As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

According to Al Gore if we would all pony up US$15,000,000,000,000.00 he and his cronies will save us from ourselves.

Gore's Energy Transitions Commission's (ETC) stated goal is net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to keep global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by 2100.

To this scribbler and question asker net zero carbon emissions costing $15T to accomplish seems like a radical environmental vision and a steep price for us to pay for it.

Glacials/Interglacials

The Quaternary Period encompasses the most recent 2.6 million years of Earth's existence and it has had dozens of glacial advance/retreats over its lifetime.

"...since the 1950s the marine record has become more useful because of its greater continuity and preservation. Marine cores may contain microscopic fossils of single-celled organisms called foraminifera, whose shells contain a record of water temperature and composition as stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon. These isotopes have revealed that dozens of major glacial-interglacial episodes have taken place during the Quaternary." ~ Quaternary, Encyclopedia Britannica

Glacials refer to the colder phases within an ice age while interglacials are the warmer periods between cold spells.

During the last 800,000 years of the Quaternary, the ice has advanced and retreated on 100,000 year cycles.

The end of the last glacial period was about 12,000 years ago.

"At the start of the Quaternary, the continents were just about where they are today, slowing inching here and there as the forces of plate tectonics push and tug them about. But throughout the period, the planet has wobbled on its path around the sun. The slight shifts cause ice ages to come and go. By 800,000 years ago, a cyclical pattern had emerged: Ice ages last about 100,000 years followed by warmer interglacials of 10,000 to 15,000 years each. The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago. Sea levels rose rapidly, and the continents achieved their present-day outline.

When the temperatures drop, ice sheets spread from the Poles and cover much of North America and Europe, parts of Asia and South America, and all of Antarctica. With so much water locked up as ice, sea levels fall. Land bridges form between the continents like the currently submerged connector across the Bering Strait between Asia and North America. The land bridges allow animals and humans to migrate from one landmass to another.

During warm spells, the ice retreats and exposes reshaped mountains striped with new rivers draining to giant basins like today's Great Lakes. Plants and animals that sought warmth and comfort toward the Equator return to the higher latitudes. In fact, each shift alters global winds and ocean currents that in turn alter patterns of precipitation and aridity around the world." ~ Quaternary Period, National Geographic

At one point during the Ice Age, sheets of ice covered all of Antarctica, large parts of Europe, North America, and South America, and small areas in Asia.

At the height of the most recent glaciation, some 18,000 years ago, the ice sheets were more than 12,000 feet thick. Sea levels plunged more than 400 feet and global temperatures dropped an average of 10 degrees Fahrenheit (up to 40 degrees in some areas).

On the march

By 15,000 years ago modern humans had reached the Americas.

Just twelve thousand years ago, the ice sheets started to retreat at the beginning of the current interglacial - the Flandrian.

Compared to the last interglacial, the Eemian (130,000 to 114,000 years ago), the Flandrian has been slightly colder and sea levels are currently at least 3 meters lower.

Between 12,800 to 11,500 years ago, during the Younger Dryas (YD) mini ice age (one of the most well known examples of abrupt climate change), present day Great Britain froze solid within a year and a lot of the northern hemisphere, on both sides of the North Atlantic, fell into perpetual winter.

Almost as remarkable as the quick start of the YD was the speed of its demise.

It is estimated from Greenland ice-cores, which display annual banding, that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years.

Breathless

Bloomberg breathlessly reported the following in early 2016.

"Humanity's experiment with planetary warming has reached a new level of extremes. Last month was the hottest February in 137 years of record keeping, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's the 10th consecutive month to set a new record, and it puts 2016 on course to set a third straight annual record." ~ Tom Randell, Bloomberg 'Stunning Global Heat Wave Pushes Planet Into Uncharted Territory'

All these hottest year "records" are based on temperature data that have only have differed by just a few hundreths of a degree to tenths of a degree Fahrenheit.

Useful Idiots

Just as the weather has changed over time, so too has the reporting - media outlets blow hotter or colder following the short-term changes in temperature.

It's easy to follow mainstream media's climate change coverage dating back to the late 1800s with several major publications, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek reporting on four different climate shifts since 1895.

In 1895 the page six headline of The New York Times warned about the looming dangers of a new ice age. Reporting on ice age threats lasted from the late 1800s well into the late 1920s.

After the earth's surface warmed less than half a degree, remember we are in an interglacial, newspapers and magazines responded with sensational stories about the new threat with the Times out in front, cautioning "the earth is steadily growing warmer."

British amateur meteorologist G. S. Callendar was arguing that mankind was responsible for heating up the planet with carbon dioxide emissions as early as 1938.

In 1954, Fortune magazine was writing about another cooling trend and ran an article titled "Climate - the Heat May Be Off."

Stories about global cooling started in the '50s but didn't gain much traction until about 1975. Some of the stories were remarkably similar in subject to today's - severe weather and deadly storms would occur much more frequently, climate changes pose a major threat to the food supply.

In 1975, The New York Times reported: "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable."

"The Cooling Worlds" was the title of a Newsweek article in 1975. The paper wrote;

"the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change.....a drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it....what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery not only are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key questions"

Just 6 years after publishing "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable," the New York Times, on Aug. 22, 1981, quoted seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude."

The global warming hiatus in which the rise in Earth's average temperature slowed during the late 1990s early 2000's is written off as a minor and temporary abnormality.

Global cooling, warming, cooling again, and finally today (well maybe not so finally) warming.

Fun Facts:

• Over 80% of the 20th century's carbon dioxide increase occurred after 1940 - but most of the century's temperature increase occurred before 1940.

• According to the journal Science, back in early 1982, termites alone emit ten times more carbon dioxide than all the factories and automobiles in the world.

• The rule of thumb in regards to global temperature/carbon put into the atmosphere (from any source) is: one trillion tonnes of carbon causes temperatures to rise by about 1.5°C. Since 1750 the planet has pumped out half a trillion tonnes of carbon - temperatures rose by 0.8°C. The next half-trillion tonnes will be emitted by 2045, that's a 1.5°C temperature rise between 1750 and 2045.

• In 1772 an intact frozen woolly rhinoceros was discovered. A frozen mammoth was discovered 15 years later. Both these animals had grass in their stomachs.

• From 950 to 1250 A.D. the Earth was in the Medieval Warm Period. The Little Ice Age happened in the 1600s to the 1800s. Temperatures are not as warm now as in the Medieval Warm Period.

"The global warming experienced during the past century pales into insignificance when compared to the magnitude of at least ten sudden, profound climate reversals over the past 15,000 years. In addition, small temperature changes of up to a degree or so, similar to those observed in the 20th century record, occur persistently throughout the ancient climate record.

Red lines represent times of sudden warming, blue lines represent times of rapid cooling. Numbers refer to the events listed below.

Temperature changes over the past 15,000 years.

The magnitude and timing of past climatic changes are recorded in the isotope data from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores. These data clearly show that abrupt climate changes many times greater than those of the past century have occurred many times in the geologic past.

Numbers correspond to the temperature curves on above chart.

• About 15,000 yrs ago, a sudden, intense, climatic warming (+12° C) caused dramatic melting of large Ice Age ice sheets that covered Canada and the northern U.S., all of Scandinavia, and much of northern Europe and Russia. Sea level that had been 120 m (~400 ft) lower than present rose quickly and submerged large areas than had been dry land during the Ice Age. This warming occurred abruptly in only a few years (Steffensen et al., 2008).

• A few centuries later, temperatures again plummeted (-11°C) and glaciers advanced.

• About 14,000 years ago, global temperatures rose rapidly (+4.5°C once again and glaciers receded.

• About 13,400 years ago, global temperatures plunged again (-8°C) and glaciers advanced.

• About 13,200 years ago, global temperatures increased rapidly (+5°C) and glaciers receded.

• 12,700 yrs ago global temperatures plunged sharply (-8°C) and a 1000 year period of glacial re-advance, the Younger Dryas, began.

• 11,500 yrs ago, global temperatures rose sharply (+10°C) marking the end of the Younger Dryas cold period and the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age."

"Convulsions and revolutions violent beyond our experience or conception, yet unequal to the destruction of the globe, or the whole of the human species, have both existed and will again exist [terminating] an astonishing succession of ages." ~ George Hoggart Toulmin in his 1785 book, The Eternity of the World

97% Consensus

Polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics." ~ Michael Crichton, 17th January 2003, speaking at the California Institute of Technology

A consensus of the world's leading scientists back in Galileo's time thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. Consensus does not equal scientific fact - is the Earth flat?

A key study in the journal Nature Climate Change revealed that nearly all climate models are dramatically inaccurate. On average, the predictions forecasted two times more global warming than actually occurred.

When someone says "the science behind climate change is settled" just remember real science is never settled.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific and intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations, set up at the request of member governments, dedicated to the task of providing the world with an objective, scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts - Wikipedia

The last released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns, with a 95% certainty, that global warming is man-made and that the resulting climate change will lead to:

• Rising temperatures, drought and increasing desertification
• Warming of the oceans and rising sea levels
• Loss of ice sheets & shrinking of glaciers
• Increasing intensity and size of storms

Well DUH! There's no doubt our climate is changing, but the Earth's climate has been continuously changing throughout its history. From ice covering large amounts of the globe to interglacial periods where there was ice only at the poles - our climate and biosphere has been in flux for millennia.

"The fundamental point has always been this. Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically selected factor (CO2) is as misguided as it gets. It's scientific nonsense." ~ University of London professor emeritus Philip Stott

"I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence. They are proclaiming increased confidence in their models as the discrepancies between their models and observations increase." ~ MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen speaking to Climate Depot

What the IPCC is doing is chasing a symptom. You cannot cure, fix or regulate cyclical variations as the Earth travels through space around the sun.

As far as this skeptic is concerned the IPCC's 'scientific' opinion on climate change is influenced by nothing more than funding and political factors.

"The theory of man-caused, catastrophic, global warming is embraced not because of any "science," (that sham is for the "useful idiots,"), but because it is a justification for a government takeover of the energy industry, with massive increases in regulation, taxes and government spending. The United Nations loves it because it inspires fantasies of the UN growing up to be a world government, with real government powers of global taxation, spending and regulation, all "to save the planet." Scientists who go along with the cause are rewarded not only with praise for their worthy social conscience, but also with altogether billions in hard, cold cash (government and environmental grants), for their cooperation in helping to play the "useful idiots." Moreover, many academic scientists are "progressives" themselves, and so favor sharp increases in government spending, taxes and regulation, because they are certain they know how to run your life better than you do." ~ Peter Ferrara, The Coming Revelation Of The 'Global Warming' Fraud Resembles The Obamacare Lie, Forbes

Carbon Tax

Al Gore ambitious global carbon tax proposal, set to cost all of us US$15 trillion dollars, is enough to give every American almost $50k cash.

This video is a must watch - three minutes of Primary School CO2 Science and why Australia's (or Canada's), carbon tax is sheer idiocy.

Carbon taxes are nothing more than government boondoggles and a straight cash grab from working families. In British Columbia the biggest carbon tax losers are actually hospitals and schools while the winners are corporate entities like Canfor and Interfor. B.C.'s carbon tax hasn't reduced greenhouse gas emissions, might have slowed economic growth and hurts the poor while benefitting the rich.

Ontario's first hydro bills of 2017 included a $20.00 increase to cover the cap and trade tax and another $2.00 of HST on the cap and trade tax. But cap and trade doesn't apply to just hydro, it also applies to gasoline, natural gas and any sector of Ontario's economy using fossil fuels to produce energy. That's virtually all sectors - from manufacturing to transportation to agriculture.

Alberta's carbon tax is expected to fill the provincial coffers to the tune of $6,000,000,000.00 dollars AFTER rebates. Of course the Federal government takes its tax from the collected monies as well.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has told the provinces they'd have until 2018 to implement a price on carbon or have Ottawa do it for them.

"If the government really believes its apocalyptic preaching, and if it really wants to help people prepare for climate changes, whether of human origin, natural origin, or a combination of the two, it'll stop slinging money into PR efforts and other governmental exercises in navel gazing, and either leave us our tax money so we can put it to use as we see fit, or at the very least, put our taxpayer dollars to intelligent use securing our decaying infrastructure, securing our water supplies, securing our coastlines, securing our energy grid, and helping to build the kind of economically resilient society that can withstand whatever changes Mother Nature cares to throw at us. And, to avoid the inevitable waste that comes with government programs that lack grounding in results-based accounting, somebody should be accounting for the money allocated to climate change, and reporting on it in detail, to the general public." ~ Fraser Institute, The $5 Billion Boondoggle

Ironic isn't it? That carbon taxes allow industries to keep consuming fossil fuels at the same rate because all those corporate tax cuts offset the additional costs of the carbon tax.

Political world

I do appreciate the complexity of and the fact that all of the individual aspects of the different systems that combine to influence our climate are barely understood (or at all) on an individual basis. What I don't get, or appreciate is, why we're suppose to JUST BELIEVE, have faith in models that take the data from all these systems we don't fully understand, combine them to come up with answers to how the Earth's climate works, then spew predictions that are constantly wrong, that time after time overestimate what is suppose to happen.

Excuses are made, the utter wrongness of previous models is brushed aside and of course a new adjusted report, with new predictions, is trotted out. Meanwhile all objections, refuting facts and hard line evidence against is ignored, the presenters vilified.

With computer modeling garbage in has always equaled garbage out. Yet we're suppose to believe the results and calmly accept misguided blatant cash grabs like carbon taxes.

Taxes which steal from poor Paul to pay rich Peter. Our government takes money from the people who can least afford it, gives it away to corporations and special interest groups (if they even bother to inform us where they are spending our money), while our schools and hospitals suffer staffing shortages, maintenance shortfalls and equipment budget cutbacks.

We live in a political world
Wisdom is thrown in jail
It rots in a cell
Is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up the trail
Bob Dylan, Political World

"Just believe that I know what's best for you and all will be fine. Go back to sleep in your pod and dream away your little doggy life. It's all good, you caused it, I'll fix it. No problemo. Just send US$15,000,000,000,000.00"

No thanks Al Gore.

Combating Pollution

I am definitely open to cleaning up our planet. Stopping the burning of fossil fuels (as much as practical) is a very good idea. Why not start by banning the use of fossil fuel based methods of transportation for humans and goods in city cores? That ban can later be stretched out to the suburbs. Advancing renewable energy usage and electric vehicle adoption along with improving electrical energy storage capabilities go hand in hand.

Instead of hydraulic fracturing and digging up the most expensive oil on the planet, Canada's tar sands, to produce what is an already outdated product (links author's timeline seems a little aggressive and 100% adoption seems unrealistic), all in a quest for energy independence. Each of the millions of fracked wells and each pipeline are ticking time bombs laid up against our most precious resource - our fresh water.

Also, still concerning our water, we could legislate away the use of chemicals in cooling towers saving billions of gallons of fresh water a year. We can make it mandatory for buildings of a certain size to have waste water heat exchangers installed to provide a good portion of the buildings heating/cooling requirements. Bio-leaching can be used to remediate old mine sites and stop acid mine drainage.

I'm going to be featuring all of the technologies mentioned above (and the companies who own the rights to them) and more in future articles. To make sure you don't miss any of the reports sign up for my ahead of the herd free newsletter.

Bard Bob Dylan is right, we do live in a political world. But cleaning up our planet is too important to leave to politicians. The people, you, me, we, them, US, all need to act. Climate change is going to happen. Humans aren't causing it and we can't stop it. But what each and every one of us can do is our own little part in cleaning up the planet.

The world is going to go clean and green, but it's obvious it isn't going to happen because of combating global climate change and it sure as heck isn't going to happen under the guidance of Al Gore et al. It's going to happen because it makes sense economically for individuals and companies to use the technologies. And isn't that, for us retail investors, how we get in on the ground floor of building something of increasing value?

Conclusion

Water vapor, methane and CO2 are not causes of global warming, they are symptoms or feedbacks - warming starts before gas levels increase.

Methane, as a greenhouse gas, is 30 times worse than CO2. Water vapor, so far the largest contributor to warming (because there is so much of it from the world's oceans), amplifies the effect of other greenhouse gases by twofold. Yet with most methane frozen in arctic tundra or at the bottom of the world's oceans it was just as impossible to 'criminalize' methane as it would have been to 'criminalize' water vapor from the Earth's oceans. How could you say you can stop the Arctic from melting or the ocean's from warming? So they picked CO2, a gas much easier to banditize and make the culprit. No matter its just .04% of our atmosphere, absolutely essential to life on this planet and that plants and animals do exceedingly well with much higher levels.