Earth Hour is a great idea except that most of the effort is aimed at an extremely minor problem while ignoring the many major environmental problem plaguing us and especially the one overriding menace so very few ever mention.
I do not agree that there is overwhelming evidence that carbon dioxide produced by human use of fossil fuels is bringing about actual global warming that portends any great danger to humanity. Neither do I agree with those who deny any possible negative effect. The factual gulf between these two extreme opinions exists only in the minds of those holding them amplified by the emotionally charged media frenzy and political fervor. In my opinion, “Global Warming,” that has recently been morphed into “Climate Change” by a cabal of financial and political benefactors of this questionable “fact”craze is, at its worst, a very minor problem. This is especially true when comparing it to many other very real problems and menaces facing humanity.
The almost spiritual global warming movement is gaining great numbers of ardent and vocal followers. Many of these are blind disciples who have absolutely no clue about the realities of climate change, the physics of the atmospheric “greenhouse” gases or whether there is even the possibility of many of the claims put forth by the high priests of global warming. This has been driven to virtually universal acceptance as an absolute fact because it serves the political, social, cultural and/or economic agendas of its proponents.
Perhaps it is a present day version of the Piltdown Man hoax foisted off on unsuspecting scientists and the public almost a hundred years ago in 1912. That hoax took forty years to be completely discredited. In 1923 Franz Weidenreich, an anatomist, reported that the skull was a modern human cranium and the jaw of an orangutan whose teeth were filed down. It took scientists thirty years to concede that he was correct. Like most of us, scientists hate to admit error on their part. Many of us cling to dogmatic positions long after an error is discovered and reality has become quite certain. Politicians and religious leaders are particularly so infected. History provides countless examples. Some were extremely damaging like the murder of Huss and the imprisonment of Galileo.
In spite of all this there is one really good thing about the global warming movement. No matter how far it is from reality it certainly has garnered the attention of the public, of the media, of governments, and of influential people. This brings attention to the overwhelming needs of our planet for serious concern, care, and attention. In spite of self-serving politicians and others who are in it for the money or power, some of the money and some of their efforts do have positive results. Fortunately, there are many dedicated people, mostly in the trenches, who are working tirelessly to prevent the destruction of our fragile environment. Tom Friedman writes about some of these people in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. These people are at their best when they educate the public at all levels how protecting the wild environment makes sense economically as well as aesthetically. How a forest with all its interacting wildlife intact is so much more valuable long term than the short-lived products made from the cutting of that forest. How ocean fisheries can produce protein food sustainably with proper management rather than the uncontrolled slaughter that has destroyed and continues to destroy a valuable but diminishing resource. We can do to the earth what Easter Islanders did to their island home and so destroy ourselves, or we can protect and sustain the valuable wild diversity on our small planet home.
Some practical information about the processes acting on our atmosphere
Here is some physical data no global warming proponent ever acknowledges. First of all, and most important, the term “greenhouse” as applied to atmospheric gases is a gross misnomer. The actual process by which atmospheric gases retain heat energy and therefore cause the temperature of air to rise follows a very complex group of physical laws that are very different from what happens in an actual greenhouse. These laws involve the physical structure of the molecules of the various gases and how they resonate and/or rotate when they absorb infrared radiation or heat. Each molecule both absorbs and emits radiation at different rates for different wavelengths and at different temperatures, yielding varying amounts of absorbed, radiated and retained heat energy. The only way we can measure these effects is to do so collectively using a significant amount of mixtures of various gases. These mixtures include a wide variety of those gases including water vapor. A glance at the data from one of the latest research studies on this phenomenon reports, “Recent improvements in the spectroscopic data for water vapor have significantly increased the near-infrared absorption in models of the Earth's atmosphere.” The full report is available at:
http://www.agua.org/crossref/2006/2005JD006796.shtml
Another report titled, Water and Global Warming, says, "Water is the main absorber of the sunlight in the atmosphere. The 13 million million (that's 13 trillion!) tons of water in the atmosphere (~0.33% by weight) is responsible for about 70% of all atmospheric absorption of radiation, mainly in the infrared region where water shows strong absorption. It contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect ensuring a warm habitable planet, but operates a negative feedback effect, due to cloud formation reflecting the sunlight away, to attenuate global warming. The water content of the atmosphere varies about 100-fold between the hot and humid tropics and the cold and dry polar ice deserts." The full article is available at:
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
There is another article on the effects of CO2 at:
http://brneurosci.org/co2.htm
Any global warming from the effects of CO2, if indeed it exists or poses any danger at all, is grossly distorted relative to the facts at hand. Most of the data used to show global warming are at best statistical and at worst, anecdotal. Both of which provide great opportunities for opinions (and agendas) to mitigate the resulting data. We know for certain that addition to the atmosphere of any gas will contribute that gas’s infrared absorption and radiation properties with all their complexities. Actually, all gases in the atmosphere have some “greenhouse” effect. This includes, nitrogen (75.0% - 78.08%), oxygen (20.11% - 20.95%), argon (0.89$ - 0.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.035% - 0.038%). The percentages in parentheses are of air at sea level. Ranges are shown because air also contains a variable amount of water vapor (from 1- 4% ±0.25%) and trace amounts of other gases. Each gas has a complex rate of infrared absorption, transmission, and emission at various infrared frequencies. Atmospheric water vapor is from 20 to 120 times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and has about 25 times the net temperature effect of the same amount of CO2 depending on various conditions. Bear in mind that net effect is the difference between energy from the Sun coming in that heats the atmosphere and energy from the atmosphere going out into space. Energy in is radiant energy from the sun being absorbed by atmospheric gasses and Earth surface materials. It includes that convected from surface materials of the earth into the atmosphere. Energy out is that radiated from the surface that freely radiates into space and is not absorbed by those gasses on its way out through the atmosphere as well as energy emitted by atmospheric gases out into space. Taking the varying amounts of each in the atmosphere into account results in a range for heat retention of water vapor between 500 and 3,000 times that of CO2. This number varies with temperature, altitude, location and water vapor content. All told it is an extremely complex system with many variables. If all factors are considered in their proper proportions and even if the amount of CO2 doubled, it would have a negligible effect on average global temperature.
The warmer air becomes, the more water vapor it can hold. Remember the weatherman’s favorite “dew point” predictions? When the temperature lowers to that point, the air can hold no more water vapor so it condenses out as “dew” or rain in the big picture. Using the same rationale as the global warming folks use for CO2, increasing amounts of water vapor would cause a much larger increase in atmospheric temperatures than CO2 resulting in still warmer air and still more water vapor. Shouldn’t this lead to a runaway greenhouse effect? Wouldn’t this drive atmospheric temperatures higher and higher until the oceans boil and all life is extinguished? Obviously this has not happened so something about these assumptions must be wrong for water vapor and CO2 as well.
Water vapor adds another major factor to the mix. That is the heat of vaporization or condensation of water. A tremendous amount of the sun’s radiant energy evaporates water all over the earth. All of that energy enters the atmosphere in water vapor. The warmer the ocean or wet land, the more energy goes into evaporating water into the air. When all this water vapor condenses out as rain, that energy is released and the air warms. This is the driving energy that causes the air to move and creates windstorms, tornados and hurricanes. For all practical purposes, the CO2 content of the air has zero effect on the amount of energy that goes into the atmosphere or heats the air when water condenses.
One huge factor that man has affected greatly is the water vapor that green plants give off and particularly dense rain forests. Our continuing decimation of all types of rain forests is removing a huge source of water vapor that formerly entered the air. One example of this effect was used incorrectly as an example of global warming, which it was not. The disappearing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are not an effect of global warming. Studies have shown that the cutting of the forest around the base of the mountain substantially reduced the amount of water vapor in the air flowing up the mountain. The result was that both the rainfall and snowfall on the higher slopes have been reduced dramatically. This is one correct example of where human activity has interfered with nature. Deforestation worldwide has done far more damage to our environment and effected climate far more than even tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could do. It alone could arguably be responsible for any temperature increase over the last hundred years as a reduction in the amount of water vapor would reduce cloud cover resulting in less of the sun’s energy reflected away. Why don’t we do something about that?
Whatever the effect of carbon dioxide, it is so small in comparison as to raise questions about the real amount of the danger it poses. Certainly it is not the degree of danger claimed by the high priests of global warming. I seriously question the validity of the often quoted phrase, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists support the theory that man’s use of fossil fuels is bringing about catastrophic global warming.” In the first place, the worldwide destructive clearing and burning of rain forest results in putting far more net carbon dioxide into the air than all the vehicles in the entire world. Second, shrinking rain forests mean less water vapor is released into the air. This could in turn mean less rain and snow where the air over land is drier. The questions remain, does the evaporation from the oceans increase and make up for this loss, and what effect does the drier air have on cloud cover and the resulting reflection of the sun’s energy away from the earth? All of these interacting variables have much larger net effects on global temperatures than CO2. Because of this, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists” may have no real clue about the degree of effect that CO2 might have on atmospheric temperatures leading to global warming. Obviously it is much smaller than that of water vapor.
To explain why I make this statement, I have quoted biologist Edward O. Wilson. A Pulitzer prize winner, Wilson is an experienced and admired biologist and author of numerous books. He may have given us a clue as to why “many scientists” may not be good judges of climate change and of global warming or just how dangerous it is. In his book, The Creation, an Appeal to Save Life on Earth, he speaks about “scientists,” who they really are, and why the “scientific method” works. The following is a revealing quote from the eleventh chapter, Biology Is the Study of Nature. The italics in the quote are my comments.
The quoted section begins:
I will offer now an account of the concept and practice of science and in particular biology, the discipline most immediately relevant to human concerns.
I hasten to add I do not mean scientists. Most researchers, including Nobel laureates, are narrow journeymen, with no more interest in the human condition than the usual run of laymen. Scientists are to science what masons are to cathedrals. Catch any one of them outside the workplace, and you would likely find someone leading an ordinary life preoccupied with quotidian tasks and pedestrian thought. Scientists seldom make leaps of imagination. Most, in fact, never truly have an original idea. Instead, they snuffle their way through masses of data and hypotheses (the latter are educated guesses to be tested - global warming?), sometimes excited but most of the time tranquil and easily distracted by corridor gossip and other entertainments. They have to be that way. The successful scientist thinks like a poet, and then only in rare moments of inspiration, if ever, and works like a bookkeeper the rest of the time. It is very hard to have an original thought. So for most of his career, the scientist is satisfied to enter the figures and balance the books.
Scientists are also like prospectors. Original discoveries are the gold and silver of their trade. If important, they can buy collegial prestige, and with it wider fame, royalties, and academic tenure. Scientists by and large are too modest to be prophets, too easily bored to be philosophers, and too trusting to be politicians. Lacking in street smarts, they are also easily fooled by confidence artists and sleight-of-hand tricksters (and global warming promoters?). Never ask a scientist to test the claims of paranormal phenomena. Ask a professional magician.
The power of science comes not from scientists but from its method. The power, and the beauty too of the scientific method is its simplicity. It can be understood by anyone, and practiced with a modest amount of training. Its stature arises from its cumulative nature. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of specialists united by one commonality of the scientific method. Few scientists know more than a small fraction of available scientific knowledge, even within their own disciplines. But no matter: their fellow scientists are continuously testing and adding other parts, and the entire body of scientific knowledge is easily available. The invention of this remarkable engine of testable learning was the one advance in human history that can be called a true quantum leap. But it attained its preeminence relatively late in the geological life span of humanity, and only after human intellect had traveled a long, tortuous path dominated by tribalism and animated by religion.
Let’s try to establish a rough chronology. Millions of years ago there was only animal instinct. Then, probably at the man-ape level, the rudiments of materials culture were added. With still higher intelligence there followed a sense of the supernatural, whereupon demons, ancestral ghosts, and divine spirits peopled the human mind. Without science there had to be religion, in order to explain man’s place in the universe. Born of dreams, its images were enshrined in the culture by shamans and priests. The gods made man. Those that lived in surrounding Nature gave way to gods of sacred mountains, in distant places, and in the heavens. Somewhere and somehow back in time, these divine humanoids had created the world, and now they governed man. Humans in their evolving self-image, rose above Nature to follow the gods as children and servants. Tribes led unwaveringly by their personal gods were united and strong. They defeated competing tribes and their false gods. They also subdued Nature, erasing most of it in the process. Their destiny, they believed, was not of this world. They thought of themselves as immortal, no less than demigods.
Along the way, commencing in Europe in the seventeenth century, a radical alternative self-image emerged. Art and philosophy began to disentangle themselves from the gods, and science learned to operate with full independence. Step by step, often opposed by the followers of Holy Scripture, science constructed an alternative world view based on a testable and self-reliant human image. Doubling in growth every fifteen years during most of the past three and a half centuries, it has looked into the heart of living Nature, finding there a previously vast and autonomous creative force. This image has subsumed religious rivalries and reduced them to intertribal conflict. Science has become the most democratic of all human endeavors. It is neither religion nor ideology. It makes no claims beyond what can be sensed in the real world. It generates knowledge in the most productive and unifying manner contrived in history, and it served humanity without obeisance to any particular tribal deity.
End of quote.
There is one certainty about the global warming movement. It has become a “cause celeb” and generated huge amounts of cash, mainly for politicians in the form of numerous, varied and punishing new taxes, cap and trade agreements, and expensive regulations. These taxes and the hundreds of global warming organizations constantly soliciting donations have turned it into a huge, self-perpetuating cash cow for its promoters and benefactors. This will guarantee its continuation long after it is proven untrue or at best, overblown far beyond any real danger.
One menace that is far more dangerous to life on Earth
In this writer's opinion there are numerous other far more dangerous menaces facing humanity than global warming in its worst case scenario. I will briefly mention just one of those, population. Considering our exponentially expanding population and our steadily diminishing resources one would think concern for this would be paramount in the minds of all thinking people. This is certainly the most serious and overriding one of several score of serious menaces we are facing right now. It alone is the driving force of many of our problems and especially those related to the environment and food supplies. Will we continue concentrating our attention on things like global warming and the next American idol or soccer champion while major problems fester and grow with little comment or attention? Like Nero, the West fiddles as the world burns.
The growing shortages and rising prices of food are bringing attention to the fact that something is going drastically wrong. Unfortunately, most reports condemn those involved in the food industry they see as responsible for rising prices. They make no mention of population growth, the very real reason for the shortages bringing about rising prices. The same could be said for many other of our rapidly disappearing resources. It seems politicians and the media are far more interested in using invented menaces as tools to promote their own agendas rather than in finding solutions to real and dangerous ones.
“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”
This real and present danger is a far greater threat to life on Earth than global warming at its worst.Some practical information about the processes acting on our atmosphere
Here is some physical data no global warming proponent ever acknowledges. First of all, and most important, the term “greenhouse” as applied to atmospheric gases is a gross misnomer. The actual process by which atmospheric gases retain heat energy and therefore cause the temperature of air to rise follows a very complex group of physical laws that are very different from what happens in an actual greenhouse. These laws involve the physical structure of the molecules of the various gases and how they resonate and/or rotate when they absorb infrared radiation or heat. Each molecule both absorbs and emits radiation at different rates for different wavelengths and at different temperatures, yielding varying amounts of absorbed, radiated and retained heat energy. The only way we can measure these effects is to do so collectively using a significant amount of mixtures of various gases. These mixtures include a wide variety of those gases including water vapor. A glance at the data from one of the latest research studies on this phenomenon reports, “Recent improvements in the spectroscopic data for water vapor have significantly increased the near-infrared absorption in models of the Earth's atmosphere.” The full report is available at:
http://www.agua.org/crossref/2006/2005JD006796.shtml
Another report titled, Water and Global Warming, says, "Water is the main absorber of the sunlight in the atmosphere. The 13 million million (that's 13 trillion!) tons of water in the atmosphere (~0.33% by weight) is responsible for about 70% of all atmospheric absorption of radiation, mainly in the infrared region where water shows strong absorption. It contributes significantly to the greenhouse effect ensuring a warm habitable planet, but operates a negative feedback effect, due to cloud formation reflecting the sunlight away, to attenuate global warming. The water content of the atmosphere varies about 100-fold between the hot and humid tropics and the cold and dry polar ice deserts." The full article is available at:
http://www.lsbu.ac.uk/water/vibrat.html
There is another article on the effects of CO2 at:
http://brneurosci.org/co2.htm
Any global warming from the effects of CO2, if indeed it exists or poses any danger at all, is grossly distorted relative to the facts at hand. Most of the data used to show global warming are at best statistical and at worst, anecdotal. Both of which provide great opportunities for opinions (and agendas) to mitigate the resulting data. We know for certain that addition to the atmosphere of any gas will contribute that gas’s infrared absorption and radiation properties with all their complexities. Actually, all gases in the atmosphere have some “greenhouse” effect. This includes, nitrogen (75.0% - 78.08%), oxygen (20.11% - 20.95%), argon (0.89$ - 0.93%), and carbon dioxide (0.035% - 0.038%). The percentages in parentheses are of air at sea level. Ranges are shown because air also contains a variable amount of water vapor (from 1- 4% ±0.25%) and trace amounts of other gases. Each gas has a complex rate of infrared absorption, transmission, and emission at various infrared frequencies. Atmospheric water vapor is from 20 to 120 times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and has about 25 times the net temperature effect of the same amount of CO2 depending on various conditions. Bear in mind that net effect is the difference between energy from the Sun coming in that heats the atmosphere and energy from the atmosphere going out into space. Energy in is radiant energy from the sun being absorbed by atmospheric gasses and Earth surface materials. It includes that convected from surface materials of the earth into the atmosphere. Energy out is that radiated from the surface that freely radiates into space and is not absorbed by those gasses on its way out through the atmosphere as well as energy emitted by atmospheric gases out into space. Taking the varying amounts of each in the atmosphere into account results in a range for heat retention of water vapor between 500 and 3,000 times that of CO2. This number varies with temperature, altitude, location and water vapor content. All told it is an extremely complex system with many variables. If all factors are considered in their proper proportions and even if the amount of CO2 doubled, it would have a negligible effect on average global temperature.
The warmer air becomes, the more water vapor it can hold. Remember the weatherman’s favorite “dew point” predictions? When the temperature lowers to that point, the air can hold no more water vapor so it condenses out as “dew” or rain in the big picture. Using the same rationale as the global warming folks use for CO2, increasing amounts of water vapor would cause a much larger increase in atmospheric temperatures than CO2 resulting in still warmer air and still more water vapor. Shouldn’t this lead to a runaway greenhouse effect? Wouldn’t this drive atmospheric temperatures higher and higher until the oceans boil and all life is extinguished? Obviously this has not happened so something about these assumptions must be wrong for water vapor and CO2 as well.
Water vapor adds another major factor to the mix. That is the heat of vaporization or condensation of water. A tremendous amount of the sun’s radiant energy evaporates water all over the earth. All of that energy enters the atmosphere in water vapor. The warmer the ocean or wet land, the more energy goes into evaporating water into the air. When all this water vapor condenses out as rain, that energy is released and the air warms. This is the driving energy that causes the air to move and creates windstorms, tornados and hurricanes. For all practical purposes, the CO2 content of the air has zero effect on the amount of energy that goes into the atmosphere or heats the air when water condenses.
One huge factor that man has affected greatly is the water vapor that green plants give off and particularly dense rain forests. Our continuing decimation of all types of rain forests is removing a huge source of water vapor that formerly entered the air. One example of this effect was used incorrectly as an example of global warming, which it was not. The disappearing snows of Mount Kilimanjaro are not an effect of global warming. Studies have shown that the cutting of the forest around the base of the mountain substantially reduced the amount of water vapor in the air flowing up the mountain. The result was that both the rainfall and snowfall on the higher slopes have been reduced dramatically. This is one correct example of where human activity has interfered with nature. Deforestation worldwide has done far more damage to our environment and effected climate far more than even tripling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere could do. It alone could arguably be responsible for any temperature increase over the last hundred years as a reduction in the amount of water vapor would reduce cloud cover resulting in less of the sun’s energy reflected away. Why don’t we do something about that?
Whatever the effect of carbon dioxide, it is so small in comparison as to raise questions about the real amount of the danger it poses. Certainly it is not the degree of danger claimed by the high priests of global warming. I seriously question the validity of the often quoted phrase, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists support the theory that man’s use of fossil fuels is bringing about catastrophic global warming.” In the first place, the worldwide destructive clearing and burning of rain forest results in putting far more net carbon dioxide into the air than all the vehicles in the entire world. Second, shrinking rain forests mean less water vapor is released into the air. This could in turn mean less rain and snow where the air over land is drier. The questions remain, does the evaporation from the oceans increase and make up for this loss, and what effect does the drier air have on cloud cover and the resulting reflection of the sun’s energy away from the earth? All of these interacting variables have much larger net effects on global temperatures than CO2. Because of this, “Overwhelming numbers of scientists” may have no real clue about the degree of effect that CO2 might have on atmospheric temperatures leading to global warming. Obviously it is much smaller than that of water vapor.
To explain why I make this statement, I have quoted biologist Edward O. Wilson. A Pulitzer prize winner, Wilson is an experienced and admired biologist and author of numerous books. He may have given us a clue as to why “many scientists” may not be good judges of climate change and of global warming or just how dangerous it is. In his book, The Creation, an Appeal to Save Life on Earth, he speaks about “scientists,” who they really are, and why the “scientific method” works. The following is a revealing quote from the eleventh chapter, Biology Is the Study of Nature. The italics in the quote are my comments.
The quoted section begins:
I will offer now an account of the concept and practice of science and in particular biology, the discipline most immediately relevant to human concerns.
I hasten to add I do not mean scientists. Most researchers, including Nobel laureates, are narrow journeymen, with no more interest in the human condition than the usual run of laymen. Scientists are to science what masons are to cathedrals. Catch any one of them outside the workplace, and you would likely find someone leading an ordinary life preoccupied with quotidian tasks and pedestrian thought. Scientists seldom make leaps of imagination. Most, in fact, never truly have an original idea. Instead, they snuffle their way through masses of data and hypotheses (the latter are educated guesses to be tested - global warming?), sometimes excited but most of the time tranquil and easily distracted by corridor gossip and other entertainments. They have to be that way. The successful scientist thinks like a poet, and then only in rare moments of inspiration, if ever, and works like a bookkeeper the rest of the time. It is very hard to have an original thought. So for most of his career, the scientist is satisfied to enter the figures and balance the books.
Scientists are also like prospectors. Original discoveries are the gold and silver of their trade. If important, they can buy collegial prestige, and with it wider fame, royalties, and academic tenure. Scientists by and large are too modest to be prophets, too easily bored to be philosophers, and too trusting to be politicians. Lacking in street smarts, they are also easily fooled by confidence artists and sleight-of-hand tricksters (and global warming promoters?). Never ask a scientist to test the claims of paranormal phenomena. Ask a professional magician.
The power of science comes not from scientists but from its method. The power, and the beauty too of the scientific method is its simplicity. It can be understood by anyone, and practiced with a modest amount of training. Its stature arises from its cumulative nature. It is the product of hundreds of thousands of specialists united by one commonality of the scientific method. Few scientists know more than a small fraction of available scientific knowledge, even within their own disciplines. But no matter: their fellow scientists are continuously testing and adding other parts, and the entire body of scientific knowledge is easily available. The invention of this remarkable engine of testable learning was the one advance in human history that can be called a true quantum leap. But it attained its preeminence relatively late in the geological life span of humanity, and only after human intellect had traveled a long, tortuous path dominated by tribalism and animated by religion.
Let’s try to establish a rough chronology. Millions of years ago there was only animal instinct. Then, probably at the man-ape level, the rudiments of materials culture were added. With still higher intelligence there followed a sense of the supernatural, whereupon demons, ancestral ghosts, and divine spirits peopled the human mind. Without science there had to be religion, in order to explain man’s place in the universe. Born of dreams, its images were enshrined in the culture by shamans and priests. The gods made man. Those that lived in surrounding Nature gave way to gods of sacred mountains, in distant places, and in the heavens. Somewhere and somehow back in time, these divine humanoids had created the world, and now they governed man. Humans in their evolving self-image, rose above Nature to follow the gods as children and servants. Tribes led unwaveringly by their personal gods were united and strong. They defeated competing tribes and their false gods. They also subdued Nature, erasing most of it in the process. Their destiny, they believed, was not of this world. They thought of themselves as immortal, no less than demigods.
Along the way, commencing in Europe in the seventeenth century, a radical alternative self-image emerged. Art and philosophy began to disentangle themselves from the gods, and science learned to operate with full independence. Step by step, often opposed by the followers of Holy Scripture, science constructed an alternative world view based on a testable and self-reliant human image. Doubling in growth every fifteen years during most of the past three and a half centuries, it has looked into the heart of living Nature, finding there a previously vast and autonomous creative force. This image has subsumed religious rivalries and reduced them to intertribal conflict. Science has become the most democratic of all human endeavors. It is neither religion nor ideology. It makes no claims beyond what can be sensed in the real world. It generates knowledge in the most productive and unifying manner contrived in history, and it served humanity without obeisance to any particular tribal deity.
End of quote.
There is one certainty about the global warming movement. It has become a “cause celeb” and generated huge amounts of cash, mainly for politicians in the form of numerous, varied and punishing new taxes, cap and trade agreements, and expensive regulations. These taxes and the hundreds of global warming organizations constantly soliciting donations have turned it into a huge, self-perpetuating cash cow for its promoters and benefactors. This will guarantee its continuation long after it is proven untrue or at best, overblown far beyond any real danger.
One menace that is far more dangerous to life on Earth
In this writer's opinion there are numerous other far more dangerous menaces facing humanity than global warming in its worst case scenario. I will briefly mention just one of those, population. Considering our exponentially expanding population and our steadily diminishing resources one would think concern for this would be paramount in the minds of all thinking people. This is certainly the most serious and overriding one of several score of serious menaces we are facing right now. It alone is the driving force of many of our problems and especially those related to the environment and food supplies. Will we continue concentrating our attention on things like global warming and the next American idol or soccer champion while major problems fester and grow with little comment or attention? Like Nero, the West fiddles as the world burns.
The growing shortages and rising prices of food are bringing attention to the fact that something is going drastically wrong. Unfortunately, most reports condemn those involved in the food industry they see as responsible for rising prices. They make no mention of population growth, the very real reason for the shortages bringing about rising prices. The same could be said for many other of our rapidly disappearing resources. It seems politicians and the media are far more interested in using invented menaces as tools to promote their own agendas rather than in finding solutions to real and dangerous ones.
“We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.”
Arnold Toynbee
Some time ago I went to my family physician for pains in my knees and back. After the examination and his recommendations I asked a simple question, “Doc! What’s happening to me?” His simple, straightforward answer said it all with great accuracy, “You’re wearing out.” Let me say that is just what the human species is doing to our world, we’re wearing it out and far beyond its ability to heal or repair itself. Deterioration is accelerating and will continue to do so until and unless something stops the insanity that is population growth. Nothing else will work! Nothing! We can cry all we want about disappearing species and growing extinctions, but the fact is simply that human reproductive success and over achievement is leading inexorably to the obliteration of all competing species, and much quicker than we think. Look at what has happened in the last one hundred years as we became more efficient at catching wild food and destroying wild habitat. Life on the earth will not handle another hundred years like the last. The greatest extinction of species since the Permian is not over. It is just beginning!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Maybe the climate change we should be concerned about is global cooling.
Climate is an extremely complex system that we have been studying for a long time up to and including the age of the supercomputer and computer modeling. Still, we have hardly touched the surface as can be attested to by the accuracy of our current weather forecasting. For example, in spite of all our technology, predictions of the frequency, location, and path of any hurricane are fraught with pure conjecture. We can't even hope to predict the intensity of any hurricane season. Witness the 2006 season. It was predicted to be one of the worst ever. Instead it turned out to be one of the mildest, the opposite of the predictions of some of our weather scientists and their supercomputer modeling. How about your local weather forecaster? How often does he miss the mark predicting just a day ahead?
The world's climate system is infinitely more complex than a single hurricane season. It moves in cycles and eddies that run from seconds to millennia. About forty years ago some climate pundits feared we were heading into global cooling and needed to prepare for a drier, cooler time with lower sea levels. According to many scientific studies of past frigid periods we are past due for the onset of the next ice age. Hubert Lamb of the UK Met Office dominated the 1961 UN meeting on global cooling. A founder of the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia, he was one of the world's top climate scientists. He warned that people had become complacent about climate at a time when population growth, cold, and drought could seriously damage their food supplies. (The Norse in Greenland perished of starvation after five hundred successful years when the Little Ice Age destroyed their crops.) In historic times the climate has veered from warmer than the present, the Medieval Warm Period, to the much colder conditions of the Little Ice Age from which we may still be emerging. Evidence shows that much of the Sahara and the Middle East held lush vegetation and crop land ten thousand or so years ago while northern Europe and America were covered with up to a mile of ice.
Many scientists and climatologists have been predicting the onset of a new ice age. Based on past climate cycles from warm ages to ice ages and looking at the major factors that influence just how much energy the Earth receives from the sun, the most likely scenario is change to a much colder, ice-age climate, and soon. Anecdotal evidence of climate change that is far more damaging than global warming is being considered by climatologists who are not overwhelmed by the global warming crowd. Indeed, there are several very real happenings that do not support global warming. Many are anecdotal, but the overwhelming evidence paints a very different picture than the one touted by global warming proponents.
I recently visited Alaska and spent a day in Glacier Bay. While there I learned some interesting facts, mostly from a recent publication about the glaciers. Since the mid 1700s Alaskan glaciers have been known to be steadily receding. Early explorers found glacier ice all the way to the mouth of what we now call Glacier Bay. There were maps in the book with lines showing the dates of glacier terminuses from the 1700s to 2007. All the glaciers were shown to have steadily receded until the early 1990's. Since that time all of these glaciers have advanced steadily. In recent years, average global temperatures have dropped. I also learned that arctic sea ice has been increasing rapidly since 2004. Recent tests show arctic ice to be thicker than it has been for many years. I wonder why the media has not made the public aware of these facts? Sure, this is anecdotal, but so is the earlier information about melting arctic ice.
Over the past two winters (2008-2009), anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snow cover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on. Already this winter, December 2008, has seen some of the coldest and most severe winter weather ever recorded.
It is interesting to note here that the onsets of previous climate changes have not been gradual, but quite sudden in relative terms. The native people who live near the mouth of Glacier Bay in Alaska once lived several hundred miles north of their present home. At about the same time, the Norse in Greenland were being wiped out by crop failures from the onset of the Little Ice Age. These Alaskan native legends describe an advancing glacier moving south “as fast as a running dog.” There are tree stumps and other evidence exposed when the glaciers receded to their current terminus showing the glaciers once had receded far beyond their current position during the medieval warm period that ended about a millennium ago.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does show clearly that more powerful factors could now be cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans—and most of the crops and animals we depend on—prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
The truth of the matter is that we are affecting the climate by adding CO2 to the atmosphere. That's roughly the same kind of truth as the fact that pouring a bucket of water into lake Erie will raise the lake level. That is about the same order of rise that can be attributed to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. We have very little definitive knowledge of how much effect raising or even doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will have in the long run. Other than using the calculations noted earlier in this article, we certainly are unable to hazard more than an intelligent guess as to what or to what degree the effect might be relative to other factors. The following are known to affect climate and average world temperatures as much or more than any increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide:
1. The wobble of the earth's axis increases or decreases the retention of energy from the sun. (22,000-year cycle)
2. The eccentricity of the earth's orbit increases or decreases the energy we receive from the sun. (12,000-year cycle)
3. The variation of energy output by the sun. (1,400-year cycle)
4. Variations in snow cover—snow reflects heat.
5. Variations in cloud cover—clouds reflect heat.
6. The variation in cosmic rays causes a variation in cloud cover. (No known cycle)
7. Dust and sulphate in the air can absorb or reflect heat.
8. Ocean temperatures and circulation.
9. Volcanic activity (For instance, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines brought on several years of cooler temperatures.)
10. Winds—as winds increase, dust from dry farmland and deserts, enters the air. (Gobi desert dust sometimes reaches as far as our west coast.)
It is also important to know that the first three are all very complex variables with many secondary effects on the temperature of the earth. For example: they all affect the power of the “solar wind.” This powerful force affects our planet strongly and varies widely on an almost hourly basis. The solar wind is a stream of charged particles or plasma ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It varies widely in its power and occurrence sometimes in very short periods of time—days or even hours. Though the earth is protected from direct exposure to this energy by its magnetic field, some of this energy does reach the surface. The effects it has on our atmosphere and climate are unknown. The noticeable effects include auroras which are relatively harmless and magnetic or EMF disturbances which can have devastating effects on electronic equipment including computers, communication equipment, and navigation systems. These solar “storms” have even disrupted electric transmission shutting down large sections of the power grid. These forces can also strip away portions of our atmosphere forming a “tail” pointing away from the sun in much the same manner as a comet’s tail. It is thought that Mars once had water and an atmosphere similar to earth’s, but it was mostly stripped away by solar wind over millions of years. Though the actual effect on the temperature if earth is unknown, the solar wind could be a major and irregular modifier of atmospheric energy and thus climate.
The rest of the factors are also varying and can be interdependent yielding an extremely complex mix of variables needed to produce any valid computer simulations. The effects of changes in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere on global temperature are probably smaller than those of any of the other factors. Records from ancient ice cores that show the CO2 content of air to be much smaller during previous ice ages. Global warming proponents say this is proof that lower CO2 levels cause lower air temperatures and higher CO2 levels bring about higher air temperatures. Actually it is far more likely that temperature variations are the cause of changes in CO2 levels rather than the result. This is evidenced by the fact that the ups and downs of CO2 levels follows those of temperatures. Effects always follow behind causes, they never precede them.
So you folks who purchased all those carbon credits and donated all that money to various global warming cause organizations can kiss that money good bye. I’m certain it is long gone with nothing to show for its passing. Perhaps when the ice sheets begin advancing you can join a new “global cooling” movement and pay for carbon debits to help warm the planet.
An unusual conclusion
After all the research of information about energy and fuels used to write my book, A Convenient Solution, it is this author’s conclusion that there is one best possible solution for practical, affordable energy and its use. In addition to its huge economic benefits to our nation, it would answer all the real or imagined concerns about CO2 caused global warming. I would urge those in power to consider doing everything required to make such a system a reality. That total system involves electric vehicles, EV’s and plug in hybrid electric vehicles, PHEV’s powered mostly by electricity from batteries charged from an electric grid supplied by geothermal power.
“GEOENERGY” is the most abundant and widest spread source of energy on the planet, yet it is rarely addressed. It is virtually inexhaustible, economically available, nonpolluting, noncarbon dioxide emitting, and grossly underutilized. A geothermal power plant costs about the same as a coal-fired plant of the same capacity and has a smaller footprint. Once built, no fuel system is required so maintenance is the only ongoing cost. It is potentially the least costly form of power generation available and certainly has the lowest environmental impact. It is an environmentalist’s dream come true. Its use requires drilling for heat almost exactly like drilling for oil, a well-developed technology. Why so few people ever mention it is a mystery. The development of geothermal energy to replace retiring coal plants and provide the necessary increase in electric generating capacity could be the best way for our future. With technology that is presently just beginning to grow, improvements in cost and performance could easily make it the best and most economical domestic source of electric power. This would satisfy complaints of both the global warming and anti nuclear crowd at least as far as generation of electric power is concerned. On the world stage, GEOENERGY is practical in most areas of the globe. It is especially available in Africa and could be a major factor in curing that continent’s serious ills.
For more information on climate goto http//hjgulfstream.blogspot.com
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