A view of climate "on the ground" from a reporter who was there at the beginning

Elevated from a comment Theodore White says: March 8, 2012 at 5:04 pm

Let’s clarify a few things on another of Anthony’s excellent posts, like this one ‘Hey Hansen! Where’s the Beef !?’ –

It’s lengthy, but gives the view of a person who was there on the ground, covering climate science and global warming in the late 1980s – years before the AGW mania took off.

I worked as a journalist in the late 1980s in Colorado, home state of Senator Tim Wirth. I had interviewed him several times on other topics. As part of my general assignment beat, I also covered science, climate and weather, regularly at NOAA, NCAR and other federal science agencies headquarted in Colorado.

I clearly remember the tone of articles on global warming during the 1980s. Most of the concern came out of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) on the ozone layer. By the way, this was during the new era of climate scientists working with high-grade graphic computer modelling.

The problem with NCAR’s interpretation on the ozone fluctuations were that some, like Hanson, took an immediate ideological tone to explain the ozone shifts – not once mentioning the Sun or the Interplanetary Magnetic Field effect on Earth’s ozone layers. For some reason, there was a resistance to even mentioning the Sun’s effects on earth by these new climate scientists getting jobs at the science agencies. It was odd I thought.

When news editors assigned stories on the climate back then it was usually spurred by press releases out of places like NCAR, NWS, NOAA, etc., which usually featured a talk, lecture, or findings that were sent to the media. Global warming, in the mid-to-late 1980s was not the AGW ideological era that it is today.

In fact, climate scientists were not in any agreement if the earth was ‘warming’ in the 1980s – though it was true. Many scientists would roll their eyes at the mention of ‘global warming’ but many changed their tune in the 1990s just as major federal dollars were being directed to ‘man-made’ global warming’ – which I continue to remind everyone cannot ever happen on Earth due to the laws of thermodynamics. The Earth can never become a greenhouse according to the laws of physics.

But I digress – in short, when I wrote pieces on the climate, I refused to write on the theory that chlorofluorocarbons were the sole cause of worldwide warming because that had never been proved. Now, though there was evidence that the use of aerosols were clearly evident in the upper atmosphere; the data did not support that this was the cause of the fear-mongering on ozone holes which was all the rage in the climate community of the late 1980s and 1990s.

NCAR had modeled on the theory that aerosols were the cause, but not the Sun, which again, I found odd, since the only major source of radiation that can only affect the opening and closings and sizes of the Earth’s ozones IS the Sun.

There is no other source of radiation that can effectively destroy the earth’s ozone layer. But what was curious (and unbelievable) is that there were obvious determined efforts (in the mid-to-late 1980s) to blame mankind for something it could not do on a planetary level – and that is to change the climate.

Only the Sun can do that.

What I noticed about Sen. Wirth and Hansen back in the late 1980s, is that there was a obvious concerted effort within the emergence of baby boomer management and personnel into climate science on the federal level; that they were pushing ideology as policy. This was a prepatory assault that was planned out.

When Al Gore rose to the vice-presidency by 1993 – Wirth and Hansen were already well out in front of the ‘man-made’ global warming pack – extending the ‘man-made’ ideology to other federal agencies and the university-level climate community – with federal dollars.

Follow the money pushing the ideological AGW lie. If one examines climate science funding from 1986 to 1996 and then from 1996 to the present – you may find some amazing numbers.

Incredible amounts – increasing yearly and wasted on every bigger and more expensive computers to run models. Careerists who cannot forecast seasonal weather were making things up (and began to alter weather data on purpose) while spending lavishly on computers pushing the AGW ideology – all at the public’s great expense.

But the media was not on board. Most journalists are ignorant of climate and weather science. I was fortunate in that I was not, so my editors passed on to me the great amount of work – and I was busy enough as it was a police reporter as it was! Since my beat included covering the climate science community in the heart of it in Colorado, I was well-attuned to how events were shaping up by 1989.

Since the mid-1980s, what I saw were articles like the one Anthony posted from 1986 were becoming more common. What I observed as professional reporter was that the ozone-layer press releases from NOAA and NCAR and other climate centers were beginning to use the same talking points in their different releases to news desks. Sometimes, these went out on the wire which were then placed into newspapers across the country without the resources to assign reporters to cover the climate.

I did not have that problem since this was part of my beat. In interviews with the particular scientists (including Hansen) what I observed was that they were heavy on the ideology, yet not sure if it was strong enough because the global weather data in the late 1980s did not strongly support their case that the world was warming because of man.

Still, by 1989, the AGW science did not make sense to me in light that it would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Which I remind everyone – remains in effect to this very day.

Anyhow, it did not seem to matter to Wirth’s office, Hansen, or the growing careerists at NCAR and NOAA; because whomever was pushing ‘man-made global warming’ on the United States, were also doing it at the international level too.

My view was that it was a conspiracy right from the start to bamboozle the world on the lie of anthropogenic global warming sandbagging much of the mainstream media, the markets and the educational system to not believe their own eyes and ears.

Events have since proven that I was right.

All this – while AGW ideologists reaped untold profits convincing populations that carbon (the very stuff we are made of) is bad and so we all have to pay for carbon to a global mafia.

In short, the careerist climate AGW scientists and their political insiders conspired to convince the world that humans had to pay dearly for exhaling the carbon gases that the natural world and our trees inhales to flourish.

Carbon is natural to Earth. It is driven by the Sun’s activity. Carbon lags far, far behind temperature (also driven by the Sun) and carbon is not – and never has been – a threat to the Earth.

Why?

Because the laws of thermodynamics and physics that govern our system says so.