Is global warming a load of propaganda?

boomshackala

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2004/06-14-2004/science.htm

democrates

He's not denying global warming, but saying it's due primarily to the sun and that our greenhouse gas emmissions are harmless, while nuclear power is aok and you can't have too many people. Oh and he also wants to drench the worlds poor with ddt to save them from Malaria (they should have called it something else, that would've been a great girls name).

His scientific argument reminds me of the ID movement, it isn't science. He hopes his solar cycle graph will demonstrate that man-made global warming is a myth because the sun has always had an effect on the earths temperature.

Of course the science of man-made global warming doesn't seek to put all temperature change down to human activity, which would be absurd, but to demonstrate that we are contributing to it, and that the type of changes we are making to the atmosphere mean it cannot be expected to behave as in the past. And it isn't.

Climate change is undeniable, he simply blames the sun. But tornados in ireland over the last couple of years? No mention of that in history. He theorised that the atmosphere is self-regulating, and concludes that we can consume and pollute as much as we like. But he misunderstands the nature of this self-regulation. As we upset the balance in the biosphere, we reduce its capacity to support us. We can see this self-regulation happening with increased frequency and ferocity of storms as well as climate change.

His motivations are far right. Religious zeal, usa number one, national sovereignty incompatible with global co-operation, and a desire to extend the american eco footprint of 400 (average person consuming and polluting the equivalent of that many hunter-gatherers) world wide.

As for the petition stunt, that's not science, that's a large number of employees...
I am diametrically opposed to his prescriptions, but am satisfied he is providing new opportunities to focus attention on these issues.

bonkey

I love that his qualification is that of professor of chemistry and founder of the OISM.

Guess where he's a professor....

A google on his name seems to supply alternate hits of sites which just list his bio, and sites pointing out that he's a long history of associating with "fringe" science.

boomshackala

Am of a similar persuasion but just for arguements sake lets put his claims about CO2 to the test;

CO2, by itself, is not a significant greenhouse gas, and there is no scientific evidence that it can raise global temperatures significantly. However, the UN computer models assume not only that an increase in CO2 will cause a small increase in temperature, but that this small temperature increase will cause more evaporation from the oceans, and that the increase in water vapor (a highly significant greenhouse gas) will greatly multiply the effect of the CO2. This amplified effect is the basis of human-caused global warming claims. The problem with this is that the Earth has already demonstrated that it does not happen. The historical record shows that the Earth has, in the recent past, been much warmer than could ever be achieved by a CO2 greenhouse effect. Since water evaporation during those warm periods did not cause catastrophic global warming, there is no chance that CO2 could do so.

But why doesn�t the "science" work as global warming alarmists theorize it should? And why can�t any CO2-induced global warming be detected? An important factor is the complexity of the atmosphere, which, experimental evidence shows, is a self-correcting chemical system. It follows the principle of LeChatelier, who discovered this self-correcting property of chemical systems about a century ago. (This principle is explained in most introductory chemistry texts.) In short, LeChatelier�s effect has reduced the consequences of CO2 warming to such a low level that they are below the limits of detection by modern techniques.

Any validity in this?

lostinsuperfunk

CO2, by itself, is not a significant greenhouse gas and there is no scientific evidence that it can raise global temperatures significantly. However, the UN computer models assume not only that an increase in CO2 will cause a small increase in temperature, but that this small temperature increase will cause more evaporation from the oceans, and that the increase in water vapor (a highly significant greenhouse gas) will greatly multiply the effect of the CO2. This amplified effect is the basis of human-caused global warming claims. The problem with this is that the Earth has already demonstrated that it does not happen. The historical record shows that the Earth has, in the recent past, been much warmer than could ever be achieved by a CO2 greenhouse effect. Since water evaporation during those warm periods did not cause catastrophic global warming, there is no chance that CO2 could do so.

This isn't completely wrong, but it is a bit of straw man argument. He is correct in saying that if the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases, the temperature will also increase due to the CO2 greenhouse effect. The increased temperature will increase the capacity for the atmosphere to hold water vapour, which will in turn add to the greenhouse effect. However, this cycle wouldn't continue ad infinitum because at some point the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere would be enough to absorb all of the available incoming infrared radiation, i.e. the water vapour portion of the greenhouse effect would saturate.
Fair enough, he's just stated that we don't have to worry about one specific scenario of a runaway, water vapour-driven "catastrophic" warming. However, that doesn't mean that there's nothing at all to worry about. Even a moderate warming (which most agree could be forced by increases in CO2 concentrations) is a real cause for concern as it would be likely to lead to higher sea levels, shifting weather patterns etc. The local effects of such a warming could be extreme.

As for the Le Chatelier paragraph, I'm no chemist but I can dimly remember the Le Chatelier principle from LC chemistry. It states that chemical systems are in a "dynamic equilibrium". All other things remaining the same, the ratio of products to reactants remains constant. This is the classic reaction used to illustrate Le Chatelier:

N2 + 3H2 <=> 2NH3 (+ heat energy)

The <=> means the reaction can go either way. If you add NH3 the system readjusts to maintain the balance, ie some N2 and H2 is generated from some of the NH3 you added. If you add N2 and H2, some more NH3 is generated.
However, you can't just apply this to the atmosphere and say that it will ensure that CO2 concentration always stays the same, because it takes a long time for this particular system to reach equilibrium.The lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere can be up to 200 years, it slowly gets absorbed by the ocean. That's a long time waiting for the system to equilibriate! In the meantime, things are heating up...
Also, if you add more CO2 to a system that's in equilibrium, yes, some of the added CO2 will (slowly) be consumed to keep the system in equilibrium, however some of it will remain, so the total amount of CO2 still increases. This is because it's the ratio of product concentration(s) to reactant concentration(s) that stays the same, not the absolute concentrations themselves. The effect of adding more of reactant A is that you end up with more products and more of reactant A, although not as much as you added. He states himself that the atmosphere is complex but then proceeds to glibly apply Le Chatelier's principle without any consideration of equilibriation time or any other factors. It is much more than a simple chemical system, such as a sealed flask of gases on a lab bench. It interacts with the land, the sea and biological systems and it has its own large-scale structure and circulation patterns and temperature and pressure variations.

In any case, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased from about 280 parts per million in 1750 to about 370 ppm today (+32%), so this suggested "self-correction" mechanism hasn't been working recently.

There are some good responses to this kind of argument on this site:
http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/how-to-talk-to-global-warming-sceptic.html

FillSpectre

Global diming is under rated hence it appears gloabl warming is over rated

Akrasia

if global dimming is under rated, (and it is) then that means Global warming is even worse than we thought it was. If global dimming is blocking some sunlight, then if it ever stops, the planet will heat up. The particles that cause global dimming only stay in the air for a very short time. If for example, the whole of new york city suddenly stopped using fossil fuels and turned to a clean source of fuel, the partical pollution over the city would drastically reduce in only a few days or weeks causing a large increase in sunlight and a large increase in temperature.

This was proven when just after september 11, as the U.S. air corridors were completely shut down, temperatures over almost the entire United States increased because there were no longer jet contrails blocking the sunlight.

democrates

Bang on akrasia, saw an interesting documentary on that.

piraka

Interesting piece from the BBC, the radio programme top right is worth a listen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4923504.stm

Capt'n Midnight

The argument about global warming is not about if it's happening but about what causes it and if we are in the middle of a cycle or on an upward spiral. If you look up any info on glaciers worldwide or ice cover in the arctic both are very obviously retreating.

We have no control over the sun and it's very hard to work out how much heat it gave out in the past. But climate models have predicted "snowball earth" before evidence was found in the fossil/isotope record they also predicted that the planet could heat up out of it in a few thousand years, and that's with glaciers covering most of the tropics and possible global floating ice.

Pocari Sweat

David Attenborough remained tight lipped about damage to environment by mankind for many years, but is now doing first big tv prog this wednesday on BBC1 at 9pm.

He says he's gettin out the enviro closet to save his grandchildren.

He says the bible sent out wrong message about going forth and multiplying and robbing the fruits of the earth, which has led us all to this mess and this has governed mankind's thinking for too long.

abakan

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

We have no control over the sun and it's very hard to work out how much heat it gave out in the past.

well a couple of hundred years ago they were growing graphes near the North of England. therefore the earth must have been warmer then


http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/climate/medieval_warm_period.html

Pocari Sweat

I think Cap'n is saying that sun is volatile and uncontrollable probably causing major hot periods and ice ages in the past, without the scientists being able to work out what was going on.

Heat and temperature are both different things, a boiling kettle of water may be hot but a fridge and its contents have more heat.

So ice cores may be taken in antartica to study historical temp variations over the millenia, but is cap'n saying the heat output of the sun can't be measured by this?

Grapes in Newcastle in the past, this would suggest that the climate was hotter by a few degrees in old times, and maybe geordies were more pissed up, but surely they could not get as pissed as they are nowadays.

Christ they can drink.

Capt'n Midnight

Pocari Sweat wrote:

I think Cap'n is saying that sun is volatile and uncontrollable probably causing major hot periods and ice ages in the past, without the scientists being able to work out what was going on.

no not volatile, just bloody difficult to average across a whole planet, what with clouds and volcanos confusing things.

Pocari Sweat wrote:

So ice cores may be taken in antartica to study historical temp variations over the millenia, but is cap'n saying the heat output of the sun can't be measured by this?

temperature is not the same as heat output. one feedback mechanism is increased water evaporation when it's hot, this gives more clouds which reflect solar energy. Ice and snow do the same thing when it gets cold which don't help the calculations.

In the last 6 million years the med. has dried out, antartica was joined to south america which wasn't joined to north america. Very different climate and much more even since there was no circumpolar current.

There were mini ice ages too in europe at least one tentatively linked to an indonesian volcano (the dark ages) look up "ice fairs"

As for growing grapes, maybe without competition from europe they could do it in a way that isn't economic now. Did the grapes ripen in the open ? Look at german vineyards relying on shale to adsorb heat from the sun. Also it could just have been drier then - less clouds to cool things and all that - I don't know.

samn

abakan wrote:

well a couple of hundred years ago they were growing graphes near the North of England. therefore the earth must have been warmer then


http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/climate/medieval_warm_period.html

Except there are far more vineyards in england today than there were in medieval times, so I am not sure how this indicates it was warmer back then.

Also the romans were growing grapes long before medieval times, and private growers were growing them since medieval times.

It seems more likely that grapes could always be grown in england. Grapes can be grown in quite cold temperatures. Quality of the grapes won't be as good in the english climate, but then medieval vine growers were not after quality, they were after wine for religious necessity.

Pocari Sweat

So really there is no global warming, it is just historical peaks and troughs with a bit of shenanegans by man to add a bit of hassle.

I don't hear much about the heat in the earth's core which is a study all in itself which has a massive effect, like the sun.

If we have an ice age in the next few hundred years, then we will mostly be indoors.

democrates

Pocari Sweat wrote:

So really there is no global warming, it is just historical peaks and troughs with a bit of shenanegans by man to add a bit of hassle.

I don't hear much about the heat in the earth's core which is a study all in itself which has a massive effect, like the sun.

If we have an ice age in the next few hundred years, then we will mostly be indoors.

Attenborough on the beeb debunked the solar explanation ths evening. They looked specifically at the trends due to the earths orbital cycle's varying distances from the sun, and showed that it cannot account for the spike in temperature since the 1970's. Human activity when added to the model yields a match with actual measurements.

sonandheir

The world was a lot hotter many millenia ago due mainly to the green house effect of CO2, methane and other gases. As plants began to populate the earth they sucked up this CO2. Over those millenia the temperture came down, and all this carbon got stored as coal, oil, and gas. Now within a 150 years since the beginning of the industrial revolution we're well underway to releasing it all back into the atomsphere. The effects will not be seen in our lifetime and unfortunately they probably will be quite sudden and dramatic as is our instigation of them (i.e. a few hundred years to undue millenia of change). The propaganda of these american "experts" is a shame, and the fact that they're undermining the Kyoto agreement which is at least trying to impose some responsiblity for the future of our planet on us is a disgrace.

base2

There is nothing unnatural about the world heating up and its laughable that some people actually think that we can do something about it.

samn

sonandheir wrote:

The world was a lot hotter many millenia

The word millenia means a thousand years. You should probably use something like eons which is a lot more vague.

samn

base2 wrote:

There is nothing unnatural about the world heating up

Well there is if the warming isn't natural. That's the definition of unnatural.

Capt'n Midnight

samn wrote:

The word millenia means a thousand years. You should probably use something like eons which is a lot more vague.

Especially around 4.5 eons ago.

boomshackala

base2 wrote:

There is nothing unnatural about the world heating up and its laughable that some people actually think that we can do something about it.

I think you're missing the point. The general thinking afaik is to set up a scenario where we consume energy sustainably, i.e. with no net effect on the earths atmos. This way we will have stopped contributing to climate change. I don't know of any other decent way to recapture the mass of carbon we've recently released other than by planting trees

democrates

base2 wrote:

There is nothing unnatural about the world heating up and its laughable that some people actually think that we can do something about it.

We can't change the earths orbit and it's impact on climate, true.

The greater danger is from mans activity causing it to spike, the greenhouse gas volume can make it hot even when naturally it would have been cold. That we can do something about.

Glenbhoy

Has anyone read the Michael Crichton book 'State of Fear'? If so, what do ye make of it? It impressed me (not the story cos that was rubbish), basically he says (with back-up references) that yes there is global warming, but that no matter how much anyone says they can prove man's influence on this, they can't. Maybe we impact on it, maybe not. He also points out that the data being used for comparative purposes for global warming may not be comparable, for example we don't know how controlled measurements taken in the past. The deficiencies in computer models get a touch, in that some scientists seem to think they're invioble predictions, whilst of course the reality is that they're models (which cannot be as complex as our environment).
He points out some other theories which were popular recently such as the feeling in the 70's that were heading towards another ice-age!! That the early proponents of plate-tectonic theories and continental drift were shunned and outcast for their ridiculous ideas (as was Darwin initially?).
I'm still in favour of dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and whatever else is advocated, whether or not man causes global warming or not, why risk the fact that he may be, but i hate this accepted wisdom of global warming theory that man is undeniably responsible - the truth is we don't know, the theory is exactly that.

bonkey

Glenbhoy wrote:

Has anyone read the Michael Crichton book 'State of Fear'? If so, what do ye make of it?

Haven't read it, but I have seen (for other reasons) the realclimate.org commentary on it.

A google should find it for you quickly enough.

democrates

Glenbhoy wrote:

Has anyone read the Michael Crichton book 'State of Fear'? If so, what do ye make of it? It impressed me (not the story cos that was rubbish), basically he says (with back-up references) that yes there is global warming, but that no matter how much anyone says they can prove man's influence on this, they can't. Maybe we impact on it, maybe not. He also points out that the data being used for comparative purposes for global warming may not be comparable, for example we don't know how controlled measurements taken in the past. The deficiencies in computer models get a touch, in that some scientists seem to think they're invioble predictions, whilst of course the reality is that they're models (which cannot be as complex as our environment).
He points out some other theories which were popular recently such as the feeling in the 70's that were heading towards another ice-age!! That the early proponents of plate-tectonic theories and continental drift were shunned and outcast for their ridiculous ideas (as was Darwin initially?).
I'm still in favour of dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions and whatever else is advocated, whether or not man causes global warming or not, why risk the fact that he may be, but i hate this accepted wisdom of global warming theory that man is undeniably responsible - the truth is we don't know, the theory is exactly that.

You are right to maintain scepticism, many scientific 'truths' have been debunked or reduced in scope over the years from copernicus to einstein. Ultimately nothing can be proven as an absolute universal truth because this could all be a dream, simulation or what not, but let's assume this is a genuine reality we are perceiving, just for sport.

What scientists are saying is that there is a preponderance of evidence that global warming is happening, and that natural events alone cannot explain it, but when they add in mans activity, the model matches real world observations much more closely.

While it's fair to point out that climate models aren't perfect, they are the best tool we have for predicting the climate and they're getting better all the time as real-world data from ice-cores, ocean buoys, satellite imagery, weather stations etc etc and better understanding are included.

As the models get more accurate, scientists are sounding more alarms. Hmm. In fairness a model showing everything normal forever is not going to make the news, or perhaps keep the funding coming. But that doesn't amount to a case for cutting funding and banking on ignorance. Most of us have enough education to comprehend the models as explained, and the problem with escalating human activity, even if the models have overstated.

Switching it around, the notion that we can spike greenhouse gasses in particular, and increase consumption and pollution in general, forever-more within a finite biosphere without adverse consequences, strikes me as patently absurd.

Also, if the global elite who concentrate ever more wealth and power through driving such excesses truly believed there was no risk, they'd readily apply their vast power to produce better models proving their point. If they have better science, they're not sharing it... Instead they're playing innocent until proven guilty. But in the absence of a perfect climate model, the proof they're asking us to wait for is disaster itself.