The global warming debate.
As with any scientific theory a hypothesis is put forth, scientific data is acquired, and then the hypothesis is either proven or disproved. In theory this is how science works. What happens when politics meets science? In today’s environment the need for continued funding for research has a tendency to lead findings toward those which allow for yet more funding. In the global warming debate, the situation is complicated by several facts.
1) The earth is not static. Models created to understand how the earth responds must, by necessity be complex.
2) In today’s scientific community, specialization is the rule. Each scientist is an expert in his own field, but not that of others around him, and they have a tendency to believe that theirs is the most important specialty.
3) Political pressures and influences are not only significant, but it is difficult to determine who is feeding into who’s agenda.
These facts have generated a lot of speculation and conspiracy
theorist. These not withstanding, the
movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has been heralded as a groundbreaking work
to bring to the public the risks of global warming, as well as a call to
action. The movie has circulated widely,
and seen by millions. The problem is
that the movie portrays itself as a factual scientific based work, when in fact
it is little more than a political statement over exaggerating the science. In fact, many of the scientists that were
quoted in the movie have gone on record, some of them quite vocally, that the
former vice president, Al Gore, misrepresented their opinions and
statements. As an example, one
particular point of the movie claims that a 20 foot rise in ocean levels is a
realistic short term effect we can expect. It states that the entire
In a study funded by NASA's Cryospheric Processes Program and the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Glaciology Program, from 1992 to 2003, Curt Davis, MU professor of electrical and computer engineering, and his team of researchers observed 7.1 million kilometers of the ice sheet, using satellites to measure changes in elevation. They discovered that the ice sheet's interior was gaining mass by about 45 billion tons per year, which was enough to slow sea level rise by .12 millimeters per year.
Also, according to NOAA data presented on the web site of Bill Chapman of
the Polar Research Group at the
Is there melting of polar and glacial ice? Certainly there is. But we must also remember that we are still
(ecologically speaking) exiting the last mini-ice age, which ended in 1880 (officially).
We must also remember that our current interglacial period is already 10,000 years old. No
interglacial period during the last half-million years has persisted for more
than 12,000 years. Most have had life spans of only 10,000 years or less.
Statistically, therefore, we are due to slither into the next glacial period.
So back to the politics. Much todo has been made about the landmark report by the IPCC (intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which clearly states that man and his burning of fossil fuels, are to blame for a rise in CO2 levels, and that those levels are responsible for the global change in temperature. Now that is quite obviously a simplification of what the report says, but if you really boil it down, that’s the jist of it. The IPCC is made up of hundreds of scientists that combined their knowledge to churn out this historic work, heralded as a landmark of scientific collaboration and consensus.
John R. Christy, a member of the IPCC, co-receiver of the Nobel piece prize in 2007, and one of the many scientists making up this consensus, makes this statement:
I'm sure the majority
(but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see
neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that
human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see
a reliance on climate models (useful but never
"proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide
and global temperatures have loose similarity over time. There are some
of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding
the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability
to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch
and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don't find the
alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the
Given this statement by one of the scientists that authored
the report being used today as the bible on global warming, one would have to
question, just exactly what kind of consensus was there for this groundbreaking
report? The answer is that
when asked, of the 345
The consensus aside, let’s look at the primary issue the report claims. “Man made CO2 generated, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, is responsible for a global temperature rise that is unprecedented in known history”. Again this is a generalization, but distilling hundreds of boring pages down to something readable requires a bit of simplification. Now lets look at the claim.
CO2 generation by burning of fosil fuels is causing a global temperature rise. For this to be true, there would have to be an average global temperature rise. The following chart shows the temperature change for the year 2007 vs the average temperature from 1880 to 1980. Note that the red colors are higher temperatures and the blues are colder.
Looking at this chart it is clear that the general temperature
rise is not global. In fact there are
portions that are significantly colder. The
theory holds that air stirring and storm currents generally mix enough air that
a global temperature change would equate to a general upward trend over the
entire globe, with some higher temperature anomalies appearing at locals
intermittently. The plot, generated from
data provided by NASA GISS (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/
) clearly shows that there are significant areas of higher temperatures, and
many lower temperatures. Notice also
that the areas of higher temperatures do NOT coincide with the areas that are
claimed to be the high CO2 producers. Looking
at the
The above chart, generated from Energy Information Administration, shows that the areas correspond to the highest areas of temperature rise, are actually the lowest producers of CO2.
The theory also holds that CO2 in the atmosphere reflects infrared radiation back to the ground, warming the earth. Where does this radiation come from? Simply put, it comes from the sun. Now if the CO2 reflects the infrared radiation from the sun, how does it get through to start with? Wouldn’t you think that we would be getting colder, instead of hotter with all that infrared being reflected back into space because of the high CO2 levels? Oh yeah, that’s right. It only reflects the radiation AFTER it comes through the first time. Try this argument on a high school earth science paper and you will sure to find it adorned with a failing grade. Why then would this argument hold anyplace else?
Another serious issue with the argument that CO2 causes higher temperatures is ocean temperatures. A recent study of ocean temperatures vs air temperatures shows that ocean temperatures are higher than the corresponding air temperature. Hmmmm let’s think about that for a second. Cooler air warming ocean water? Something doesn’t add up. Well, the fact is that it doesn’t add up. Ocean water is not warmed by the air. It is however warmed by Infrared radiation. Ah yes, there’s that infrared again. Only this time, it is exactly correct. Water absorbs vast amounts of infrared radiation. Anyone who has spent any time in an arid climate knows that the temperature swings are tremendous, compared to a wetter climate, like a rain forest, where the daily swings are only a few dozen degrees at most. In a desert you can see a low at night of nearly freezing, and a high above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Why is this? Any good meteorologist or high school science teacher can answer that without even opening a book. Arid land has no water to absorb infrared from the sun, and then emit the stored heat during the dark areas. This energy storage works on water in the land, the air and the plants. So lets get back to our ocean. What is an ocean made up of? Water! That’s right. The oceans are warmed by the sun. Now the next thing gets a little technical, but I will try to simplify it. The oceans contain high amounts of CO2. Most of this is in the water in what is known as solution. The amount of CO2 that water can hold is directly related to the temperature of the water. The warmer the water, the less CO2 it can hold due to something known as Partial Pressure. Now if the water is warming, do you think its giving off more CO2? Of course it is. And the evidence shows that the of the oceans are giving up their CO2 at tremendous rates. The following graph gives an example of what is known as the carbon cycle.
Note that fossil fuel burning gives off 5.3 billion tons of carbon per year. The oceans give off and re-consume between 100 and 115 billion tons per year. Looking at this as a concentration problem, the CO2 levels of the atmosphere increased by 5 parts per million between 2001 and 2003. According to Dr Jarl Ahlbeck of Abo Akademi University, Finland, one degree temperature rise of the ocean can increase atmospheric CO2 levels by as little as 10 parts per million and as much as 20 parts per million. (http://www.john-daly.com/oceanco2/oceanco2.htm )
Now I may only be a simple engineer, but if the oceans are warming, and the warming oceans create several times more CO2 than the rise seen between 2001 and 2002, wouldn’t it make sense that this may be a significant factor in global CO2 rise? In fact, a rise of average ocean temperature of only one quarter of one degree would account for ALL the CO2 increase we saw last year. This very point has been stated by Dr Ahlbech. Ice core studies covering the climate for the last 60,000 years shows that for first comes the warming, then comes the CO2. This has been known and stated in a number of scientific studies from as far back as 1989. (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V6/N26/EDIT.jsp )
So if warming comes before CO2 (according to real, not political, science) then what is the driving factor? Let’s see. Infrared heats ocean water, and ocean water gives off CO2. And we know that water in most climates absorb infrared moderating them. so is it possible that water vapor is a factor? Is there more water vapor in the warmer areas of the atmosphere? According to NOAA higher temperatures and higher water vapor content are clearly linked, one feeding the other. The question is, which comes first, and what upset the feedback cycle that keeps things in check? Very simply put, without the greenhouse effect, there would be no life on earth. It’s what keeps us from becoming little more than a floating chunk of rock in space like the moon. The following diagram shows a very simplified version of how the greenhouse effect works ( Borrowed from Junkscience.com)
You can see that there are many factors that reflect infrared both away from the earth, and back toward it. The balance of these energies is what allows our planet to stay at its comfortable life giving temperatures. When these this balance is changes, the earth changes. Some of these changes are long term and some are short term. As an example, the 1880’s were the end of what is known as the little ice age, a period of our planets history starting in the 1600’s, where average global temperature dropped around one half of one degree. This period followed a relatively higher temperature period known as the medieval warm period, a rise of peaking around two tenths of a degree in the 1100’s. What caused these warmer and colder periods? What upset the balance and allowed the global balance to change? Scientifically we have already eliminated CO2 as the cause, the ice core data clearly shows that rising CO2 levels came after warming.
The answer is that we simply do not know. Climatic models that are used to determine what the global climate is doing, are simply in adequate. Not one of the sixteen models currently in existence properly predict our current situation without “tweaking”. This tweaking is a manual recalibration to an arbitrary temperature of 14 degrees Celsius. Why is this done? Because if you don’t, none of the models accurately predict where we are today. Now if you go to a grocery store you want the cash register to tally up exactly what you spend. How many of you would go to a store that rang up most of your order and then calculated how much your total should be, and charged you for that? I know I wouldn’t, but that is exactly what the IPCC wants you to do. They have models that take historic data, and tally that data. In theory, if the model is correct, it should be able to predict a short period into the future. Unfortunately, the models don’t work, so to bolster their argument that CO2 is the problem, they adjust the model to get the result they want. The reality is that the absolute mean surface air temperature of the Earth is actually not known and there is no specification of exactly what we are trying to measure or how to go about doing so. No one knows what Earth's optimal temperature would be or how it could be knowingly and predictably adjusted even if an optimum could be agreed.
Does global warming exist?
Certainly it does. If it didn’t we
would be an ice ball floating in space. The real issue is how much global climate
change is good, how much is natural? Are
we really so vain to think that we can really effect our atmosphere to such a
great extent in such a small period of time? Reality shows us that one single massive volcanic
eruption can cause massive climatic change. The year without a summer, 1816, was caused by
the eruption of