Berry replies to climate lobby claims

First, let’s read a good summary of the climate alarmists’ position on climate change. How would you reply to Jim’s article?

Instead of debating climate change, we need solutions for it (585 words)

by Jim Edwards Guest Columnist, Bozeman Chronicle and Daily Montanan, Citizens Climate Lobby

We’re past the time to “debate” climate change, it’s real — and it’s a problem. We need Congress focused on bi-partisan solutions for addressing it.

We need to be solving it so we can live in a stable climate and not enduring the climate-driven extreme weather events — wildfires, droughts, heatwaves, and the resulting low flows and warming water temps in our rivers and reservoirs. 2023 was the hottest year since records have been kept and 2024 is likely to beat it. Besides rising global temperatures, we’re seeing all sorts of other negative impacts, like more frequent and extreme droughts, floods, and severe, dangerous storms.

However, since the “debate” seems to keep cropping up, I’d like to remind my fellow Montanans that there is overwhelming consensus within the scientific community on these fundamental points regarding human-induced climate change:

Earth’s global average temperature is increasing;

Due to our burning of fossil fuels, human emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide, are the main cause of the warming;

International, independently derived research results all pointing towards the same finding provide a high degree of confidence that climate scientists are on the right track. The scientific community continues to add new findings and knows that many details about climate interactions aren’t fully understood and require significant, additional, continued research.

Climate defines the range in temperature and precipitation patterns making up our weather. Since the 1800s, the climate has warmed. Since World War II, the dominant contributor has been the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas. All contain carbon. When burned, they emit potent gases, mostly CO2, into the atmosphere. These emissions act like a down blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and thus raising temperatures, and creating droughts. As more water evaporates into the atmosphere, it provides fuel for storms and more intense rainfall.

Nearly 100% of climate scientists are now convinced, based on the evidence, that human-caused global warming is happening. Still, the general public perceives there is significant “debate” among scientists — why?

A campaign of obfuscation regarding climate change science has been underway since the late 1980s, funded in large part by the fossil fuels industry (quite similar to what the tobacco industry did 30 years earlier regarding the correlation of tobacco use and cancer prevalence).

In the early 1990s, the Western Fuels Association (with funding from Exxon and others), conducted a massive public relations campaign to “reposition global warming as a theory (not fact),” using dissenting scientists (industry funded), to create the impression of ongoing scientific debate.

My brother spent 40 years as an engineer working in the coal side of ExxonMobil (Exxon is now 100% divested of its coal portfolio). He’s helped educate me to the fact that for the first 30 years of his career, Exxon was invested in climate change denial; within the past 15 years, Exxon has pivoted and is now fully on board with the Paris Climate Agreement.

Scientists do not disagree about whether climate change is human-caused. There are only a very few, and even fewer with scientific backgrounds relevant to climate science, who promote “debate.” Many individuals who pose as “experts” in media sources are not scientists at all, or else have no real background in actual climate science.

People from all walks of life and all political stripes care about climate change and want to see the problem fixed as soon as possible.

To leave a healthy, stable world for future generations, we need to act now, get creative, and work energetically together.

Jim Edwards is retired, lives in Helena and is a member of the Citizens Climate Lobby. This column was initially published dailymontanan.com.

Guest column: Instead of debating climate change, we need solutions for it | Opinions | bozemandailychronicle.com

Second, here is my reply. My papers give the references.

Nature controls the climate (500 words)

by Ed Berry, PhD, Theoretical Physics

The belief in human-caused climate change is imaginary.

To do science correctly, we must list our assumptions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes these three assumptions:

1. Natural CO₂ stayed constant at 280 ppm since 1750, so human CO₂ caused all the CO₂ increase.
2. Increased CO₂ (from any source) increases global warming.
3. Global warming causes adverse events.

These three points are not facts. They are assumptions.

To “prove” these assumptions are true, climate alarmists further assume adverse events prove human CO₂ caused these events. They think the existence of (3) proves (1) and (2) are true, which is not true because events do not prove their cause.

Philosophy is the key to science.

The scientific method says we cannot prove any assumptions, like (1) and (2), are true. But we CAN prove (1) and (2) are false by finding errors in these assumptions or their predictions.

Consensus does prove (1) and (2) are true because consensus is not evidence. Wikipedia says, “argumentum ad populum is a fallacious argument which is based on claiming a truth because the majority thinks it is true.”

The following arguments (by Edwards) assume (1) and (2) are true, so they fail.

• “International, independently derived research results all pointing towards the same finding provide a high degree of confidence that climate scientists are on the right track.”
• “Due to our burning of fossil fuels, human emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide, are the main cause of the warming.”
• “Since World War II, the dominant contributor (to warming) has been the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil and natural gas.”
• “Nearly 100% of climate scientists are now convinced, based on the evidence, that human-caused global warming is happening.”

Published, peer-reviewed papers prove (1) and (2) are false. These proofs override and outvote all claims that (1) and (2) are true, according to the scientific method.

Assumption (1) requires the added assumption (1a) that human CO₂ stays in the atmosphere much longer than natural CO₂.

However, (1a) is impossible because human and natural CO₂ molecules are identical and, therefore, behave exactly the same. So, both assumptions (1a) and (1) are false.

IPCC’s own data, properly interpreted, prove natural CO₂ – not human CO₂ – is the dominant cause of the CO₂ increase. IPCC’s own data show natural CO₂ today is about 400 ppm. We cannot lower the CO₂ level to 350 ppm by stopping human CO₂.

Carbon-14 data show human CO₂ is less than 2% of atmospheric CO₂.

Changes in sea surface temperature PRECEDE changes in the CO₂ level, so temperature is the cause, not the effect.

IPCC’s radiation calculations flunk Physics 101 because they contradict the Stephan-Boltzmann law. This makes (2) false.

The Earth’s reflection, or albedo, mostly due to clouds, controls the solar energy absorbed by the Earth. Albedo controls Earth’s temperature. A small decrease in the Earth’s albedo since 1984 (when measurements began) explains all measured global warming since 1984.

Climate alarmists are wrong because they do not follow the scientific method.

Edwin X Berry, PhD, Theoretical Physics, former National Science Foundation Program Manager for Weather Modification. Bigfork