Day looks at factors affecting climate changes, challenges advocates of global warming
Douglas – According to Don Day of DayWeather, Inc., the argument about climate change and global warming is a three-legged stool, and one that is wobbly at best.
“Climate change has three components – carbon dioxide, water vapor feedback and clouds,” Day says.
Day notes that of the three components affecting climate change, only one is solidly agreed on by all members of the scientific community, making for a “wobbly” argument.
“One of the big problems that is not addressed is consensus,” he says. “If anyone challenges climate change, they get called nasty names.”
Delving into the three factors, Day looks at the reasons for contention in the scientific community.
Carbon dioxide
Day notes that carbon dioxide in the air has several affects.
“The first assumption is that when we add CO2 to the atmosphere, especially if we double the amount, which they claim has happened since the industrial age, we will increase global temperature by about 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit,” Day explains. “Why? Carbon dioxide has irradiative forcing. It reflects heat back to the lower troposphere where we live.”
This leg of the stool, he adds, is one that everyone agrees on. Additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases global temperature, Day continues, adding that the increase in minimal and excludes other global factors.
“This is the one leg of stool that is agreed on by everyone. It is physics,” he says.
Water vapor
The second factor behind global warming is water vapor feedback. The impacts of water vapor feedback are somewhat contentious, Day says.
“Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse gas,” he says. “The more water vapor, the more heat we have.”
This second leg of climate change is assumed to increase the early by 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit.
“There is also a lot of disagreement in this leg,” Day comments. “The climate model used by people proposing man-made climate change assumes the water cycle will change only one to three percent. However, numerous other studies see that increase at eight to 13 percent.”
“If that is the case, instead of 1.2 degree Fahrenheit, it is closer to zero degrees,” he continues.
As a result, the 1.2 degrees of warming caused as a result of water vapor is highly contested.
“We have only one leg, so far, that is good,” Day notes. “The other is wobbly.”
Clouds
The final leg in the climate change argument is the impact of cloud feedback.
“This is the biggest piece, and it is one that is involved in a lot of litigation against EPA,” says Day, noting that people are attempting to increase regulations after the premise of cloud feedback.
Cloud feedback is based on the premise that the more water vapor means that clouds and heat are trapped.
“However, their own international Panel on Climate Change’s report says cloud feedback remains the largest source of uncertainty,” he comments. “Large uncertainties remain about how clouds might respond to global climate change.”
With uncertainty and unsubstantial trends in data sets presented, Day also sees no clear consensus in the scientific community.
“They are claiming clouds will increase and temperatures will go up,” he says. “Essentially, they made up a number and said clouds will increase temperatures by 1.3 degrees.”
Overall argument
After tallying the proposed impacts of climate change from each of the three components, Day says. “Only 1.2 degrees of 3.2 degrees of global warming are agreed on. Two degrees are disputed.”
In fact, he adds that cloud feedback could actually result in a negative number. Science is uncertain at this point.
“Would anyone sit on this stool?” Day asks. “It is weak.”
“There is truth to what people claim, which is that adding more carbon dioxide can indeed make the earth warmer, but the other things they claim carbon dioxide will do, including increased water vapor and clouds, don’t take into account other things.”
Outside factors
Among the components of climate change that Day asserts many discount is the impact of the sun.
“Proponents of climate change say the sun doesn’t matter,” he says. “They only counted brightness and didn’t count sunspots – because it contradicts their claims.”
At the same time, when analyzing trend lines, Day notes that predictions about what would happen by 2029 don’t line up with what is currently happening. Temperatures are remaining steady, despite predictions of a sharp temperature increase.
“When we look backward in time and look at when there wasn’t as much CO2, we also see things like the Medieval Warm Period,” he continues. “This was a period of a couple hundred years of really warm global temperatures.”
However, when extrapolating the mathematics used by climate change proponents, that period should not have happened.
“It is very inconvenient,” he says. “We can get these proponents of climate change for extreme exaggeration. CO2 isn’t good, and we don’t want more than we need, but the end-of-the-world scenarios they are projecting aren’t happening.”
“Only one-third of their argument is true,” Day says. “Our government is making policies based on batting one-for-three.”
Day spoke at the 2015 Wyoming Livestock Roundup and Farm Credit Services of America Cattlemen’s Conference.
Saige Albert is managing editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup and can be reached at saige@wylr.net.
