Some Questions for Climate Scientists

Global warming and climate change has been around for almost 30 years. There is a whole slew of experts and scientists of all disciplines doing research and publishing papers and warning of the dire consequences if we don’t address this issue.

I have a few basic and simple questions for them.

If they can answer them to my satisfaction, I will be convinced.

As an engineer by training, I have a logical and unbiased mind. I will let the facts and evidence guide me.

- Nov. 2018

Do you think Earthquakes and Volcanos and Tsunami are complex problems?

and do you think they are more or less complex than Climate Science?

If so, to what degree they are more or less complex?

Assuming they are less complex because for no other reason than size, since earthquake is only restricted to a local region near a fault line, and volcano is only restricted to one mountain and tsunami is caused by one sudden event like an earthquake or land movement, and climate change deals with our whole planet.

How do you explain the fact that all these natural events cannot be predicted accurately as of 2018?

That is to say, none of the experts in these fields have come up with a model or technique to predict the next “big one.”

Moreover, a complex system like climate change, there exists plenty of computer models, 31 by last count, that claim to predict our future climate going out 30 years.

These models also claim to have a confidence factor of 90% in their projections.

I hope you see the discrepancy.

Assuming these projections are accurate, no one has been able to tell us how long it will take for these effects to materialize? For example the rising of the oceans.

The scientists who have done these studies and gone back a few hundred thousands years in our past by looking at ice cores...even they cannot say for sure how long it will take for the arctic ice to melt on Greenland or Antartica...

How come? Isn’t this a simple calculation?

We know the amount of ice that exists. we know how much heat energy is required to melt one pound of snow or ice...and we should have evidence from previous ice ages for the duration of time needed to go from warming to cooling to affect the ocean rise...

Is it decades, hundreds of years or thousands of years?

They claim they know how much warming to expect in the next 30 years based on our current CO2 emissions.

The bottom line is how much time do we have?

Is Carbon dioxide a pollutant? The EPA has ruled that CO2 emissions poses a risk and they need to be regulated. However, even they do not rank CO2 as a poluttant gas like Sulfur dioxide and other harmful gases.

If that is the case, why do climate scientists and environmentalists band together to pitch the same song? Aren’t they two separate problems and you can fight one without the other or vice versa?

Taking climate change as a whole, what percent of the current warming is due to natural activity and what percent is due to human activity?

It seems these are basic questions we need to ask and get answers to before taking the next step of mitigation or adaptation...

The solutions should be based on our knowledge of the current environment and on a cost benefit analysis of each of the possible proposed solutions.

Does this seem like a rational and sound approach to dealing with climate changes?

The America public deserves some accountability. For the past 20 or 30 years, they have been told by climate scientists to “trust them”. They are experts and they know what they are doing. After all, 97% of scientists agree with them. How can you argue with science?

Now is the time for these very scientists to put their money where their mouth is.

We need some simple answers.

It starts by answering these basic questions and putting their face and name behind them.

• Al Gore
• Michael Mann
• James Hansen
• Andrew Light