How Google, MSM distort a grain of truth about global warming to promote hysteria

Sources in text | Dangus

[dangus]

This article is a great example of how insidious media misinformation is. A few days ago, a news story came out confirming that the amount of ice in Antarctica is still growing, faster than ever. THIS was the report that the mainstream news reported on, and which Google floated to the top:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190114161150.htm

Antartica is losing ice so quickly, because it is being formed even more quickly. This is a slightly older article making that clear: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses

But even that article is misleading. It seems to suggest without directly stating (because that would be a lie) that there is some balance between Antarctic ice growth and Arctic ice loss. In truth, the total amount of Arctic ice is negligible compared to the amount of Antarctic ice.

And both articles talk about sea level rise.

No amount of Arctic ice melt could raise the sea level even an inch. The part of ice you see above the surface of water is due to ice expanding as it freezes. Less ice means less volume of water. (Not lower sea levels either, because the less volume is exactly equal to the amount of ice sticking above the water.)

Now, if Antarctica melted, we'd be screwed. But the melting ice in Antarctica is just the fringe. The central bulge of Antarctic ice is almost 100 degrees below freezing. You could raise the temperature of the Earth 100 degrees and it would still take tens of thousands of years to melt Antarctica's ice.

So why are sea levels rising? Sea levels ARE rising, but the places where the media points to rising sea levels are actually places the earth is sinking or being eroded. Actual sea level rises are on the scale of millimeters per decade, too small to be detected by any but the most sophisticated satellite data analyzed by complex algorithms. These tiny rises ARE due to global warming. Water expands as it warms; that's how thermometers work. These rises won't inundate massive portions of entire societies; they'll be only inches. But they can cause trouble for densely populated regions of Bangladesh or Nigeria.

To restrain economic progress in the name of Nigeria or Bangladesh would be to murder hundreds of millions of people. The problem isn't that the oceans will rise four inches or so. The problem is that so many people are so destitute that a tiny sea level rise could threaten their rice crops and bring them to starvation and disease.

As fantastically destructive as the media lies about global warming are, if conservatives wish to be scientifically accurate or liberals wish to be rid of destructive hyperbole and hysteria, here are things we should acknowledge:

1) Globalists have for years published absurd exaggerations about global warming, using fake data and coming to unfounded predictions which have been proven false. At the same time, over the decades, enough data has been concluded to suggest that there has been some global warming. Some of this is a rebound from 70's-era local cooling caused by aerosols (particulates, not hairspray). Some is caused by local warming effects that globalists discount. But some is likely caused by carbon-dioxide trapping of electromagnetic energy. (The reason more isn't is because the Earth's atmosphere is already largely opaque at the EM frequencies that matter.)

2) Coal and oil have a few decades less of feasibility. Renewable energy is becoming cheaper at a rate which is similar to Moore's Law, which makes microprocessors cheaper (but which is technically unrelated). There is a growing need to store renewable energies from when they are most available (noon) to when they are most needed (3PM) and least available (overnight). But storage will also follow a cheapness trend. Last year, the use of renewable energy grew at a rate that it would supply all our energy needs in 30 years. Let me be clear: I am not talking about an exponential rate. Exponential rates can never be maintained. I am talking growth at a linear rate: if the production of renewable energy equipment stayed steady with no decline or expansion, we would achieve this goal.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01

3) Because global warming does not pose an existential threat to civilization, and because carbon-based energy is already in decline, there is no need for any massive, world-government-led intrusion into economies. CO2 output will fall because CO2 production will be unnecessary. The higher lattitudes will have warmer winters and warmer nights. The arctic may be navigable. And grains will need less water to grow.

[SkyDancer]

The only hysteria will be from the snowflakes; the rest of the informed public will do a ‘ho hum’

[Flintlock]

PROBLEM IS: There JUST AIN’T NO GLOBAL WARMING.

Check the temperature graphs that go back MANY thousands of years.
We are on the cusp of ANOTHER (of many) ice ages. According to the oldest historical records you get a warm period of about ten thousand years, THEN an ice age of many tens of thousands of years before it warms again.
If anything, any warming due to mankind has only helped delay the process as we are about one thousand years overdue for global cooling.
Burn that coal.
Run that SUV.
Knit yerself another sweater.