By Dr. Gordon Fulks

It is always frustrating to read an article by someone claiming expertise in Global Warming only to find that he has no expertise at all in any area of science. Likewise the organization that employs him (Center for American Progress) claims all sorts of expertise related to scientific and engineering issues and has a large staff. But I could not find a single one with ANY training in science or engineering. That is a real pity and obviously contributes to their inability to come to grips with science-related policy issues in an objective fashion.
What profession does Mr. Bracken Hendricks claim? "Promoting policies" at "the interface of global warming solutions and economic development." In other words, he is a propagandist.

When he says that:"The best science available suggests that ...we could see temperatures rise 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States by 2090," how does he have any idea what the best science is?

Hendricks clearly does not know that most of us agree that increasing levels of carbon dioxide alone will raise the earth's temperature about 1 degree centigrade for a doubling of CO2. That is what the UN IPCC says and that is what MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen says. He is widely recognized as the greatest meteorologist alive today and a prominent skeptic of Global Warming hysteria. That is not much for a doubling that is unlikely to occur anyway.

Where then does the disagreement lie if not with carbon dioxide? The most significant disagreement involves feedbacks that alarmists claim are strongly positive but for which they can provide no valid scientific evidence. The evidence runs much the contrary, likely because climate cooling mechanisms are strongly non-linear. For instance, radiative cooling goes as the fourth power of the temperature, making it extremely difficult to maintain higher temperatures. Precipitation systems (thunderstorms) are strong cooling events that work on a threshold basis and are therefore thought to be a type of climate thermostat that largely bypasses the greenhouse effect.
But what of the actual data over the last decade or so? The Global Temperature anomaly has varied up and down but been close to constant on average. We had a super El Nino in 1998 and another this year that was a virtual tie with the previous one. Now we are headed into a deep La Nina and the Sun seems to be going into a deep sleep reminiscent of the Maunder or Dalton Minimums which were cold periods. According to the Alarmist theories Mr. Hendricks references, the Global Temperature SHOULD have gone up 0.2 C for an increase in CO2 from 370 to 390 ppmv over this period. It did NOT!

But that is hardly the only hole in Global Warming theory. Since human emissions of CO2 are relatively minor compared with amounts naturally in play, it is difficult to argue that these emissions are causing the rise in CO2 observed. They may well be a consequence of the late 20th century Warm Period which warmed the oceans slightly in the same fashion that they were warmed by the earlier Mid-20th Century Warm Period that we call the "Dust Bowl." About five years after that ended, chemical measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere showed a peak considerably HIGHER than today. Alarmists completely ignore this high quality data, because it destroys their theory.
Why should a slight warming of the oceans increase CO2 in the atmosphere? You do not need to be a PhD physicist to figure that out. Every beer drinker knows what happens when he lets his Budweiser warm up! It goes FLAT, because warmer beer cannot hold as much CO2.

The obvious solution to Global Warming is to improve science education so that fewer people will fall for the many scientific scams out there, Global Warming being the most pervasive and destructive at this time. Propagandists like Mr. Hendricks want this to be a political issue, so that people will not seek the truth but just support what they are being told. Most of us put our science far ahead of our politics. That is one trademark of a real scientist.

Professor Ivar Giaever is a well known Democrat who campaigned for President Obama in 2008. But he joined with me and 125 other scientists to take Obama to task for his climate hysteria. Who is Ivar Giaver? He is a Nobel Laureate in Physics and one of many Democrats concerned about the corruption of science by politicians and propagandists.

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics)
Corbett, Oregon USA
gordonfulks@hotmail.com
Comments at OregonLive today, responding to an Op-Ed that originally appeared in the Washington Post: