Are Carbon Emissions the Cause of Global Warming?
The natural science of climatology and the social science of economics find themselves bound up with each other in the debate on global warming.
There are many economic issues to discuss concerning the government's ability to control the future of weather patterns through regulation and the like.
But so far, the debate has focused on the natural-science question of whether global warming is actually occurring, and, if so, what its cause is. Here is where the popular understanding is very much in need of correction. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (67)
Tick, Tock...Tick Tock.... Tick Tock...
Published: December 11, 2007 8:51 AM
I didn't think any peer-reviewed journal was accepting articles for publication unless they supported the carbon-emissions-cause-global-warming-hypothesis. Pretty amazing that anyone could publish a contradictory article no matter how good their evidence.
Well, even if the data doesn't support global warming, the proponents can continue their agenda using villification and character assasination. Those are the tools of the political arena, and global warming certainly has been coopted as a political support for expansion of government power.
So don't expect the issue to die. Plenty of other mythical ideas are alive and well and driving public policy...over a cliff. But thank you for pointing out the latest data!
Published: December 11, 2007 9:16 AM
Good luck convincing the watermelons with any amount of scientific evidence, I'm afraid they're here to stay.
Here's a thought-provoking film called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which includes the two main arguments made in this piece:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6772058898203776825
Published: December 11, 2007 9:19 AM
Thank you for your scientific and rational look at CO2 but this doesn't make the problem go away. What about the melting ice caps and all the other evidence that the world is warming at a significant rate? What do you think is causing this warming if not CO2? Do the high and increasing levels of CO2 and other global warming gases not concern you at all? Why are so many large companies now on the band wagaon and trying to reduce emissions if your science is correct? It is going to cost them a great deal of resources and companies don't do these things for just public relations reasons. It is hard to see this as a black and white issue to me. There is a warming problem here. Clearly the consequences of being wrong are quite serious for people living in coastal and low laying areas and for our children. What management steps would you recommend to prevent global temperatures from rising too quickly and too far? Thank you.
Published: December 11, 2007 9:46 AM
The climate science community has apparently previously recognized and laid this this issue to rest as addressed by "RealClimate" blogging climate scientists:
The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
With regard to "The Great Global Warming Swindle", trace out the contributors through:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle
Published: December 11, 2007 9:59 AM
"Science is about observational evidence trumping theoretical calculations, which is exactly what is happening here"
Good article, but what an awfully Popperian proclamation to make! I thought this site refrained from such positivistic statements.
Published: December 11, 2007 10:09 AM
From a non-linear (i.e., exponential) perspective, AGV is a non-issue. And to the extent that the free market manages to work its routine wonders, all will be well:
"We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth), but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years. Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences, such as global warming, fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem." -- http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?
Published: December 11, 2007 10:57 AM
Bruce:
There has been a natural temperature cycle since the beginning of time. Of course now this natural cycle is being bastardized and politicized because it's helpful to certain political causes. For example, it's a great way for governments to further enslave the people.
Why have big corporations jumped on the bandwagon? That's not hard to see; if you can halt new businesses from entering your market by making ridiculous environmental regulations, it's good for the business. That is not to mention them cashing in on this "green" craze that allows them to charge more for less as long as they put some environmental propaganga on the box.
But on second hand, if you say it's for the kids, then we must enslave ourselves so that their skin doesn't melt due to the 4 degree (based on flawed data) temperature increase.
Al Gore is not a good choice for someone to blindly follow.
Published: December 11, 2007 11:16 AM
Can someone point me to data indicating massive declines in the value of waterfront property anywhere in the world? As much as theory can predict, market outcomes reveal. And since our vanishing ice caps are melting at such a rapid pace that low-lying areas will soon be flooded, I can get a really good deal on beachfront property right now, can't I?
And malinvestments due to Fed policy don't count! Even where property values are falling, those on the waterfront would have to be falling the most, since their useful lifetime is the shortest (or alternatively would require more investments to combat the ever rising tide). Any help appreciated. Thanks!
Published: December 11, 2007 11:47 AM
It seems to me that we should ask 19000 degreed scientists what they think:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p37.htm
And the Gore and the UN declare the "consensus" is effectively unanimous .... yeah right.
Published: December 11, 2007 11:50 AM
Bruce: "What about the melting ice caps and all the other evidence that the world is warming at a significant rate?"
I don't think anyone is claiming that the earth isn't warming. The question is the cause and how much it will warm in the future.
Bruce: "What do you think is causing this warming if not CO2?"
Cycles in the sun are the most commonly suggested alternative. The founder of the weather channel suggests the the correlation between CO2 and warming has more to do with the ability of warm air to hold more CO2 than can cooler air. This is similar to the way that warm air can hold more water vapor, also a greehouse gas, than can cooler air.
Bruce: "Do the high and increasing levels of CO2 and other global warming gases not concern you at all?"
Not me.
Bruce: "Why are so many large companies now on the band wagaon and trying to reduce emissions if your science is correct?"
I would say blackmail by the watermelons.
Published: December 11, 2007 11:59 AM
Now water vapor is a global warming gas? I do not need satallites or baloons to see this is crap.
Yes water vapor has a higher heat capacity and lower thermal conductivity than CO2 BUT!!!!!!
The cloud form of water vapor reflects sunlight (The real cause of global warming) from hitting the earth surface. So the surface of earth is COOLER!!!!! Have you ever experienced it getting colder when a thunderstorm moves into your local area.
This whole global warming this is silly. It defies not only science but common sense as well.
Published: December 11, 2007 12:33 PM
It is widely assumed that more atmospheric CO2 results, perforce, in higher temperatures, alomost in a 1 to 1 fashion. This is not accurate.
CO2's effect on temperature is logarithmic. Its effect actually decreases as more CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere. For example, it would require 340 units of additional CO2 to achieve the same increase in temperature as the first 40 units.
Each additional unit of CO2 has a decreasing, not increasing, effect on temperature. You'd need an exponential increase in CO2 to produce real effects, not a linear one, and that just isn't going to happen.
Once the CO2 bands of the spectrum become saturated they don't contribute to warming. In short, CO2's ability to influence temperature is actually quite limited.
It seems far more likely that higher temps cause greater CO2 levels. From the early 1800s to 1961, reliable chemical testing - accurate to about 3% -revealed that CO2 levels varied greatly (See Ernst Beck). Ice core samples, upon which the IPCC relied, seem to be greatly inaccurate and tend to give artificially low CO2 readings (See Zbigniew Jaworowski), falsely suggesting dramatically lower pre-industrial CO2 levels. Hence, the now discredited "hockey stick."
CO2 levels were sometimes higher in the 19th century than now and they peaked in 1940 at about 450 ppm, about 80 parts higher than we currently have. What's significant about 1940? It marked the end of a great warming period. First the warming, then the CO2 - not the other way around. The earth cooled for about 40 years after that.
Ultimately the science will discredit the notion of AGW. Unfortunately, it probably doesn't matter. The snowball has gathered too much speed and it is no longer a scientific, but a political, issue. The planners have a new toy with which to play, and they're not about to let the scientific details stand in the way of their dreams of assuming virtual control over the entire global economic system.
Published: December 11, 2007 12:37 PM
In the 70's and 80's, there were record lows in the Northeast and they we were heading towards another ice age. Then things warmed up and the concensus was that we weren't heading for an ice age. In what I believe was 1995, we had 28 winter storms, and again there was talk of the possibility of an ice age. Then it warmed up and we began to discuss global warming.
As for the oil companies going "green" . . . they're using political correctness to gain greater market share. They are after all being made out to be villians. A few weeks ago, Bush blamed the oil companies for our financial woes. Never mind that oil was approximately $30/barrel at the beginning of the war in Iraq.
Published: December 11, 2007 12:45 PM
Whether we arm them with good science or bad science, we can have confidence that the economic planners (who agree with Al Gore that the climate is a "political" issue) will do the wrong thing.
An intelligent free market will make the best decision.
Published: December 11, 2007 12:50 PM
Please please please...can I blame those dirty rotten Cavemen for the Iceage...pleaaaaaaaase?
The earth temperature cycle sounds more logical to me...like the ABCT, only in this case we know who causes the BC.
Mother Nature has not revealed all her secrets, yet.
Published: December 11, 2007 1:00 PM
Brian,
While others have made some excellent points on this thread, you deserve to be especially commended for noting the fact that the effect on temperature of increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is logarithmic and not linear. This fact is not mentioned too frequently by the supporters of AGW, but it is quite significant to any conclusions that can be drawn regarding the effect of increasing CO2 levels on temperature.
Published: December 11, 2007 1:28 PM
Underlying the AGW debate is a persistent myth that nature is static or in balance, nature is never static nor balanced it constantly undergoes change, see danielbbotkin.com. The climate likewise is always changing. The current debate centers on "man" as the cause, but any "unbiased" reading of the "data" shows that we are still within the level of natural variation.
"Temperature data" is a rather loose term. The only reliable direct data we have is for the developed world during the last 100 years or less and even that has significant problems with the methods of measurement and site selection. Satellite data from the last 25 years or so is better but not without limitations.
Real question is "should" we do anything about it to secure our future? Yes, create as much wealth as possible so that future generations will have the resources to manage what ever that changes produces. Keep in mind that even the low end of C02 abatement that environmentalist recommend will reduce global GDP 3% per year, which means that global GDP is reduced by 50% in ~25 years. Wealth that could have been used to more than offset any effect of AGW, if they in fact did occur.
Published: December 11, 2007 1:29 PM
Well can I finally turn up the heat here in Los Angeles, I'm freezing. It's been 10 degrees below average this month and last winter was the coldest I remember in 30 years here.
Maybe I better shut up before all the global cooling people pounce on me.
Published: December 11, 2007 1:48 PM
The petition project:
Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine
Case Study: The Oregon Petition
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine#Case_Study:_The_Oregon_Petition
It is not the only one:
Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Leipzig_Declaration_on_Global_Climate_Change
Climate change denial
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
Global warming controversy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
Published: December 11, 2007 2:32 PM
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I didn't think any peer-reviewed journal was accepting articles for publication unless they supported the carbon-emissions-cause-global-warming-hypothesis.
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Yes I can't imagine why a peer-reviewed science journal would not accept articles from David Evans, just because he is an electrical engineer and appears to have no background whatsoever in natural science. On the other hand he claims to be "an exceptionally productive programmer on his posted resume" and that has to count for something right?
Published: December 11, 2007 3:47 PM
If CO2 is the cause of global warming why isn't there a rise in temperature at night? Unless of course CO2 is phototropic and continually drags itself around the globe following the Sun...
http://gustofhotair.blogspot.com/
I find it heartening that most of the posts here at Mises are usually in defiance of all main stream thought. Mises is a welcome refuge from all the Socialist blithering out there.
Published: December 11, 2007 4:05 PM
Fundamentalist,
"Cycles in the sun are the most commonly suggested alternative. The founder of the weather channel suggests the the correlation between CO2 and warming has more to do with the ability of warm air to hold more CO2 than can cooler air. This is similar to the way that warm air can hold more water vapor, also a greehouse gas, than can cooler air."
I am in agreement about the cycles in the sun. But because I have too much time on my hands, I'm going to combine the two ideas.
Just as you can generally dissolve more of a substance in warm water than cold, you can dissolve more CO2 in warm air. It would also make sense that the air would have a saturation point.
Taking it a step further, do you think it's possible that there might be a synergistic effect between the warm air and the CO2, in that the CO2 could raise the temperature of the air, thereby increasing the air's saturation point? The increased saturation point permits the absorption of more CO2 and so on.
Based on those assumptions, my next guess would be that the shorter days of the fall season with its decreased input of the sun's energy, would reverse the process. Is it possible that the process might take longer to reverse with each passing year?
Of course, what I'm saying is complete speculation on my part.
Published: December 11, 2007 4:21 PM
"Science is about observational evidence trumping theoretical calculations..."
True... but politics is about convincing people you can save them from disaster if only they will surrender their wealth and power, and Climate Change is political.
'Peer review' is treated as a hold grail, not to be doubted, and it is a great mechanism for improving conventional ideas. Unfortunately it is equally good at supressing anything considered unconventional.
You get to be an 'expert' by your experise in past and current theories, not future ones.
Most of the major advances in science were rejected by the experts ('peers') of the time.
'Twas ever thus.
Cheers,
Published: December 11, 2007 4:34 PM
"Why are so many large companies now on the band wagaon and trying to reduce emissions if your science is correct?" -Bruce
Because large companies will milk the national or worldwide government program that "fixes" the CO2 "problem".
You might as well ask why large Agribusiness supports that federal farm bill... after all, it is expensive to comply with all the regulations and the bill is "supposed to" help "family farmers". Maybe it's because it overwhelmingly helps large farms and agribusiness...
Published: December 11, 2007 5:14 PM
"An intelligent free market will make the best decision."
I'm not so sure. And I think that's why free Austrian economist take up the debate on global warming issue opposite what's in the mainstream scientific literature. Isn't it interesting to a T that almost all such economist take a common skeptical position on aa subject seemingly completely unrelated to economics.
If man made global warming IS real the economic philosphical detruction may be as bad as the Earthly destruction it may wrought.
Published: December 11, 2007 5:19 PM
"Yes I can't imagine why a peer-reviewed science journal would not accept articles from David Evans, just because he is an electrical engineer and appears to have no background whatsoever in natural science." -Nick, The Troll
You obviously can't imagine even bothering to look up what it takes to become an electrical engineer, let alone knowing any friends (students who've just gone through the degree program) and family who are electrical engineers. What a joke.
Non-Trolls should know that most of this global warming hysteria is based on statistics and - shock! - plenty of people have statistics backgrounds, even if they don't have a degree in a natural science.
Published: December 11, 2007 5:25 PM
Nick,
good work on the character assasination (in the best tradition of the "if he doesn't have a PHD he cannot know what he is talking about" crowd) of David. If you had read his previous article you would know that he spent 6 years developing carbon accounting models for the Australian Government, so he may have some valid experience from which to base an opinion.
If having high tertiary qualifications is required to make a comment, what are your qualifications, or should we discount everything you say. (I don't think we should by the way.)
JMG3Y, I read the articles on the links you sugessted, and found that in the second, the author talks about some unknown initial warming, and that CO2 could (he says this several times) be responsible for the remaining 5/6ths of the warming. By the end of the article is is not could, but a matter of fact that the warming is caused by CO2. Poor logic by any account.
My thoughts are that the global climate is a hugely complex network with a myriad of feedback mechanisms, very similar to an economy. Just as it is impossible to predict what the overall result may be to an intervention in an economy, my feelings are that it is impossible to predict the results to an intervention in climate change.
We have seen governments combat poverty, amongst other things, with a notable lack of success considering the vast amount of resources that have been expended. I have no doubt that the attempt to modify the climate will be just as successful.
CO2 = silver bullet for climate change.
In my experience silver bullets don't exist, but results in a complex network system are caused by a whole range of large and small events.
I acknowledge that the climate is changing, but the current theory that is being used to explain it appears to have too many holes, and the observable data does not seem to fit the theory. In this case I feel it irresponsible to commit large amounts of funding to fix something we do not even understand yet.
Published: December 11, 2007 6:03 PM
"Just as you can generally dissolve more of a substance in warm water than cold, you can dissolve more CO2 in warm air. It would also make sense that the air would have a saturation point." - IMHO
Actually, I believe it's the reverse with co2 and water. The higher the temperature, the less co2 disolves in water. This should explain why as the oceans warm up, more co2 is released into the air. That could be the explanation for why co2 lags temperature. Can someone verify this, as I'm not an expert.
Published: December 11, 2007 6:57 PM
Sometimes, I have this silly idea that the 'climate change' debate should be renamed to 'weather change'.
But more seriously, and hopefully not too far out of topic: how good is the science (practice? technology?) of weather forecasting?
In other words, how good are the forecasts nowadays, at least roughly, the future? I have read quite a few arguments for and against GW, and have already picked my leaning, but this is one thing I haven't seen elaborated yet.
Anybody has some data on its reliability?
Published: December 11, 2007 7:09 PM
Eric,
I am not a natural scientist, but I believe the general principle is that a gas dissolves less readily in a warmer than a cooler liquid. This not only applies to CO2 and water, but to gasses and liquids in general.
Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Published: December 11, 2007 7:44 PM
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Sometimes, I have this silly idea that the 'climate change' debate should be renamed to 'weather change'.
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It should not. Climate is a measure of weather patterns over a particular length of time. These two concepts are like apples, and er.. very large sacks of apples. The fact that discrete weather events like thunderstorms are difficult to forecast does not imply that aggregate measures are hard to predict
Published: December 11, 2007 9:55 PM
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Can someone point me to data indicating massive declines in the value of waterfront property anywhere in the world?
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I think your question is really 'why do markets experience sudden and violent corrections'.
Possibly because investors do not have perfect information and often behave emotionally rather than rationally.
For instructive examples, google 'tulip mania', 'dot com bubble', 'stock market crashes'
Published: December 11, 2007 10:04 PM
"[C)2] Omitting rocks, 75 percent is stored in the oceans; 20 percent in the coal, oil and gas deposits; and about 1.4 percent in the atmosphere. The atmosphere itself is only about 0.04 percent carbon dioxide.
"Human activity converts about 0.05 percent of the coal, oil and gas, or about 0.01 percent of the total, into carbon dioxide.
http://www.sitewave.net/news/s49p1373.htm
"Of all the other GHGs in the atmosphere (mostly CO2 and CH4), the vast majority is non-anthropogenic. Ergo; how much of the total is really caused by humankind (ignoring our own CO2 exhaust (i.e. from breathing) for now)? It's only a fraction of a percent!! Maybe 0.2. So let's assume we stop ALL manmade CO2 emissions. How much impact could that possibly have on our atmosphere, when the reduction is only 0.2% of the total? That amount is within the error range of the instruments used to measure atmospheric variables, therefore a reduction of 0.2% in atmospheric CO2 loading cannot even be discerned!!"
http://www.junkscience.com/news/jonker.htm
if the above information is true - why does the worry over anthropog_CO2 continue??
Published: December 11, 2007 10:32 PM
JMG3Y:
The climate science community has apparently previously recognized and laid this this issue to rest as addressed by "RealClimate" blogging climate scientists:
The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)
From the blog:
First of all, saying "historically" is misleading, because Barton is actually talking about CO2 changes on very long (glacial-interglacial) timescales. On historical timescales, CO2 has definitely led, not lagged, temperature.
The blogger uses the "historical" concept as saying "if we look at it from afar". This is intellectual dishonesty of the highest order. The CO2 increase, according to the readings, started 800 years after the end of the Ice Age, that is when temperatures started to rise. Either CO2 came first, or it did not. According to the samples, it did NOT. So the blogger cannot say now that it led the temperature rise. It is the same as Obi Wan Kenobi saying "Well, I said the truth from a certain point of view, Luke!".
But in any case, it doesn't really matter for the problem at hand (global warming). We know why CO2 is increasing now, and the direct radiative effects of CO2 on climate have been known for more than 100 years.
Basically "Well, the hell with evidence! We *know* [ex catedra] what's going on here, don't we???" Statements like these readily told me that the bloggers at RealClimate.com are just a bunch of religious cranks.
Published: December 11, 2007 11:56 PM
"I think your question is really 'why do markets experience sudden and violent corrections'.
Possibly because investors do not have perfect information and often behave emotionally rather than rationally.
For instructive examples, google 'tulip mania', 'dot com bubble', 'stock market crashes'"
LOL This nonsense again. Better answer: possibly b/c the Fed is constantly messing with the monetary system.
And dear Nick, you haven't said, what exactly are your credentials on the matter of climate change? PHD in Trolling?
Published: December 12, 2007 6:52 AM
What happened to all that talk about the ozone hole that would kill us all?
Published: December 12, 2007 7:01 AM
It's good to see the Pope clarifying his views on this: ""It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions..."
Published: December 12, 2007 8:05 AM
Oh, you silly scientists with your highfalutin facts and fancy-shmancy cause and effect just don't get it. We're talking about global political power and control to make a better world where the proper people with correct ideas are in charge. Why can't you just accept it?
Published: December 12, 2007 8:09 AM
Incredible, the Pope speaking words of wisdom. :)
Published: December 12, 2007 8:30 AM
There was a blurb also about the melting ice caps causing ocean levels to rise. Isn't it true that the north pole is sitting in water already so that when the ice melts it has relatively little affect on levels? And when ice melts it loses 6 percent of it's volume? Doesn't this mean that the only ice melt that will have an affect on levels would be glacier and other land based ice?
Published: December 12, 2007 9:59 AM
I think your question is really 'why do markets experience sudden and violent corrections'.
We can only assume you mean a kind of metaphorical "violence," as opposed to the, you know, real violence that government uses to do every single thing it does, like force banks to become members of the Federal Reserve system, seize monopolistic control over the money supply, etc.
Published: December 12, 2007 11:17 AM
Aah, so much nonsense (opportunity!) and so little time! (Important rent-seeking opportunities are calling, you know.)
Sorry, Yancy!
Published: December 12, 2007 12:38 PM
Hole in the ozone layer, CFCs, now global warming. It's funny to see the environmentalists in bed with the corporations.
My recent run in with the CFC farse: I use an inhaler for when I am having an asthma attack and cant breathe. I go to get my Rx refilled yesterday, and it costs me more than double as much as it used to. Turns out drug companies had lobbied congress to ban my inhaler because it used cfc propellents, and of course the only generic made used cfcs. The alternative is an HFA propellant with ethanol in there (maybe big farming had a hand in the ruling) that doesn't work as well and costs more than double due to the lack of a generic. So people die of asphyxia but at least the big rent-seeking-bastard corporations make their blood money. All brought to you by environmentalists, rent seeking corportates, and government.
Published: December 12, 2007 1:19 PM
muirgeo: "Isn't it interesting to a T that almost all such economist take a common skeptical position on aa subject seemingly completely unrelated to economics."
Good economics provides training in analysis, logic and assessment of evidence which can be applied to any subject. GW is not rocket surgery. Watermelons try to make it seem like subject so complex that it is best to leave the answers to the experts. But it's not. Any person of average intelligence can understand the arguments and assess the evidence.
muirgeo: "If man made global warming IS real the economic philosphical detruction may be as bad as the Earthly destruction it may wrought."
Check out "How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place" by Bjorn Lumberg. Lumberg shows that the problems that watermelons claim GW will cause are far, far down the list of priorities using cost/benefit analysis.
Published: December 12, 2007 2:42 PM
Matthew: "Can someone point me to data indicating massive declines in the value of waterfront property anywhere in the world?"
In a free market, you would be right. But the government has distorted the market for beach front property with its housing insurance. The Feds created home insurance for homes built near the water because no private company would insure them. Only poor people built near the water because the land was cheaper. Wealthier people built inland. Probably, somebody who owned beach front property realized that if they could get the feds to insure it, its value would increase and he could dump it on some suckers. Building on beaches skyrocketed after the federal insurance became available.
As a result, even if owners of beach front property could see the ocean rising daily, they wouldn't be worried because they know Uncle Sam will bail them out.
Published: December 12, 2007 2:50 PM
Can someone point me to data indicating massive declines in the value of waterfront property anywhere in the world?
New Orleans?
Published: December 12, 2007 3:46 PM
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What happened to all that talk about the ozone hole that would kill us all?
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It is currently shrinking thanks to government regulation (according to the American Geophysical Union)
Published: December 12, 2007 4:52 PM
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There was a blurb also about the melting ice caps causing ocean levels to rise. Isn't it true that the north pole is sitting in water already so that when the ice melts it has relatively little affect on levels? And when ice melts it loses 6 percent of it's volume? Doesn't this mean that the only ice melt that will have an affect on levels would be glacier and other land based ice?
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Yes and Greenland has 2.85 million km³ of ice, on land.
Published: December 12, 2007 4:56 PM
Troll, you haven't responded; just what are your credentials, besides a tendency to leave inane commentary?
Published: December 12, 2007 6:08 PM
*thanks to government regulation*
Yes, Nick Troll, and government regulations cure cancer and have ended poverty... at least they would if only those damn capitalist freedom-loving individuals would get out of the noble government's way.
Published: December 12, 2007 7:51 PM
As I've said before: the science is over.
All that's left is the taxing. That will start soon (where it hasn't already started) and it will continue LONG past the time when global warming has ceased to be perceived as a threat to anything. And the damage it does will vastly exceed anything global warming itself could do.
Published: December 12, 2007 9:29 PM
Well, at least the earth still orbits the sun ... thanks to government regulation.
Published: December 12, 2007 9:59 PM
Jeff, as for the Pope, beauty is in the eye of the beholder (more on the Mail`s ridiculous spin below), but surely you appreciated the ironies in the Pope calling for prudence in the face of ideological presssures?
A brief reaction from a climate science perspective is here: http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2007/12/12/the-ideology-of-climate-change/#respond
The Pope`s full speech, which also addresses war, nuclear threats and problems with development, is here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-xvi_mes_20071208_xli-world-day-peace_en.html. WHile considered, a fair amount is rather muddled.
But here is a fuller excerpt of the portions relating to environmental issues:
The family, the human community and the environment
- The family needs a home, a fit environment in which to develop its proper relationships. For the human family, this home is the earth, the environment that God the Creator has given us to inhabit with creativity and responsibility.
- We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion.
- Human beings, obviously, are of supreme worth vis-à-vis creation as a whole. Respecting the environment does not mean considering material or animal nature more important than man. Rather, it means not selfishly considering nature to be at the complete disposal of our own interests, for future generations also have the right to reap its benefits and to exhibit towards nature the same responsible freedom that we claim for ourselves. Nor must we overlook the poor, who are excluded in many cases from the goods of creation destined for all.
- Humanity today is rightly concerned about the ecological balance of tomorrow. It is important for assessments in this regard to be carried out prudently, in dialogue with experts and people of wisdom, uninhibited by ideological pressure to draw hasty conclusions, and above all with the aim of reaching agreement on a model of sustainable development capable of ensuring the well-being of all while respecting environmental balances.
- If the protection of the environment involves costs, they should be justly distributed, taking due account of the different levels of development of various countries and the need for solidarity with future generations.
- Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying.
- In this regard, it is essential to “sense” that the earth is “our common home” and, in our stewardship and service to all, to choose the path of dialogue rather than the path of unilateral decisions.
- Further international agencies may need to be established in order to confront together the stewardship of this “home” of ours; more important, however, is the need for ever greater conviction about the need for responsible cooperation.
- The problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short. In order to face this situation effectively, there is a need to act in harmony.
- One area where there is a particular need to intensify dialogue between nations is that of the stewardship of the earth's energy resources. The technologically advanced countries are facing two pressing needs in this regard: on the one hand, to reassess the high levels of consumption due to the present model of development, and on the other hand to invest sufficient resources in the search for alternative sources of energy and for greater energy efficiency. The emerging counties are hungry for energy, but at times this hunger is met in a way harmful to poor countries which, due to their insufficient infrastructures, including their technological infrastructures, are forced to undersell the energy resources they do possess. At times, their very political freedom is compromised by forms of protectorate or, in any case, by forms of conditioning which appear clearly humiliating.
Seems like a call for prompt collective action, to me.
Published: December 12, 2007 10:50 PM
Eric and Dennis,
You two are right. Warmer water would cause gasses to expand. So, basically ever since the end of the last ice age, as the oceans warm up, more CO2 gets released.
Makes sense. Thanks.
Published: December 13, 2007 12:19 AM
Jeff, allow me to commend you and LvMI, a bastion of rational economic thinking, liberty and human welfare, on its decision to expand its influence on (and help its supporters to gird their loins for) the important and complex battle over domestic and international climate change-related policy by turning away from its strengths -economic analysis - in favor of providing a soap box for short and simple "exposes" on climate science by self-made and self-confident experts.
This is clearly just what the doctor ordered, given the warm reception and acclaim - as well as piercing and cogent questions and observations - that David Evans has earned here. As this post propagates through the intertubes, I can positvely FEEL the serious policy world turning toward LvMI and sensing that an important voice of reason, judgment, gravitas and, above all, clear scientific thinking, has just arrived on the scene.
By all means, keep these "scientific" posts coming!
Regards,
Tom
PS: I am not troubled in the least that:
- David Evans has himself previously said that "my only relevant qualification in this debate is that I saw the interaction of science and politics first hand, and that I was on the global warming gravy train" and, when pointed out that Sen. Inhofe staffer Marc Marano had referred to Morano had referred to Evans as "a prominent scientist" said "It never occurred to me that he could be referring to me!" and "Morano is exaggerating both my prominence and agenda, and assuming my motivations for his own ends. A typical political approach, if I might point out." http://blog.mises.org/archives/006581.asp This forthrightness, even though in little evidence on Evan`s current post, is admirable and certainly doesn`t disqualify him from trying explain his understanding of the science. In fact, it increases his credibility vis-a-vis all of those scientists who publish their work in "scientific journals" or hide behind thousands of pages of publicly-available reports and summaries, or brazenly trumpet their ideology on accessible blogs, and all of their deluded, misanthropic, self-seeking and/or struthious KoolAid swallowers throughout wide swathes of the business world and the rest of the "establishment".
- Or that Evans, while observing that atmospheric CO2 trails rising temperatures in the paleo record, fails to note that the rising CO2 levels today are due to man, that link between warming oceans and further releases of oceanic CO2 may imply for future warming, or to note obvious ongoing warming or to suggest alternate mechanisms.
- Or the neat way in which he tries to discredit imperfect climate models by assuming the reliability of their results, without referring to the papers he is relying on (by authors previously criticized and subsequently addressed by notorius AGW warmers here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/#more-509 ).
- Or that, while focussing on possible flaws in climate models, ignores the actual abundant and startling evidence for ongoing climate.
Published: December 13, 2007 12:31 AM
A prominent investor has said that speculators think linear trend; investors think reversion to the mean. I think this applies to the issue of GW as well. GW hysteria thinks linear, or exponential trend; common sense says look for the reversion to the mean on temperatures.
TT: "The technologically advanced countries are facing two pressing needs in this regard: on the one hand, to reassess the high levels of consumption due to the present model of development..."
How do we know the levels of consumption are too high?
TT: "... and on the other hand to invest sufficient resources in the search for alternative sources of energy and for greater energy efficiency."
I don't think we could possibly invest more. All of the major oil companies are investing billions in research on ethanol and hydrogen powered vehicles. Electric utilities have billions invested in hydrogen fuel cells and wind power. The technology already exists for a smooth transition to the next generation of energy; all that's lacking is price and market incentives.
TT: "The emerging counties are hungry for energy, but at times this hunger is met in a way harmful to poor countries which, due to their insufficient infrastructures, including their technological infrastructures, are forced to undersell the energy resources they do possess."
How do we know that they "undersell" (I assume you mean the price below the market) their energy resources?
Published: December 13, 2007 9:02 AM
I remember a meteorologist in Oklahoma City, Gary England with Channel 9, saying in 1989 that a warmer climate would increase humidity and produce low level clouds that would block energy from the sun and counter GW. He added that GW climate models do a poor job of modeling this effect. It has taken other scientists almost 20 years to catch up to Gary.
Published: December 13, 2007 10:36 AM
Roger, thanks for complementing my quotes from the Pope's statement with obviously sensible observations, to which certainly others can be added.
My point was that the Mail was unjustified in spinning the Pope's statement as a skeptical view on climate, environmental and developmental issues, was unjustified. Rather, the Pope seems to be trying to offer a muddled "wisdom" of HASTY prudence (and collective action):
"We need to care for the environment: it has been entrusted to men and women to be protected and cultivated with responsible freedom, with the good of all as a constant guiding criterion. ... Prudence does not mean failing to accept responsibilities and postponing decisions; it means being committed to making joint decisions after pondering responsibly the road to be taken, decisions aimed at strengthening that covenant between human beings and the environment ....
The problems looming on the horizon are complex and time is short.
Published: December 13, 2007 11:23 PM
FWIW, there actually IS a good discussion of science and economic issues raised by the David Evans piece over at Arnold Kling's and Byan Caplan's EconLog: http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/12/global_warming_10.html#comments.
Those who are interested in links to where the scientific issues are discussed should look there (adults only; I also do not want to contribute to the delinquency of minors!).
Published: December 14, 2007 8:00 AM
Global Warming – Man Made or Nature’s Cycle R8.
The debate: Is the observed global warming natural or man made?
Global Warming or natural climatic rhythm?
Global Warming Man made or natural cycle?
Compiled by Yehuda Draiman, Energy Analyst
An extensive look at Global Warming – Cause and effect.
The dominant greenhouse gas is WATER, not carbon dioxide. It is responsible for up to 95% of the so-called "greenhouse effect". Carbon dioxide is only a minor player, and Man's activities put only about 3% as much CO2 into the atmosphere yearly as does Nature. How does the atmosphere distinguish between them? Its concentration is believed to have increased from 0.00028 of the atmosphere to 0.00038 over the past couple of hundred years.
There are numerous pros and cons as to the cause of Global Warming.
After some study and research I share with you the various opinions.
This consensus in this on-line article represents the views of some researchers and forecasters, but does not necessarily represent the views of all scientists. It was not the intention of this article to discount the presence of a human-induced global warming element or to attempt to claim that such an element is not present. There is a robust, on-going discussion on climate change within the scientific community.
It takes a certain kind of gumption to stand up to the status quo.
Folks who challenge the mainstream media and popular culture are subjected to some of the nastiest insults and character assassinations. And such retribution is nowhere more severe than for those who take issue with popular views about global warming.
There are a number of very bright climatologists and meteorologists out there who believe that this century’s warming trend is neither critical nor man made. Now you can agree or disagree with these folks. But you can’t pretend that these folks are crazies or ill informed or just in it for the money. They believe that the models used by the “We’re all going to die!” global warming worriers are far too severe and fail to take enough natural factors into consideration in their climate models. For their audacity to take on the status quo, they have been censured, excoriated and labeled as lackeys for the oil companies.
One degree. On a thermometer, it doesn't seem like much at all. But that degree has sparked intense debate among experts who monitor the temperature on Earth.
In a new report issued by a leading group of scientists and meteorologists, research shows the planet has warmed one degree during the last 100 years. That report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts that Earth will continue to warm between 2 and 10 degrees during the next century.
Those researchers believe that global warming could be boosting the planet's temperature. Global warming is a phenomenon of temperatures rising on Earth. Scientists have said that some human activities cause gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to build up in the atmosphere. Those gases trap heat closer to Earth's surface giving the planet a worldwide fever.
Many experts say two chemicals -- carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide -- are most responsible for global warming. Cars, trucks and factories around the world emit those chemicals everyday. Once in the atmosphere, those chemicals act as big reflectors, bouncing back sun rays to the Earth and warming the planet.
But there are scientists, climatologists and weather watchers who believe that the warming trend is not an aberrant threat, but part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling on Earth. "We just haven't been around long enough to know if it's a fact," said CNN weather anchor Orelon Sidney. "The Earth is more than 4 billion years old and humans haven't been around that long. So this could just be a part of cycle."
The scientists who believe the Earth is warming say years of research are needed to determine why.
Dr. Lonnie Thompson, a researcher at the Byrd Polar Research Center located at Ohio State University, is among those attempting to discover the causes of global warming. He spends many months away from his home in search of answers.
Thompson's latest trek to the Andes Mountains showed substantial changes in a glacier.
"The glacier we have been studying has been melting at an unbelievable rate," Thompson said. "Where there was once ice, there is now a lake." Thompson photographed the new lake and glacier to show "obvious changes in our world because of temperature increase," he said. Thompson said a warmer earth could lead to more erratic weather. "If energy in the system -- the heat on the Earth's climate system --increases, then you're going to have more water vapor. More water vapor feeds more storms -- larger hurricanes, maybe larger snowstorms too."
As a meteorology student at the University of Maryland, Antony Chen is among those who would watch for those weather changes. He is part of the next generation of researchers who will have to figure out what's behind the cause of the temperature bump.
Chen says we have to look at the big picture then determine what changes people should make on the local level. "We need to know what's going on in the atmosphere, the magnitude of changes we are making to our climate system," Chen said. "Then we can start coming up with solutions."
Professor Bruce Doddridge is one of Chen's professors and is encouraged by the caliber of young people he's seen entering the earth sciences. "I'm impressed with the variety of smart and intelligent people coming through that can do this work," he said.
Doddridge concedes that there are many potential causes of global warming, but said he believes the new technology could help assess and solve the problem. "The issues are becoming more complicated," Doddridge said, "but I think the tools we have to work with are becoming more sophisticated."
Many experts say two chemicals -- carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide -- are most responsible for global warming. Cars, trucks and factories around the world emit those chemicals everyday. Once in the atmosphere, those chemicals act as big reflectors, bouncing back sun rays to the Earth and warming the planet.
But there are scientists, climatologists and weather watchers who believe that the warming trend is not an aberrant threat, but part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling on Earth. "We just haven't been around long enough to know if it's a fact," said CNN weather anchor Orelon Sidney. "The Earth is more than 4 billion years old and humans haven't been around that long. So this could just be a part of cycle."
The scientists who believe the Earth is warming say years of research are needed to determine why.
Dr. Lonnie Thompson, a researcher at the Byrd Polar Research Center located at Ohio State University, is among those attempting to discover the causes of global warming. He spends many months away from his home in search of answers.
1. The authors of Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years, say that history, ice core studies and stalagmites all agree on a natural cycle at roughly that interval that is superimposed on the longer, stronger ice ages and interglacial phases.
They point as evidence of this natural cycle to the “Climate Optimum” - a period of warmer and wetter weather than the present Earth’s climate, which took place 9,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago, and a cooling event 2,600 years ago.
During the Roman warming period from 200 BC to around AD 600 North Africa and the Sahara were wetter and supported crops. In more recent times they point to the medieval warming of 900 to 1300, when Eric the Red’s descendant’s colonized Greenland and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1850 which saw the Norse dairy farmers on Greenland grow short from malnutrition and eventually die out.
Mr. Avery, a former US agriculture official whose celebrated earlier book was Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High Yield Farming suggests that the natural cycle of warming and cooling may come from variations in cosmic rays which have been linked to cloud formation.
This theory was validated in a recent paper in a Royal Society journal by scientists from the Danish National Space Centre who showed that sub-atomic particles - cosmic rays from exploding stars - play a major role in making clouds. During the past century cosmic rays became scarcer as vigorous activity by the sun forced them away. So there was less cloud cover to reflect away sunlight and a warmer world, according to the Danish scientists.
2. Policymakers have been arguing for nearly a decade over what to do about global warming. Noticeably missing from this debate has been any mention of the fact that natural fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature, not Man, are the likely explanation for any recent warming.
Proponents of the global warming theory repeatedly cite a 1.5° F temperature increase over the last 150 years as evidence that man-made CO2 is dangerously heating up the planet and will cause huge flooding, severe storms, disease and a mass exodus of environmental refugees. Based on this, the Clinton Administration and its environmental allies want Congress to ratify a treaty that will hike consumer prices 40 percent and cost the American economy $3.3 trillion over 20 years. But the apocalyptic predictions on which they justify these drastic steps are totally unsubstantiated and ignore some fundamental truths about the Earth's climatic behavior.
The fact is, the planet's temperature is constantly rising and falling. To put the current warming trend in perspective, it's important to understand the Earth's geological behavior.
Over the last 700,000 years, the climate has operated on a relatively predictable schedule of 100,000-year glaciations cycles. Each glaciations cycle is typically characterized by 90,000 years of cooling, an ice age, followed by an abrupt warming period, called an interglacial, which lasts 10,000-12,000 years. The last ice age reached its coolest point 18,000 to 20,000 years ago when the average temperature was 9-12.6° F cooler than present. Earth is currently in a warm interglacial called the Holocene that began 10,700 years ago.
Although precise temperature readings over the entire period of geologic history are not available, enough is known to establish climatic trends. During the Holocene, there have been about seven major warming and cooling trends, some lasting as long as 3000 years, others as short as 650. Most interesting of all, however, is that the temperature variation in many of these periods averaged as much as 1.8° F, .3° F more than the temperature increase of the last 150 years. Furthermore, of the six major temperature variations occurring prior to the current era, three produced temperatures warmer than the present average temperature of 59° F while three produced cooler temperatures.
For example, when the Holocene began as the Earth was coming out of the last Ice Age around 8700 B.C., the average global temperature was about 6° F cooler than it is today. By 7500 B.C., the climate had warmed to 60° F, 1° F warmer than the current average temperature. However, the temperature fell again by nearly 2° F over the next 1,000 years, settling at an average of 1° F cooler than the current climate.
Between 6500 and 3500 B.C., the temperature increased from 58° F to 62° F. This is the warmest the Earth has been during the Holocene, which is why scientists refer to the period as the Holocene Maximum. Since the temperature of the Holocene Maximum is close to what global warming models project for the Earth by 2100, how Mankind faired during the era is instructive. The most striking fact is that it was during this period that the Agricultural Revolution began in the Middle East, laying the foundation for civilization. Yet, Greenhouse theory proponents claim the planet will experience severe environmental distress if the climate is that warm again.
Since the Holocene Maximum, the planet has continued to experience temperature fluctuations. In 900 A.D. the planet's temperature roughly approximated today's temperature. Then, between 900 and 1100 the climate dramatically warmed. Known as the Medieval Warm Period, the temperature rose by more than 1° F to an average of 60° or 61° F, as much as 2° F warmer than today. Again, the temperature during this period is similar to Greenhouse predictions for 2100, a prospect global warming theory proponents insist should be viewed with alarm. But judging by how Europe prospered during this era, there is little to be alarmed about. The warming that occurred between 1000 and 1350 caused the ice in the North Atlantic to retreat and permitted Norsemen to colonize Iceland and Greenland. Back then, Greenland was actually green. Europe emerged from the Dark Ages in a period that was characterized by bountiful harvests and great economic prosperity. So mild was the climate that wine grapes were grown in England and Nova Scotia.
The major climate change that followed the Medieval Warm Period is especially critical as it bears directly on how to assess our current warming period. Between 1200 and 1450, the temperature plunged to 58° F. After briefly warming, the climate continued to dramatically get colder after 1500. By 1650, the temperature hit a low of 57° F. This is regarded as the coldest point in the 10,000-year Holocene geological epoch. That is why the era between 1650 and 1850 is known as the Little Ice Age. It was during this time that mountain glaciers advanced in Switzerland and Scandinavia, forcing the abandonment of farms and villages. Rivers in London, St. Petersburg and Moscow froze over so thoroughly that people held winter fairs on the ice. There were serious crop failures, famines and disease due to the cooler climate. In America, New England had no summer in 1816. It wasn't until 1860 that the temperature sufficiently warmed to cause the glaciers to retreat.
The significance of the Little Ice Age cannot be overestimated. The 1.5° F temperature increase over the last 150 years, so often cited as evidence of man-made warming, most likely represents a return to normal temperatures following a 400-year period of unusually cold weather. Even the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the chief proponent of the Kyoto Protocol global warming treaty signed in December 1997, concludes that: "The Little Ice Age came to an end only in the nineteenth century. Thus, some of the global warming since 1850 could be a recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than a direct result of human activities."
Leading climate scientist Dr. Hugh Ellsaesser of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says we may be in for an additional 1.8° F of warming over the next few centuries, regardless of Man's activities. The result would be warmer nighttime and winter temperatures, fewer frosts and longer growing seasons. Since CO2 stimulates plant growth and lessens the need for water, we could also expect more bountiful harvests over the next couple of centuries. This is certainly not bad news to the developing nations of the world struggling to feed their populations.
Thus, far from being a self-induced disaster, global warming is the result of natural changes in the Earth's climate that promises to yield humanity positive benefits. In the geological scheme of things, the warming is not even that dramatic compared to the more pronounced warming trends that occurred during the Agricultural Revolution and the early Middle Ages. Moreover, there is strong evidence that this long-needed warming is moderating. All things considered, global warming should be viewed for what it is: A gift from the often fickle force of Nature. Enjoy it while you can.
3. Global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years, predicts an Ohio State University researcher.
The researcher suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide -- often thought of as a key "greenhouse gas" -- is not the cause of global warming. The opposite is most likely to be true, according to Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering. It is the rising global temperatures that are naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, he says.
Essenhigh explains his position in a "viewpoint" article in the current issue of the journal Chemical Innovation, published by the American Chemical Society.
Many people blame global warming on carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in man-made devices such as automobiles and power plants. Essenhigh believes these people fail to account for the much greater amount of carbon dioxide that enters -- and leaves -- the atmosphere as part of the natural cycle of water exchange from, and back into, the sea and vegetation.
"Many scientists who have tried to mathematically determine the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature would appear to have vastly underestimated the significance of water in the atmosphere as a radiation-absorbing gas," Essenhigh argues. "If you ignore the water, you're going to get the wrong answer."
How could so many scientists miss out on this critical bit of information, as Essenhigh believes? He said a National Academy of Sciences report on carbon dioxide levels that was published in 1977 omitted information about water as a gas and identified it only as vapor, which means condensed water or cloud, which is at a much lower concentration in the atmosphere; and most subsequent investigations into this area evidently have built upon the pattern of that report.
For his hypothesis, Essenhigh examined data from various other sources, including measurements of ocean evaporation rates, man-made sources of carbon dioxide, and global temperature data for the last one million years.
He cites a 1995 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel formed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to assess the risk of human-induced climate change. In the report, the IPCC wrote that some 90 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide annually circulate between the earth's ocean and the atmosphere, and another 60 billion tons exchange between the vegetation and the atmosphere.
Compared to man-made sources' emission of about 5 to 6 billion tons per year, the natural sources would then account for more than 95 percent of all atmospheric carbon dioxide, Essenhigh said.
"At 6 billion tons, humans are then responsible for a comparatively small amount - less than 5 percent - of atmospheric carbon dioxide," he said. "And if nature is the source of the rest of the carbon dioxide, then it is difficult to see that man-made carbon dioxide can be driving the rising temperatures. In fact, I don't believe it does."
4. Is human activity warming the Earth or do recent signs of climate change signal natural variations? In this feature article, scientists discuss the vexing ambiguities of our planet's complex and unwieldy climate
Newspaper headlines trumpet record-breaking temperatures, dwindling sea ice, and retreating glaciers around the world. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for scalding temperatures on Venus and at least 33 degrees C of normal warming here on Earth, are on the rise. Our planet seems destined for a hot future!
But is it really? Or are we simply experiencing a natural variation in Earth's climate cycles that will return to "normal" in time?
Correlations between rising CO2 levels and global surface temperatures suggest that our planet is on a one-way warming trend triggered by human activity. Indeed, studies by paleoclimatologists reveal that natural variability caused by changes in the Sun and volcanic eruptions can largely explain deviations in global temperature from 1000 AD until 1850 AD, near the beginning of the Industrial Era. After that, the best models require a human-induced greenhouse effect.
In spite of what may seem persuasive evidence, many scientists are nonetheless skeptical. They argue that natural variations in climate are considerable and not well understood. The Earth has gone through warming periods before without human influence, they note. And not all of the evidence supports global warming. Air temperatures in the lower atmosphere have not increased appreciably, according to satellite data, and the sea ice around Antarctica has actually been growing for the last 20 years.
It may surprise many people that science -- the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world -- cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change.
Why is the question so thorny? The reason, say experts, is that Earth's climate is complex and chaotic. It's so unwieldy that researchers simply can't conduct experiments to check their ideas in the usual way of science. They often rely, instead, on computer models. But such models are only as good as their inputs and programming, and today's computer models are known to be imperfect.
Most scientists agree that no single piece of data will likely resolve the global warming debate. In the end, the best we can expect is a scientific consensus based on a preponderance of evidence.
5. 30 Natural Global Warming Episodes Have Occurred During the Past 5,000 Years.
David Dilley of GWO has discovered a powerful natural forcing mechanism that controls global warming cycle, hurricane track landfalls, El Nino cycles and many other climate weather cycles.
David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations Inc., Ocala Florida, has completed groundbreaking research on Global Warming. This research found that the current global warming episode is a "Natural Recurring Cycle", and that this current cycle will begin to diminish as early as 2015, and no later than 2040.
Mr. Dilley’s 15-years of ongoing climate research has uncovered a very powerful external forcing mechanism that causes shifts in regional weather cycles, and the world’s climate. This forcing mechanism is called “the Primary Forcing Trigger Mechanism”, or PFM. The PFM is a cyclical forcing mechanism that can be forecast years in advance, or even traced back through the earth’s climate history. The major influence of the PFM on the earth’s climate is that it causes the world’s dominating regional high-pressure systems to shift position, or become displaced from their normal seasonal position.
Because the PFM is cyclical, the earth’s weather and climate is likewise cyclical. As an example of an induced PFM climate cycle, the subtropical high-pressure system in the central South Pacific normally causes the ocean’s water temperature to stay relatively cool in this region. Dilley’s El Niño research (see link) explains that the PFM cycle induces a shift in the position of the high-pressure system where El Niños form. The resulting wind shift then triggers the formation of an El Niño by inducing a rapid warming of sea surface temperatures. Dilley says that research going back to 1915 showed 24 such PFM cycles and 24 El Niño occurrences. This research is currently under peer review and will go to a leading climate journal this summer.
Further research by Dilley and Global Weather Oscillations, indicates that this same PFM forcing mechanism displaces high-pressure centers in such a way to control the tracks of hurricanes from one year to the next. (See hurricane link) Knowing how and why this forcing mechanism controls weather cycles opened the door to the ground breaking global warming research.
Mr. Dilley states that the current global warming cycle is without a doubt the result of a known external “natural” forcing cycle. According to Dilley, most government officials, climatologists and meteorologists are looking only at the increase in temperatures and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels over the past 50 to 100 years. These correlations and findings are only representative during global warming episodes. When you take into account nearly 30 other global warming episodes over the past 5 thousand years, it becomes very apparent that CO2 levels cannot be the forcing mechanism that has caused global warming, but rather Long-term PFM climate forcing cycles. These cycles likely displace high-pressure systems and the polar jet stream northward during an approximate 200-year recurring PFM forcing cycle.
the years 1050 to 1205 AD. The peak warming of this cycle lasted 90 years from 1090 to 1180 AD, as delineated by the red box. The second global warming cycle was from 1285 to 1415 AD, with a 65-year peak from 1315 to 1380. The third global warming episode was from 1440 to 1590 with a 50-year peak from 1520 to 1570. The fourth was from 1700 to 1845 with a 45-year peak from 1740 to 1785. Finally, the current global warming episode began about 1910 and the peak about 1950, or about 57 years ago.
The graph and research indicates that each global warming cycle has duration of 130 to 160 years, and the peak of each cycle has duration of 50 to 90 years. Analyses of the 5 warming cycles and the history of PFM cycles, indicates that the current cycle is about the same duration as the one that occurred about 900-years ago. Therefore, the current global warming cycle will run from 1910 to 2060, with the duration of the peak warming occurring between 1950 and 2015. The peak warming will level off around 2015 and then begin diminishing rapidly by no later than the year 2030 to 2040. Once cooling begins it will only take 20 to 30 years to cool to the lowest part of the cooling cycle, temperatures much like what was recorded in the 1800s.
In addition to the 5 global warming cycles found during the past 1000-years, it should be noted here that a total of approximately 30 global warming cycles have occurred during the past 5000 years, with the warmest cycle occurring approximately every 1000-years, and the peak of the warmest cycle having a duration of 60 to 90 years. Referring to the 5000-year graph, the present long-term warming cycle can be seen on the right hand side of the graph, and 4 other long-term warm cycles date back 5000-years on the left side of the graph.
Analyses of the 5000-year graph indicates that long-term warming cycles have durations as short as 500-years as seen in the 2 cycles labeled A, to as long as 1000-years as seen in cycle C nearly 4500-years ago. Further analyses of cycle durations indicates that if the current long-term warming cycle which began in the year 1500 AD was of the same duration as cycle A, the peak of the current warming would of ended back in the year 1750, and it did not. In addition, if the current cycle was the same duration as cycle B, the peak warming of our current global warming cycle would have ended in the year 1900, and it did not. Now let’s take a look at cycle C. in the next paragraph..
Further research by Research by Global Weather Oscillations indicates that the PFM climate forcing cycle normally occurs in cycles of 5. Therefore looking back 5 warming cycles and 5 PFM cycles, we find cycle C that occurred 4,500 years ago and had a 1000 - year duration of the entire warm cycle. Using the mid-point of this cycle (500-years), the current long-term warming that began around the year 1500 AD will peak around the year 2000 AD, and end by 2500 AD.
Reconstructed Carbon Dioxide CO2 and Temperature Proxies Past 400,000 Years.
The graph below shows reconstructed Ice Core temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations over the Antartica from near present time back 400,000 years. Of particular importance is that this graph shows 5 Natural Cycles during the past 400,000 years and as temperatures rise the carbon dioxide concentrations also naturally rise, thus mirroring the cyclical temperatures. It is well known throughout the scientific community that warmer temperatures can hold more water vapor, and water vapor absorbs and holds carbon dioxide. Thus these 5 Natural Cycles during the past 400,000 years mirror the 200-year global warming cycles shown early. Therefore, it is likely that the peak of all 30 global warming cycles during the past 4,000 years likewise had carbon dioxide concentrations very similar to the values found today.
Thus, carbon dioxide levels are not the cause of global warming....all global warming cycles are "Natural".
Natural Global Warming Cycles …. Putting it all together
The current long-term 1000-year warming cycle began about the year 1500 AD and will continue to near 2500 AD. This current long-term cycle will consist of 5 cyclical short-term global warming and cooling episodes. The world is now in the third of the 5 short-term cycles, and the warmest of the 5. The first short-term global warming episode peaked between 1520 and 1570 AD, followed by a cooling period until the next global warming episode peaked between 1740 and 1785. Temperatures remained cool throughout the 1800s to early 1900s, and then the third short-term global warming episode began. The peak of this current global warming episode began in earnest around 1950 and will level off as early as 2015, and no later than 2030-40. Then within 20 years temperatures will cool rapidly to the same levels as seen in the 1800s. The global warming cycles are approximate 200-year cycles, so the next global warming cycle will peak about 150-years after the end of the current cycle, or about the year 2200. This will be the 4th of 5 cycles within the current 1000-year primary warm cycle, and it will not be as warm as the current episode.
Global warming research has found 5 natural global warming cycles during the past 1000-years, and approximately 30 global warming cycles during the past 5 thousand years.
Actions - While we argue a lot about details on how bad global warming is and how responsible mankind is for it, we did agree that individuals acting on their own to conserve energy or clean the environment is always preferred to a government mandated, centralized policy of coercion. In that respect, I was able to support his project of working with Corporate America and other companies to give consumers incentives to buy energy-saving light bulbs—a private sector initiative that he claims will save a lot of energy and produce less CO2.
Cleaner burning energy that takes some of the profit out of the pockets of our “friends” the Saudis wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It may not be much, but it’s a start and a way to bring two divergent sides of the global warming debate together.
Perhaps a non-coercive method of voluntary action on CO2 emissions will work. The one thing we’re learning from the example of Europe’s Kyoto experiment is that government coercion doesn’t work. Freedom of choice is not only right, it’s practical!
In conclusion - let the reader make up his own conclusions.
Data compiled by Yehuda Draiman, Energy Analyst – 12/16/2007
P.S.
Global Warming scientist skeptics list is growing...
6/23/2007
Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose the perceived alarmism of man-made global warming.
The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics.
Once Believers, Now Skeptics
Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.
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Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997.
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Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article.
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Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added.
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Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained.
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Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added.
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Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006.
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Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said.
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Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause.
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Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote.
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Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added.
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Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun.
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Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote. .
Saturday, June 23, 2007.
The makers of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle have made many science documentaries before. The thing they found most shocking when they started to make this one, was the weakness of the case for man made global warming, and the quantity and quality of the evidence which flatly contradicts it.
http://greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/
La Nina threatens to wreck world’s weather
‘Fertilising’ oceans with iron may combat climate change | Damage to the planet ‘is already inevitable’
Experts predict a run of severe weather in the coming months, with devastating floods striking some parts of the world while severe droughts afflict other regions, as the climate phenomenon known as La Niña gathers momentum.
A chronic drought afflicting southern California and many southeastern states of America could be exacerbated, with Los Angeles heading for its driest year on record. In contrast, western Canada and the northwestern US could turn colder and snowier. Mozambique, southeast Africa, and northern Brazil may face exceptionally heavy rains and floods, while southern Brazil and much of Argentina suffer drought.
La Niña could even rearrange the pattern of sea ice around the Antarctic, pushing the ice pack towards the Pacific side of the continent. Already, torrential rains have triggered severe floods across a huge swath of Central Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Uganda in the east.
Related Links
Warm waters may trigger Mediterranean hurricane
Rupa Kumar Kolli, chief of world applications at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, predicts that the worst of La Niña is yet to come. “This La Niña is now in its developing phase and getting stronger, and we can expect it to peak this coming December and January,” he said. Whether this episode of La Niña will make itself felt in Britain and continental Europe this winter is not certain. “We tend to get a mild end to winter with La Niña, but it’s not a strong signal,” said Adam Scaife, at the Hadley Centre of the Met Office in Exeter.
Met Office scientists have found that La Niña is likely to have played a part in the abysmal British summer. By upsetting the usual track of the high-altitude jet stream towards Britain, it delivered barrages of slow-moving Atlantic depressions with torrents of rain. La Niña may also have been involved in the spectacular Asian monsoon this summer, leading to floods that killed about 1,000 people in India and Bangladesh. And it allows hurricanes to develop - already this month the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico have experienced two monstrous Category 5 storms. Another hurricane broke the record for the fastest intensification of a storm.
La Niña occurs when the tropical seas of the Pacific off the coast of Latin America cool down, while the waters turn warmer towards Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. That lurch in ocean temperatures can send weather systems into havoc over vast areas, delivering huge deluges of rain over the Far East and tropical Australia, while western parts of Latin America turn much drier than usual. This is the flip side of El Niño, although La Niña lasts for a shorter time, usually no more than a year.
The way that La Niña casts its spell over the globe, from the Pacific to the rest of the world, is known as a “tele-connection”. By disrupting sea temperatures, pressure systems and winds over the Pacific, it interferes with the atmospheric circulation around the tropics. This sends out waves in the atmosphere, like casting a stone into a pond, which can change the strength and position of jet stream winds several miles high. In this way the Pacific can have a huge impact on the weather far from the tropics.
We really DO NOT know that carbon dioxide is causing climate change. There are several alternative suggested causes and the current warming (which seems to have stalled around 1998) is probably more likely a continuation of the warming that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age, from around 1850 (which by no coincidence is the starting year for Gore's temperature chart that supposedly shows alarming warming).
The dominant greenhouse gas is WATER, not carbon dioxide. It is responsible for up to 95% of the so-called "greenhouse effect". Carbon dioxide is only a minor player, and Man's activities put only about 3% as much CO2 into the atmosphere yearly as does Nature. How does the atmosphere distinguish between them? Its concentration is believed to have increased from 0.00028 of the atmosphere to 0.00038 over the past couple of hundred years.
If the Kyoto Accord were put into effect...heck, if ALL manmade CO2 emissions were stopped immediately...there would be no discernible temperature effect 50 and 100 years from now. (As an aside, we don't even have accurate ground-level temperature measurements over most of the world.) The scare tactics are based on glorified video games and are not to be trusted to the extent of spending billions of dollars and damaging our economies. Canada, and every other country, would be foolish to take heroic action on the basis of shonky "everybody-knows" pseudo-science. Even the much-quoted IPCC reports are more political than scientific and should be approached with great caution as a source of information.
Ian L. McQueen
Here's how Essenhigh sees the global temperature system working: As temperatures rise, the carbon dioxide equilibrium in the water changes, and this releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide is then an indicator of rising temperatures -- not the driving force behind it.
Essenhigh attributes the current reported rise in global temperatures to a natural cycle of warming and cooling.
He examined data that Cambridge University geologists Nicholas Shackleton and Neil Opdyke reported in the journal Quaternary Research in 1973, which found that global temperatures have been oscillating steadily, with an average rising gradually, over the last one million years -- long before human industry began to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Opdyke is now at the University of Florida.
According to Shackleton and Opdyke's data, average global temperatures have risen less than one degree in the last million years, though the amplitude of the periodic oscillation has now risen in that time from about 5 degrees to about 10 degrees, with a period of about 100,000 years.
"Today, we are simply near a peak in the current cycle that started about 25,000 years ago," Essenhigh explained.
As to why highs and lows follow a 100,000 year cycle, the explanation Essenhigh uses is that the Arctic Ocean acts as a giant temperature regulator, an idea known as the "Arctic Ocean Model." This model first appeared over 30 years ago and is well presented in the 1974 book Weather Machine: How our weather works and why it is changing, by Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist magazine.
According to this model, when the Arctic Ocean is frozen over, as it is today, Essenhigh said, it prevents evaporation of water that would otherwise escape to the atmosphere and then return as snow. When there is less snow to replenish the Arctic ice cap, the cap may start to shrink. That could be the cause behind the retreat of the Arctic ice cap that scientists are documenting today, Essenhigh said.
As the ice cap melts, the earth warms, until the Arctic Ocean opens again. Once enough water is available by evaporation from the ocean into the atmosphere, snows can begin to replenish the ice cap. At that point, the Arctic ice begins to expand, the global temperature can then start to reverse, and the earth can start re-entry to a new ice age.
According to Essenhigh's estimations, Earth may reach a peak in the current temperature profile within the next 10 to 20 years, and then it could begin to cool into a new ice age.
Essenhigh knows that his scientific opinion is a minority one. As far as he knows, he's the only person who's linked global warming and carbon dioxide in this particular way. But he maintains his evaluations represent an improvement on those of the majority opinion, because they are logically rigorous and includes water vapor as a far more significant factor than in other studies.
"If there are flaws in these propositions, I'm listening," he wrote in his Chemical Innovation paper. "But if there are objections, let's have them with the numbers."
Adapted from materials provided by Ohio State University.
A Brief History of Ice Ages and Warming
Global warming started long before the "Industrial Revolution" and the invention of the internal combustion engine. Global warming began 18,000 years ago as the earth started warming its way out of the Pleistocene Ice Age-- a time when much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.
Earth's climate and the biosphere have been in constant flux, dominated by ice ages and glaciers for the past several million years. We are currently enjoying a temporary reprieve from the deep freeze.
Approximately every 100,000 years Earth's climate warms up temporarily. These warm periods, called interglacial periods, appear to last approximately 15,000 to 20,000 years before regressing back to a cold ice age climate. At year 18,000 and counting our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age is much nearer its end than its beginning.
Global warming during Earth's current interglacial warm period has greatly altered our environment and the distribution and diversity of all life. For example:
Approximately 15,000 years ago the earth had warmed sufficiently to halt the advance of glaciers, and sea levels worldwide began to rise.
By 8,000 years ago the land bridge across the Bering Strait was drowned, cutting off the migration of men and animals to North America.
Since the end of the Ice Age, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet! Forests have returned where once there was only ice.
Is there a scientific consensus about global warming?
All climate scientists accept that there are more greenhouse gases in the air than there were, and that in consequence the world will warm somewhat. There is no consensus on the central question of how much warming there will be. The main area of dispute is about the magnitude of the temperature effect of carbon dioxide. Arrhenius (1896) was the first to calculate the effect of doubling atmospheric carbon dioxide, concluding that global temperature would rise by 8C.
In the 1970s, experiments showed that at the Earth’s surface the principal absorption bands of atmospheric CO2 were saturated, and it was thought that a doubling of CO2 might raise temperature by as little as 0.5C. However, subsequent experiments indicated that in the much thinner air and much lower temperature at the tropopause – the top of the main atmospheric layer, around 5 to 11 miles up – the secondary absorption bands of CO2 were not fully saturated. Some of the outgoing, long-wave radiation from the Earth’s surface would be intercepted at the tropopause and scattered back into the troposphere. The UN’s 1990 and 1996 Assessment Reports suggested that additional warming of 4.4 watts per square metre per second would occur. The 2001 report cut this figure to 3.7 watts. However, it is not clear how much of this additional energy reaches the surface.
A submission to the UN by Dr. Hugh Elsaesser suggested that only 1.5 watts would reach the surface.
See also De Laat et al. (2004) and Etheridge et al. (1996) for a discussion of man’s contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Leading climate scientists who strongly disagree with the view that additional carbon dioxide in the air will have the large effect on the climate suggested by the UN include Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who recently received a £10,000 prize for courage in opposing
conventional thinking. Some 41 scientists recently wrote to the Telegraph to say they were not part of, and were not convinced by, the “global warming” consensus.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years by Dennis T. Avery, S. Fred Singer
The advertising for the book says: ""Singer and Avery present in popular language supported by in-depth scientific evidence the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we're warming, why it's not very dangerous, and why we can't stop it anyway."
Reviewer: Crosslands (Maryland USA) wrote: Excellent Resource, November 13, 2006Mrs. Avery and Singer provide an excellent readable and well documented book on the global warming hoax. The reader can only conclude that this book is an invaluable resource on the topic of global warming. The work refers to a vast amount of scientific research in a wide variety of scientific journals indicating a natural sunspot magnetic wave is causing what little global warming exists. Man created carbon dixoide has very little effect on the earth's climate.Avery and Singer go further by providing an in depth expose of the fallacious research that alledgedly supports man made global warming. In particular the authors make an incisive investigation into the so called hockey stick hypothesis of unprecedented recent warming hoax widely enunciated by the UN's climate change panel. This hoax was first exposed by two skilled and courageous Canadian researchers - McIntyre and McKitrick.Pseudoscientists and others with a vested interest in controlling the global economy by use of the global warming hoax will not like this work. However informed readers concerned with human welfare and human progress will find this book invaluable. This book should be read by all Amercians and really by everone else in the world.
There is another theory of global warming and cooling that Gore does not address in An Inconvenient Truth. The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory posits that cosmic rays, not humans, cause climate change. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change (2007) by Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder is the first book to be published on this subject. Svensmark proposed this theory in 1996 and supplies the scientific input for the book. Calder, a British science writer, "strung the words together," as he puts it. He does this very well and explains Svensmark’s theory in an engaging and easily understandable way. It will be published in the U.S. March 25 (I obtained my copy from the UK, where it was published last month).
The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory says that cosmic rays make clouds. Exploding stars continually spray the galaxy with cosmic rays, which consist of protons, alpha particles (helium nuclei), electrons, and muons (heavy electrons). The muons in this mix of atomic bullets make low-level (below 8,000 feet) clouds. They do this by knocking electrons off atoms and molecules in the air, and these liberated electrons seed the formation "cloud condensation nuclei." Water vapor in the atmosphere condenses on these specks to form cloud water droplets. The wet clouds thus formed block sunlight and reflect its rays back into space, which has a cooling effect. In 2006, Svensmark and colleagues showed experimentally how it is done, which involves adding sulfuric acid to these condensation nuclei. (Plankton, microscopic plants in the ocean and to a much lesser extent volcanoes and fossil fuels, continually restock the atmosphere with sulfur.)
The sun’s magnetic field encloses its planets in a magnetic solar wind (the heliosphere) that shields us from many of the cosmic rays that exploding stars shoot our way. Sunspots, dark spots made by pools of intense magnetism seen through a telescope, indicate heightened magnetic activity, which deflects more cosmic rays away from Earth. During the 20th century the sun’s magnetic shield more than doubled, and the sun had a lot of sunspots. Fewer cosmic rays reached Earth to make clouds, and global temperatures rose. When the sun’s magnetic activity wanes and sunspots disappear, more cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere to make clouds; and the globe cools. The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory of climate change explains observations made over the last 400 years since the advent of the telescope that correlate sunspots with global warming and cooling.
The Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory explains climate change on a geologic time scale. Our solar system in its rotation around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy passes through one of its spiral arms every 135 million years. These arms contain high levels of cosmic rays. Astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and geologist Ján Veizer in "Celestrial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate?" (Geological Society of America Today 2003;13:4-10) and Veizer in "Celestial Climate Driver: A Perspective from Four Billion Years of the Carbon Cycle" (Geoscience Canada 2005;32:13-30) show that the variability in the Earth’s temperature over the past 500 million years correlates well with the intensity of cosmic rays hitting the planet when it passes in and out of the spiral arms of the Milky Way. They found that at one point atmospheric CO2 levels were 18 times higher than they are today, and they were 10 times higher when the planet was an "icehouse" during the Ordovician glacial period (450 million years ago).
During one warm period, 50 million years ago, the weather in the arctic was like that in Florida today. The Arctic Ocean was free of ice year-round and was populated by alligators and turtles. Axel Heiberg Island, in the high Canadian arctic 600 miles from the North Pole, has a well-preserved fossil forest (discovered in 1985), in what once was a semi-tropical swamp. At the other extreme, 2.2 billion years ago, and several times more recently, the planet was covered in ice down to the equator, making it a "Snowball Earth." Planetary factors that have played a role in these climate changes include the position of drifting continents and the evolving composition of the atmosphere.
Other cycles that drive climate change include the Earth’s 100,000-year elliptical orbit around the sun and its 41,000-year axial tilt cycle. (In the most elliptical phase of the Earth’s orbit, the sun’s rays must travel 3 percent farther to reach the planet. The Earth’s axial tilt ranges from 22.1 to 24.5 degrees and is currently at 23 degrees.) And then there is the 1,500-year solar cycle.
S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery describe the 1,500-year solar warming and cooling climate cycle in their book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years (2007). It has 528 references, a glossary, and an index. This well written book is arguably the best book to date on the politics and science of global warming. In addition to presenting evidence for the 1,500-year solar cycle, first proposed by European researchers in 1996, the authors address both the Greenhouse and Solar/Cosmic Ray theories of climate change.
The sun’s role in climate change is due not so much to changes in intensity of its visible and/or invisible rays, or irradiance, but to its magnetic effect on cosmic rays. Changes in the sun’s magnetic activity have a four-fold greater effect on the Earth’s temperature than variations in its irradiance.
Today’s global warming is part of a natural 1,500-year, plus or minus 500-year, solar cycle operating for at least a million years. The Earth’s climate has warmed and cooled nine times in the past 12,000 years, in lock step with the waxing and waning of the sun’s magnetic activity (Science 2001;294[7 December]:2130-2136). Over the last 1,200 years there has been a "Medieval Warming" (900-1300), when Greenland was green; a "Little Ice Age" (1300-1850), when New York harbor froze, and people could walk from Manhattan across the ice to Staten Island a mile away (in 1780); and the current global warming (1850-?). Rather than "global warming," a better term for this phase of the solar cycle is "Modern Warming." Since 1850, temperatures have risen 0.8 degrees C, most rapidly in 1850-1870 and 1920-1940. Temperatures in the 1,500-year solar cycle fluctuate within a 4 degree C range – two degrees above and two degrees below the norm.
The Modern Warming is not confined to this planet. Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and Triton (Neptune’s largest moon) in the solar system are also warming.
It is not surprising that the former vice president did not address the Solar/Cosmic Ray Theory of Climate Change in An Inconvenient Truth. This "documentary," as the Christian Science Monitor notes, is really a docuganda, propaganda disguised as documentary. It manipulates the audience, with alarming images and a skewed presentation of facts, into believing that humans cause global warming and that "polluting" the atmosphere with carbon dioxide will have catastrophic consequences. Unlike a true documentary, which seeks to inform the audience about a given state of affairs in a balanced and unbiased fashion, in An Inconvenient Truth Gore ignores or misrepresents evidence that refutes the human-cau