The power of scepters … sometimes the magic works … sometimes not

 

The photo above is that of Pope Leo XIV. The scepter he holds in his left hand is known as the Papal “ferula”. Coming as I do from a deeply Catholic family I can tell you that the Catholic Church works very hard on the concept of infallibility, that is, that when the Pope speaks on certain matters, he is correct and there can be no disputing the matter. I come from a different era than most people, and am now older than 83% of the American population. I went to grade school at a time when Catholic doctrine was held as sacred. Our school, even though regular buses were available, invested in its own so that we would not mix with public school kids. They took their job of indoctrination of youth seriously.

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” 1 Corinthians 13:11

Sadly, judging by some extended family members and having attended a couple of class reunions, the hold that the Catholic Church has on people my age is still firm. But as an adult and capable of rational thinking, I know that there is no such thing as infallibility. The Pope is just a man, the President is just a man, in reality, actors. But their public role is to project certainty.

I spent the last couple of days writing a post that will never see light of day. I was triggered by an assertion made by the IPCC AR6 (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report finalized in March of 2023) that states that the Earth is now absorbing heat from the Sun at the rate of .79 (.52-1.06) watts per square meter (W/m2) in the measurement period 2006-2018, where formerly AR5  (1971-2006) claimed that at that time Earth was absorbing solar energy at the rate of .50 (.32 – .69) W/m2. If true, that would represent an increase of .29 W/m2, or 58% over a period  of twelve years, truly alarming.

It is not true, but the IPCC wants to project a papal-like certainty with its pronouncements, so it asserts with authority. Do we grant it that authority? I do not. Most people don’t even think like that. Only a minority know that IPCC exists, and fewer than that give it any credence.

Here’s what I know for sure:

• If the planet is getting warmer, it is doing so only slowly and modestly. Here in the Southwest region of the US, for the period 1919 to 2018, a trend measured as the highest monthly high temperature per year show that our region has warmed by .19°F per decade, or 1.9°F over 100 years. That is not even perceptible on human skin.
• The Earth goes through periods of warming and cooling, and our best method of measuring this is via ice cores taken from Antarctica and Greenland. Below is a 10,000 year record of temperatures from Greenland.

 

• Pay particular attention  to the far right of that graph, where you will see a particularly cold period called the Little Ice Age. That was not a good time to be alive, as growing seasons were often shortened, crops often failed and people starved.
• We did not escape the LIA in total until about 1860 or so, and Earth has been warming ever since. That little red line at the far right represents our Modern Warm Period. It is a good time to be alive, as we’ve enjoyed modest warming now for 166 years. Agriculture is booming, food is plentiful.
• But take note: We are not as warm as it was in the Minoan, Roman, or Medieval Warm Periods. Our temperatures now, at least according to ice sheets (which measure presence of different oxygen isotopes), are modestly warming, but not dangerously so.

So why does the IPCC have its panties in such knots? Honestly, it should have a sign over its door that says

ABANDON SCIENCE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE

IPCC is not a science enterprise. It is there for the purpose of spreading propaganda. Sometime around 1987, with the Club of Rome somehow an instigator, a new movement was rolled out called “Global Warming”, since changed to “Climate Change”. As a planet as a whole we have a hierarchical structure with ruling class in place that runs all of our affairs, but only quietly. If you doubt that, think back to 2020 and the onset of Covid, where there was no virus, no unusual deaths, but an entire planet locked down and put in a State of Fear.

You might ask, what kind of power can do that? It is hidden power to be sure, and we can only judge its strength by its manifestations. That every church, sporting event, and even family gatherings were shut down shows power. That the entire world was wearing masks shows power. That every news outlet spouted the same propaganda shows that we have no meaningful public information system.

Climate Change is the same forces behind the scenes at work, but much less effectively. Fortunately, with the matter of temperatures, we can all stick our heads out our windows and see that nothing as changed, and that we are not in danger.

So what is the meaning of the measurement of a 58% increase in absorption of W/m2 over twelve years? Nothing, zilch, zippo. There’s a rule in science, and we still have some real scientists at work, that we cannot accurately measure systems that are not in equilibrium. We don’t know the temperature of the planet or the oceans, and therefore do not know how much solar radiation we are absorbing or how much it has changed over time.

IPCC, however, expects that its pronouncements are infallible, like the Pope’s. They are not.

I just read a scientific paper saying as much, that the means by which IPCC gathered the data to make that assertion are bogus. I was going to write about that, but it was too dense for me, over my head. I’ll link it here, and you can decide. That link is to a 34-page paper, but reading the abstract on pages one and two should get you by.

Of course the IPCC, and leading scientists all dispute those findings. So does AI. I did have a long conversation with AI on the matter, and when it told me that there is a scientific consensus that says the paper is wrong, I asked if “consensus” is part of the scientific method.  Here’s what it told me:

Scientific consensus is not a formal step within the scientific method, but rather a natural outcome of the scientific process. It emerges when a large body of independent, high-quality evidence from multiple lines of inquiry converges on the same conclusion, leading the majority of qualified experts in a field to agree. 

If you know how to interpret gibberish, then you can tell that AI is saying that consensus is not part of the scientific method, but then again, it is.