patrick.net

https://www.youtube.com/embed/aRdqYRS3GMo

After becoming frustrated at constantly seeing the same misinformation being used to try to guilt people as sinners to the religion of climate change, I made a documentary film. This film presents an agnostic view of climate change, but directly challenges the conjecture of climate alarmism. Many people get triggered by the introduction, but it has been well received by those who have watched it all the way through.

This film presents the skeptics' side of the debate on anthropogenic climate change. It is broken down into easy to follow sections, which explore the assertions of climatologists who claim a consensus, on the settled science, that humanity is reaching an environmental tipping point. No matter where you stand on the issue, this film is a good starting point to learn the theories on both sides, as well as who the main players are, and what fuels the discussion.

This was easily the biggest subject of debate in 2019. For this reason, the name most associated with the issue, Greta Thunberg, was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year. This film was released the day after the announcement, but Miss Thunberg’s rising star, in the movement, is definitely recognized.

In the introduction, I explore the drivers of alarmism. Since climate change is such a hot topic, media outlets, social media pages, and Internet sites feed into a self-fueling hysteria of alarmists trying to outdo each other, to draw attention to their pages and even to art work. What started out as science, devolved into conjecture and alarming dogma that has morphed into a religion.

Throughout the rest of the film, I systematically challenge the most compelling assertions on anthropogenic climate change starting with the 97% consensus, which upon closer review is potentially 97% out of about a third of the peer reviewed research. Most of the studies cited as the basis of the consensus are actually nonscientific, invitation polls.
I then examine the historical predictions and compare them to actual government statistics. The predictions generally covered a few areas such as polar bear extinctions, increasing natural disasters, flooded cities and climate refugees. These predictions are easily measured and debunked when using official numbers. We find that the polar bear population has tripled since the 70s, climate refugee predictions have been retracted, and hurricane activity actually declined throughout the 20th century. I also point to specific examples of islands, the Carteret and Maldives, which not only aren’t under water, they aren’t going to be anytime soon.

In the next section, I explore current examples of alarmism starting with the most famous polar bear in the world, the viral National Geographic footage of a starving bear. I address the first fallacy, of many pointed out in the film, which is the tendency to let one event or measurement trigger grandstanding proclamations that the scientists were right. Specific examples cited are the heat wave in Europe and one lost shark, which made its way to Irish waters.

The section addressing cherry-picking follows, which goes into more detailed examples starting with Al Roker’s disastrous trip to Alaska to show how hot it was there, while having to dress like an Eskimo because the weather returned to normal after a brief high-pressure dome trapped hot air over the Arctic. Specific examples of cherry-picking news include a snow free year in Chicago, iguanas thriving and dying in Florida, and clear sky flooding in Florida.

Following that is a section called Bad Science. Here, I explained Climategate. The main concern was the substitution of an actual data set at a convenient point in a chart of tree ring data, which on its own would have shown a temperature decline, but was presented as a “hockey stick” temperature increase and projection. The reliability of the surface temperature chart is questioned later in the section due to obvious test errors. Specific examples are historical maps showing gaps in coverage as well as the accuracy of instruments 140 years ago compared to now. The topic of urban heat islands and their effect on instrument readings is also addressed.

The next section is called Canaries in the Coal Mine. It pivots from questioning climate change consensus to demonstrating how to objectively prove that climate change is real and also that it is a threat, regardless if it is manmade. The prior section ended with how to use predictive theory, and in this section specific canaries in the coal mine are identified. These include the Torrey Pine tree, a variety of pine tree, which only lives in two small areas in California and would display stress from climate change very quickly. Other examples are things that would have a noticeable economic impact on certain industries. For example, the multibillion-dollar cocaine trade would be affected if Coca plants stopped growing in the Andes. Likewise, coffee, another big industry, would be disrupted if coffee stopped growing in Columbia and started growing in places that it currently doesn’t grow.

The most compelling section is challenging sea level rise. The most touted alarmist predictions are that sea level rise is accelerating and already causing disruptions. In this section, I show about a dozen then and now comparisons of the same sea shores over time. I also address previous criticisms that the pictures aren’t proof because tidal variation makes comparisons impossible. By identifying three types of subtle clues, we are able to tell if sea levels have risen. I do this by explaining how vegetation and other organisms define the high water to land interface in the tidal and splash zone. I show how water leaves its mark daily on the sand, and how repeated exposure leaves staining on rocks and other hard surfaces.

My favorite section is the Religion of Climate Change. In this section I started with a humorous, but applicable popular clip of a torture scene from Star Trek the Next Generation, known as, “There Are Four Lights.” This serves as a metaphor of how people are force fed beliefs, which contradict observations like no noticeable sea level change. How climate change theory resembles a religious belief is explored, in detail, with examples of similarities like predetermined conclusions and the need for sacrifice and control.

The film technically ends there, but I did include an epilogue to bring a nice closure to the film.