Posted on 04/26/2007 10:29:28 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The current debate about global warming is "completely irrational," and people need to start taking a different approach, say two Ottawa scientists.
Carleton University science professor Tim Patterson said global warming will not bring about the downfall of life on the planet.
Patterson said much of the up-to-date research indicates that "changes in the brightness of the sun" are almost certainly the primary cause of the warming trend since the end of the "Little Ice Age" in the late 19th century. Human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas of concern in most plans to curb climate change, appear to have little effect on global climate, he said.
"I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," said Patterson. "The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."
Patterson explained CO2 is not a pollutant, but an essential plant food.
Billions of taxpayers' dollars are spent to control the emissions of this benign gas, in the mistaken belief that they can stop climate change, he said.
"The only constant about climate is change," said Patterson.
Patterson said money could be better spent on places like Africa.
"All the money wasted on Kyoto in a year could provide clean drinking water for Africa," said Patterson. "We're into a new era of science with the discussion of solar forces. Eventually, Kyoto is going to fall by the wayside. In the meantime, I'm worried we're going to spend millions that could have been spent on something better like air pollution."
Tom Harris, executive director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project - an organization that attempts to debunk some of the popular beliefs about climate change - supported Patterson's findings.
Global warming assertions are based on inconclusive evidence put forth in science reports that had not been published yet, he said.
"The media takes (inconclusive) information that only suggests there could be a climate problem and turns it into an environmental catastrophe," said Harris.
"They continually say we only have 10 years left, and they've been saying it for 20 years, and it's ridiculous," he said. "The only reason I got involved in talking to media is that I think our resources are being mismanaged.
"Go after something real and tangible like air pollution."
After hearing a second scientist say climate change is part of a natural cycle, Elaine Kennedy - a local environmental activist - is interested in investigating the issue further.
She looks forward to examining scientific reports that will be published in a couple of months by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"The problem may not be climate change, but the problem is still pollution," said Kennedy.
She's not alone in her assertion global warming is a pollution problem.
David Phillips, a senior government environment expert, believes there is more than one contributing factor to global warming. There's a human element, as well as natural cycles.
Difficult to convince
"I'm a man that's difficult to convince," he said. "What convinces me is the large body of evidence, and highly reputable people promoting global warming, who are not lobbyists, but only seeking truth in science. They say the the earth is warming up faster and greater now than in the past."
People who are contradicting the global warming reality, Phillip thinks, have their own motives for doing so.
"These skeptics are keeping the debate alive (for their own interests). They try to confuse people into inaction," said Phillips.
Phillips believes global warming is solvable.
"We solved the ozone and acid rain problem. With effort, and a new way of doing things we could solve this one too," said Phillips.
Oh, c'mon now...it's not wasted if a significant portion of those billions ends up lining the pockets of Al Gore and his friends at Lehman Brothers Holdings.
Printing up all those carbon offset certificates ain't cheap, you know. 8^)
But if plants grow more they will put more oxygen in the atmosphere and, as anyone who has been in a hospital knows, oxygen creates an explosive atmosphere. So the planet really could catch fire and burn up like Algore says. We need to get rid of all these dangerous gasses. /s
I hope they recover what they don't use. I shudder to think that they contribute to global warming just to provide us with some winter tomatoes, or even flowers.
[Except, of course, the irrevocably lost value of what we could have produced or accomplished with the money we threw down the global warming rat hole.]
That, my friend, is considered lost opportunity costs. It is the product of spending beyond the point of dimishing returns. I would go one step further, along the diminishing returns side, and add; Humans have taken several actions that, later were found to make a problem worse (MTBE in CA, DDT banned around the world, etc.)
The lost opportunity to control inflation and tax's cost Louis XVI his head.
Bttt...
NO ONE EXPECTS the GW Inquisition!!! 'Spose that he'll get the comfy chair?
One of the most classic cases of begging the question ever spoken. Should be part of every class on elementary logic.
They destroyed the anthracite coal industry with that stupid acid rain nonsense.
Unfortunately, the public has been whipped up into such a frenzy about this that someone JUST doing something ...regardless of how utterly foolish... might not only be accepted, but also encouraged.
Stuff like Carbon Credits and driving around in Hybrid cars are harmless and allow people to get a wonderfully smug feeling that they are personally saving the Earth. But, in the long run, they don't really amount to a hill of beans. Some truly drastic action might cause permanent harm.
Riiight. Of COURSE, they do!
They go in there at night and suck it up with a vacuum cleaner, and blow it out again the next morning.
I thought everybody does that.
The Earth is getting warmer because it is supposed to.
Do you get a headache holding your CO2 in overnight?
THANK YOU! I`ve been saying, screaming this to liberals for the past few years but they just don`t get it...
Composition of dry atmosphere of earth, by volume.
ppmv: parts per million by volume
Nitrogen (N2) 780,840 ppmv (78.084%)
Oxygen (O2) 209,460 ppmv (20.946%)
Argon (Ar) 9,340 ppmv (0.9340%)
Carbon dioxide (CO2) 383 ppmv (0.0383%)
Neon (Ne) 18.18 ppmv
Helium (He) 5.24 ppmv
Methane (CH4) 1.745 ppmv
Krypton (Kr) 1.14 ppmv
Hydrogen (H2) 0.55 ppmv
The atmosphere is composed of 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxegen and 0.04% CO2 which you can literally read as ZERO POINT ZERO! Of that amount that is ZERO POINT ZERO, it doesn`t take a fool to imagine how incredibly low human emissions are.
Liberals are literally using as evidence the deviation of that 0.04%..One day it is 0.0383%, then a few years later it`s 0.04%, and this they claim is evidence! 17 more molecules of CO2 in a million molecules of air, and for this they are holding these "Live Earth" concerts in July, for a "Climate in crisis"!!
http://www.liveearth.msn.com/
17 additional freggin` molecules that could have come from anywhere, from shaking the reader, even from the hippie burping while doing it, and THIS is their evidence!
Global warming by humans is just as impossible as humans reducing CO2 in the atmosphere (which by the way if reduced to 0.02% basically stops photosynthesis in plants - If liberals love trees so much you would think they would be wanting MORE CO2!)
At 0.02%...When the air has less that 0.02% CO2, photosynthesis basically ends.
Right now the atmosphere has approx. 0.0383% to 0.04% CO2..You would think all these lib tree huggers would be going in the OPPOSITE direction saying “More CO2”, but noooooo, it seems the current lib fad or idiots like Al Gore and Sheryl Crow is to reduce CO2 which is pracically impossible.
If you removed every CO2 expelling animal on this planet, every car, every industrial plant, you couldn`t even measure the difference unless you counted in parts per million, and even then, the difference would be literally a few molecules here and there.
The reason is there are just too many PLANTS on earth which out number CO2 expelling life forms BILLIONS to one. Look at this photo of South America from space, all you see is GREEN and it ain`t green from cars, people, volcanoes or animals, and this is just one continent!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e9/South_America_satellite_orthographic.jpg
Tell that to all the MENSA rejects in the California legislature.
They have made that asinine assertion officially law, in California.
CO2 Bookmark, thanks for a good one.
So where else does the energy come from to explain the warming, if not from the sun ?
BUMP
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