I have lamented at times that people in this land do not know how to read and interpret graphs. Indeed, some can be confusing and intimidating. Take, for instance, this one, called the Palmer Drought Severity Index, which is maintained by NCAR, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, just down the road from us in Boulder.
How to read: Dark brown is severe drought going on as we speak. That middle state there is Colorado, where I live, and I think it reflects the fact that we had very little snowfall this winter, so little in fact that thousands of people cancelled winter skiing vacations here. That happens on occasion, from what I read, maybe ten years out of the last 100 have been as bad or worse. Take a look, however, at the bottom point of Nevada, and the Utah/Arizona border. That would be the location of Lake Meade and Lake Powell, and the Hoover and Glen Canyon Dams. I keep reading where these two locations are undergoing record low water levels … in fact, that is why those dams were built, to store water in a drought-prone area.
Naturally, we’re told that the current drought is the cause of historic low levels for Lakes Meade and Powell, and that it is catastrophic and that it is caused by Climate Change. Catastrophic would indeed be the case until such time as people in that area stop with the drawdowns. The Climate alarmists do not take that into account, that Las Vegas inserted a “third straw”, a tunnel to draw water from Lake Meade from underneath the reservoir. The cities of the Southwest, including Phoenix, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Tucson, in fact, 40 million people, depend on the Colorado river for water sustenance. If you look at Colorado on this map, you’ll see a current part of the problem, lack of snowpack in the Colorado Rockies. The rest … is overuse. Drought? It comes and goes, always has. Climate change? They have no evidence to back that claim, but then, they’re the Climate Alarmist crowd. They don’t need it.
Droughts are a fact of life out here in the west. I am hopeful as I see all the flooding going on in so many places, including Phoenix itself, that the current very powerful La Niña will circulate some moisture our way. Things never really improve until things are looking really, really bad.
Above is a fun graph, showing how they like to alarm us with things that are not alarming at all. Notice how NASA GISS, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in the upper graph has taken the mild warming we have experienced since 1880, which falls between 58° and 60° degrees Fahrenheit, and expanded it and colored it red and gave it a pointy surface to make it seem like the fires of hell. That is just how propaganda is done, how they try to insert alarm into everything, even a mild temperature increase. That is how they lie with graphs.
The bottom graph is the very same data, but scaled differently. Thanks, by the way to NASA, who was also very straight with us about those Moon landings too. Lying is just not in their makeup.
OK, I hate it when they do this, as they can make simple things so confusing. Above they have taken an IPCC graph of temperatures and turned it on its side. So twist your brain sideways to understand it. It is a graph of temperatures, the X axis, which runs left to right on the bottom, shows the temperature increase during the timeframe 1979-2010. Here is the key: The IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is showing us the blue and red of this temperature chart. The red is NOT actual temperatures, as they would lead us to believe, but projected temperatures from climate models they use instead of real data. The blue lines are the IPCC’s view of what temperatures would have been during that time without the effects of greenhouse gases. Superimposed on that, and not by the IPCC, are the gray lines, which are actual observed temperature data from weather balloons and satellites.
Why, it is as if GHGs have had no effect!
What IPCC wants us to believe by this graph is how much hotter it was from 1979-2010 due to greenhouse gases. What they inadvertently showed us is how actual temperatures act as if GHGs are having hardly any effect!
Here’s another graph:
This one has been around for a while. What it shows us are those IPCC Climate models, the spaghetti lines above, and actual observed temperatures from weather balloons (green), and satellites (blue). Here’s what is really crazy: The IPCC, and all of the countries of the world which subscribe to its data, base actual climate policy on the models! Reality took a hike there, long, long ago.
Now, this last graph below is going to take some explanation. At the very end of this post are the CVs of the two gentlemen who prepared it, Richard Linzden, an atmospheric physicist, and William Happer, a physicist. I do this to embolden the case they are making, as shown on the graph. It is very important.
What these two men are telling us is that CO2 does have warming power, but that the first 20ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere have the most, and that its warming power diminishes rapidly after that, so that today, in 2026, it is having hardly any warming effect on the planet! In fact, they say, CO2 has not made anything more than a tiny impact on global temperatures since 1750.
It is my belief that the Climate Alarmist movement is nothing but propaganda, but that it is so powerful, so well financed, that it has the ability to change all of our perceptions about a harmless fertilizer gas that helps us grow better crops, making it appear to be a monster. They dominate the media, an effect that CIA once referred to as its “Mighty Wurlitzer“. Every climate scientist, every government agency, every news outlet spout the nonsense that CO2 is a planet-killer, and that our use of fossil fuels has to end!
Can you see, as I so easily do, that it is ALL fake, and that there is an ulterior motive? As in … misanthropy?
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CV’s of Richard Linzden and William Happer:
Richard S. Lindzen is an American atmospheric physicist and Professor Emeritus of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he served as the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology from 1983 until his retirement in 2013. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (1964), an S.M. (1961), and an A.B. in Physics (1960), all from Harvard University.
His academic career includes positions at Harvard University (Gordon McKay Professor of Dynamic Meteorology, 1972–1982), the University of Washington, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Oslo, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the University of Chicago. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Geophysical Union.
Lindzen has published more than 200 scientific papers and is known for his work in atmospheric tides, ozone photochemistry, and the Iris hypothesis. He received the AMS Charney Award (1985), the AGU Macelwane Medal (1969), and the AMS Meisinger Award (1968). Since 2013, he has served as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and has been associated with the Heartland Institute and the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy.
William Happer is the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics, Emeritus at Princeton University, specializing in atomic physics, optics, and spectroscopy. He holds a B.S. in physics from the University of North Carolina (1960) and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University (1964).
His career includes significant academic and government roles:
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Academic Tenure: He began at Columbia University in 1964, serving as Director of the Columbia Radiation Laboratory (1976–1979), before joining Princeton University in 1980 and retiring to emeritus status in 2014.
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Government Service: He served as Director of Energy Research at the U.S. Department of Energy (1991–1993) under President George H.W. Bush, overseeing a $3 billion research budget. He later served as Senior Director of Emerging Technologies at the National Security Council (2018–2019) in the Trump administration.
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Advocacy: He is the Chair and Co-Founder of the CO2 Coalition, where he advocates for views that atmospheric CO2 levels are beneficial and that climate change poses limited risk.
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Innovations: He invented the sodium guide star for astronomical adaptive optics and co-founded Magnetic Imaging Technologies Inc. to develop hyperpolarized gas technology for MRI imaging.
Happer has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers and received numerous awards, including the Davisson-Germer Prize (1999), the Broida Prize (1997), and the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award (2015). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
