless you believe as we and do as we say we're all gonna fry." Yes, that's nothing but the most extreme kind of hubris. Their statements of impending doom can't be proven. They're hokum, bunk, and scams.
I will state to anyone that I concur with Dr. Clauser on his main criticisms and the value of incorporating his "missing element" to the body of climate considerations, but I have a prediction – even if and when it is, assuming it can ever be figured out, it will result in climate models that predict to some degree better than those currently in use, but not better enough that any of them will become more than marginally more reliable. Which is to say – the addition of a good and common-sense consideration to what is otherwise a hugely flawed body of science won't do much to alter today's reality. Those models don't and won't do much of anything for anyone.
This is the point where I get specific about why I think this way.
Every theory of atomic science that was ever put forward made the claim that it was the best, last, and final understanding of how atoms work and what they're comprised of. Yet, there are always scientists who think there's more. Those scientists begin with the premise "There must be more to it. There always has been, and if we're right, we need to show the world there still is." That's the premise that resulted in the discovery of neutrinos, then mesons, then even smaller and more obscure physical phenomenon like quarks and gluons that exist in the sub-atomic world. We now see long, scholarly articles written about the discovery of effects, with theories attached to them. The effects are taken as proof of the existence of "things" that we haven't identified and don't yet understand, so there are always groups of scientists spending years and millions of dollars trying to determine what unseen things create the observed effects. Basic science teaches us to think of electrons, neutrons, and protons, as the only sub-atomic particles, yet "real" science tells us protons and neutrons have sub-components to them – sub-sub-atomic particles, which should feed the notion that there are sub-sub-sub-atomic particles as well.
What I've always noticed are the parallels between atomic science and astronomy. When you dwell on those parallels it's fairly easy to think of the Earth as a sub-sub-atomic particle in relation to the Milky Way Galaxy. What that means on a next-level scale is something I find myself quite incapable of thinking about. It does sort of allow one to contemplate the hubris of mankind in thinking we're of major importance in any grander and greater schemes of things, like time and space. I try to leave most of that thought process to philosophers who are still staring into basins of water, divining eternal truths from ripples in the surface, and to astronomers who theorize about how "this" all began.
The notion that something as dynamic as weather can ever be fully understood and explained strikes me as impossible, unless it includes the contribution of the ant and the flea. When scientists understand how the population and sub-species distribution of ants and fleas on the surface of the globe affects weather, then I might want to agree that they've arrived at something useful. Until then I'm convinced any assertion by anyone, anywhere that climate science is settled is just as I've stated twice before – hokum, bunk and scams.
While I applaud Dr. Clauser and the 1,600+ other scientists for signing the World Climate Declaration and demonstrating their belief in the truth of the statement "Science has never been "settled," is not "settled" now, nor should it ever be" I know they have all entered the realm of politics. When politics dominates the conversation in such undertakings as climate science, nuclear physics, and astronomy we need to fear that mankind is on the verge of societal collapse. Not death, but a return to a state more reminiscent of the societies that existed 2,000 years ago, when the understanding of such things was far more primitive. If we keep allowing politics to steer us instead of Natural Law and the knowledge of pure truth as found in The Holy Bible we appear destined to see mankind regress at a dramatic pace to a state where we exist in highly technologically advanced societies that have absolutely no true understanding of anything worth knowing. We will become as cattle and sheep are to us now. In fact – that may be the literal truth. The overlord class of the future may find it far easier to access us as its main food source than to till the earth and raise their food by the efforts of their own hands.
What did I just do? I took you to the clouds, then to the unseen world, then out to the cosmos, then back down to Earth in hopes you might gain a bit of perspective that aids in our battle for existence as free humans. Why did I do that? Because we all need to understand who we are in relation to everything. We need to comprehend that we are ants and fleas and until we grasp our true contribution to life in a fuller sense. We're all living at the whims of people who spend all their time, effort, and money manipulating us to their own ends. Those people – the ones we refer to as the Cabal – the unnamed, unseen power behind the great curtains of obscurity – they don't care about how or why anything works. They only care that they own it all and can do with it as they wish. That includes all of us. All the hokum, bunk, scams and grifts we see in the world today are mechanisms that further their interests, not ours.
Connect the dots. When you learn to connect the dots correctly you'll understand that there are two forces at work on this planet – nature and man. Nature is something we struggle to understand because it's so infinitely complex. Man? Man is easy. Some are good and some are evil. Some ally and identify with God, whom they define as the definition of good. Others ally and identify with Satan, whom they, also identify as the definition of good. Two definitions of "good?" How can that be? It just is. That's the dichotomy of man – our primary failing as beings. We are imbued with the power to choose which definition of "good" we will follow – God's or Satan's? We all make that choice, either consciously or unconsciously. One day we will all understand the importance of our personal choice. One day those members of the Cabal will know whether their choice was the right one. My prediction for them is – a very long stay in a very, very hot town – with no more good times to be had.
I'm done for today. I started with a scientific discussion and ended with a sermon. That's just how I am.
In Liberty,
Steve
© Steve A. StoneThe views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.