Opinion : Finally, a friend (or three), for a global warming Neanderthal

For years now – 22 of them to be exact – my liberal friends have been reading my columns mocking global warming and repeatedly reminding me of just how much of a mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging Neanderthal nut job I am, although they don’t usually say it that kindly.

With the great lakes nearly completely frozen -- at near-record levels, and with March coming in not like a lion or lamb, but rather as a woolly mammoth that made it dangerously cold to shovel the latest layer of snow off the thick layer of ice I call my driveway -- I am more grumpy than ever when it comes to global warming.

Or rather, the absence of it.

This is leading to some arguments.

“Climate change denier because it has been cold here--explain this!!” wrote a friend recently, with an attached to an email message an NPR article quoting Deke Arndt of the National Climate Data Center, who said: “We see more evidence that we will continue to have cold air outbreaks as the climate continues to warm.”

Ah, naturally. Global warming (I refuse to call it climate change because the climate is constantly changing) causes everything from warm winters to bitterly cold ones.

While just about every major media outlet knows how to contact Mr. Arndt when they do stories on global warming, nobody in American media seems to know the names of John C. Fyfe, Nathan P. Gillett or Francis W. Zwiers.

These three blokes (dudes from England) published another report on global warming in September of 2013, entitled “Overestimated Global Warming Over The Past 20 Years.”

Like me, they claim that global warming scientists have been incredibly wrong.

Unlike me, however, these are actual global warming scientists.

I would have ignored this study if Fyfe, Gillett and Zwiers had done some kind of study on behalf of the oil industry or conservative talk show hosts.

But they didn’t. They are part of the University of Edinborough School of Engineering, where the professors and students see global warming (yes, they say “climate change” there, too) as a fact.

So, their study about global warming is particularly interesting.

These gentlemen have been studying the climate – and global warming predictions – for decades.

They have come to two conclusions:

1. The temperature difference between 1999 and 2012 is “not significantly different than zero.”

2. Of 117 computer models predicting global warming only three of them were accurate; the other 114 predicted much more global warming than that which actually occurred.

These guys say the temperature data they reviewed indicates a “temporary hiatus” in global warming, although that hiatus, according to their data, is still in progress.

They also summarized the status of the global warming debate as anything but “settled.” It will, they say take “decades,” to figure out why climate change predictions were so “inconsistent.”

“Ultimately the causes of this inconsistency will only be understood after careful comparison of simulated internal climate variability and climate model forcings with observations from the past two decades, and by waiting to see how global temperature responds over the coming decades.”

The most intriguing thing about this study is the response from the rest of the global warming science community: Silence. Nobody is contradicting this report.

Yet, many who still believe in global warming say we can’t wait to take action – or to force the U.S and some of the rest of the world to take action.

The global warming embracers (I am a kinder, gentler Neanderthal; I no longer call them “Chicken Littles) warn us of what could happen if we refuse to accept their arguments that despite the fact that we are still freezing our bums, the earth is getting warmer every year.

“The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact,” said President Obama, during this year’s State of the Union.

Of course, he has been saying this for years.

“The planet is in peril,” candidate Obama said repeatedly during the 2008 presidential campaign.

People who agree with the President ask us to consider scary scenarios.

For example:

Imagine a climate where 40 percent of the farmland in the U.S. is incapable of supporting vegetation without irrigation.

Imagine a climate where a hurricane could devastate New York City.

Imagine a climate where a sudden flood kills 2,000 people.

That climate is not only possible; it’s historical. Everything in the above three sentences already happened, in the U.S. – in the 1800s. The famous Johnstown flood killed more than 2,000 in 1889. The hurricane – although they did not yet use that word – hit NYC in 1821. And in 1878 Major J.W. Powell, in his “Arid Lands” report, stated: all the present and future agriculture of more than four-tenths of the area of the United States is dependent on irrigation.”’

And all of those extremes – drought, flooding, hurricanes – took place a century or more before global warming scientists starting blaming global warming for such natural disasters.

And at times, they will take place this century, and beyond, the way they have for thousands of years.

The funny thing about this whole global warming debate with my friends is that I agree with them on what they say are the solutions to global warming. I have planted lots of trees on our farm. I made a small sacrifice and stopped renting our pasture for cow grazing because the manure was polluting the creek that runs into the Cedar River. And the entire time I have been mocking global warming and its inability to bring warmer winters, I have also been calling for the use of green energy sources, and writing as much as possible about solar and wind energy. And I have used as much Ethanol as possible in all of my vehicles.

There's a reason, however, to be concerned about how wrong global warming predictions have turned out to be.

While most people who are concerned about global warming are merely looking out for our future, there is a small but powerful group who want to use the fears of global warming as a weapon against any industry or nation they see as bad. If they can create a “crisis” in the minds of the people of the world they can get more support for whatever drastic action they want to take, whether or not that action would actually do anything to help either the economy or the environment. For them the global warming debate is about that power.

And for the rabid anti-Americans, global warming is one way to arouse hate for America, to blame us for the troubles in the rest of the world.

There is good news, however, from a surprising source in this global warming controversy.

A recent United Nations study indicates they are losing that debate. A survey of hundreds of thousands of people from many countries listed global warming at the very bottom of the list, as the very least of their concerns, among the list problems the U.N. surveyors put on the survey.

And at the bottom of the list is exactly where this winter -- like every other winter that is clearly not any warmer than last year's -- tells us where it should be.