Chill out
Last week I looked at an in your face ignorant rant, one that would reinforce the views of like minded people but that would probably lead others to think that the author is a raving extremist. . This week I look at a more subtle rant, one much less likely to be dismissed by the general reader, but one that still goes "over the edge" in places. Because of the length, parts of the essay have been skipped.
Global Warming: A Chilling Perspective by Monte Hieb and Harrison Hieb
Here there is no mention of "fraud", "hoax" or "scam" Still, it is obvious that this is going to be a "skeptical" essay.
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 it's 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.
Here the authors redefine "global warming". While the term usually refers to human caused warming, they use the term to include natural changes as well. A similar redefinition has been used with other environmental problems such as ozone depletion and acid rain. ("Global warming" has been increasingly replaced by the more accurate and inclusive "climate change").
In the 1970's concerned environmentalists like Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado feared a return to another ice age due to manmade atmospheric pollution blocking out the sun.
Since about 1940 the global climate did in fact appear to be cooling. Then a funny thing happened-- sometime in the late 1970's temperature declines slowed to a halt and ground-based recording stations during the 1980's and 1990's began reading small but steady increases in near-surface temperatures. Fears of "global cooling" then changed suddenly to "global warming,"-- the cited cause: manmade atmospheric pollution causing a runaway greenhouse effect.
This is the mythology. The reality is somewhat different. As William Connolley has pointed out, an eminent ice age was not predicted by scientists in the scientific literature. And concern about human caused global warming started long before the 1980s. The prospect of human caused global warming was first raised by in 1895 by Svante Arrhenius. In one of the earliest books to criticize the environmental movement, 1972's The Doomsday Syndrome, John Maddox wrote (page 8) that "Another [recipe for disaster] is that the accumulation of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels may so increase the temperature on the surface of the earth as to transform the present pattern of weather and perhaps even to melt the Antarctic ice."
Global warming alarmists maintain that global temperatures have increased since about A.D. 1860 to the present as the result of the so-called " Industrial Revolution,"-- caused by releases of large amounts of greenhouse gases (principally carbon dioxide) from manmade sources into the atmosphere causing a runaway "Greenhouse Effect."
Note the use of language. Global warming "alarmists" "fear" a "runaway greenhouse effect." In reality, almost no one believes that a runaway greenhouse effect is going to happen.
Was man really responsible for pulling the Earth out of the Little Ice Age with his industrial pollution? If so, this may be one of the greatest unheralded achievements of the Industrial Age!
Unfortunately, we tend to overestimate our actual impact on the planet. In this case the magnitude of the gas emissions involved, even by the most aggressive estimates of atmospheric warming by greenhouse gases, is inadequate to account for the magnitude of temperature increases. So what causes the up and down cycles of global climate change?
Causes of Global Climate Change
Climate change is controlled primarily by cyclical eccentricities in Earth's rotation and orbit, as well as variations in the sun's energy output.
"Greenhouse gases" in Earth's atmosphere also influence Earth's temperature, but in a much smaller way. Human additions to total greenhouse gases play a still smaller role, contributing about 0.2% - 0.3% to Earth's greenhouse effect.
As we shall see, their claims of "about 0.2% - 0.3%" is based on faulty reasoning that has been debunked several times.
Playing with Numbers
Global climate and temperature cycles are the result of a complex interplay between a variety of causes. Because these cycles and events overlap, sometimes compounding one another, sometimes canceling one another out, it is inaccurate to imply a statistically significant trend in climate or temperature patterns from just a few years or a few decades of data.
Unfortunately, a lot of disinformation about where Earth's climate is heading is being propagated by "scientists" who use improper statistical methods, short-term temperature trends, or faulty computer models to make analytical and anecdotal projections about the significance of man-made influences to Earth's climate.
Yes there is a lot of disinformation. Coming from the people who claim that global warming is nothing to worry about.
During the last 100 years there have been two general cycles of warming and cooling recorded in the U.S. We are currently in the second warming cycle. Overall, U.S. temperatures show no significant warming trend over the last 100 years (1). This has been well - established but not well - publicized.
Each year Government press releases declare the previous year to be the "hottest year on record." The UN's executive summary on climate change, issued in January 2001, insists that the 20th century was the warmest in the last millennium. The news media distribute these stories and people generally believed them to be true. However, as most climatologists know, these reports generally are founded on ground-based temperature readings, which are misleading. The more meaningful and precise orbiting satellite data for the same period (which are generally not cited by the press) have year after year showed no warming.
Dr. Patrick Michaels has demonstrated this effect is a common problem with ground- based recording stations, many of which originally were located in predominantly rural areas, but over time have suffered background bias due to urban sprawl and the encroachment of concrete and asphalt ( the "urban heat island effect"). The result has been an upward distortion of increases in ground temperature over time(2). Satellite measurements are not limited in this way, and are accurate to within 0.1° C. They are widely recognized by scientists as the most accurate data available. Significantly, global temperature readings from orbiting satellites show no significant warming in the 18 years they have been continuously recording and returning data (1).
Each year is not declared the "hottest year on record." Ground based readings are not misleading, nor are they the only source of temperature data. The "urban heat island effect" has long been recognized and compensated for. Since satellites don't measure the temperature at the surface it is hard to see how they are "more meaningful." And the satellite record has frequently been criticized and revised. The latest revision shows that temperatures are increasing. . The latest revision shows that temperatures are increasing.
FUN FACTS about CARBON DIOXIDE
Don't you just love "fun facts"?
Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.
The more extreme anti-environmentalists keep clamming that humans are not responsible for the recent increase in carbon dioxide increase. On the main page the authors simply present some "fun facts" and let the readers reach their own conclusions. But if you read some of their side pages, like Global temperature deviations vs. solar activity and increases in carbon dioxide it is clear that the authors are also making this claim, and it is the source of the "about 0.2% - 0.3%" figure used above. Also note that while volcanoes are a very minor source of carbon dioxide they are made to appear significant by lumping them with other unrelated sources. This claim is patently false and has been debunked a number of times. (See Why does atmospheric CO2 rise? by Jan Schloerer or I've heard from the US EPA. Also see Why Do Human-made Greenhouse Gases Matter When Water Vapor Is the Most Potent Greenhouse Gas? from the World Meteorological Organization.)
At 368 parts per million CO2 is a minor constituent of earth's atmosphere-- less than 4/100ths of 1% of all gases present. Compared to former geologic times, earth's current atmosphere is CO2- impoverished.
CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life-- plants and animals alike-- benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.
The authors are once again redefining terms. Carbon dioxide is not a nutrient in the normal meaning any more than oxygen or water are. And anything in too much of an amount or in the wrong place is a pollutant. When plant growers use carbon dioxide it is inside a greenhouse where the can control factors like water and nutrients and weeds.
CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans-- the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.
Sine 1955 atmospheric CO2 has gone from about 315 ppm to about 370 ppm.
If we are in a global warming crisis today, even the most aggressive and costly proposals for limiting industrial carbon dioxide emissions would have a negligible effect on global climate!
The "skeptics" usually portray environmental measures as being "aggressive and costly". In reality, it has almost always been the case that preventing problems has cost much less than estimated. This is the same argument that was made about ozone depletion, acid rain, species loss and just about every other environmental problem.
The case for a "greenhouse problem" is made by environmentalists, news anchormen , and special interests who make inaccurate and misleading statements about global warming and climate change. Even though people may be skeptical of such rhetoric initially, after awhile people start believing it must be true because we hear it so often.
The case for climate change is being made by leading scientists and scientific organizations. People "believe it" because it is supported by the data.
"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
Stephen Schneider (leading advocate of the global warming theory)
(in interview for Discover magazine, Oct 1989)
As has been noted a number of times, Schneider was simply showing the difficulty of conveying complex science to the public.
"In the long run, the replacement of the precise and disciplined language of science by the misleading language of litigation and advocacy may be one of the more important sources of damage to society incurred in the current debate over global warming."
Dr. Richard S. Lindzen
(leading climate and atmospheric science expert- MIT)
Note the language once again. Schneider is a "leading advocate of the global warming theory" while Lindzen is "leading climate and atmospheric science expert."
"Researchers pound the global-warming drum because they know there is politics and, therefore, money behind it. . . I've been critical of global warming and am persona non grata."
Dr. William Gray
(Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado and leading expert of hurricane prediction )
(in an interview for the Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 28, 1999)
What politics is behind it? Leaders in congress and several of the recent administrations have been openly hostile to environmental protections. At best we have had the lukewarm Clinton-Gore administration.
"Scientists who want to attract attention to themselves, who want to attract great funding to themselves, have to (find a) way to scare the public . . . and this you can achieve only by making things bigger and more dangerous than they really are."
Petr Chylek
(Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Commenting on reports by other researchers that Greenland's glaciers are melting.
(Halifax Chronicle-Herald, August 22, 2001)
Why is there no quote about the money that can be made (and fame found) by being a global warming "skeptic."
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Written by Jim Norton
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