This new Citizen's Voice feature at the KNS is going great. One of their featured voices is Dr. Pete Stevens, a "retired international business and education consultant, researcher, writer, speaker, manager and professor," who today tells us that global warming is a "leftist" hoax.

(The headline on the KNS website says "Another look at the controversial issue of global warming." The print edition headline in bold print on the front page of the editorial section says "A leftist hoax?")

It's not clear what his PhD is in or what his field of research is, and I'm unable to find a reference to him in any published works or professional directories. (I was able to find a couple of irrational, radical rightwing rants on his website.)

Whatever his qualifications are, I'm sure his climatology credentials are stellar. Or that at least his status as an amateur climatologist is well established. And he cites one of the most respected climatologist of our time, whose credentials are beyond repute:

The global warming scare is, as John Stossel says, junk science and merely the latest anti-capitalism and anti-America leftist hoax.

Indeed.

Let's look at some of Dr. Stevens' studied assertions so that we might learn more about this hoax.

Read more...

Dr. Stevens:

Conclusions can only be historical and only covering such period wherein current instruments and methodology were employed. What will happen with respect to temperature in the future is speculation.

From the IPCC Working Group report on The Physical Basis of Climate Change:

• Current concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 far exceed pre-industrial values found in polar ice core records of atmospheric composition dating back 650,000 years. Multiple lines of evidence confirm that the post-industrial rise in these gases does not stem from natural mechanisms.

• It is very likely that average NH temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were warmer than in any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely that this was also the warmest 50-year period in the past 1300 years.

• Climate models are based on well-established physical principles and have been demonstrated to reproduce observed features of recent climate and past climate changes. There is considerable confidence that AOGCMs provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. Confidence in these estimates is higher for some climate variables (e.g., temperature) than for others (e.g., precipitation).

Dr. Stevens:

The cause of this temperature increase is speculation. What effects a temperature increase of one or two or five or 10 degrees will have on the Earth's ecosystem is speculation.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency's State of Knowledge:

Scientists know with virtual certainty that:

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.

• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.

• A warming trend of about 0.7 to 1.5°F occurred during the 20th century. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (NRC, 2001).

• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.

• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

From the IPCC The Physical Basis of Climate Change report:

• From new estimates of the combined anthropogenic forcing due to greenhouse gases, aerosols and land surface changes, it is extremely likely that human activities have exerted a substantial net warming influence on climate since 1750.

• Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years.

• It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate. Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. Almost everywhere, daily minimum temperatures are projected to increase faster than daily maximum temperatures, leading to a decrease in diurnal temperature range. Decreases in frost days are projected to occur almost everywhere in the middle and high latitudes, with a comparable increase in growing season length.

• Intensity of precipitation events is projected to increase, particularly in tropical and high latitude areas that experience increases in mean precipitation. Even in areas where mean precipitation decreases (most subtropical and mid-latitude regions), precipitation intensity is projected to increase but there would be longer periods between rainfall events. There is a tendency for drying of the mid-continental areas during summer, indicating a greater risk of droughts in those regions.

• There is unanimous agreement among the coupled climate-carbon cycle models driven by emission scenarios run so far that future climate change would reduce the efficiency of the Earth system (land and ocean) to absorb anthropogenic CO2. As a result, an increasingly large fraction of anthropogenic CO2 would stay airborne in the atmosphere under a warmer climate.

• Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations lead directly to increasing acidification of the surface ocean. [..] Ocean acidification would lead to dissolution of shallow-water carbonate sediments and could affect marine calcifying organisms. However, the net effect on the biological cycling of carbon in the oceans is not well understood.

• Sea level is projected to rise between the present (1980–1999) and the end of this century (2090–2099) under the SRES B1 scenario by 0.18 to 0.38 m, B2 by 0.20 to 0.43 m, A1B by 0.21 to 0.48 m, A1T by 0.20 to 0.45 m, A2 by 0.23 to 0.51 m, and A1FI by 0.26 to 0.59 m. [..] In all scenarios, the average rate of rise during the 21st century very likely exceeds the 1961 to 2003 average rate (1.8 ± 0.5 mm yr–1). During 2090 to 2099 under A1B, the central estimate of the rate of rise is 3.8 mm yr–1. For an average model, the scenario spread in sea level rise is only 0.02 m by the middle of the century, and by the end of the century it is 0.15 m.

• Results from embedded high-resolution models and global models, ranging in grid spacing from 100 km to 9 km, project a likely increase of peak wind intensities and notably, where analysed, increased near-storm precipitation in future tropical cyclones. Most recent published modelling studies investigating tropical storm frequency simulate a decrease in the overall number of storms, though there is less confidence in these projections and in the projected decrease of relatively weak storms in most basins, with an increase in the numbers of the most intense tropical cyclones.

Granted, scientists use terms such as "very likely" and "extremely unlikely", meaning that Dr. Stevens is technically correct that this is "speculation." Scientists, however, quantify the terms such that "very likely" means a greater than 90% probability, and "extremely unlikely" means a less than 5% probability.

Which brings us to Dr. Stevens' next assertion:

Scientists cannot prove anything. What they can do is disprove things. They disproved that the Earth is flat and speculated that it is round.

He goes on to discuss controlled experiments with controlled variables and that this is the only way to establish even a suspicion of cause and effect.

This is all very true. But gravity is just a theory. Its effects, however, can be observed by dropping a lead weight on your toe. The science behind Bernoulli's Principle is just a theory, too, but observation of a Lockheed L-1011 in flight suggests that it's pretty good science. If Bernoulli is "disproved," will airplanes suddenly start falling out of the sky? Fingerprint and DNA science are used every day to "prove" guilt or innocence "beyond a reasonable doubt."

While the IPCC says significant advancements have been made in understanding the problem through "large amounts of new data, more sophisticated analyses of data, improvements in the understanding and simulation of physical processes in climate models and more extensive exploration of uncertainty ranges in model results," they are very careful to differentiate between what they know with a high degree of certainty versus what is still uncertain or unknown.

But the bottom line is that with existing science they are able to conclude with a high degree of certainty that climate change is occurring at an accelerated rate and that human activity is the cause.

We are also able to conclude that the KNS should be more circumspect in allowing unfounded, unverified, unreferenced "science" to be foisted off on readers of its editorial pages without at least a disclaimer that these allegations of "junk science" are themselves "junk science."

Realizing, of course, that it takes a lot of time and effort to read and study and understand all that science mumbo-jumbo with all those big words and data and stuff, we understand why it's easier to just take the word of some local yokel quoting John Stossel that the "leftist" science is all wrong, and ignore the most comprehensive, international, multi-discipline, peer-reviewed science currently available.

What's really sad about all this is that people like Dr. Stevens and John Stossel, who call this science "anti-American" and "anti-Capitalist," can't see the declining forest for the ailing trees. Regardless of your ideological or political bent, reducing pollution and reducing the use of fossil fuels and our dependence on foreign oil are about as All American as it gets. Getting out in front of this with our Yankee Ingenuity (whatever happened to that?) would save us a lot of money and make us even more money.

We could be world leaders again in at least one field besides export of dysfunctional idiot entertainers if we had the political will and our energy policy wasn't being held hostage by a corrupt government run by corporate interests enabled by their lapdog media and so-called "conservative" pundits.