Posted on 05/17/2007 2:09:14 AM PDT by Las Vegas Dave
If you have tried to reason with a GWF (Global Warming Fanatic), you know it's a waste of time. They believe GW with a passion that has no room for facts and data. Tell them the planet has been warming (slightly) since 1977 because it's on the up side of a solar-driven warming and cooling cycle going back hundreds of thousands of years. Tell them CO2 (carbon dioxide) - not a pollutant but a harmless gas that every oxygen-breathing animal breathes out and plants breathe in to survive - is a tiny fraction of the Earth's atmosphere, man-made CO2 a tiny fraction of that and therefore highly unlikely to be a factor. They don't want to hear it.
They believe in human-caused GW on faith, like religion, because their personal GW evangelists (Al Gore, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the mainstream media) tell them it's fact and that we should all (except wealthy GWFs like Gore) dramatically alter our lifestyles to save the world. They want to believe it is mankind's (and mostly America's) fault, and they desperately want to believe they can make a difference.
But why (contrary to GWF pronouncements) don't all scientists agree?
No scientific consensus
Every global temperature computer model is a product of its human author and the data humans put into it. Researchers accumulate temperature trends wherever good data is available, but none can accurately calculate true "global" temperature because reliable data is not available everywhere on the planet. And even in long-populated developed areas, how accurate is temperature data from 100 or 1000 years ago?
So researchers compute imperfect estimates of climate history and input them to their models, and each model spits out a range of future temperature predictions. Those wanting to prove GW naturally focus on the high ends of those ranges. Those choosing to dispute it look at the lower ends.
The result is a cadre of GW believers and plenty of doubters among the so-called "scientific community." Which group gets the media attention and lucrative research grants? Which gets ignored, marginalized, ostracized, demonized, sometimes fired and even death threats? Yes, death threats! Such is the depth of GWF passion.
The New York Times, among others, took Gore's GW Inconvenient Truth film apart for its errors and exaggerations. He says CO2 is the most important "greenhouse" gas. But 95 percent of that mix supposedly causing Earth to cook is water vapor; CO2 is four percent. He says the seas will rise 20 feet due to polar melting. The true worst-case scenario is more like one to two feet.
"One foot would be a problem," one critic points out. "Twenty feet would be a catastrophe. He's asking us to react as if to a catastrophe with measures that would be very expensive and do little good."
And fret not for his polar bears. Their population has swelled to some 25,000 from 10,000 in the last 50 years. Maybe they like it a little warmer.
What about the U.N. studies?
The oft-touted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "consensus of 2000 scientists" is a politically driven scam. Some contend it's a conspiracy to damage our economy and aid others, especially those of developing countries, which will be much less affected by CO2-reducing laws, controls, and taxes. The much-praised Kyoto Treaty to supposedly slow global warming imposed drastic CO2 reductions on the U.S. and other developed nations and zero on China, India, and others that are the world's worst polluters as their economies grow faster than their pollution controls. That's why the U.S. (even under Clinton ) refused to sign it, and countries that did sign it have not come close to complying.
According to Western Washington University geologist Don J. Easterbrook, one of thousands of scientists who does not subscribe to human-caused global warming, the version of the IPCC report released for policymakers this February "was written by 33 policymakers, not scientists. The scientific report that will come out in May/June was written by 143 climatologists and other scientists, reviewed by 27 scientists, and sent out to about 1700 scientists for comment. That represents fewer than one percent of the world's scientists, and they surely don't speak for the entire scientific community. The truth is, there is no 'consensus.'"
"I can get 9000 [scientists] who question it," another dissenter says.
"I've been studying meteorology all my life," another adds. "This [recent warming] is just part of a pattern, and there is nothing we can do about it."
Still another points out that only 17 percent of his meteorological society "believes human activity has anything to do with it."
The debate is hardly over
We are not hearing much intelligent debate on GW these days because GW disbelievers - armed with data and facts vs. GWF emotion and opinion - are routinely ignored, suppressed, even intimidated by GWF hysteria faithfully and unquestioningly amplified by mainstream media. High-profile industry and government leaders, including President Bush and all three U.S. automaker chairmen, have crumbled under GWF pressure and decided to go along, behave as if human-caused GW is real and jump on the runaway GWF train. Better that than to continue being savagely demonized as enemies of the Earth.
Should they, and we, do everything reasonably possible to protect the environment and reduce our consumption of fossil fuels? Absolutely! Should we continue to reduce man-made pollution of our earth, air and water, as America very effectively has been doing over the past four decades? No question! But we must not be fooled or bullied into believing that harmless CO2 is pollution. Or that the Earth is on an irreversible course toward destruction if we don't curtail CO2 production by some unattainable percentage in the next several years. There is absolutely no scientific proof or evidence of that, and a great deal of evidence otherwise.
For example, just two percent of Antarctica is dramatically warming while 98 percent is cooling, according to Bjorn Lomborg, author of the widely acclaimed book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, and sea mass is increasing in the Northern Hemisphere while decreasing in the Southern Hemisphere. And global temperatures dropped for three decades following their recent high point in 1940 despite increasing levels of CO2. Now they are rising again and approaching that 1940 high. These cycles correlate closely with solar activity, not CO2.
What seems difficult for non-scientific GWFs and GW believers to grasp is that two things happening simultaneously - increasing CO2 and increasing temperatures - are not necessarily linked. Is increasing human life expectancy caused by increasing CO2?
The fact that CO2 levels are higher than they've ever been, Easterbrook points out, "does not mean that CO2 is causing global warming. The increase in CO2 since about 1945 has been from 0.03 percent [of the Earth's atmosphere] to 0.038 percent, a change of only 0.008 percent. The data I have indicates that CO2 is not the cause."
The simple solution
All human activity (including breathing) produces about 3.3 percent as much CO2 as does nature itself, primarily from solar ocean heating and decaying plants and animals. While CO2 now comprises 0.038 percent of the total global atmosphere, human activity contributes just four percent of that, and the U.S. supposedly 25 percent of that four percent. So if the entire United States were to disappear overnight, the resulting reduction in generation of new "greenhouse" gas would be one percent! Tell me again how much difference we can make with more efficient (and far more expensive) vehicles and light bulbs?
If we well-meaning Americans really want to reduce that allegedly Earth-threatening one percent of that 0.038 percent, we (and all our animals) need to stop breathing. Or maybe we all, like Gore and other well-heeled GWFs, can purchase "carbon offsets" (baby trees and captured cow flatulence) to render our lifestyles "carbon neutral." Then none of us will have to stop breathing or change our evil CO2-producing ways. The resulting enormous volume in "carbon offsets" will drive the prices down to affordable for most of us, and the government will surely subsidize or give away offsets to carbon consumers who can't afford them. Think how profitable that will be for Gore's company and others that sell them.
Or we could catch our collective breath and listen to geologist Easterbrook: "Extending the past [global temperature] pattern into the future," he contends, "we should start cooling again beginning between sometime this year and 2010." That should eventually hush GWF hysteria and send doomsayers over the edge (again) about "global cooling," as in the mid-'70s. He further projects that the globe will cool "half a degree or so" between 2010 and 2040, warm between 2040 and 2070, and cool again from 2070 to 2100, "give or take five years."
But how many years will it take for America 's industries and economy to recover from the enormous damage that will certainly result from draconian laws and taxes laid on by a misguided Congress driven by GWF politicians and media to "fix" a problem that doesn't exist?
Global warming fanatics hearken back to the Marxists who believed that their predictions of the future were scientific and therefore could not be questioned.
GW Theory is remarkably robust with respect to data. All observations confirm with it probability 1.0.
Ping!
Thanks for posting!
prisoner6
proud-to-be-a-global-warming denier bump!
One study posted here before showed that warming preceded co2 increase.
I’ve been reading some interesting reports about temperature measurements. Seems that some are saying that any increased temps may be due to bias in the weather stations. It seems that up until some years ago the weather data “boxes” called Stevenson screens were painted with whitewash which had more reflective properties than the modern white paint used today.
You can read about it here:
and here:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1546
Interesting to say the least.
The oft-touted U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "consensus of 2000 scientists" is a politically driven scam.Thanks LVD.
save
Those are the 2 best weblogs on climate that I am aware of. Everyone who reads FreeRepublic should be reading those blogs as well (if they are truly interested in GW debate). (Of course, realclimate.org should be visited from time to time just to see how childish people can act).
I have been forwarding these and other info to Art Bell of Kook to Kook.
He has jumped the shark and joined the man made global warming nuts.
At least his weekday host, Norey, seems to still have not
lost his mind.
I doubt that I will get any reply from Bell.
CO2 is not a pollutant; it’s plant food.
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