May 22, 2015

By David Larison

Call me a denier or flat-earther, but as a career meteorologist, I know how the atmosphere works. And I’ve never bought into the preposterous notion of man-made global warming causing weather extremes and climate change.


Today’s popular usage of “climate change” is a big misnomer in itself. The climate for a given location is the long-term average of weather conditions over many decades. It includes the wet and dry, hot and cold cycles that make up a norm.



For example, the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s did not change the “climate” of the south central U.S. plains. The preceding decade of the 1920s was wet over the region as was the following decade of the 1940s. In fact, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has long used 30-year periods to establish normals for weather stations around the country.


The great villain of the climate change crowd is a scant trace of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, most recently measured at 400 parts per million (PPM). Of this, the contribution due to human activity may total 100 PPM at best, some estimate much less.
Compare this to the Earth’s weather engine fueled by enormous energy from the sun. The entire surface of the Earth receives on the order of one sextillion (10 to the 21st power) British Thermal Units (BTU) of solar energy over one year’s time.


The equatorial regions of our planet receive far more direct energy than the polar regions. It’s this temperature difference along with physical forces that creates a river of air at high levels in each hemisphere known as the jetstream, which in turn drives the surface weather patterns.

In other words, the Earth’s weather system works from the grand scale down. My grounding in meteorology tells me it is absurd to believe that a mere 100 PPM of carbon dioxide contributed by man, acting as a significant greenhouse gas, causes climate change.


And what about the basic claim of Al Gore & Co. that the global average surface temperature is rising and will continue to do so at alarming levels? There are many variables that make such temperature calculations suspect, including instrumentation changes, the proper adjustments due to urban heat island effect and accurate computer model initialization.


Satellite measurements of the lowest two miles or so of the atmosphere are the best temperature indicator of all, and these data have shown no warming whatsoever for almost 19 years now.


President Obama likes to say that 97 percent of scientists agree that climate change is “real, man-made and dangerous.” This is a gross exaggeration based on a small sampling of researchers who are funded by the climate change movement.



I am one of 31,000-plus American scientists who have signed the Global Warming Petition Project. We are degree-holding professionals who are genuinely unconvinced about the existence of a human-caused global warming emergency.


In the end, the narrative all comes down to politics and the anti-fossil fuel, environmental left agenda. Practically every letter to the editor you see on saving the planet from climate change focuses on the same conclusion, that carbon taxes are necessary for all.
Those who can achieve political and economic control of the basic human need of energy are a threat to yield great power over our lives for years to come.


Dave Larison is a retired National Weather Service meteorologist and has lived in Longmont since 1980.