"Global Warming", now termed "Climate Change", is being publicized with polar bears swimming in water, glaciers melting, and other normal things, but what are the facts?
What will be the results of drastic governmental control of energy and resources? Will government control reduce pollution? Or just cause higher prices and less freedom?
When you see the globalist propagandists' photos of glaciers being smaller than 100 years ago, think of this:
During the last Ice Age much of Europe was covered in a sheet of ice - Over a mile deep in some places. During the Wurm Ice Age, the timberline was at the Mediterranean Sea. Just three hundred years ago, during the 1600-1700's, ice surrounded Iceland, destroyed Greenland food crops (yes, Vikings used to grow their own food), ice covered the Thames river.
During the Pleistocene in North America, the Great Lakes and the Finger Lakes were carved
by the ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin were gouged out by glaciers, to be filled with water later when the glaciers melted.
Glaciers, by definition, have been melting since the end of the last ice age. That melting would naturally accelerate as the centuries of warming continued. We have not seen evidence if accelerated glacial loss is appropriate to this inter-glacial period or not.
As a matter of fact, recognized theories state that we have been in an interglacial period of an ice age which began 40 million years ago.
On a global level, when all the Earth's ice is measured, we find as much is currently thickening as is thinning. Similarly, when we ignore short-term regional trends and focus on global temperatures as measured by satellites, no warming trend is found. (If anyone has solid evidence to dispute this or any statement, please inform us.)
Carbon Dioxide.
The causal relationship between past warming periods and greenhouse gases such as
carbon dioxide
is still under controversial debate.
The
gases that absorb infrared radiation
from the sun and create the greenhouse effect are mainly water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Water vapor and water in clouds absorb nearly 90 percent of the infrared radiation, while carbon dioxide, methane, and the other minor greenhouse gases together absorb little more than 10 percent of the infrared radiation.
Therefore, most of the greenhouse effect is natural and caused by the different forms of water in the atmosphere.
In fact, many scientists state that human activity is negligible compared to natural water vapor in the air.
(Ref. http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html)
However, human activities over the past 100 years--such as burning wood, coal, oil, and natural gas--have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by an amount equivalent to a 40 percent increase in carbon dioxide alone. This is an increase of only 2 percent in total greenhouse gases.
From 1940 to 1970, carbon dioxide built up rapidly in the atmosphere. According to the simplistic reasoning of the alarmists, the temperature of the Earth should also have risen rapidly. It did not.
When scientists analyzed the relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperatures dating back 250,000 years, inferred from ice cores drilled in Greenland and the Antarctic, they found that sometimes the concentration of CO2 was high when the temperature was low, and sometimes the CO2 was low when the temperature was high. (Ref. H. Fischer and M. Wahlen, "Ice Core Records of Atmospheric CO2 Around The Last Three Glacial Terminations," Science 283, 1712-1714 (1999).)
We know from simple physics that the additional energy added to the climate system by the doubling of atmospheric CO2 is about four watts per square meter (W/m2)--a very small amount of energy when compared to the 342 watts per square meter added by the sun's radiation at the top of the atmosphere, and small also when compared to natural variations in the amount of radiation the sun sends toward the Earth.
The possible increase in energy stored in the atmosphere due to human activity is also small when compared to uncertainties in the computer simulations of the Earth's climate used to predict global warming. For example, knowledge of the amount of energy flowing from the equator to the poles is uncertain by an amount equivalent to 25 to 30 W/m2. The amount of sunlight absorbed by the atmosphere or reflected by the surface is also uncertain, by as much as 25 W/m2. Some computer models include adjustments to the energy flows of as much as 100 W/m2. Imprecise treatment of the effect of clouds may introduce another 25 W/m2 of uncertainty into the basic computations. (Ref. R.D. Cess, M.H. Zhang, P. Minnis, L. Corsetti, and E.G. Dutton, "Absorption of Solar Radiation by Clouds: Observations Versus Models," Science 267, 496-499 (1995).)
These uncertainties are many times larger than the four W/m2 input of energy believed to result from a doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It is difficult to see how the climate impact of the four W/m2 can be accurately calculated in the face of such huge uncertainties. As a consequence, forecasts based on the computer simulations of climate may be meaningless, as the computer addage goes: "garbage in, garbage out".
Despite the continuing debate,
newspaper and
magazine articles
and now
movies
have began a trend toward alarmist positions with little balance in the stories.
Al Gore's
An Inconvenient Truth
points out that temperatures and carbon dioxide go up in tandem over the last four ice ages. But Gore fails to mention something interesting. Temperatures went up first and then the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases some 800 or more years later.
The ozone hole over the Antarctic,
which has also been curiously included as evidence in some global warming reports, is expected to disappear by 2050.
The new findings are based on a series of numerical simulations carried out by Eiji Akiyoshi of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, near Tokyo, using projected emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and other gases blamed for the ozone hole.
According to a report posted Friday on the institute's Web site, the hole is at its largest now but is likely to gradually start contracting around 2020 and disappear by around 2050.
The team's findings are in line with research by other scientists, including a favorable outlook from U.S. scientists published in the journal Nature earlier (in May 2006.)
Then we have other factors:
Earth Orbit variation.
Earth has a three-dimensional orbit with a 100,000 year cycle of orbital inclination. It was proposed that these variations in orbital inclination lead to variations in insolation, as the earth moves in and out of known dust bands in the solar system. Incidentally, previous ice ages had periods of 100,000 years.
Earth spin tilt variation.
The Earth spins around an axis that tilts lower and then higher during a 41,000-year cycle. Close to the poles, the contrast between winter and summer is greatest when the tilt is large. The Earth wobbles because it is spinning around an axis that tilts back and forth. Thus, a temperature drop occurs in the Northern Hemisphere when it tilts away from the sun; then the same thing happens in the Southern Hemisphere and again in the North, in a 22,000-year cycle.
Sun intensity cycles.
NASA has reported that the sun is in a 40+ year cycle of significantly increased radiation.
Some scientists report that the last 60 years of activity has been greater than in any period in the last 8000 years. and should last another 20-30 years.
If one looks at only the last few hundred years of that chart, one may be alarmed, but we can't control the sun, and it should calm down again before it really rises in a about 2 billion years.
Predicting global weather is about as precise as predicting earthquakes and volcanoes.
Campi Flegrei in Italy (15 kilometers west-southwest of Naples) had a large eruption 35,000 years ago that produced 80 cubic kilometers of dense rock, some of which flew as far as the Don River in Russia, over 2500km away. Java a hundred years ago, and Mt. St. Helens recently, were nothing compared to such less frequent eruptions, which probably cooled the Earth significantly.
It is easy to look at a photo of a retreating glacier and think, "oh my! it must be suddenly getting warmer!" This can be analogous to the people who are buying homes in 2006 because the prices have been rising for a decade. For the old timers who remember the busts of the 80's and 30's... some with whom I spoke are gladly selling their extra properties to people like these, and waiting out the ride.
"Climate change is more remote than terror but a more profound threat to the future of the children and the grandchildren and the great-grandchildren I hope all of you have," President Bill Clinton, May 20, 2006.
Repetition does not establish validity. -Souder's Law
Doubt everything at least once, even the proposition that two times two equals four. -Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, scientist and philosopher (1742-1799)
We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist
(1872-1961)
I will harm you the most when I leave you in the hands of academics.
- Gengis Khan.
[W]e 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 (quoted in Our Fragile Earth, Jonathan Schell)
Views expressed in this page are not necessarily those of anyone whom is known by anyone associated with this webpage.
by the ice deepening old valleys. Most of the lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin were gouged out by glaciers, to be filled with water later when the glaciers melted.
Hmmmm. Any similarities?