Author Archives: rachase

About rachase

BS (Plant Science), MF (Forest Management) Yale Univ. Retired after a 40-year career with US Forest Service, 10 years in private consulting. Forest Service experience included 13 years in field assignments in the Northwest, 12 in national administration, and 15 in a variety of aspects of wildland fire research.

GOD’S OTHER BOOK

GOD’S OTHER BOOK

Preface

Over the past several hundred years, many adherents of the intellectual disciplines known collectively as “Science” have conducted numerous systematically structured investigations into the origins of the universe, and how it has developed out of nothing from formless plasma into to the complex of myriad components-especially our own earth-which we are able to observe in detail today. The culmination of this scientific effort is an understanding of the natural processes that have been-and continue to be-involved in this development, and a conclusion from the evidence that it has taken about 14 billion years to accomplish since its now identified unique single instant and point of beginning.

The cause of the instantaneous beginning that created time, space, and the universe in what is generally concluded to have been a void of “nothingness”, is still debated within the scientific community, but a supernatural one is increasingly being favored as the best explanation consistent with the apparent facts.

On the other hand, the Judeo-Christian Bible’s description of how the entire natural universe came to exist declares it to have been accomplished through a six-day (as we measure days now) supernatural event in which God created everything natural in completed kind and form as Biblically described as then existing. Some Biblical scholars estimate from Biblically recorded genealogies and events that this creative event occurred 6 to 10 thousand years ago.

Obviously, both “explanations” cannot logically co-exist as being literally true.

The intent of this brief paper is, first, to present and substantiate a position that there is no conceptual conflict between the two despite their widely divergent descriptions of how Creative events specifically occurred. For, as we shall see, the valid basis for both is the same Source, one that is eternally consistent and infallible, the Creator Lord God. And second, since most readers will be (or readily can become) familiar with the Biblical version, but likely unaware of even the principal details of how Science has arrived at its conclusions, I will present a condensed, largely non-technical outline of how the detailed observations and studies of the myriad components of Nature, itself, have led to an understanding of God’s supernatural creative power to bring the Universe to its present state.

For those who wonder what “credentials” I might claim that entitle me to comment on the issues I discuss, I first am a committed professing Christian who has had an inherent belief in a Creator God since childhood from an early introduction to the complex variety of Nature by my parents.  My understanding of the Bible has been enhanced through both the excellent teachings of countless lessons from Pastors of the Churches I have attended over the years, the adult Bible classes that I have taught, and the many Precept Ministries’ formal Inductive Bible studies that I have participated in.

On the “Science” side, my curiosity about nature, from astronomy to geology to biology was early evidenced in my reading choices, and the subjects in high school that I found of most interest, all of which led to a college course of study that earned me a Bachelor’s degree in Plant Science, and a Master’s in Silviculture & Forest Management; All of which provided attendant appropriate knowledge in physics, chemistry, and what are collectively known as the “earth sciences”. 

Therefore, while I make no claim to expertise in all of the areas of science that I will discuss below, I am sufficiently confident of my at least general understanding of the subject matter and the basis for the scientific conclusions that have been reached.  I have not knowingly ignored any serious scientifically valid disagreements with what I present, and welcome factual rebuttals.

My goal in this paper is to improve understanding of why and how rational people on each side of this controversy believe as they do, and from that will come realization that in truth there is really no conflict, for each of the two versions simply presents a valid explanation of God’s creation-Nature-that is consistent with the level of technical sophistication of the respective cultures in and for which each “version’ was developed, the two cultures being separated by several thousand years during which magnitudes of steady progress were made in the ability to observe and understand the complex details of nature both on earth and in the skies above.

The difference between the versions of course, begs the question: If the “Science” version of Creation is factual, do I imply that the “conflicting” Biblical description of Creation that is presented in Chapter 1 of Genesis is then false, despite that it is inspired text?

Being a devoted Christian who has studied the Bible and subscribes to its God-declared inerrancy, my answer, of course, is a firm “NO”.  But that answer requires recognition that the writers of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, as well as Jesus, Himself, often used allegories and metaphors to make important themes, events, or concepts easily understandable for the people of their era by relating them to then familiar things. The Earth is depicted in Psalms as ‘standing still’ while the sun and stars revolve around it in order to acknowledge their apparent daily motion; Jesus is referred to as a “door” and a “shepherd”, and His followers as “sheep”; the Psalmist (90:4) reminded us (and the Apostle Paul confirms (2Tim 3:8) that, metaphorically, a thousand [human] years are like a day to God. Jesus’ parables while essentially are just stories, the content of each represents particular “truths” presented in easily understandable form. There is a major difference between a writing that is false with intent to deceive the reader, and that which, while the content may not be literally factual, presents an unfamiliar or complex truth as an understandable metaphor or allegory. The first is obviously false; the second simply uses familiar parallels to convey a potentially complicated conceptual truth in a more understandable context for the intended audience. The break with factual reality comes when you misinterpret a statement that is a metaphor or allegory as a literal fact. How can you know the difference? The standard admonition for Biblical understanding of “difficult” passages applies: Careful attention to context, both general and specific.

The essential point conveyed by Genesis 1 is that God initiated Creation of “something” from “nothing” by which everything in the Universe has come into existence by His command.


Why the Genesis 1 Creation account is valid scripture


The Holy Bible, written some two or three thousand
years ago by men inspired by God to reveal Himself to all people, is well-known, read and studied at least in part by most everyone who has interest or professes belief in Him. The explanation of Creation presented in the Book of Genesis clearly establishes God as the unquestionably sole Creator of everything in terms of what the reader then could personally observe on Earth and in the Heavens above about His Creation-the collective natural components of what we now refer to as the ‘Cosmos’, or ‘Universe’. It does this by describing God’s creation in terms that, while not literally complete in detail or procedure, they were ones that correctly conveyed the concepts of creation based on what was observable in ways that were understandable by the culture of that day. Doing so does not make it “false”. Supporting the validity of this is the fact that the order of creation in Genesis essentially is the same order of the formation of the universe and the earth and the occurrence of plant and animal life as that which scientific study has determined. 

 What the Genesis version of Creation obviously lacks, for reasons that I believe are clear, are the incredibly complex details of the myriad essential physical, chemical, and physiological elements and processes that, while hidden from the naked eye, collectively are the basis for the observable superficial characteristics of nature.  The evidence of these intricate hidden details of God’s creation are not lost, though, for He carefully imbedded them in discoverable form in all the diverse individual components of His Creation: “the things that have been made”, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans.

I believe that it clearly is God’s intention that this evidence of the how of Creation would eventually be discovered and understood by his children. For He subsequently has led Scientists to observe and understand it through the natural curiosity and ability to reason with which He endowed them, so that we are now able to marvel at the methods of His natural creative ways, ways that He makes it unarguably clear through the observable evidence that His methods involved eons of supernatural wisdom, not six literal days, in which to systematically carry out His creation progressively using capabilities which He had imbedded in nature itself.

Understanding the results of Science’s search for the facts of how the created material universe has come to be in the state in which we witness it today requires acknowledgment that it is based on the evidence found in what has been termed “God’s other Book” [1] — one “written” personally by God, Himself. QThe fundamental basis for these scientific studies is simply what God provided for us in observable natural form: detailed evidence of both the way His creation has been (and still is being) carried out, and the designed configuration and on-going function of all the natural elements that compose what we collectively refer to as “Nature”.

    [1] First use of this term to describe the totality of Created Nature as a revelation by God of His power that stands alongside the inspired texts of the Bible, has been attributed to the 3rd century Christian theologian, Augustine of Hippo. The concept has been repeated by such respected notables as 13th century philosopher/theologian Thomas Aquinas, (thought by some to rival Paul, himself, in his insights on God and Christianity), and, on the science side, early systematic seekers of answers to Nature’s secrets, Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon.

  Before continuing, we need to clear up some misconceptions about “Science”

 Science as a discipline is not the irreconcilable opponent of religion that some perceive it to be. In fact, it is evident that the strong Judeo-Christian beliefs of many preeminent early scientists were a factor underlying what led up to the”scientific revolution” of the 16th and 17th centuries. This was a period that saw significant advancements in the observation and understanding of Nature, both on earth and in the heavens above. These advancements corrected flawed and biased beliefs from ancient times and established formal systematic procedures for scientific observation, experiment, and analysis that form the basis for modern scientific enquiry-the Scientific Method, a formal process    of testing and analysis to validate (or refute) proposed explanations of observed natural phenomena.            .  

By definition, “Science” as a discipline is merely the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the natural physical world and universe through detailed formal observation and reasoned analysis. Its sole objective is to gain and increase the understanding of “matter”— everything in the universe that is substantive, that is, having mass and volume.  Matter exists in solid, liquid, gas, and plasma form, and it and energy are interchangeable.

In ancient civilizations a mythical supernatural controlling deity was credited for each phenomenon of nature because there was little understanding of the “whys” and “hows” of nature itself.  The earliest roots of a disciplined approach to begin to understand the natural world by observation of the superficial causes and effects of phenomena were by the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Greeks, and Romans ca. 4000 – 3000 BCE. (The word ‘science’ in English comes from the Latin one for “knowledge”.) 

Over the course of ensuing millennia, recognition grew that the explanations which scientists sought about nature’s components were to be found in the formal study of the observable details of nature itself. With that, the early modern practice of science was born, and its practitioners began to distance themselves from using made up supernatural forces as the source and cause of natural phenomena. This approach to restrict their attention to observable material evidence for answers eventually became imbedded in the formal rules of scientific investigation as studies involving the natural “laws” of physics that govern the characteristics of matter increasingly revealed identifiable natural physical causes for more and more of nature’s apparent enigmas.

This growing ability to begin to satisfactorily explain nature’s make up, even if only superficially, by increased understanding of its components, over time provided some scientists with a sufficient reason to disavow the existence of Judeo-Christian religion’s supernatural Creator God, along with any credibility in the Biblical Scripture that claimed to reveal Him. This view, while by no means ever unanimous among the scientific community has been sufficient over the centuries to get scientific endeavors into understanding Creation through Nature’s evidence generally branded as “anti-religion” by religious groups.

As I shall discuss later, scientific discoveries over the past century have erased at least some of the principal reasons for this “anti-science” bias, and there is a growing recognition within the science community that the answer to the ultimate question: “how did ‘matter’, and more particularly “life” itself, with its apparent supernatural attributes, come into existence?” lies outside of a scientific search that focuses solely on the physical components of the universe.

HOW SCIENCE ARRIVED AT THE APPROXIMATIONS OF

THE AGES OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE EARTH

Preface: The role of science

Before embarking on the explanations for how members of the scientific community came up with their age approximations, I need to address two items that bear directly on the historic objectives of science in general, i.e., what it does and why it does it.

First, I direct your attention to the previous reference in the Book of Romans, a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, a letter which has been called both a theological masterpiece and the constitution of the Christian faith. It is so well organized in its presentation of the precepts of Christianity that it has been used in some law schools as an example of how to prepare a legal brief, a formal document a lawyer uses both to convince a court that the client’s argument is sound, and to persuade the court to adopt that position.

In it, as recorded in Chapter 1, verses 19 and 20, Paul rebukes the ungodly and unrighteous who suppress the truth (deny any knowledge of the existence of God) by their actions, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them, for His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the World in the things that have been made. So, they are without excuse.”

Paul states here that to know that a Divine Supernatural God exists, we need only look at nature itself, where He has revealed Himself in His creation, “the things that have been made”. Paul does not tell us that all we need to do is to go read Chapter 1 of Genesis to realize and understand the revelation of what He has done and how he did it (His invisible attributes). His Creation-nature-is all around, visible to any who will look at it, and through it He has revealed Himself to all. And while science has not yet ever declared that its objective in the studies of nature is to find God, its continuing discoveries of nature’s myriad components, and in the unraveling of nature’s innermost workings, answers to the mysteries of the HOWs of God’s Creation are revealed, leading us to a secure understanding of His Divinity, Majesty, and awesome Supernatural Power.

Please keep in mind that the only purpose here is to challenge the literal interpretation of the creation account as it is presented in the opening Chapter of Genesis. There is no intent to falsify, denigrate, or belittle the basic concepts underlying that Chapter, for it serves an important unique purpose that embodies an essential message of its own, a message that is the very foundation of all scripture, to wit: God is eternal, and He existed before there was anything; it is He who has created all things from nothing by and through His supreme divine power.

What the first Chapter does clearly identify is the WHAT and WHO of creation; through the rest of scripture, we come to know God, learn the WHY, and acquire understanding of His ways and expectations for us. It is in nature (“the things that have been made”) that we, through our understanding of the intellectual discipline called “science”, which is based on the use of the God-appointed power of our mind to reason [2], look with awe at the infinite complexity in the design of that creation and the way it is sustained. It is through careful study of His Creation through improving technology that we can fully understand and appreciate God’s awesome power and divine ways-the HOW it was-and still being-carried out.

[2]   E.g., Job 23:7; Isa 1:18

With respect to concerns that many had about apparent conflicts between scripture and the results of scientific investigation, Thomas Aquinas, 13th century philosopher/theologian, allegedly expanding on the thoughts of the 3rd century theologian, Augustine, observed that the natural sciences serve as a kind of veto over the subjective or literal interpretation of a biblical passage when that interpretation is in conflict with what the objective scientific study of nature itself establishes through appropriate observation, analysis and testing to be a fact. 

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(NOTE: The following sections provide an overview of the more significant discoveries by scientists that have occurred along path that scientists have traveled over the past century or so in their exploration of the mysteries of nature in order to understand how the universe in which we live came to be. Technical detail is held to a minimum, but the information provided is based on technically supported documentation.)

Four natural forces–God’s tools for His design of the Universe
and operation of its natural functions


Underlying the science for the issue of age calculations for both the universe and the Earth, and how created energy and matter formed the physical components of the Cosmos that exist today, is an important discovery by scientists over the years of the underlying components of God’s designed creation that are responsible for the continuing existence of nature itself:  Four natural FORCES, products of Creation, itself, that are the “glue” that holds the Universe and all its material components together and which enables them both to function and to dynamically change in form and composition over time.

That such essential forces existed in nature, with Jesus Christ their source and presence, had been revealed by the Apostle Paul many centuries earlier in his letter to the Colossians 1:16,17:  “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have 4been created through him and for him; 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

These four natural forces came into existence at the moment of creation and are fundamental to all matter which comprises the universe. Should they suddenly disappear, the entire universe would literally fly apart and disintegrate in an instant. Science has been able to determine very accurately through observation and experiment the nature of these forces and how they behave, but it cannot explain either how they came into existence, or why they have the inherent capability to act as they do.

We personally experience two of these forces every day:

—The Force of Gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass or energy — including planets, stars, galaxies, gaseous matter, and even light — are attracted to one another. We experience it as our weight as the earth pulls on us. It caused the original gaseous matter to coalesce to form stars, and the stars to group together to form galaxies, and It keeps the planets in our solar system fixed in their orbits about the Sun. The gravitational attraction of our Moon is responsible for our oceans’ tides and currents as it orbits the Earth. Theoretically, anything with “mass” exhibits gravitational attraction, but the strength is too weak except in very large or very dense bodies of matter to have an effect.

—The Electromagnetic (EM) Force is the radiant energy (“radiation”) associated with magnetic and electric fields. Its presence is extensive and diverse, from holding atoms together (which is why things are solid) to making such diverse things as TVs, cell phones, X-Rays, MRIs, your microwave oven, and even your eyesight possible.

The full range of all possible EM frequencies or wavelengths [3] make up the Electromagnetic Spectrum, from shortest wavelengths (gamma rays, X-rays) to the longest (radio and TV waves). Tucked in a very narrow band in the center is the only EM radiation that can be detected by the human eye-visible light.

This visible light band is made up of the EM frequencies for each of the colors from violet through blues, greens, yellows, oranges to reds, the order being the same as a prism produces from a beam of white sunlight. (This will be relevant to our discussion below on age of Universe.)

[3] Electromagnetic energy is transmitted in the form of ‘waves’ (as is sound as a different form of energy.) The measured ‘frequency’ (the number of times a wave peak passes a particular point each second) determines the properties or type of each EM form. “Wavelength” is concurrent way to characterize any wave form, and is the measured distance between wave peaks expressed in meters.


The other two natural Forces operate at the level of the individual atom:

—The ‘Strong Force’ holds the subatomic particles in the nucleus of an atom together, thereby maintaining the integrity of the particular chemical element that the atom forms. (Chemical properties of atoms are determined by the number of protons in the nucleus)
 —The ‘Weak Force’ is responsible for the controlled radioactive decay in those elements, such as radium and uranium, which, by their nature, have a systematically unstable nucleus and lose energy by radiation. (It is this Force that is responsible for providing scientists with the basis for determining the age of the Earth and its features, as will be discussed below.)

Skeptics have questioned the validity of the assumption that the effects of these four basic forces have remained constant over time while the environments in which they have operated have varied significantly, for they maintain-based on conjecture-that even minor changes might invalidate scientific conclusions of historic natural phenomena developed from their use in calculations on which those conclusions are based.

Relying on the inerrancy of the Colossians verse quoted above that it is Christ who holds the Universe together, Hebrews 13:8 assures us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”.  That straightforward statement would be a “truth’, and not a metaphor, a verse we can take literally. Scripturally, then, these basic forces were the same at the moment of creation as we observe them to be today. Science has found no evidence to the contrary.

How scientists have calculated the estimated age of the Universe.

First, this section is not a detailed textbook recitation of all the mathematics and physics that describe the many intricate technical steps that have been pursued by scientists that led to the procedures that enable them to calculate a reliable estimate of the age of the Universe, and details about its development.  Only enough technical detail is given for an understanding that the way scientists have been able to develop the age of the Universe is based on nature’s facts and sound reasoning.  For any readers unsatisfied with abbreviated general descriptions, I suggest an Internet search for “estimating the age of the Universe” to find the full details on the physics technologies that are involved. (Without an appropriate academic background, prepare to be at least somewhat overwhelmed.)

 Calculation of the age of anything obviously requires knowledge of when it came into existence. For the scientific determination of the age of the Universe, this initially presented an insurmountable problem since there appeared to be no way to even verify that the event actually occurred. For generations, people argued over whether the Universe had always existed in a stable form, or was it eternally cyclical, expanding and contracting with neither beginning nor end, or whether it had a supernatural beginning as the Bible declared. However, starting in the early 20th century, improving technology enabled scientists to begin to explore the Universe in greater systematic detail, steadily increasing their discovery and understanding of its components and how they worked. 

In 1929, Edwin Hubble  confirmed and enlarged upon a discovery that Vesto Slipher had made in 1912 that the light from most distant galaxies [4] was ‘redder’ than those in our own Milky Way. Hubble, using the now available 100-inch telescope on Mt. Wilson in California, was studying the light from the stars in very distant galaxies  using a spectroscope [5], and observed that the spectral lines of the of the colors for the light emitted by the stars in the galaxies under observation did not have exactly the wavelengths as those indicated for the same colors from a spectroscope of light in the laboratory. Rather, the wavelengths of each of the colors were systematically shifted slightly toward the red end of the color spectrum indicating that the transmission of each color from the light source had a slightly longer wavelength.

[4] A galaxy is a gravitationally bound system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, and dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias, literally “milky”, an early 1800’s reference to ‘our’ Milky Way. Galaxies range in size from dwarfs with just a few hundred million stars to giants with one hundred trillion stars, each orbiting its galaxy’s center. It is estimated that Earth’s “home”, the Milky Way Galaxy, is made up of an estimated 100 billion stars (similar to our sun). The closer ones are mostly what can be seen with the naked eyes in the night sky except for the 5 the planets of our solar system, and one major galaxy, the Andromeda, which is “only” 2.5 million light years away, and a few small ones that are part of our Galaxy and look just like the stars.

[5] An instrument that breaks a ray of light into its component spectral lines (colors) and identifies their respective frequency and wavelength .(Descriptive measures that identify unique characteristics of individual electro-magnetic energy transmissions, e.g., each color has a unique wavelength and frequency.)

In considering the reason for this phenomenon, the only plausible conclusion was that these red shifts occurred because the galaxy from which the light that was being studied originated was moving rapidly away from our Milky Way galaxy. It was then noted that other observed galaxies exhibited the same shift. The cause of this change in wavelength is due to a natural physics principle known as the Doppler effect, or Doppler shift, which had been previously observed and verified in connection with an unrelated “Earthbound” application.

 The reason for the Doppler effect is that when the source of light (or sound) waves is moving towards the observer, each successive wave crest is emitted from a position slightly closer to the observer than the crest of the previous wave. Therefore, each successive wave takes slightly less time to reach the observer than the previous wave. Hence, the wavelength is reduced, and the frequency (the time between the arrivals of successive wave crests at the observer) is shorter. Conversely, if the source of waves is moving away from the observer, each wave is emitted from a position farther from the observer than the previous wave, so the arrival time between successive waves is increased, increasing the light’s wavelength, and in this case, affecting the individual colors that make up the star’s light.

A common example of Doppler shift in wave-form energy is the change of pitch of sound that is heard when a train or vehicle sounding its horn approaches and recedes from an observer. (Sound, while not electromagnetic, is transmitted in wave form through air.) Compared to the emitted sound’s frequency, the received frequency (and tone) is higher during the approach, identical at the instant of passing by, and lower as the source of the sound recedes.

This discovery that all galaxies are rapidly moving outward and away from each other led to the new understanding that the Universe was expanding uniformly like a balloon; and the velocity at which any distant galaxy was moving could be calculated by the amount of the wavelength “red shift” measured by the Spectrometer. With this this new information, scientists were now able to estimate the rate at which both the Universe and space itself is expanding in all directions, the current estimate being about 42 miles per second, per parsec (a unit of length used to measure astronomical distances One parsec = ~19,2 trillon miles.).

More importantly, this new information provided the key to what many physicists concluded settled the question about how and when did everything start? Armed with the information that all the components of the Universe were moving outward from a point of common beginning, it now was factually knowable that the Universe did have a definite singular point and time of beginning, one which was quickly labeled as the “Big Bang”. 
This, of course, only served to give new life to the debate among scientists, atheists, and Judeo-Christians that continues today about what caused the Big Bang to occur, how did energy and matter appear out of ‘nothing’, and from where and how did the specific information that appears to have guided all the subsequent development of the Universe in general, and the Earth in particular (especially life itself), originate?
 

Creation event is estimated by scientists from evidence still observable in the cosmos [6]  to have been instantaneous, and incredibly hot and violent, producing and ejecting particles with great force in all directions into the void, creating out of nothing in an instant, energy, particles of matter, and time and space, none of which existed before.[7]  Our learned knowledge of natural chemical and physical principles from systematic observations now enables us to understand how these particles of matter merged to form through nuclear fusion, first atoms of hydrogen, and then through the highspeed collisions of these, atoms of helium, the two “simplest” (and still most abundant) elements in the Universe, having but 1 and 2 protons respectively in their nucleus. (For comparison, later formed elements such as oxygen has 16, and iron 26.)

[6] Among this evidence, when the “Big Bang” of creation was first hypothesized, scientists calculated, based on known properties of the resultant observed existing energy and matter, that, if there were such an event, some of the extreme energy that would have been released as an electromagnetic (EM) force at the instant of its creation would have included a specific frequency in the microwave range that should still be discernable as faint background radiation in space. Radio telescope searches found nothing, however, until a few years later when a totally unrelated space EM radiation-related research project was “bothered” by unexplainable interference, which proved to be background radiation on exactly the frequency previously predicted for the “Big Bang”.  Given the vast multitude of possible EM frequencies, discovering one “lurking in the background” exactly as predicted is hard to believe as merely a coincidence.

[7] Scientists acknowledge that this event created what is referred to as Space to begin filling the void and contain the Universe. The hypothesis is that Space continues to expand into the void.

Of major importance from Hubble’s discovery was that scientists now had the ability to approximate with reasonable certainty based on nature’s own imbedded attributes, the amount of time that has elapsed since the Universe came into existence at the “Big Bang”.

In 1996 two teams of physicists using the available data in slightly different methods, independently determined the time of the creation event:  One estimated 9-12 billion years ago, the other 11-15 billion. More recent data provided by improved technology now places the Universe’s estimated age at 13.8 billion years, with a +/- confidence of 20 million years.  The data has also now made it possible to tell from observations of the direction in which individual galaxies are moving outward, the general location in the present Universe of where the Big Bang took place by tracing their trajectories back to a common generalized “point”.

The above brief description of how scientists have determined the age of the Universe is by intent, general in content, and describes only what led them to that end. The path to our present knowledge of the components of the Universe is filled with far more technical detail than covered here.  It is my hope that what I have provided will bring understanding that the effort has been a search of Nature itself, one that has successfully revealed how things have progressed based on observations of “the things that have been made” and understanding and use of Nature’s own “laws” of physics from Creation.

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The processes by which the vast and varied components of our Universe have been formed through the action of imbedded natural forces from the initial creation of matter and energy to the state in which we observe them today have been slowly revealed by intense scientific observation and study using ever improving technology over the past three centuries. For those interested (and able to wade through highly technical material), it is well documented in numerous scientific research papers, textbooks, and articles.

Since the principal focus of this paper is on our own tiny piece of the Universe, Earth, we will concentrate now on it in our further look now into how Science has been able to “decipher” the story of the development of the principal natural features and components of our world.

How scientists have documented the Earth’s formation and

development, and calculated its estimated age.

The following discussion will be only as technical as may be appropriate to provide understanding of the natural basis for a particular issue or scientific observation, procedure, or determination. 

I also need to make it clear up front that the discussion of how life arose and developed over time on earth as determined by main-stream science, which raises serious controversy between religion and science, and between conflicting views within science itself, an emerging branch of which supports “intelligent-design”, will be limited to brief statements of factual findings from observations of appropriate relevant evidence in nature. Readers’ knowledge of the Biblical version of God’s creation of plant, animal, and human life in the opening Chapters of Genesis is assumed. 

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Based on the known physical principles (or “laws”) of nature, and observations of the components and dynamics of the current Universe, scientist have been able to determine that the Sun and the Earth and the other seven planets that make up our solar system were formed  at the same time about 4.6 billion years ago when internal gravity caused a giant cloud of gas, called a nebula, to collapse into itself because of its mass and crushed all the gassy material in it into a rotating plane called the protoplanetary disc. (Remember, space is essentially a vacuum, and matter encounters no resistance to movement other than the force of gravity and inertia.)

Over a period of an estimated hundred thousand years after the collapse, the Sun was formed by the compression of nebular gasses, nearly 98% of which was hydrogen and helium, at the center of this disc, with the rest swirling around it. (Our Sun constitutes 98% of the mass of our Solar System today.) [8]  The gases and other materials outside of the mass that would become the Sun in this protoplanetary disc started clumping together at various spots. Constant collisions between these bodies formed miniature planets. These seeds of planets eventually grew by pulling more material in due to growing gravitational forces, a process called accretion, to become true planets within 100,000 years after the Sun’s formation. The gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, would have formed much faster than the four terrestrial planets closest to the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

Clearly, in its very beginning, Earth was “without form and void”, as appropriately described by Genesis 1:2.

[8[  The Sun is the star at the center of our Solar System. It is a nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy mainly as visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared radiation. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 864,000 miles, or 109 times that of Earth. Its estimated life expectancy before it enters the death throes normal for a star and expands to become a “red giant” rendering Earth uninhabitable before it cools to a “white dwarf, is about another five billion years. 

The History of Earth’s development is recorded in Nature, itself


The history of the Earth’s subsequent transitions over time has involved short- and long-term large-scale disruptions of geography and climate to bring it to its contemporary configuration of continents and oceans, mountains and valleys, fertile plains, and arid deserts, all stocked with continuous successions of an almost incomprehensible variety of species of plant and animal life in sizes from the microscopic and simple to the “gigantic” and complex.  Searching out, understanding, and recording the details of this history have presented paleontologists, geologists, chemists, physicists, botanists, and zoologists with a monumental challenge.
Fortunately, the intricate detail of the historic natural events that have shaped our planet, the what and the when, and clues about the how have been recorded over time by nature itself, and faithfully preserved in Earth’s rocks and geological features for us to discover and read. 
Rocks hold tangible records of their initial formation and subsequent transitions that they have undergone. These records have been formed over hundreds of millions of years, storing evidence within them of the geologic activities and changes in contemporary plant and animal life that occurred in the passage of time.  The field of geology that studies and dates the successive layers in rock formations as they were formed over long periods of geologic time is called Stratigraphy. This information enables scientists to document the general timing and duration of significant geological processes and changes in the kinds of plant and animal species that have occurred as the earth developed, and to construct a geological time scale for the natural events that have occurred over Earth’s history as a planet.

This detailed history of how life started as a single celled organism that gave rise over uncountable thousands of generations through a succession of increasingly more complex types and species to the myriad variety of plant and animal species of today is knowable only because some rock formations-principally sedimentary [9]  types-in the Earth’s crust contain fossils. Fossils are the petrified (mineralized), often very detailed remains or impressions of an individual specimen of plant and animal species that existed in identifiable specific past geological time periods and was buried in the material, such as lake or stream deposits, that eventually formed the rock over subsequent eons. Determination of the age of the rock since its formation tell us when the particular species of the imbedded fossilized plant or animal existed in the geologic past.

[9] Sedimentary rocks, which are formed from the deposited sediments of other rocks and mineral materials, form via different methods. Over a long period of geologic time as sediments become trapped, they grow compact from the weight of the overburden of layered material. Grains are forced together, squeezing out excess water, and ultimately, they cement together to form a solid rock layer. Since no destructive heat or disruptive forces are involved, organic specimens imbedded in the sediment can mineralize intact to form a fossil.

Fossil evidence ranges from the first evidence of life-microscopic single celled organisms, to partial parts of the stages in the development of more advanced species, to complete skeletons of mature specimens of increasingly more complex plants and animals that have lived on Earth since it cooled off from its fiery formation, and became able to support life, a span of more than a billion years.

Until 1926 controversy marked the issue of how to accurately date the ages of Earth’s geological history. In that year, The National Academy of Sciences assessed the available options, and adopted as the official standard an emerging scientifically sound, well-tested technology known as the radiometric time scale, which, with advances in collateral technologies, provided the basis for an acceptable method to determine the age of basic geological and carbon-related features of the earth as it formed.

Radiometric dating is a technique that takes advantage of the predictably consistent effects of nature’s “Weak Force” described earlier, which controls the predictable rate at which each radioactive element decays. While the dating methodology can be complex in some applications, the basic principle is straightforward. A simple explanation of the process is:

The planet Earth, being one of the four “inner” (i.e., closer to the sun) terrestrial planets of the solar system, while having a core of molten iron, its outer layers were basically formed out of minerals in the form of rock. (Soil came much later in the Earth’s development as the rock weathered and eroded.) Different kinds of rocks are made out of different kinds of elements, some of which may be radioactive, such as uranium, which over time “decay” atom by atom by spontaneously giving up energy and particles from their nucleus, thereby changing into an “isotope” — a related element with different properties from the original one.  For example, Uranium-238, one of the more common radioactive elements occurring in nature, decays into thorium-234. 

Radioactive elements and their isotopes are used for establishing the ages of rock formations that include these elements, and thereby the age of the fossils of plants and animals that were trapped in the parent material of the rock which subsequently formed.

This is possible because each radioactive element decays into its isotope at a predictable unique constant rate over time. This rate of decay is usually expressed in terms of the element’s “half-life”, that is, the time it takes for 50% of any amount of that element to decay into its isotope form. Scientists, using standard mathematical formulas, have calculated the rates of decay for all radioactive elements, making it possible to calculate the age of rock formations by simply determining through analysis the relative amounts of parent element and “daughter” isotope(s) present in a sample of the rock.

For example, if a rock sample is analyzed and is found to contain “x” grams of uranium-238 and “y” grams of its daughter isotope, thorium-234, we can calculate the fraction of the originally deposited uranium-238 that has radioactively decayed into thorium since its formation. By measuring the amount of each of these that is present in a sample and knowing the half-life of the parent uranium-238 (4.47 billion years), the age of the rock sample can be calculated by a standard mathematical formula. (This explanation has been simplified for easier understanding of the scientific principles involved.)

Multiple analyses like this, using a variety of radioactive elements and their isotopes from multiple diverse rock formations that were created as the Earth was first formed have indicated that the age of our planet is estimated to be 4.54 billion years, with a confidence of +/- 1%. Similar analyses of later forming rocks around the world have identified the timing in the fossil record of the presence of the succession of increasingly complex plant and animal life forms that have existed on earth since the evidence of the first simple single-cell life that appeared approximately 4 billion years ago.

AFTER THOUGHTS 

First, I must reemphasize an earlier statement that it is not my intention to-and I do not-argue with the scripture through either the thoughts that I present here or the material from a variety of sources that I have chosen in support of the points that I make. My intent is just the opposite, that is, to show that scripture and science are logically and factually complementary.

As I have presented in this paper, the evidence that God has made available in His Creation of nature itself,” the things that have been made” through His “invisible attributes, in the words of the Apostle Paul, is clear. I would submit that to deny this evidence-or the understanding of it that our God-given reason has then led us to-is, in effect, akin to denying God., Himself. The extensive “imbedded” evidence of a creation that has brought both geological formations and plant and animal life into its present forms over vast eons of time reveals the “HOW” of His creation and is as much a part of creation as the created things themselves. To place greater belief in favor of a contradictory literal interpretation of His 3000-year-old scripture passage written for a technically primitive culture, suggests a grossly misplaced faith in the human literal interpretation of words written by God for an ancient culture with sparse understanding of nature, for a very logically limited, specific purpose.

The fact cannot be ignored that what have been revealed through science is based solely on the readily observed effects of natural laws that have governed all of the content and ongoing actions of creation itself since the initial “big bang”. 

The conclusion by historical respected theologians that God wrote two books, one is in words, inspired scripture, and one in tangible, functional form, His Creation itself, also surely cannot be dismissed.  The first Book tells us Who, What and Why of Creation; the second, How He did it. We get some When, as well as the understanding of His unlimited Power in both.

Just as the New Testament does not nullify, but clarifies and expands upon, the truths of the Old, so the Book of Nature expands upon and clarifies the Books of scripture. All three sources of knowledge of God were given by Him at different times for different audiences.   Obviously, while the theme was readily apparent, the then-indecipherable technical details in Book of Nature weren’t even recognizable, let alone understandable 3000 years ago, so the needed important message in the opening Chapter of Genesis about how things came to be, was presented in simpler allegorical word pictures.

As Thomas Aquinas wisely advised, when human interpretation of scripture contradicts what Science has proven to be a fact by careful analysis of nature, e.g., it is the earth, not the sun that moves, it is the objective explanation by science, not the subjective human interpretation that should prevail.

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ADDENDUM

The once popular scientifically accepted explanation that life arose “spontaneously” from the biotic chemicals presumed to have been available naturally in the “primordial ooze” of early earth has been thoroughly discredited due to the now provable extreme improbability of the required chemical interactions.

 A second theory that life came to earth from another planet outside our solar system simply transfers the intractable question of how life arose in the first place to another location, so is given little attention.

The answer, of course, for all those whose belief is locked on Biblical Scripture all being literally factual as written continues to be found in the Creation account as it is presented in the early Chapters of the Book of Genesis.

An emerging alternative now being given attention is one based on the processes of the scientific discoveries that have led to the  recognition that a Supernatural Force is necessary to adequately explain many complex facets of life itself.  Largely rejected by most scientists initially, this hypothesis has over the past 50 years captured the attention and support of an increasing number of respected biological, chemical, and mathematical scientists as providing the best explanation. 


 Called “Intelligent Design”, aka “ID”, this technically sophisticated scientific effort has focused on unravelling the myriad complexities of emerging biological systems as earth’s life forms can be observed in the geologic record as fossils and transform from the initial individual organisms consisting of a single living cell through the eons of earth’s development to the abundant plethora of animal and plant types and species with the diverse complexity of body forms that we can readily see around us today.

This research has found that life required for its initial existence, as well as for the subsequent development of new species, embedded complex information that could come only from an external “intelligent source”, a hypothesis subsequently confirmed in the 1950s by the discovery of DNA-the complex computer-like code found in all cells that is essential to guide their individual and collective development, function, and replication in the reproduction process.

Throughout the decades of its existence, ID scientists have carefully refrained from giving an identity, other than a non-specific “an intelligent designer” to the probable supernatural source of the intelligence behind the hypothesized designer and sustainer of life on earth, in deference to the main-stream science’s foundational biased systematic rejection of the existence of a Deity as the source of matter. A long-anticipated break from this practice finally has occurred with the recent publication of a book entitled “The return of the God hypothesis” by Dr. Stephen Meyer, author of several excellent prior books on the scientific steps that have led to the conclusion that contrary to Darwinian evolution, an Intelligent entity is required to explain both the very existence of life and the design of the myriad forms (species) in which it has existed on earth over the past several billion years.

In his newest book, Dr. Meyer addresses the issue of scientific proof of the existence of a supernatural “cause” of creation, proof which cannot be done by the accepted standard processes of deductive or inductive reasoning, by turning to one lesser commonly used-abductive reasoning-but one accepted and used in such fields as archaeology, law, computer science, artificial intelligence, and diagnostic ‘expert’ systems where hard facts (required for deduction and induction) may not be available to lead to a definitively provable conclusion. The abductive reasoning process instead leads to what logically is the “best available” or “most likely” explanation of all the available alternatives. Given the logical conclusion that an intelligent Creator/Designer exists, Meyer moves systematically to the final hypothesis that the Judeo-Christian God is the only defined Entity that “fills the bill”.

Meyer’s book is an extensive ‘summary’ of how and why an Intelligent designer is the best explanation for Creation and life on earth, reaching his conclusions by carefully dissecting and scientifically refuting proposed alternative theories. Since his target audience is principally, but not exclusively, other scientists, some of the material he covers can defy full understanding by those who lack a sufficient background in this area of the subject science. (I quickly turned more than a few pages to escape getting a brain cramp.)  But if you have an interest in learning why an increasing number of prominent scientists are acknowledging God’s existence and His design of nature, I highly recommend this book.

A book less filled with technical science but filled with compelling rational reasons and facts that sum up the many shortcomings of the still popular Darwinian theory that all life has evolved from a single cell to the myriad complexity that exists today simply through successive purely accidental mutations over of the eons of time. Titled Taking Leave of Darwin: A Longtime Agnostic Discovers the Case for Design, by Neil Thomas, discredits Darwin’s claims in an easily read text, and I recommend it also.

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Also of considerable interest, Michael Denton of the Discovery Institute (home of the Intelligent Design science project) has written a series of small books on the Privileged Species in which he discusses the science of nature that make it apparent that earth is uniquely designed (which requires an intelligent creator) for human life. He summarizes his findings in a 46-minute video “The fitness of nature for mankind” which is available at:
  https://www.discovery.org/v/56184

Denton’s work presents unarguable facts to counter the World View that God and creation are religious myths. In my opinion this video is a “Must Watch” for all students before they are subjected to the public Educational System’s main-stream science myth that we and the universe are all just a big “accident”, with no purpose for existing.   


     Dick Chase    December 2021

     rachase@aol.com

*** CONSTRUCTIVE QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION WELCOMED ***

Part III–Global Warming: Today’s “Burning” Issue!

NOTE: The information in these three Posts is at least as valid as it was two+ years ago when I wrote it. The  “Green New Deal” currently proposed by the Progressive Liberal Left  has no scientific basis for providing any significant reduction in Global climate temperature, but has a documented basis for causing a substantial negative impact on the Global economy, with resultant downturn of production, jobs, and standards of living world-wide.  RAC 11/2020

(Parts I and II of this discussion can be opened in the Climate Change Posts Menu above.)

Part I reviewed the background of the Climate Change/Global Warming controversy, with some facts about just why it is, in fact, a very valid controversy, and one requiring open discussion despite claims to the contrary by those who endorse it as an “obvious” imminent danger to life on earth  requiring immediate drastic, costly measures to try to mitigate its effects. 

What likely is not well understood by many people who are sincerely concerned about the issue is that these proposed measures would bring on both cultural and economic disruption globally, but there is no valid proven estimate of the effect they might have in reducing any future climate temperature increase, if for no other reason than what is stated in the very next paragraph. 

The assertions by proponents that the increasing concentration of the greenhouse gas, CO2 is the sole cause of “unprecedented” rising global temperatures, have been proven to be false. Despite this, and the objection of numerous skeptical respected climate scientists worldwide about the lack of a valid full scientific understanding of the issues, human-caused CO2 warming proponents have declared that the “science is settled”, and no further discussion of the subject is needed or to be condoned. But as Einstein, himself, said, science is never “settled”, and is always subject to additional scrutiny. 

Part II took a look at the geologic history of the earth’s temperatures and atmospheric CO2 as documented by paleo scientists, a history which reveals that continuous successive natural major variations in the earth’s global climate have been the norm during the past 4.6 billion years.

This record clearly indicates that natural cyclic variations in the earth’s climate have repeatedly resulted in periods of tens of thousands of years during which temperatures were respectively substantially warmer and colder than our current climate regime, which is one that geoscientists classify as a naturally warm “interglacial period”, one which ended the last “glacial period” 11,000 years ago, having melted extensive polar and sub-polar ice sheets.  

While scientists who study this geological climate record have several theories about the precise causes of these natural temperature variations, the cyclic nature of documented effects and the absence of any common global cause points principally to globally external influences, evidence that contradicts the “alarmist” claimed “fact” that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is the sole cause of climate variations.

Part III — A Contemporary Look at the Issues

In Part III we now turn to how this controversy is playing out in today’s world. To do this, we will review a sampling of the more significant examples of just how the alleged “scientific fact” that human-caused CO2 is responsible for unprecedented “rampant” climate heating has been presented to the public by involved scientists and political bodies with the all too willing help of the faithful mainstream media.

The intent here is that, when finished, you, the reader, will have a more balanced understanding of the facts about climate change than you had with just the politically motivated information which the media and many politicians have been providing.

The UN — The Drum Major Leading the Climate Change Parade

The principal institutional body that has been a most enthusiastic promoter of human-caused CO2 as the sole reason for global warming since it first became recognized as a “crisis” eligible for concerted international attention is the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Created in 1988, the stated objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels worldwide with periodic reports containing scientific information assessing the status of current and predicted future climate change that can be used to develop and support international, national, and regional energy policies to counter the warming climate.

The contents of the IPCC reports are accepted by most world governments as indisputable fact, and are the key input into UN-sponsored international negotiations to establish agreed upon UN-monitored goals for reductions in CO2 emissions by the individual nations—as well as binding economic commitments to reimburse developing countries for the impacts of such reductions on them.

This immediately begs the question “Just how “factual” is the IPCC information?

IPCC Reports: Built on a Foundation of Bias

The IPCC does no research on its own for these periodic reports, but instead recruits volunteer international scientists from a wide variety of disciplines to review existing published climate change research and develop forecasts of future global climate temperature increase, (forecasts of decreases clearly are not permitted) and the various physical, environmental, and economic impacts of that warming on world populations.

Since many scientific journals are, unfortunately, apparently more interested in being on the correct side of politics than in promoting open scientific discussion, they tend to adhere to unofficial policies of publishing the results of research that advances the human activity-generated CO2 global warming “crisis”, while accepting few studies for publication with contrary skeptical content.

And since much of this published research has been done by the same scientists who now confirm its validity and use its conclusions for the IPCC reports, those reports have consistently been openly biased in an unsurprising direction, with few questions raised. This has made the reports controversial and open to technical criticism from “skeptical” scientists not part of the hand-picked alarmist IPCC stable.

If Folks won’t Pay Attention, Scare Them!

A case in point is the latest IPCC report issued in October 2018. This report contained a claim (contrary to clear existing evidence) that “there is no documented historical precedent” for the global warming that is now occurring.

And, in an even more alarming vein, it made the claim that the world nations had just 12 years (to 2030) to make massive changes to their respective energy strategies and infrastructure (i.e., basically substantially replace fossil fuels with solar and wind power) to save the world by reducing the UN-predicted average annual global temperature for 2030 by 0.5 degree Celsius. Supporting valid science-based proof of either the need for, or actual effectiveness of, this action was lacking, as was any assessment of its massive cost or even its technical feasibility.

More to the point, this sudden alarming deadline was not based on any new scientific research results proving a significant increase in the previously forecast questionably high rate of climate heating from CO2 emissions. Rather, it came solely as a result of an apparent subjective IPCC assessment of popular perceptions about how current climate warming will be getting much worse and triggering increased disasters.

For the report went on to warn (again without any supporting new science) that unless world-wide action was immediately begun to reduce carbon emissions, increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will result in faster rising sea levels, more devastating droughts, more damaging storms, more major forest fires, and higher temperatures, all of which will bring on famine, disease, economic tolls, and refugee crises as people flee climate-induced disasters.

Mind you, according to the IPCC ALL these worldwide disasters can be avoided by simply reducing average global temperatures by only one-half of a degree Celsius. 

It warrants repeating that neither this new warning of alleged rapidly approaching world-wide environmental calamity from hot, violent weather, nor the alleged effectiveness of its mandated “solution’ resulted from any dramatic new scientific breakthrough validating CO2’s supposed “sole” role in precipitating a climate crisis. Rather it came from a purely subjective view that the already documented natural weather-related events of the kind listed would be made “worse” because of increasing atmospheric CO2’s supposed sole role in dramatically raising climate temperatures.

While this deliberately calculated alarming forecast of future weather calamities fits the political need to motivate the public to support the desired politically inspired agenda, valid scientific evidence to support it is weak at best, mostly lacking, and even contradicts what is actually occurring.

Chicken Little and the Falling Sky

Despite a 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 in the past half century, the current periodic frequency and magnitude of droughts and floods over time have shown little change, as have those of major storms. Tornado activity in the U.S. has actually declined in recent years, and presently is in a multi-year “lull”, with 2018 the first year since modern tornado records have been kept with no category F-4 or 5 storms experienced. The cyclic nature of U.S hurricane frequency and severity, already known to be linked to the el Niño/la Niña Pacific Ocean oscillations, has shown no unexplained change even with the doubling of CO2 over the past 50 years.

The tie alleged between every noteworthy forest fire (or, for that matter, any remotely relatable major event) and global warming is predictably generated pro forma by the media and the “wishful thinking” of other alarmist crisis promoters—regardless of obvious evidence of other known contributing factors.

And sea levels have been rising at a variable but steadily small rate (averaging around one-third inch per year) since formal measurements began in the late 1800s, with only a very slight increase noted over the past several decades, probably in response to the slight recent global warming.

But note that the ocean level has risen because of natural (non-human) causes about 400 feet since the beginning of the current Interglacial Period 11,000 years ago, an average rate of just under a half an inch a year. So the alarming claim of “rapidly rising oceans” because of a supposed increase in glacial and ice sheet melting as a result of the human-caused increase of CO2 in the atmosphere would not seem to have a credible basis.

The REAL issue behind these alarms is, since scientists are unable to understand and explain the very evident NATURAL causes that have significantly affected global climate throughout geologic history, but they DO understand that CO2 can have some effect, they apparently go with what they know and therefore blame ALL climate change on human-caused CO2. The natural causes of global climate warming which have been proven to have been active for hundreds of millions of years, apparently no longer exist.

Which brings us to our next subject.

Building a Forecast Model? Understanding the Process Being Modelled Might Help its Ability to Reflect Reality

The reliability of any forecast model is dependent on the concurrent reliability of the underlying information on which it is based. And that reliability, in turn, requires a full understanding by the model designer of the natural process that the model is intended to replicate. And therein lies a major issue with respect to the predicted “alarming” rise in global temperatures.

When the potential for a future global warming crisis caused by a documented steady increase in atmospheric CO2 became apparent back in the early 1970s, there was a rush by scientists to develop computer models that would be able to forecast the rate and magnitude of that rise in the average global climate temperature. The fact that the complex science of the earth’s “Energy Budget”, which is what largely determines the Earth’s climate in any region, was not well understood was apparently not a deterrent to these model development efforts.

The Earth’s Heat Energy Budget Sets the Climate

The Earth’s heat energy budget accounts for the balance between the heat energy Earth receives from the Sun, and the heat energy Earth loses (radiates back into outer space) after having been distributed throughout the five components of Earth’s climate system and powered the so-called Earth’s heat engine. This system is made up of earth’s water, ice, atmospheric constituents, rocky crust, and diverse biological elements. The qualitative and quantitative heat flux relationships among components are complex are not all that well understood.

Accurately modeling even the generalized heat flow complexities of the energy budget is further confounded by potential variable heat flow “feedbacks” such as by clouds, variable in their nature, amount, and distribution over time, which can block incoming solar radiation and/or atmospheric heat loss into space. The science of how to validly account for these feedbacks that dynamically affect climate temperatures is not well understood. To either ignore or misrepresent them obviously introduces significant errors in the model output.

These models, based on what is now being referred to by politicians, the media, and alarmist scientists as “settled science”, have produced an array of forecasts of climate temperature increases from the starting 1970s temperature out to the year 2050., The resulting array of forecast temperatures by the individual models, while in some disagreement in the amount of the forecast temperature rise, were all consistent in forecasting a “dangerous” climate temperature increase through the 70 year period, predictions that were quickly used to support the global warming “crisis” by politicians and the media.

So, How Reliable Are Modelled Forecasts?

Which raises the essential question: how well are climate scientists able to accurately simulate the complex processes that are required to accurately model and forecast the Earth’s climate temperature for many decades into the future? Can we be confident about what they tell us? Figure 1 provides a significant answer.

This graphic, which allows the initial 35 years of the average annual global climate temperature data as forecast by 102 computer models to be compared with similar data as recorded from observations by ground-launched balloons and by satellite remote sensing, respectively for the period 1979 – 2014.   The heavy red line displays the average annual temperature variations from the 1979  temperature as forecast by 102 climate models, the green boxes and blue circles are the observed average annual data as computed from global observations by balloon (blue) and satellite (green). 

(NOTE: The data from the 102 computer models’ runs are combined into 32 groupings of similar output, and the individual group averages plotted for display clarity (thin lines).)

Climate models

Figure 1: Graph of Modelled Forecast vs Observed variations in average global atmospheric temperatures for the periods shown. Model forecast average (bold red line) represents outputs from 102 individual computer models run in 32 groups of similar output and individual group data points averaged.(thin lines) Individual model group IDs are listed in the box.    (Source: Univ. of Ala.)

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The critical point to note is that the model forecasts for 35 years from their starting point (which was the actual global average climate temperature), and only half way to the forecast 2050 target, were already averaging a 300% error when compared to the temperatures actually observed by both ground weather balloon and satellite monitoring. And the trend for the modeled forecasts indicates a steadily increasing divergence from the observed slower rising actual observed temperatures, suggesting a larger yet forecast error for future years.

It must be emphasized that, while more recent climate forecast models than these early ones are becoming available, published research on the earth’s Energy Budget and climate modeling shows no “breakthrough” in better understanding the complexities of how to validly include all the factors that affect climate temperature over time.

One example is the dynamic causes and effects of natural change, which, while known to exist, continue to be ignored because they are not understood. Computer climate models’ forecasts, therefore, logically must be interpreted accordingly when considering alternatives to “solve” global warming.

Should We be Using Forecasts of Questionable Accuracy to Make Major Unreversible and Costly Program Decisions?

Despite the readily available published information shown by this graph that climate models seriously over-predict the temperature of the future global climate, forecasts such as these based on “imperfect ‘settled’ science” continue to be the basis for the predictions of a climate calamity (and draconian mandatory “solutions”!), including the recent UN IPCC prediction of irreversible climate disaster by 2030 if climate warming is not stopped.

Given the models’ average 300% over-estimate of future temperature vs the observed values for 2015, the half degree C temperature reduction “required” by 2030 based on the UN’s temperature prediction would seem to already be a reality.

But more important, with this demonstrated inability to forecast future climate temperatures with any accuracy, is it reasonable to demand that the world’s developed nations embark upon a massive new energy strategy, based solely on a clearly unscientific, knowingly flawed estimate of expected temperature, when that strategy has a high probability of devastating economies and cultures, ?

NOAA/GISS “Fixed” US Temperature History

The whole case for  blaming human-caused Global Warming for our current climate  rests on the valid premise that (1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, that is, it “traps” some of the earth’s heat by inhibiting its free radiation out into space, causing the atmosphere to warm; (2) Burning fossil fuels emit significant amounts of CO2; (3) As human use of fossil fuels increased over time, more CO2 was emitted into the atmosphere; and  (4) As more heat was trapped, the earth’s climate got increasingly get warmer.                

Therefore, the expectation was that as fossil fuel use had increased significantly during the twentieth century in the U.S. and elsewhere, the records of observed temperatures from the network of official weather monitoring stations (maintained by NOAA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in the Historic Climate Network (HCN) database) in the country would show a clear trend of increasing average annual temperatures through the period from 1900 into the 21st century.  

But a check of that original, observed data (the BLUE line in Figure 2)  showed something quite different and presented two problems for climate alarmists (which, as we shall see, actively includes NOAA) in that (1) annual data showed years in the earlier 1900s that were much warmer than more recent years when the century of steadily increasing CO2 was supposed to be causing  higher temperatures  according to the  global warming narrative, and (2) the warming that does show for the graphed period does not conform to the expected upward temperature trend in response to the known increasing CO2 content of the atmosphere.
Revised HCN temps

Figure 2. The graph is a plot of the official average annual temperatures (5-year means) from the US Historic Climate Network database 1895-2017. The BLUE line (“Raw” data) displays average temperatures as originally observed; The RED line displays the final official (adjusted) values. (See text for explanation.)
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But not to worry, alarmists! NOAA was able to get the train back on the track with adjustments to account for a change in the original max-min thermometers in the late 1980s that were determined to have been reading 0.3 of a degree C too warm since 1895, to more accurate electronic ones. That, plus filling in computer-generated estimated temperatures for missing station observations–about 10% of the data in the 1970s, but as much as 40% in recent years.

The result of these ‘adjustments’ which progressively lowered (cooled) pre-2000 temperatures, and warmed those after that, as shown by the RED graphed line in the above figure 2.

The 1895 to ~1910 observed annual temperatures have been lowered by a degree (F.) or more, and years from there to 2000 progressively lowered from 1 degree F. up to “no change”. Years from 2000 to the present are–for no apparent scientific reason–progressively “warmed” ending with a 1 degree F. increase for 2018. 

 While a degree or so may not seem like a”big deal”. in Climate Change perspectives these are very significant adjustments which dramatically alter the observed historical record.

And the positive political benefits of these ‘behind the scenes’ adjustments become very apparent when you read headlines in the papers like the one that just appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Feb 7, 2019) “Scientists Call Last Five Years Warmest Since 1880.”  Without the adjustments, alarmists lose their ability to use today’s less alarming observed warming as the reason we have “only 12 years” to reduce CO2 by imposing restrictive energy regulations.

It also needs to be noted that, with the temperature adjustments, the trend of NOAA’s adjusted temperatures (Red line) now closely approximates that of the CO2 increase in the atmosphere over that period. Remarkable coincidence. 

To Err is Human; To Err on the Side of Global Warming is  Science

In October 2018, a team of scientists from the University of California Scripps Oceanographic Institute and Princeton University published the results of a comprehensive study that utilized a new technique they had developed to more accurately determine the rate that the world’s oceans were being heated by the climate warming from increased CO2 emissions from human activity.

Ocean warming is a critical component of the earth’s Energy Budget discussed earlier, for the heat that they absorb (and store as latent heat) is a major factor in understanding the on-going global heat flux and in predicting future climate temperatures.

The published report was a literal “Bombshell”, for it revealed that ocean warming was actually SIXTY times greater than previously thought. As a result of the new data, forecasts of future climate warming based on previous science significantly understated future warming and its alarming consequences.

The media, as usual, were quick to make “front page” news out of the results of a study that significantly advanced the global warming cause, especially when conducted by scientists from two prestigious Institutions.

About a week or so later, an independent individual scientist, with no connection to the study but having an interest in Climate Change, started reading the details of the study in the scientific journal Nature, in which it was published, and “something didn’t look quite right”. So he started through the numerous calculations by which the authors had derived their “explosive” results and saw a very clear mathematical ERROR in one part, an error that when corrected completely invalidated the study conclusion about the amount of ocean heating.

He called this to the attention of the lead author, who promptly concurred and issued a public acknowledgment.

.The point in including this anecdote is twofold. First, the media, while very quick to report the original alarming news that advanced the Global Warming “threat”, has been silent about the fact that it was not true, after all. This, unfortunately, is typical of the wide-spread media policy to not report any information that does not support the human-caused global warming narrative. 

Second—and more disturbing—is that this study involved a number of credible scientists from two prestigious institutions of higher learning who all “signed off” as to its scientific validity. Also, in order for it to be published in an equally prestigious scientific journal such as Nature, an independent review concurring with its scientific validity is [supposedly] required to be done by at least two journal-selected scientifically qualified peers.

That NONE of these scientists apparently bothered to actually review and check all the study details (including the math calculations) before publication, and thereby allowed this mathematical error to go uncorrected in a research study that reached a well-publicized very major conclusion affecting Climate Change, immediately raises the question about how much other published global warming “junk science” has been similarly allowed to become fact without detailed verification simply because reviewers agreed that it reached the “right” conclusion?

Frightening.

Five Big Questions that Need to be Asked & Answered

Dr. Roy Spencer, an eminent climate scientist formerly with NASA, where he developed and ran the program for satellite monitoring temperatures of the global atmosphere, and is now continuing his climate research at the University of Alabama, has proposed  five questions that MUST be considered and ALL answered in the unequivocal affirmative in order for Global Warming to be a problem serious enough to be addressed by making changes in energy policy that will result in disruptions in existing global energy sources, economies, and cultures. If any answer is not a definitive “Yes”, that is the weak link and the “justification chain” for an energy policy change is broken.

The requirement for all to be answered “yes” with certainty is predicated on the reality that, given the facts that, rationally, any policy changes must be effective against the actual cause(s) of climate change, so before taking any action we must be certain that we know what the cause(s) and the extent of what their future effect(s) on climate and the environment is/are.

We also need to be certain that we understand the direct and indirect effects (economic, environmental, and cultural) that the proposed energy policy will have on humanity.

The content of Dr. Spencer’s questions, slightly reworded here for emphasis is:

  1. Do we know that atmospheric warming and associated Climate Change is predominantly human-caused?
  2. Is the human-caused portion of warming and associated Climate Change large enough to be significantly damaging? (Positive Benefit/Cost)
  3. Have the climate models that we use to develop proposed energy policy demonstrated they accurately predict changes in global climates?
  4. Do we know that the proposed changes in energy policy would substantially reduce future Climate Change and its resulting damages?
  5. Would the effect of the policy changes do more good than harm to humanity?

Given what we both do and don’t know about the historic and current scientific facts of the complex issues that affect Global Warming/Climate Change as covered in the three Parts of this discussion of the issues, in my humble opinion FIVE honest “YES” answers are not possible. 

Therefore, embarking on a mitigation program of both great cost and cultural disruption, and, moreover, at the same time one of questionable technical feasibility and effectiveness, is very unwise.

But, it’s up to YOU to decide where YOU stand.   

Thanks for your interest!

                 

GLOBAL WARMING (aka Climate Change)

An objective review of facts and fictions

Part II: Some Historic Climate Facts 

In Part I (Can be found posted following this) we looked at the more prevalent misconceptions that power the climate change alarm regularly sounded in most media articles about earth’s alleged rapidly warming atmosphere from increasing human-caused CO2. These same allegations are parroted by the UN, many individual world governments and assorted politicians as they make the case for immediate draconian government tax and control actions they claim imperative to save the human race from cooking itself in an overheated climate.

The Climate in Earth’s Geologic History

 A principal claim by those promoting rampant Climate Change (aka Global Warming) states modern day human activities that involve the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) are adding huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. Since CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” (a name derived from its ability to trap some of the earth’s heat that otherwise would be radiated back out into space), has been labeled by some scientists as the cause of the earth’s alleged rapidly heating climate.

These scientists also make the claim that today’s alleged “soaring” climate temperatures are unprecedented in the earth’s history and therefore can only be accounted for by human impact and fossil fuel use. 

Given this alarming context, it becomes important to explore some facts about the history of the earth’s climate that scientists have documented.

The immediate questions that arise are, first, is the current climate change really “unprecedented”;  And, second, is warming caused solely by human activity in burning fossil fuels?

Or have there been previous similar climate changes in the CO2 content and/or temperature of the atmosphere over the course of the earth’s history that pre-dates humans?

Fortunately, paleo geologists, botanists, and climatologists have been able to determine and document the earth’s historic climate so that we can have objective insight into what both the earth’s temperatures and CO2 were like during the period of several hundred million years that predate modern times.          

And, we know that past natural history is often a window that shows us what can be expected in the future.  So by looking at the earth’s climate before there was any human presence, we can see what happened under purely natural influences. And, from a study of the scientific facts about what affected the earth’s “natural” past climate, we can begin to identify the factors that caused it to change, and thus better understand how those same factors may be influencing our climate today.

Some Basic Geological Facts

According to paleo scientists, there have been five ice ages identified in the Earth’s geologic history. An ice age is defined as an extended time of recurring glacial episodes during a specific named geological period. (For example, the present Ice Age is in the Quaternary Period)

Within each of these historic ice ages, there have been successive periods of substantial glaciation and intervening temperate conditions, each lasting many tens of thousands of years and known respectively as glacial and interglacial periods.

Glacial periods are characterized by a frigid global climate resulting in the formation of polar and continental ice sheets–some as much as a mile thick!–over extensive portions of the earth’s surface, particularly in polar and sub-polar regions. During interglacial periods the climate warms causing the glacial ice to retreat. 

Between the Ice Ages themselves, the global climate historically has warmed significantly, substantially reducing, if not eliminating, the glacial ice on the earth’s surface.

What all this means in layman’s terms is that we know from documented scientific evidence that there have been times when the earth was very cold with lots of ice, and times when the earth was very warm; warm enough to melt the ice from all, or almost all, of the earth. 

To obtain this historical data, scientists use surrogates, such as specific chemicals in ice and sediment core samples, the presence and amount of which provides a measure of the relative temperatures and atmospheric CO2 content for the historical time period of the sample. While the surrogate temperature values cannot be converted to precise equivalents of  F or C degrees, a reasonable approximation can be made for the purpose of relative temperature comparisons. 

The earth currently is in the fifth of its historic Ice Ages.  Climate scientists have designated this present one as the Quaternary IcAge, and our climate presently is consistent with the warming of an interglacial period.

Figure 1 displays the temperature of the earth’s climate over the past 1 million years.  (The present is on the left.)  The cyclic nature of the successive warming and cooling of the climate is readily apparent.

It is also relevant to note that the transition from a cold glacial period climate to a warm interglacial one typically occurs with little or no variation and over a shorter time-span than that when the warm climate changes to a cooling phase and enters a glacial period.

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Figure 1.  Graphic representation of the relative historical global climate temperature over the 1 million-year time period up to the present. (Ticks at the top and bottom margins are 100,000 years apart.) The red indicates warm climate temperatures of interglacial periods when glacial ice sheets retreated, the blue the glacial periods when the climate cooled to the point where precipitation resulted in extensive glaciation. Purple indicates a period of transition between the two.  (Note: the full extent of present warming (extreme left edge of the graph) is obscured slightly because of the graph’s time-scale.)  

Observe that while the duration and temperature extremes of the glacial/interglacial cold and warm climate periods vary, the successive cyclic conditions have reoccurred with regularity over the million years shown. This is a strong indication that the causation is the result of one or more natural repetitive factors that affect the amount of solar heating.

Many scientists point to the cyclic variations of the Earth’s orbit around the sun as a primary contributor to these cyclic variations in climate temperatures. Known as Milankovitch cycles, these fluctuations in the earth’s orbit occur with regularity every 20,000, 40,000, and 100,000 years, and appear to generally coincide with the onset and end of historic glacial periods.

Also, it is important to note that the warming of our current global interglacial climate temperature is less than the warming of the climate that has occurred in many of the past interglacial periods in our current Ice Age.

Based on this data, the earth’s current climate warming is clearly not “unprecedented” in either occurrence, the rate of warming, or the temperature,  contrary to what has been claimed by “Alarmist” scientists!

And, as we shall explore further, the obvious cyclic nature of climate warming and cooling essentially rules out CO2 as the cause.

A more detailed timescale graphic picture of the relative global climate temperatures for that portion of the figure 1 graph for just the past 150,000 years is displayed in figure 2.

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Figure 2. Graphic representation of earth’s relative climate temperatures for the past 150,000 years. Blue shows glacial periods, red interglacial periods. Purple indicates a time of transition between the two. 

The most recent glacial period (leftmost blue portion of the graph)  lasted about 60,000 years, reaching its maximum glaciation about 22,000 years ago, and it ended (and the current warm interglacial period began) approximately 11,700 years ago, with the climate temperature warming rapidly (on a geological timescale) to its modern-day range. The extreme left red portion of the graph line indicates the relative average global climate temperature which we are currently experiencing. 

Notice that our current average climate temperature is exceeded by the maximum climate warming that the earth experienced about 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial period

Turning to the issue of the role (if any) of CO2 in driving the  temperature of the earth’s climate, Figure 3 provides us with a graphic picture of the results of research by paleoscientists that documents both the carbon dioxide content and temperature of the earth’s atmosphere relative to that of the present for the past 4.6 billion years. Because of that timescale, both graphed lines appear smooth because they necessarily can depict only longer-term variations.  [To put Figures 1 and 2 in perspective with this graph,  both of those provide a higher resolution timescale detail for their respective portions of the present Quaternary Period (extreme right side of this graph)].


Figure 3. Shown are the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 (purple line) and the temperatures (green line) for the past 4.6 billion years. (The Present is on the right) Left arrows show temperature ranges.

The noteworthy point of these related graphs is that, contrary to the claims that CO2 is “the sole” or principal driver of Climate temperature, our planet’s geological history as displayed here shows that there is no continuous direct relationship between the two on a longer-term timescale, with temperatures largely indepedent of CO2.

It is also important to note that the present climate temperature (right edge of the graph) is near a geologically historical minimum range, and the earth’s climate has been naturally considerably warmer for literally billions of years in the past. Yet “Alarmists” claim with certainty that the only human activity is responsible for the current very small warming trend that started at the last glacial maximum 22,000 years ago, well before human activity began burning fossil fuels!

A Quick Summary

The point of the above has been to provide information that is readily available, yet clearly ignored by those scientists who obviously have to be aware of it, but by self-serving choice, promote the “CO2 is the only scientific explanation” reason for global warming. The very existence of the above research belies their contention that the CO2 cause is “settled science” and shines a spotlight on the deliberate disingenuous nature of  their position.  There clearly is a need for unbiased, open discussion,  with science-based issues on both sides to discuss. 

The media also must share in the deliberate coverup, for any cub reporter with an interest in exploring the Climate Change issue would quickly find that there are two sides to its probable cause.  Arbitrary editorial  policies have apparently decided otherwise.

In Part III which will be posted in the “near” future, we will look at the nature and basis of the ubiquitous “sky is falling” warnings that now regularly pervade political rhetoric and the mainstream media.

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GLOBAL WARMING (aka Climate Change)

An objective review of facts and fictions

Part I: The Issues

Background 

“Global Warming”, rechristened as “Climate Change” after 19 months of unexplainable atmospheric temperature stability, with many months of global cooling, was observed around the recent turn of the century, has become an almost daily cause célèbre for the last 40 years for politicians and the mainstream media both in the U.S. and Europe.

The period of the mid-1960s through the ’70s had been marked by a frenzy over a scientifically promoted major global cooling scare replete with warnings of imminent worldwide food shortages as agriculture succumbed to a predicted frigid climate. But by the early 1980s, these forecasts of a potential frigid future disappeared, to be replaced by new scientific predictions as some scientists now forecast as front page news a long period of alleged unprecedented, and inevitably devastating, global warming

It is perhaps ironic that these new warnings of a complete reversal in future world-wide climate temperatures were by many of the same scientists who had just been forecasting the certainty of significant global cooling that would devastate most of the world’s population.

The reason for this apparent 180-degree switch in the long-range forecast for the world’s climate temperature appears to have been triggered solely by the fact that global climate temperatures had abruptly switched from cool to warm, rather than by any sudden new scientifically generated revelation.

In their search for an explanation for this new warning of global warming, scientists turned to one that had been first proposed back in 1896 by a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius. What Arrhenius had postulated was that there was a direct relationship between the percentage of the “greenhouse” gas carbon dioxide (CO2,), in the atmosphere and the atmospheric temperature. Given this relationship, he suggested that the continuing burning of fossil fuels (coal at the time), of which carbon dioxide is a chief byproduct, would result in eventually warming the world’s climate, but made no forecast of calamity.

But to add importance to their new “discovery” a block of scientists added their own caveat to Arrhenius’ hypothesis: If the current level of the burning of fossil fuels is allowed to continue unabated, the further increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will soon cause it to warm to the irreversible point of no return where environmental damage from the heated climate will peril human existence.

Many scientists, most world governments, and the United Nations each saw the opportunities that could accrue for them by raising this possible warming of the climate to a level of a global crisis, and quickly embraced the wisdom of Winston Churchill’s observation that one should “never let a good crisis go to waste”. The lure of opportunities for governments to impose new regulations and taxes, and for lucrative research grants for scientists beckoned.

Also, in order to add a clear targetable focus to both warming predictions and any proposed mitigation, these scientists unilaterally declared carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to be the sole cause of climate warming. Protests from numerous climate scientists around the world who disagreed, asserting contrary scientific theory and evidence mandated that the science was not at all clear and the subject required more research, were summarily dismissed with the pronouncement that “the science was settled”.

The Question

A principal issue is what is the scientific proof that atmospheric CO2 is the sole (or dominant) regulator of the global climate, and that increases in its concentration are responsible for an alleged long-term irreversible and dangerous increase in climate warming that was presently being claimed?

And if increasing CO2 is the cause of global warming as alleged, then what is the scientific explanation for the apparently abrupt change about 1980 from a decade of global atmospheric cooling to a condition now of now proclaimed alarming warming; a change which occurred without any concurrent change in either the atmospheric concentration or the rate of emissions of CO2 from human or other sources? Or the 19 months of no warming and some cooling at the turn of the century?

This begs the corollary question: Is there precedent in either recorded or scientifically determined geologic history for apparent longer-term changes (warming or cooling) in the earth’s climate that appear to have occurred “naturally”, i.e., where there is no indication that a change in atmospheric CO2 was the likely responsible factor?

In summary, do we really understand the science behind what is causing the earth’s climate to warm and cool?

To embark upon a global program, one with huge cultural and economic impacts to the world population, to significantly reduce carbon emissions from human activities will be an ineffective fool’s errand if natural forces other than atmospheric CO2 are involved in our ever-changing global climate. Dismissing that very real possibility without further investigation—as is currently the case—is irrational and irresponsible.

(A possible response to the above is that to do nothing in the face of impending disaster also can be foolish. True, but prudence still requires a rational reason for whatever it is that you do. Otherwise, you merely replicate Brownian motion in (often vain) hope just doing “something” is better than nothing. The wise course is to first spend some effort into analyzing alternatives, and not to discard anything “out of hand”.)

The Problems confronting a solution

Finding answers (even if it’s just “we cannot determine”—which in itself is important to realize) to the above essential questions is common sense. Science has available both the established procedures and the ability to address them.

But for reasons too personal, political, and not entirely rational enough to dissect here, two ‘camps’ each composed mainly of scientists and politicians, but diametrically opposed in their approach to global warming issues and in their responses to the above questions, quickly emerged.

To easily identify the two, the larger group is called “Alarmists” by the other, which in turn has been labeled “Deniers” by their opponents.

The “Alarmists” are those who dogmatically maintain that:

(a) significant global warming is real and ongoing;

(b) the warming is caused solely by steadily increasing CO2 in both the atmosphere and the oceans as a  result of uncontrolled use of fossil fuels; and

(c) if strict measures to substantially reduce CO2 emissions are not immediately imposed by all developed nations, irreversible environmental consequences detrimental to human existence will soon occur worldwide.

The mainstream media quickly adopted a policy of solid support of this group and its warnings, giving prominent positive publicity to its every press release and public declaration.

On the other side is a group of world scientists and some politicians that the “Alarmists” label as “Deniers”, although this group actually does not deny that some warming of the global climate is real. This group basically maintains that:

(a) Global atmospheric warming and cooling has occurred  throughout the earth’s history, and is provably a natural phenomenon that has occurred with no dependent connection to CO2, and

(b) CO2, while a known “greenhouse gas”, is no more than a “trace” gas constituting less than 0.04% (four hundredths of one percent) of the atmosphere, and has not scientifically proven to be a dominant (let alone, the sole) cause of the present apparent climate warming temperature trend; but, on the other hand,

(c) Water vapor, a variable greenhouse gas,, which can constitute a percentage of the atmospheric gases 100 times greater than CO2, has been confirmed by recent satellite monitoring of humidity in the lower atmosphere to have a major effect on its temperature, and is a major player in our changing climate through both humidity and clouds.  Therefore:

(d) regulatory controls imposed to reduce CO2 emissions will have little effect in stopping a warming climate, while, the other hand, the ineffective mandated reductions in the use of fossil fuels will have a substantial adverse consequence for the world’s economy and standard of living. In addition, developing nations will be unnecessarily denied the opportunity to rise out of their ‘third world’ status and “catch up” with the more developed nations of the world.

The Next Step?

Undertaking the research needed to get answers to the questions posed in the “Question” section above is, unfortunately, severely constrained, if not totally prevented, by the dogmatic position taken by the “Alarmist” scientists.

Further complicating the chance of needed research being done before acting, is that the Alarmist scientists’ position has been adopted as “fact” by their political allies and the compliant media. The “official” position is now essentially:  The singular or dominating cause of  Climate Change is carbon dioxide, which has been increasing steadily in our atmosphere for well over a century as a result of increasing industrial and public use of fossil fuels. If immediate action is not taken by world governments to drastically reduce this use, the climate will warm over the next decades to the point where human existence is threatened.  Period. End of discussion.

And–worse yet–they further maintain that the science behind that position is “settled”, and no further research or discussion is needed.

In summary, the Alarmist’s singular solution to the Climate Change problem is simple: Reduce carbon emissions through regulatory and economically motivated restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, such use to be replaced by solar and wind “green energy” electricity wherever possible, without particular regard for the economics of the switch. Those who continue to use fossil fuels will be subject to penalizing energy taxes.

In support of their position on CO2 as the singular cause of the rapidly warming climate, and that no further research is required, the “Alarmist” scientists maintain that a “consensus” of 97% of the world’s scientists agree with it. This alleged “fact” is quoted at every opportunity by the media and politicians and has become anchored in the minds of much of the public as a cast-in-concrete truth.

Discussion

We will discuss the principal science-related issues in a following post, but there is a major problem with the two of the concepts state just above that are of immediate concern because they present major stumbling blocks to obtaining a factual basis for resolving the global warming issue.

First, by science’s own “rules”, no scientific finding is ever “settled”, for one never knows if the results of the next related experiment will be the results that prove previous conclusions to have been based on an error. As Albert Einstein said in regard to the issue of settled science: “No amount of experimentation can prove me right; [but] a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Valid science must always be “open” to father testing and confirmation.

Second, again by science’s own rules, a scientific theory is never developed,  proven, or affirmed by group “consensus”. Rather, a theory must be the result of an independently formulated understanding of the problem and the phenomena involved; Based on this, subsequent independent peer review and experimentation is required to confirm the validity of the initial experimentation and results.

No legitimate scientific fact can be claimed as a result of an individual or group just “agreeing” with a  conclusion (consensus) because it meets their expectations. Confirmation requires independent verification through the scientific process that a conclusion is valid.

This has never been done by the alleged 97% of scientists who are allegedly in “consensus”

Third, and of prime importance, through all this each scientist is mandated by professional scientific standards to always have an open mind, ready to, without bias, acknowledge and act on (reject or confirm through scientific methodology) new information, especially if it conflicts with previous concepts, research results or beliefs.

And, fourth, with regard to the alleged “97% of all scientist worldwide” who are alleged to agree with the “Alarmist” position, there never has been any formal or informal survey of “the world’s scientists” to record their individual positions with respect to the existence or cause(s) of global warming /climate change. The all too readily quoted “97% consensus figure is, in fact, a bogus, fictional number. It was created by a purely self-serving subjective process that lacks any statistical or sampling merit and has no legitimate basis. It is pure “Alarmist” propaganda.

The tragedy is, these bogus claims of “settled science” and near world-wide scientist agreement (“consensus”) are accepted as gospel proof of the validity of the “Alarmist” argument by the media, and most politicians. This has cut off any possibility of open, honest discussion by scientists from both “sides” to mutually review the complex scientific issues involved.

In Part II we will explore some of the facts (real and alleged) that bear on the Climate Change issue and its resolution.

NOTE: Constructive comments (pro or con) that add to the discussion, and questions are welcomed.

















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