Is Global Warming Real?
With the revelation of the British hoax regarding global warming, an obvious question is "Do you think that anthropogenic global warming is real?" And here's my answer:
( What's the Truth? )
( What's the Truth? )
I have no doubt some climatologists believe in man-made global warming. Their belief, however, can affect their objectivity ... as has been demonstrated in "Climategate."
There is no scientific justification for saying an increase of CO2 from one part in 3,500 to one part in 2,600 will cause an increase in temperature of 1 degree C over 100 years.
Most people believe there is more CO2 than there is. When that Science Czar Holdren was on Letterman, he asked Dave how much CO2 was in the atmosphere and he said 20-30%! *LOL* It's actually .00000385%.
I could go on and on but suffice it to say global temperatures naturally go up and down. The methodology of assigning global temperatures over hundreds and thousands of year has such a high margin of error, the samples being so small and localize, that any attempt to say you know that current temperatures are one degree higher than they were 100 years ago is stupid.
The "Mann trick" in the emails involves comparing apples and oranges, selected tree ring data to estimate temperatures over hundreds of years with actual measurements in recent decades.
Why? Because the more recent tree ring samples show lower temperatures than actual readings.
That and using codes and corrections in the models to eliminate results you don't want to see.
You can look it up. That's how Mann smoothed out the Medieval Warming Period, the Little Ice Age, and made the 1940s look cooler and recent decades warmer.
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The question is not, therefore, whether or not CO2 greatly affects our climate. It is known science, known at the level of physics, that it does. The question is whether or not the human-caused INCREASE in atmospheric CO2 resulting from the Industrial Revolution affects the climate ENOUGH to constitute a PROBLEM. This is a much more specific and complex question, and it is one to which we do not yet know the answer.
The reason why the question is complex is that CO2 goes through long and complex atmospheric, biological and geological cycles; and furthermore, that a lot of other factors (chiefly insolation) also affect the Earth's climate. What's more, changes in the climate caused by CO2 may trigger other processes that may push the climate in all sorts of directions: the best example is that if there were a sudden melting of the Greenland glaciers, the salinity of the Northwest Atlantic would reduce and this would probably shut down the Gulf Stream, causing glaciation in Europe!
You can look it up. That's how Mann smoothed out the Medieval Warming Period, the Little Ice Age, and made the 1940s look cooler and recent decades warmer.
Yes, I know that Mann prostituted science on behalf of his own political hobbyhorses. But Mann isn't the only source of this data, and there is a rise of about 1 degree Centigrade since around 1900. Is this anthropogenic, and is this significant? That is what the debate is about, and the fact that Mann lied doesn't negate the reality of the situation.
Whatever is that reality.
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CO2 doesn't "trap heat" it delays the release.
There is still no scientific evidence to suggest that CO2 in such a minute amount causes anything but a tiny fraction of the "greenhouse effect." And man's contribution to the total CO2 in the atmosphere is miniscule.
Fossil-burning CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased because vegetation, tres, etc. don't like that particular isotope and they don't get reabsorbed in favor of other isotopes.
Much less than water vapor, methane, etc.
CO2 has been pinpointed as the target because it is the only one we can control.
The Supreme Court, the government, and the media have been successful in getting people to believe that CO2 is a pollutant That that billowing smoke from smokestacks is, in fact, CO2 when it is mainly water vapor.
If CO2 were a primary determinant in raising temperatures, we would not have had a decrease in temperature over the last 11 years.
CO2 levels over history have always followed temperature fluctations, not caused them.
I know this is useless to debate you on this because you believe the CO2 theory. But you can look up the facts on what I have said yourself. Cutting CO2 emmissions is not only costly to everyone but it won't happen and, if it did happen, wouldn't do anything except make some people rich and redistribute money and power away from developed countries.
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By "trap heat," I meant "delays the release." For obvious reasons of thermodynamics, it is impossible to "trap heat" eternally. Delaying the release of heat, however, is enough to increase the temperature of an object. That's the principle on which feathers, fur and clothing all operate.
There is still no scientific evidence to suggest that CO2 in such a minute amount causes anything but a tiny fraction of the "greenhouse effect."
Indeed, but the release of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels means that CO2 long sequestered by geologic cycles is re-entering the atmosphere long in advance of when it would normally be released, concentrating it in time. (Without human intervention, that CO2 would eventually be subducted into the mantle and released by volcanic action). And nobody is claiming that it does cause anything but "a tiny fraction" of the greenhouse effect.
Perhaps you're not aware of the size of the total "greenhouse effect." It's something on the order of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The last time the "greenhouse effect" shut completely down was Snowball Earth, about 750 million years ago in the time of the Rodinian supercontinent.
And yes, anthropogenic CO2 is a tiny percentage of this total effect!
Fossil-burning CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased because vegetation, trees, etc. don't like that particular isotope and they don't get reabsorbed in favor of other isotopes.
As far as I know, this is gibberish -- organic processes do not significantly distinguish between different isotopes of the same element. FYI, two isotopes of the same element have the same electron shell: the difference lies in the nucleus, and the nucleus is not involved in most chemistry.
(Hydrogen is the great exception to this: because deuterium differs so greatly in mass from normal hydrogen, heavy water is a poison).
Much less than water vapor, methane, etc.
Yes, quite true.
CO2 has been pinpointed as the target because it is the only one we can control.
To be more precise, because it's the one whose output we have primarily affected. We do, btw, also have an effect upon the output of methane (a more powerful per-unit greenhouse gas), but this effect is much more complex.
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I know what the greenhouse effect is and how it works. I have for decades.
I also know that CO2 is but a tiny participant in that process, and man's contribution to that process is even smaller.
If CO2 causes more heat to be "delayed" why has the temperature been going down for 11 years when CO2 has been going up?
The CLIMATEGATE scientists don't know. That's why they've been trying to HIDE the decline.
"Gibberish?" "As far a you know?" Oh, come now. That's a liberal tactic. Look it up.
Look, the left doesn't want ANY energy produced if possible because they hate capitalism and think human beings are an intrusion on the planet.
They don't want nuclear. They don't want solar. They don't want windmills.
It's all about control, with them as the oligarchs.
And even if you did produce alternative fuels, battery cells, windmills, the facts indicate that the net output in energy doesn't even cover the input in energy, resources, damage to the environment, etc. it takes to produce the energy.
Every one of these produces there on "carbon imprint", waste, pollution, maintainance costs, disposal problems, etc. to be dealt with, not to mention disruptions to the ecological/food systems by the vast amount of water, resources, and money needed to produce them.
Let the alternative energy producers demonstrate they can sustain the production of energy sources WITHOUT using fossil fuels to produce them at a competitive cost. They can't so the taxpayer pays while they spring their wheels.
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I agree with you on both those points. It's a marginal effect. But marginal effects may be significant. Or they may not be, in a particular case. It's why my answer boils down to "We don't really know yet."
If CO2 causes more heat to be "delayed" why has the temperature been going down for 11 years when CO2 has been going up?
My guess would be twofold.
(1) Since average global temperatures first increased for about 200-250 years, we may be seeing a negative feedback mechanism, part of Lovelock's postulated "Gaia" self-regulation of the biosphere, and
(2) The Sun has been entering a short-term cooling phase, which could by itself account for the total change (since insolation is by far the biggest climatic factor.
Again, I've never heard of a difference in carbon isotope uptake by living things. As far as I know they take up carbon and its compounds with indifference to what isotope of carbon is involved.
(Carbon-dating is based on the fact that, once the living thing stops uptaking carbon, some isotopes decay and thus change the proportions from what would be found in the atmosphere).
Look, the left doesn't want ANY energy produced if possible because they hate capitalism and think human beings are an intrusion on the planet.
They don't want nuclear. They don't want solar. They don't want windmills.
It's all about control, with them as the oligarchs.
I totally agree with you there. And, being arrogant, they assume that they would remain in charge, and continue their comfortable lives, regardless of what happened to other people.
They're wrong about that, but that would be scant comfort to us.
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http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
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The first thing I recognized and criticized about global warming theory years ago, after studying social science research and inferential statistics, is that CORRELATION does not necessarily mean CAUSALITY.
A funny "study" I remember was how the more fire-fighters you have the more damage they cause at fires. Of course the reality is that the bigger the fire the more fire-fighters you NEED.
As I've said in other comments, there is no scientific proof that a rise .0000385% CO2 in the atmosphere would cause a 1 degree C rise of global tmemperature.
I'm old enough to remember when some of these same scientists believed the burning of fossil fuels would result in Global Cooling.
This is a political movement, not a scientific search for the facts, as many of the former leaders who have LEFT the movement like Patrick Moore:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_CfwtHuZT557pmj6dtgdR2I
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Note my lack of precision regarding the percentage rise in CO2 and in temperature. That's intentional -- we don't really yet understand all of the processes involved.
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I am not anti-science. I am very pro-science.
I am anti-BAD science.
These guys jumped onto and promoted a theory before they knew enough about what they wer studying.
Now we are watching them all wriggle in the wind, along with the politicians and media who WANT their theory to be true.
Because they have an agenda.
Trillions of dollars and a massive takeover of personal liberty are at stake over a scam.
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They use that as a reason for placing blame on human beings as the primary cause for increased CO2 levels in the air.
However, they are too biased to realize that the levels of that isotope will ALWAYS be increasing in the air if plants avoid absorbing it.
As I pointed out elsewhere, the Sun was in an ACTIVE phase before this resting phase and GW Alarmists said that had little or nothing to do with the alleged increase in warming.
You can't have it both ways and say that NOW it is responsible for global cooling.
These people are all over the map and the Climategate emails and documents are confirming that fact.
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"Pollutant" is a relative term -- one man's pollutant is another man's product. You'd be on firmer ground pointing out that the popular concept of a "pollutant" is irrationally tinged by the concept of "pollution" in the religious sense, and often has very little to do with the relative detrimental effects on human beings.
That that billowing smoke from smokestacks is, in fact, CO2 when it is mainly water vapor.
(*nods*) CO2, in gaseous form, is invisible and odorless.
If CO2 were a primary determinant in raising temperatures, we would not have had a decrease in temperature over the last 11 years.
Nobody said it was a primary determinant. The primary determinant on the Earth's surface temperature is solar radiation.
CO2 released from fossil fuels is of importance because it is CO2 that was previously sequestered by geological processes. We can raise the CO2 levels of the Earth's atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. That's not even a matter of scientific question: we know this for sure. The matters of scientific question are how signficantly and to what effects.
CO2 levels over history have always followed temperature fluctations, not caused them.
If that were true, then our understanding of atmospheric physics would be gravely flawed. Atmospheric CO2 in fact does both: it causes global warming (because it increases atmospheric heat reabsorption) and follows it (because increased heat releases more CO2 from the oceans). As I've been trying to explain, the process is complex.
I know this is useless to debate you on this because you believe the CO2 theory.
I don't know what you mean by "the CO2 theory." I believe that CO2 exists, and that it is a greenhouse gas, and that we have raised the level of CO2 in the atmosphere since around 1750 by burning fossil fuels.
(Note that if we burn a biological substance that then regrows the biological cycle takes care of that CO2, since the regrowing plant uses roughly the same amount of CO2 to build its tissues: the issue is purely one of fossil fuels).
I do not believe that we have enough evidence to know whether or not anthropogenic global warming is an overall problem for humanity.
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The fact that someone has a peanut allergy does not infer that peanut is a pollutant.
CO2 is a naturally occuring gas essential to life. It is not a "waste" product. It is a part of life and the chemistry of the univers, no matter what 5 Supreme Court Justices, the EPA, and Climate Alarmists think.
Of course too much of anything, like plain water, can have deadly effects ... but that does not make them pollutants.
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No, the same substance may be a good or a bad externality depending upon the situation. If we were plunging into an Ice Age, we would want to produce excess CO2 (and CH4, among other things) to ramp up the greenhouse effect. If you are trapped in a small airtight space with no external supply of oxygen, the CO2 of your own exhalations is most definitely a "pollutant" from your POV. If you are living on a space station and attempting hydroponics gardening, you want to make sure that you don't scrub too much CO2 from those same exhalations out of the atmosphere before it can reach the plants. And so on.
CO2 is a naturally occuring gas essential to life. It is not a "waste" product.
Would you believe that it's both? It's a waste product from your POV biologically, because you burn glucose with oxygen to fuel yourself, and your main waste products from this are carbon dioxide and water. It's also a nutrient from the POV of a plant, which combines the carbon dioxide with water and other substances to make glucose, other sugars and starches, emitting oxygen as part of the process.
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