Dick Dean, owner of WFMZ-TV, and sole commentator following WFMZ News broadcasts, is a well known conservative and Trump supporter.
His opinion following news broadcasts is the only one offered viewers, never allowing an opposite view of his own message.
Ownership has its privileges.
Normally, Mr. Dean’s opinion pieces are those that lift Trump, justifying his actions, or try to shift blame onto those nasty socialist liberals.
That is the political message of his usual commentaries. His rainbows and unicorns opinion pieces on Trump are to be expected, despite the inaccuracies in what he feeds those who eagerly await his flawed view.
Earlier this week, Dean appeared again, to give a commentary following the news. As I reached for my remote to change the channel, expecting him to give an opinion on how great Trump is doing in handling the pandemic, he began with the subject of global warming.
I listened, curious as to how he would deny what 99 percent of scientists agree on. The more he rambled, the more I began to wonder if senility had taken hold of Mr. Dean.
It wasn’t Dick Dean, political pundit. It was Dick Dean, scientist.
Apparently, according to Mr. Dean, global warming isn’t the product of tiny little humans on planet earth. Dick believes we are so tiny, as to be inconsequential in our contribution to global warming.
He believes it is due to sunspots. The 11 year cycle of sunspots. To validate his point he mentions other planets heating and cooling, affected by the sun. Of course, those planets have no fragile ecosystem, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, or support life, but he didn’t mention that.
Sunspots being the cause of earth’s global warming is a theory that has no support, other than that from corporations and businessmen trying to promote an agenda that will cost them less than meeting pollution reduction laws and increase profit. They find a mouthpiece to get their message out.
Pollution laws mostly scrapped under the Trump administration, who pulled out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, allowing corporations the ability to pollute again with reduced restraint, and lax record keeping.
Dick Dean cherry picked some data to bolster his commentary. Though, I suspect that he never looked at any data. More likely, it was something he read somewhere, or someone told him, and he ran with it, eager to appear intelligent on his news appearance. After all, he offers no one the opportunity to give a counter-point to his crazy ramblings.
Recordings of the rise in the earth’s temperature and the suns affect have been made by scientists.
Mr. Dean noted that sunspots ran in tandem with rising temperatures, but he failed to mention it hasn’t been that way for decades, nor did he use comparisons in a running average.
Up until about 1970 his “sunspots cause global warming” rhetoric would have been a possible argument to present as fact, but Mr. Dean omitted information, either intentionally, or because he didn’t bother to research the crap he was spouting to those in broadcast range of his television station.
After all, he provides one-sided commentary – he’s not an investigative news journalist.
Let’s start with the known about the sun, and its affect on earth, in relation to providing heat.
The “solar constant”, that solar irradiance at the mean earth-sun distance, is approximately 1360 W m-2 (*W m-2 = watts per meter squared) .
Solar energy waxes and wanes at several time scales due to internal changes in the Sun’s energy output. The most famous is the 11-year sunspot cycle, which Dick mentioned. At the bottom of the cycle (we are currently near the bottom of the cycle), solar energy at the Earth’s surface drops by ~0.1%. One study noted a 0.1°C warming of the oceans for each 1 Wm-2 change in solar energy.
The difference between the maximum and minimum of a solar cycle is about 1-2 Wm-2. This difference is not nothing, but it is far from explaining much of the observed temperature increase in the last century, with the increase in earth’s rising temperature beginning at the start of the industrial revolution around the turn of the 20th century.
As I said, if anyone were to look at the graph of recordings taken in earth temps and the sun’s affects only before the 1970s, Dean could assume his conspiracy believing cohorts had discovered the Holy Grail of secrets that the left-wing tree huggers had been keeping from the American public.
However, in the decades that follow 1970, Mr. Dean’s “science” falls apart in dramatic fashion, leaving little doubt that his opinion of sunspot cycles being the cause of global warming is simply wishful thinking, derived from ignorance.
Sunspot irradiance remained fairly level during multiple cycles over the last 50 years, and has even declined on average during the last 10.
Global warming, however, doesn’t seem to follow Dick’s reasoning that the sun is to blame. Recorded average global warming temperature rose faster, separating the two in an ever-widening gap.
Dick must not be aware the world’s population, us tiny inconsequential humans, who numbered a mere 3.7 billion in 1970 has more than doubled in the last 50 years. We hit 7 billion in 2011 and this year the world population is 7.8 billion, with the 8 billion mark expected by 2023.
With these numbers we use more and destroy more of our natural resources, adding pollutants to the air, water, and soil.
We, the human race, with our unabated destruction of forests, and the belief that we can continue to pollute our atmosphere, poison our water and soil, are the reason for global warming.
We continue to burn fossil fuel at an alarming rate, with the only respite happening recently, due to the current pandemic. The results of which have been clear skies, not present for decades, due to the decline of exhaust from vehicles, as people remain at home.
Dick noted the current 11-year sunspot cycle is nearing its end, hinting that the rapid increase in global temps would soon come to an end. I’m not running out to buy a heavier winter coat.
Dick Dean needs to stick with cheerleading for Trump, as we can get a laugh when he speaks so adoringly of his idol.
As a scientist, he’s the usual ignorant Dick.
