I need to rebut a climate change denialist in my local McPaper. I am familiar with climate science, but don’t know much about different right-wing denialism strategies. I know they make up their own “facts,” but I haven’t paid much attention to them. I know there are many DKos readers who know a lot about denialism propaganda, and I would appreciate suggestions about how to rebut this guy. Thanks!
Here is his letter that appeared in today’s McPaper:
Why alarmist climate change models fail
Climate catastrophe delusion infects many letter writers, Gordon Solberg’s recent letter being perhaps the most splendid example.
CO2, the substance essential to almost all carbon-based animal and human life on Earth, now about 403 parts per million is at historic lows in geologic terms. In the Cambrian, about 550 million years ago, sea life, trilobites, brachiopods and even chordates exploded across the ocean floor, while CO2 was 7000 PPM, about 18 times as much as today. Towards the end of the Ordovician, CO2 increased from 4000 to 4400 PPM, yet temperatures plummeted into Snowball Earth.
High school chemistry teaches Henry’s Law: roughly, in aqueous solution, say seawater, when the temperature of the water increases, dissolved gases, including CO2 come out of the water into the air. Put simply, temperature controls CO2, not the reverse, a principal reason why alarmist climate models fail.
Mainstream media have not looked up historic data, which confound the catastrophic predictions.
The last ice age ended about 18,000 years ago. Near its maximum, the ice sheet went south of Manhattan; Central Park’s visitors see bare rock, Manhattan Schist; a few miles away lays the terminal moraine, at New Jersey’s Galloping Hill Country Club.
Since the end of the last ice age, ice cores show about 12 warm periods; the last four have been the Minoan, Roman, Medieval and the Present. The Present warm period is not as warm as the previous ones despite “record amounts” of CO2 and methane in the air today. Professor Patzelt’s results of an alpine tree ring study also shows about 12 warm periods, the present warm period is puny in comparison with those of the previous 7,000 years.
These are all indisputable facts; the alarmist cries are the propaganda of leftist governments and their ignorant minions in the media.
Robert W. Endlich,
Las Cruces
Saturday, Dec 24, 2016 · 11:11:30 PM +00:00
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soarbird
Thanks for the comments so far. I am unfamiliar with the “warm periods” he mentions, and the “fact” that the present warm period is “puny in comparison.” I think he’s getting his “facts” from a right-wing denialist blog. I’m sure somebody has already rebutted this stuff, and I’m hoping somebody can point me to the rebuttal so that I don’t have to personally enter the fever swamps and research this nonsense for myself.