Where's The Warming, Where's The Oil?

We constantly hear that carbon emissions are responsible for global warming.  However, this report from Hot Air citing an op-ed by James Taylor at Forbes states that carbon emissions over the last decade have exceeded predictions and it should follow that global temperatures should have risen if the global warming theories are correct.

NASA satellite instruments precisely measuring global temperatures show absolutely no warming during the past the past 10 years. This is the case for the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, including the United States. This is the case for the Arctic, where the signs of human-caused global warming are supposed to be first and most powerfully felt. This is the case forglobal sea surface temperatures, which alarmists claim should be sucking up much of the predicted human-induced warming. This is the case for the planet as a whole.

If atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions are the sole or primary driver of global temperatures, then where is all the global warming? We’re talking 10 years of higher-than-expected increases in greenhouse gases, yet 10 years of absolutely no warming. That’s 10 years of nada, nunca, nein, zero, and zilch.

I am not a scientist but I was taught in school that the Scientific Method requires that a proposed hypothesis should be tested and proven with real facts before it is accepted as truth.  If the facts don't back up the hypothesis you don't have anything supported by Science.  What are the facts of the connection between carbon dioxide trends and global warming?  Taylor explains.

Most powerfully, global temperature trends during the twentieth century sharply defied atmospheric carbon dioxide trends. More than half of the warming during the twentieth century occurred prior to the post-World War II economic boom, yet atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions rose minimally during this time. Between 1945 and 1977, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels jumped rapidly, yet global temperatures declined. Only during the last quarter of the century was there an appreciable correlation between greenhouse gas trends and global temperature trends. But that brief correlation has clearly disappeared this century

Which brings us back to the sharp scientific disagreement about whether the earth’s climate is extremely sensitive or merely modestly sensitive to minor variances in the composition of its atmospheric gases. Carbon dioxide comprises far less than 1 percent of the earth’s atmosphere. In fact, we could multiply the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere a full 25 times and it would still equal less than 1 percent of the earth’s atmosphere. The alarmists claim that the minor increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations during the past 100 years, from roughly 3 parts per 10,000 to roughly 4 parts per 10,000, is causing climate havoc. Real-world temperature data tell us an entirely different story.

While I was reading this article it got me to thinking of what happened to all the oil from last year's Gulf Oil Spill. The oil spill that the mainstream media and environmental groups stated was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history and would spoil the Gulf for years. This is a post from Ricochet that asked the same question in January, "What happened to the 207 million gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico". It cites an article by Brian Palmer of Slate that is certainly no friend of the oil business that has these quotes. 

• "[T]he vast majority the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is already gone."
• "[E]ven if we halted human activity in the Gulf, natural seeps would still send 42 million gallons of oil coursing from the sea floor into Gulf waters each year."
• "Because of this constant supply of hydrocarbons, there is always a healthy population of bacteria floating around the Gulf looking for more food. When BP's Macondo well began gushing, the steady drip of nutrients turned into a feeding frenzy."
• "Within 24 hours of the spill, the number of oil-eating bacteria around the wellhead had grown tenfold."
• "[T]he overwhelming majority of the Macondo oil was recaptured, burned off, evaporated, flushed out by ocean currents, or eaten by bacteria by the end of July, just two weeks after BP managed to seal off the well. Because the bacteria and cleanup crews worked so quickly and the spill is now so diluted, it's impossible to say exactly what percentage of the original oil is still around, but it's a small fraction."
• "By most estimations, the right colony of bacteria can break down oil so quickly that within six days the hydrocarbons are undetectable using the best available instruments."
• "Between July and August, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory took 170 samples of Gulf water, starting at the wellhead and following the oil's likely path for several hundred kilometers. They couldn't find any Macondo oil, which means the concentration was less than two parts per billion."

Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2279401/ 

I am as concerned about the environment as anyone.  I love the outdoors, the beach, clean water and fresh air.   However, everything in life is balance.  In order to assure ourselves of the cleanest possible environment we could commit ourselves to live in huts and forego every modern convenience.  As civilization has progressed each generation has made a decision on what the balance would be.  All of what we have today is a product of the earth in some way.  Iron ore for steel. Rubber for tires. Lithium for batteries.  Water and trees for paper manufacture.  Oil for plastics.  Each decision is a trade-off.  Our ancestors could have continued to live in the huts and enjoy the scenery.  Fortunately, they didn't.  

My problem with many in the environmental lobby is that there is no balance in their views.  They talk good theory but they bring nothing practical to the table.  We need energy but we can't do any drilling.  Don't think about fracking or nuclear either.  Wind turbines are fine but don't spoil my view.  They also have so little faith in the talents and creativity of mankind.

The bottom line is that God gave us an earth with abundant resources that due to the ingenuity of man has meant continuing advances in our way of life.  I have heard the same refrain my entire life.  Shortly after I graduated from college in the 1970's, at the beginnings of the environmental movement, there was talk of "The Population Bomb". William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal reminds of the history in today's issue.

On the eve of that decade, Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich opened his best-selling book "The Population Bomb" with this sunny declaration: "The battle to feed all humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." Of course, nothing of the kind happened.

• The Club of Rome, an international group of academics, scientists and global citizens, commissioned a now-infamous 1972 report called "The Limits to Growth." Like so many others, these scientists informed us that we were running out of . . . well . . . everything.

• Or take Robert McNamara, the "whiz kid" president of Ford Motor Co. Later, as chief of the World Bank, he would throw tens of millions of development dollars into population control because he said—sounding much like Mr. Friedman—the alternative was a world no one would want. If voluntary methods failed, he warned, nations would resort to coercion.

All these things were the received orthodoxies of their day, endorsed by the experts, sustained by the scientists, and challenged by only a few brave souls such as economist Julian Simon. 

Does that sound kind of familiar to the same orthodoxies we hear today about global warming and environmental extremism? McGurn points out that all the fear mongering from that period was flat out wrong. In fact, there were only 3.7 billion on earth in 1970. In 2010, we are almost double that total at close to 7 billion. However, by almost measure, the people of the world are much better off. This is particularly the case with the countries that were the poorest in 1970.

The one difference between the 1970s and today is this: Back then, the worry was that poor nations would never advance. Today we know they can and are developing.

That's precisely the fear: that as people are eating better and living longer and making their way up the ladder, they will want more of the things that we take for granted—cars, air conditioners, refrigerators and so on. Indeed, the really big dreamers might even hope one day to have for their families the kind of carbon-footprint-maximizing manse that Mr. Friedman has for his family in Maryland.

Ironically, by almost any human measure—food consumption, life expectancy, access to clean water, etc.—life is getting better, not worse. So why the recurring predictions of catastrophe? Partly it's because the apostles of population control assume that resources are fixed and immune to human creativity or effort. In this view, human beings are primarily seen as mouths instead of minds.

The 1970s has many ugly legacies. Surely, however, the cruelest was this leading Western export: the idea that the Earth has reached its limit with us, and that the solution is to persuade other folks who don't yet have what we do to lower both their populations and their expectations.

The only "population bomb" that went off is the explosion of additional ingenuity and in the world's standard of living because of the increased talent pool! Why should we think anything will be different in our future? I choose to be an optimist.