A Global Warming Warning, written by Freydis
Global warming
is an increasingly contentious issue around the world. The ones
most alarmed see the stakes as immense and consequently they
fight for their view like ideological partisans and nothing else
matters more. This creates a very polarized environment for
dialogue that tends to
 negate
objectivity and impartial analysis allowing panic, fear,
and others emotions to guide the debate. The partisan divide
that has emerged is an especially worrisome trend in climate
research, but first let's review the main elements of
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), or in other words
human-caused global warming.
The Main Elements of Global Warming
All future climate predictions are based on computer models.
The past record of Earth’s temperatures and climate can be
measured in various and often quite creative ways from drilling
ice cores in glaciers to studying the growth patterns of tree
rings. Through a combination of efforts it is possible to gain
an incomplete idea of Earth’s climate history but we don’t have
anything that can tell us what the future will be. That’s why
researchers have turned to computer simulations to try and
predict what Earth will be like tomorrow or two hundred years
from now. Not surprisingly the models for future climate change
have a wide variation of predicted outcomes because a simulation
is only as accurate as the input data and the mathematical
formulas being used.
When you stop
and consider how comically inaccurate meteorological scientists
are at predicting the weather even just two days into the future
I think some of us can be forgiven for remaining slightly
skeptical of current climate predictions for Earth in the year
2100.
Is it all negative?
Even if the temperature increases 1 or 2 degrees Celsius that
may not be an undesirable event! History and paleontology have
shown that life on Earth thrives during warm periods and
struggles during the cold cycles. Even if the sea level
increases because of the warmer temperatures the increase in
habitable land closer to the poles will more than compensate. Is
global warming really all negative? No, absolutely not, and this
is an important point that is quickly lost in the emotional
debate.
Warming is the effect but what is the cause?
The Earth really is getting warmer, global warming is a real and
verifiable effect
but the
substantiating details of this effect depend on the time frame
and location being measured. Even then a warming climate is
hardly abnormal! Earth’s climate has varied wildly in the past
long before humans were around and scientists still don’t know
what causes the changes. Quantities of carbon dioxide gas have
increased in Earth’s atmosphere and that can reasonably be
connected to the vast quantity of fossil fuels humans have
burned over the past 150 or so years of industrialization. But
CO2 is not a strong greenhouse gas, as opposed to methane, or
even water vapor, and
other natural factors are so much more powerful and widely
varied that disentangling cause and effect is truly a daunting
scientific challenge. Also there is a delay between cause and
effect when it comes to burning the fossil fuels and when the
Earth begins to warm, if indeed the two can be directly
correlated at all. It’s so early in this cycle that researchers
have to guess about the effect from the known causes but many
fear that if they downplay the potential dangers they will do a
disservice to everyone if it later turns out to be a real
problem. I contend that many climate researchers are dong the
disservice to the public by extrapolating highly questionable
future trends and turning them into predictions of disaster that
may never occur, and indeed such predictions are distracting us from other more tangible and correctable
problems.
Where's the consensus supporting artificial global warming?
A standard
tactic in psychological manipulation is to emphatically imply
that a belief or assumption is so assuredly true that nearly
everyone agrees with it without questioning and that anyone
extreme enough not to agree is crazy or foolish and therefore
not even worth listening to. Commercial mass-marketing
successfully uses this trick to sell their products to consumers
every day. The Artificial/Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis is being sold to the public in the
same manner based on the erroneous assumption that all
respectable scientists and researchers unequivocally agree with
it. But this is absolutely not the case.
In
2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC)
Working Group One, a panel of experts established by the World
Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment
Programme, issued its Fourth Assessment Report. This included
predictions of dramatic increases in average world
temperatures over the next 92 years and serious harm resulting
from the predicted temperature rise. ... The 4th IPCC report
was released 10 months before it shared the Nobel Prize with
Al Gore, and that publication made it clear that there was a
consensus of 2,500 scientists across the globe who believed
that mankind was responsible for greenhouse gas
concentrations, which in turn were very likely responsible for
an increase in global temperatures.
However, just two weeks ago, Dr Arthur Robinson of the Oregon
Institute of Science and Medicine told the National Press Club
in Washington DC that more than 31,000 scientists had signed
the so-called Oregon Petition rejecting the IPCC line.
Moreover, some of those included on the IPCC's list have also
raised objections. On 12 December 2007, the US Senate released
a report from more than 400 scientists, many of whose names
were attached to the IPCC report without - they claim - their
permission. In the report, the scientists expressed a range of
views from skepticism to outright rejection of the theory of
anthropogenic global warming. [1]
What can we really do about it anyway?
The developing countries of the world are building polluting
industry like mad. China has already eclipsed the United
States in industrial pollution and CO2 emissions! China is building coal burning power plants at a
staggering rate, around one per week, all in a desperate attempt to keep up with
rapidly growing electricity demands. China has adopted the most
wasteful and polluting economic model they could find and are
well on their way to the new, I mean old, gloriously
smog-chocked future of an automobile based society. Fear of
global warming has done nothing to stop this catastrophe. And
catastrophe is an understatement because it will definitely have
a negative effect on the entire planet from pollution to
resource scarcities.
Even if the wealthy countries decide to significantly cut their
CO2 emissions, all the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere as
well as all the new additions from the poor and developing
countries will continue to build up and the stuff already up
there isn’t going away either. I think it is a legitimate
question to ask, is it really worth the massive effort to try
and stop this based on less than conclusive predictions when all
that effort may well be better directed at more immediate
problems or at least at problems that can actually be solved in
our lifetime?
Where’s the Warming?
Computer model based climate
researchers made the stunning admission in spring 2008 that
Earth’s temperature will not increase for 10-20 years, and
instead may actually cool! [2]
A
recent study in the journal Nature by scientists from the
Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University,
postulates that global temperatures are unlikely to rise again
until around 2015-2020, after a decade-long leveling-off since
the 1998 recorded high. In other words, it is possible that by
2020, the world will not have warmed for over 20 years.
[1]
Why are we being compelled to
panic over this global warming mega-event that’s supposed to
occur at a perpetually postponed future date when very real
problems such as pollution are occurring right now and can be
realistically solved using current knowledge and technology?!
The real disaster is science in the service of ideology
Whether they realize it or not through their zeal the fact is
that many climate researchers, including respected institutions
and not just the fringe element, are flagrantly lying about
global warming because they continue to make assertions and
predictions that cannot be substantiated by any known scientific
evidence. When you read about the impending catastrophes from
global warming don’t forget the mindset here: it’s never
really a lie if it promotes concern over artificial global
warming. Catastrophic artificial global warming as it's
known today is like Walt Disney ‘science’ where if you believe
in it enough it will have to come true.
A Warning
on Warming
Critics of the AGW
hypothesis are not just being isolated and marginalized anymore
they are being directly attacked and punished for their views.
If everyone that held a dissenting view on the causes of global
climate change were clearly crackpots without any credentials or
valid arguments then marginalization might be appropriate but
that is definitely not the case this time.
This is the greatest risk we run by polarizing and politicizing
the debate and putting all our bets on the one hypothesis that
global warming is caused by human action, if these convinced
climate researchers are later proven to be wrong it won’t just
be a few scientists with a black mark on their career but all of
science that will be condemned by the public. This collective
failure has already happened most notably with predictions of
global over-population catastrophes after the year 2000 and
predictions that Earth was headed for another ice age made just
30 years ago with as much fervency as artificial global warming
is made today.
The doom and gloom catastrophist prognostications from
researchers have taken on the same quality as the lunatic on the
street-corner holding up the cardboard sign exhorting us all to
read the Bible and find Jesus because the world will end
tomorrow. If the scientific community fails this time the stakes
are much, much higher because of the very way the argument has
been heated up with exaggerated rhetoric and extreme predictions
of future disaster while simultaneously being linked with
ideological causes.
And that’s really what artificial
global warming
is about. Even
worst case scenarios put 2-3 degrees in temperature increase 100
years out, far enough away that we may well have some
technological solution anyway. If global warming can be tied to
human actions then it creates a direct path to attack
large-scale industry and the rampant environmental pollution
that has gone along with it. That is the real intent of the
argument and science is just being abused to open up that path.
Pollution is a terrible problem, ironically a very tangible and
immediate one that is a direct consequence of human effort as
opposed to global warming, but using global warming as a pretext
to cut industrial emissions and radically alter human economic
and social behavior is foolish, to put it mildly.
|
Smells Like Global Warming |
August 2007 |
Artificial global warming
is the dues ex machina of the 21st century
Global warming is blamed for
just about every severe weather event that occurs now, floods,
famine, fires, and earthquakes even! The list is nearly endless
since the artificial global warming advocates can say just about
anything they want without fear of criticism because it’s the
same story on every channel: 'artificial global warming proven
without doubt; everyone says so!' Just as ‘terrorism’ lurks
under every rock and in every shadow to the Bush/Cheney regime,
global warming is the hidden demon responsible for every major
climate event and natural disaster.
For a
revealing look at how the fervent belief in artificial global
warming has lost scientific legitimacy to become a new religion
read Alexander Cockburn’s excellent article from June 2007, with references:
Dissidents Against Dogma.
The
Achilles' heel of the computer models (which form the
cornerstone of CO2 fearmongering), is their failure to deal
with water. As vapor, it's a more important greenhouse gas
than CO2 by a factor of twenty, yet models have proven
incapable of dealing with it. The global water cycle is
complicated, with at least as much unknown as is known. Water
starts by evaporating from oceans, rivers, lakes and moist
ground, enters the atmosphere as water vapor, condenses into
clouds and precipitates as rain or snow. Each transition from
one form of water to another is influenced by temperature and
each water form has an enormous impact on global heat
processes. Clouds have a huge, inaccurately quantified cooling
effect: they reflect heat received from the sun, though how
much is unknown. Water on the Earth's surface has different
effects on retaining the sun's heat, depending on whether the
water is liquid and dark, as are the oceans, which are highly
absorbent; or ice, which is reflective; or snow, which is even
more reflective than ice. Such water cycle factors cause huge
swings in the Earth's heat balance; they interact with global
temperatures in ways that are beyond the ability of computer
climate models to predict.
The first
global warming modelers simply threw up their hands at the
complexity of the water problem and essentially left out the
atmospheric water cycle. Over time a few features of the cycle
were patched into the models, all based on unproven guesses at
the effect of increased ocean evaporation on clouds, the
effect of clouds on reflecting the sun's energy and the effect
of cloud warming on rainfall and snow. All of these "band aid"
equations are hopelessly inadequate to repair the computer
models' inability to describe the water cycle's role in
temperature.
Besides the inability to deal with
water, the other huge embarrassment facing the modelers is the
well-researched and well-established fact published in many
papers that temperature changes first and CO2 levels change
600 to 1,000 years later. Any rational person would
immediately conclude that CO2 could not possibly cause
temperature if the rise in CO2 in comes centuries after the
rise in temperature. The computer modelers as usual have an
involuted response ... - Alexander Cockburn, June 2007
Noctilucent Clouds,
A Mysterious Weather Wild Card
Particulate material in the upper
atmosphere can have a significant impact upon global weather
temperatures but this effect has many variables, such as the
altitude and whether the location is equatorial or polar,
and this makes predictions problematic.
 Noctilucent clouds are a strange
and poorly understood phenomena thought to consist of ice
covered meteorite particles and known to have an unquantified
impact on Earth's climate. Being highly reflective (white) and
very high altitude at 50 miles up in large quantities they can
reflect significant heat. Indeed it's possible that a large
meteorite storm could generate sudden weather changes
Not
only meteorite particles but dust, and solar radiation as well,
could also be factors influencing the formation of noctilucent
clouds, and thereby affecting global temperatures by reflecting
heat and solar radiation away from the Earth.
Iridescent,
silvery blue clouds at the edge of space that may be connected
to global warming will be studied by a NASA spacecraft set to
launch on 25 April.
The
[noctilucent]
clouds were first observed above polar regions in 1885 –
suggesting they may have been caused by the eruption of Krakatoa
two years before. But in recent years they have spread to
latitudes as low as 40°, while also growing in number and
getting brighter.
And
greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide actually help to cool
the upper atmosphere, where the clouds form. That is because
carbon dioxide, like methane and water, is an efficient radiator
of energy – both downwards, towards the Earth, and upwards, out
to space.
The source of
the particles that seed the clouds is also a mystery. Since the
clouds form during the local summer months, when the pole is
bathed in perpetual sunlight, one possibility is that warm air
rising above the pole could carry dust upwards from lower
atmospheric altitudes. The dust could also have a cosmic source,
however, dropping into the atmosphere from space.
[7]
How many other factors that science barely knows about, or that
are completely unknown yet, can have a major influence upon
Earth's atmosphere and weather?
Since
artificial Global Warming has all the trappings of being just
more dogma from the Church of the Green
we should ask, is Global Warming a Sin?
In a couple
of hundred years, historians will be comparing the frenzies
over our supposed human contribution to global warming to the
tumults at the latter end of the tenth century as the
Christian millennium approached. Then, as now, the doomsters
identified human sinfulness as the propulsive factor in the
planet's rapid downward slide.
Then as
now, a buoyant market throve on fear. The Roman Catholic
Church was a bank whose capital was secured by the infinite
mercy of Christ, Mary and the Saints, and so the Pope could
sell indulgences, like checks. The sinners established a line
of credit against bad behavior and could go on sinning. Today
a world market in "carbon credits" is in formation. Those
whose "carbon footprint" is small can sell their surplus
carbon credits to others, less virtuous than themselves.
The modern trade is as fantastical as
the medieval one. There is still zero empirical evidence that
anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable
contribution to the world's present warming trend. The
greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely
oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful
contribution. Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis,
carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism
and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the
latter produced beautiful monuments. [6]
Does AGW Belief Signal the Death of Science?
The rise of
Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) as a crisis issue
is at least partially the result of the increasing
specialization of scientific research, for instance climate
computer modelers mostly support AGW but geologists don't.
I’ve
already mentioned the hazards of scientific specialization in my article
Science as
presently practiced is a false savior..., and unfortunately, modern science is mostly just creating a rainbow
of disjointed facts rather than the functional answers and
practical solutions that can only emerge from establishing a
valid holistic framework within which to place all these
isolated pieces. This is why we read so many contradictory news
articles on harmful foods, for instance, every research study
looks at one small thing in isolation and no one is looking at
everything taken together. By fixating on one narrow element a
researcher may be able to derive an answer but that answer may
not have any validity within the greater context!
The scientific process begins to fail when scientific research
becomes so highly specialized that scientists can no longer
communicate their results to researchers in different fields of
study, and when they cannot resolve discrepancies and
contradictory answers from across disparate fields of inquiry.
Even more serious is the loss of public support for science.
People lose confidence in the utility of the scientific process
as it becomes increasingly politicized and the answers more and
more contradictory. The higher the stakes are raised the more
contentious and ugly the debate over the direction and
conclusions become. Again this is because of the narrow focus,
as people lose perspective panic sets in and the immediate
fixation assumes fantastic importance far beyond true reality,
i.e. ‘if we don’t stop global warming right now the whole
universe will explode!’ Remember: the easiest way to manufacture absurdity is to separate
facts and events from surrounding context.
The
situation is not hopeless, the contemporary approach to
science can certainly change but only if problems are recognized
and addressed in time. And in this regard the clock is
definitely ticking. 25.08.07
The planet will continue to change,
adapt and evolve, with or without us. The atmosphere will
continue to change as it always has under the influence of
life and of geology. We can't control these things. We can
barely perceive them correctly. But we can take control of how
we treat each other. The best we can do for the environment
and for the planet is to learn not to let undemocratic power
structures run our lives. The best we can do is to reject
exploitation and domination and to embrace cooperation and
solidarity. The best we can do is to not trust subservient
scientists and to become active agents for change beyond
head-in-the-sand personal lifestyle choices. - David
Noble, environmental science researcher at the University of
Ottawa putting things back in perspective.
|
Hot
Button Earth |
August
2005 |
Goddess
Gaia
Gaia - that the
sum of all life on earth works to balance
atmospheric and environmental conditions to
optimize life conditions. This idea was
concocted by an atmospheric chemist named James
Lovelock and a microbiologist Lynn Margulis. "The Gaia Hypothesis
proposes that our planet functions as a single
organism that maintains conditions necessary for
its survival." [3] It is
said that Gaia is valid because no single living
organism on Earth could be removed and set on
another planet and it would survive on it's own,
hence the whole world is connected to such an
extent that it's a single living entity. But is
this intentional or accidental?
All life evolved
next to other life, it only makes sense that
everything has developed connections!
 The
Gaia metaphor attempts to connect other things as
well such as the Earth atmosphere as a cell
membrane or the entire universe as a cell or a
living organism that is born grows (and
collapses?) and dies. But none of these apparent
connections can be verified empirically.
Nevertheless it stirs the imagination. In The
Beginning is an intriguing book written by
fringe science author John Gribbin in 1993. The
primary theme is how the universe and components can be seen as living organisms
and
the Gaia hypothesis figures into it quite heavily.
Ultimately it will be very difficult to know one
way or the other whether the universe itself is
actually growing, multiplying and doing all the
things that life does, so scaling it up to that
level is pretty farfetched.
More recently, Reason
magazine features a short article on Gaia which
summarizes the hypothesis fairly well, albeit to
make a rather facetious point.
According
to the Gaia hypothesis, the history of life on
Earth can be regarded as a progressive
modification of the planet's chemistry and
temperature by biological organisms acting in
ways that enhance their own flourishing. For
example, Earth's atmosphere was modified over
billions of years by photosynthetic
microorganisms from one that was predominantly
carbon dioxide and methane into its current
oxygen-rich state. This oxygen-rich atmosphere
apparently set the stage for the evolution of
multicellular life that took off in earnest
during the "Cambrian explosion" some
540 million years ago. [4]
This conveniently
ignores the fact that the atmosphere changed to
one of oxygen as a byproduct of pollution. Oxygen
emerged as the toxic byproduct of microorganism
life that went amok and created a global
pollution of unmatched proportions, even killing
off the polluters in the process! Gaia is totally
putting the cart before the horse. All organisms
function on a completely selfish basis, they want
to survive and if it means destroying other life,
competitors or just in the way, so be it. Besides
that Gaia seems like a very teleological concept
because it posits that everything is connected to
serve a long range purpose; that everything is
intentionally working together to create
something larger than any single part. Indeed
some even believe that Earth will 'reproduce'
through space colonizing humans!
It just doesn't work that way,
naturally everything individually seeks an imbalance in its own
favor but collective competition creates an equilibrium as long
as no single entity can dominate. Besides that random external
and even internal events are constantly shifting the balance.
Life just tries to fit into whatever situation arises, hence
natural selection i.e. evolution.
"Molecular
biologists view life as replicating strands of
DNA that compete for survival and evolve to
optimize their survival in changing surroundings." [3]
The flaws in this
model, which is why it's called the Gaia
hypothesis and not theory, are more numerous than
that which support this contention. For instance
all evidence points to a universe that will
expand forever not re-collapsing in a reverse big
bang creating that perfect set of bookends.
The single largest
complaint lodged against the strong Gaia
hypothesis is that experiments can't be designed
to refute it (or test it at all, for that matter.)
Without going into all the details, suffice it to
say that those arguments are valid. The strong
Gaia hypothesis states that life creates
conditions on Earth to suit itself. Life created
the planet Earth, not the other way around. As we
explore the solar system and galaxies beyond, it
may one day be possible to design an experiment
to test whether life indeed manipulates planetary
processes for its own purposes or whether life is
just an evolutionary processes that occurs in
response to changes in the non-living world. [3]
Sometimes it
seems science is listening to musical notes
emanating from behind a wall while trying to
guess what the musical instrument looks like.
I think the Gaia
hypothesis is flirting with something much more
fundamental than the idea that everything is
living. Likely this has to do with the simple
fact that the universe is finite and filled, no
entity can expand without subtracting from
something else.
 The laws of
propagation and survival are interwoven into the
very fabric of the universe. Graphic
artist MC Escher unintentionally demonstrated
this principle in two dimensions through what he
called 'division of the plane'. "Repetition
and multiplication - two simple words. The entire
world perceivable with the senses would fall
apart into meaningless chaos if we could not
cling to these two concepts," [5] MC Escher. Also
note that within these tessellations if one
character moves the others move as well; it's
'all connected' but not in any
spiritual Gaia way, not even in a biological way,
it's just the dimensional nature of these
structures. Indeed, evolution itself can be seen
as a division of a plane, the fourth dimensional
plane of time. Only the most fit of the species
can inhabit their niche at any given moment. "Over
and over again it was, and still is, a great joy
to have "found" such a motif that
repeats itself rhythmically in accordance with a
specific system and thus obeys immovable lows. It
gives one the sensation of approaching something
that is primeval and eternal," [5]
The Gaia hypothesis is not
completely flawed but it does create more fog of confusion than
it disperses. The basic idea is helpful in that it has created
an awareness that everything has consequences and that even
simple actions can generate unpredictable and pernicious
reaction over vast geographic and chronological spaces. But at
the same time it highlights its own absurdity because if
everything is in balance or seeks a balance then whatever anyone
does is of little concern because it will all just balance
itself out! "If
the Earth is indeed self-regulating, then it will
adjust to the impacts of man." [3] So why care?
Gaia is a model, it's an
attempt to understand complicated processes and
connect the dots but regardless of the origins
it has nonetheless been massively perverted and
distorted for teleological and mystical purposes.
Everyone from the new Green religion to
Anarchists have latched onto this myth of the
'Earth Mother' to justify their preordained plan
and make their violent and self-destructive
actions more palatable both to their own selves
and the cynical public. Bottom line: Gaia is garbage, it has the
stink of spiritualism and faith all over it while failing to
make anything more lucid or understandable and it doesn't make
any valid predictions. The scientific community is doing
themselves a significant strategic disservice by continuing to
debate a model that is fundamentally flawed and incapable of
verification while failing to address the misconceptions
spreading like a bad disease amongst the ill informed public.
04.08.02
Holes
in Global Warming
Where's
cause and effect with the ozone / CFC issue?
These CFC’s haven’t been used by
industrialized nations since the mid 1990s, so use of ‘ozone depleting’ chemicals
has decreased yet the Arctic ozone hole has gone
from nothing to serious threat level since they
were banned in 1996.
As temperatures fall
during Arctic winter, polar stratospheric clouds
(PSCs) [microscopic ice crystals] can form.
A complex series of chemical reactions on the
surface of PSC cloud particles frees up active
chlorine and bromine, which react with sunlight
to catalyze ozone destruction when the sun
returns in early spring.
[8]
The real cause of
the ozone holes is the drop in temperature over
the poles which creates the PSC ice clouds at
temperatures around 80 below 0 C, this in
conjunction with the presence of chlorine,
bromine, and CFCs acts to break up ozone.
Antarctica usually gets this cold so the
temperatures there aren’t necessarily
abnormally low but the Arctic usually doesn’t
stay at those levels long enough to cause ozone
depletion chemistry. But both poles have been
consistently colder over the past decade. Shouldn’t
scientists be investigating why this is?
CFCs don’t make the atmosphere
colder and they've been in the atmosphere for
years but only recently has ozone depletion
occurred, at least in the Arctic. So which is the
cause here the cold or the CFCs?
The answer is the
cold temperatures but the researchers study the
CFCs because it simplifies and politicizes
the issue making funding more abundant but
obscuring the true factors at work. Are
(some) scientists ignoring this because of dogmatic
heterodoxy i.e. it can’t be the cold because
the earth is experiencing ‘global warming’?
I hope not, that would sure be one glaring irony
if the world freezes over while everyone is
panicked out over global warming. 23.01.00
The
Next Ice Age
It seems
profoundly egotistical and narcissistic for
humanity to believe itself so powerful that it
has the capability to alter the environment
radically enough to create total and permanent
climate change. Volcanoes are merely one example
that counters this belief; in one single blast
they spew out more chemicals, poisons and
particulate matter than carbon fuel burning could
possibly produce in decades. My point first off
is that natural elements are much more
significant to Earth’s climate. Not only
that but so many factors go into creating our
climate that predictions are at best merely
guesses. Axial tilt, sunspots, solar activity,
geomagnetic anomalies, cosmic rays, volcanic
activity, single cell sea life, butterfly wings,
the list is endless.
But that’s not
to say that our climate won't change or that it
isn’t altering itself significantly even as
I write. But with that baggage out of the way now
I can speculate which is the most fun part.
Fortunately for the reader I won’t demand
that they give up cars and burgers and revert to
the over-vaunted cave-man lifestyle.
First the El Nino /
La Nina effect is turning into a prelude to
another larger cycle called the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation wherein the edges of the Pacific
basin are biased hot and cold creating unpleasant
weather patterns. And truthfully, unpleasant
weather is just the stuff we don’t expect to
usually happen, the biggest problem is that
humans demand that the weather stay within that
narrow statistical band of normal temperatures
and average rainfall when the climate is really a
much more dynamic system, but I digress again.
The PDO is not unheard of but it’s
significant enough to warrant attention.
Second the North
Atlantic / Arctic Ocean currents are changing.
Some ice is melting in the Arctic, for whatever
reason, but the effect is to lower water
temperatures (like ice cubes in a glass of water)
and this alone or with other factors is altering
the circulation of warm water to the detriment of
the regional land masses notably Europe and
Eastern North America. This certainly helps
explain why those areas have been hit by colder
than usual winters. If these new ocean
circulation patterns hold, this part of the world
could be in for some rugged weather.
Third the arctic air
temperatures are constantly and continually at
record cold levels. This is involved in an ozone
hole at the North Pole but the effect once again
is to chill the entire polar area. In essence
this is turning the North Pole into a copy of the
colder Antarctic twin to the south.
This
year is most unusual. Temperatures have been
consistently as low as ever recorded in the
Arctic stratosphere," says Harris. "There
have been polar stratospheric clouds since the
end of November and we are already seeing ozone
destruction. [9]
Now when the air gets cold enough
high in the atmosphere microscopic ice crystals form, a common
event in Antarctica. These crystals act as a mirror reflecting
away large quantities of solar radiation before it enters and
heats the earth. This ice-over effect is one of the most
significant factors in starting and maintaining an ice age
because it creates a feedback mechanism. Heat is reflected away
and temperatures at the poles continue to drop creating more
atmospheric ice crystal, etc.
 Normally this is all mitigated by
proper temperature circulation patterns between the warm equator
land and water and the cold poles keeping ice age at bay.
If this circulation system breaks
down for long enough and the earth drifts to extremes of
temperature, very cold at poles and warmer at equator, then more
precipitation falls and snow builds up on the high altitudes and
then glaciers form. The high albedo of the white ice and snow
reflects away more heat. The current pacific weather has been
dumping unusually large amounts of snow on the mountains in
Western North America. I’m not sure if this effect is being
counter balanced by dry mountains elsewhere but some places,
like Mt. Baker in Washington state, have received record
snowfalls in recent years.
The next most
significant factor that stimulates ice-age
formation has to do with volcanic gasses and
particle being injected into the upper atmosphere
blocking out sunlight for long periods of time.
Certainly Central and South America have had a
lot of recent activity but most of it is low
level and not especially unusual - example
Quito Ecuador. Will one or more of the Andean
volcanoes blow soon?
Ice ages are the
statistical norm over Earth’s recent history
but the next ice age if it follows the past
pattern isn’t expected for several thousand
years; although another could start anytime.
Geological evidence and ice-cores for example
have shown they can form extremely rapidly over
just a few decades. Weather is one of the last
strongholds our technology can’t control yet
and not surprisingly it still has an aura of
power and fear associated with its unpredictable
and pitiless forces. Perhaps this explains the
fervent dogma of artificial global warming? 20.01.00
Updates
In June
2008 it was announced that the tropical ocean is removing much
more ozone and methane from the atmosphere than researchers and
climate modelers previously assumed. This is significant for the
global warming debate because ozone in the upper atmosphere (up
to 10 kilometers above the surface) is considered a key
greenhouse gas, and methane even more so.
Ozone is
known to be largely broken down by sunlight and water vapour.
This produces hydroxyl radicals, which in turn remove methane
from the atmosphere.
Halogens like
iodine and bromine can also help break down ozone. When the
researchers plugged the bromine and iodine values measured at
the observatory into their model they were better able to
predict the decay of ozone. The results suggested that the
halogens help create an ozone "sink", which sucks the greenhouse
gas out of the lower atmosphere.
"It has come as a surprise to find these
chemicals, not only in coastal regions with lots of iodine rich
seaweed, but also in the middle of the Atlantic ocean," says
Lewis. [10]
This is
yet more evidence that the supposedly finalized conclusion on
AGW is really far from actually being resolved, and the
complexity and volume of chemical interactions that shape
Earth's atmosphere are only in the very rudimentary stages of
accurate human understanding. 26.06.08
* * *
Another
Reason Not to Panic
Previous
assumptions on the speed of Greenland's ice sheet sliding into
the ocean are incorrect.
Many fear a positive feedback loop,
whereby the accelerating flow will bring more ice down out of
the mountains and toward warmer temperatures near sea level.
Roderik Van De Waal and colleagues at Utrecht University in the
Netherlands now say there is no evidence this will happen.
...
[T]he
acceleration was short-lived, and ice velocities usually
returned to normal within a week after the waters began
draining. Over the course of the 17 years, the flow of the ice
sheet actually decreased slightly, in some parts by as much as
10%.
"For some time, glaciologists believed that more meltwater
equaled higher ice speeds," Van de Waal says. "This would be
kind of disastrous, but apparently it is not happening."
[11]
* * *
Oceanographers Discover Huge Atlantic Carbon Sink
Once again global warming assumptions have
turned out to be incorrect after collecting and analyzing
verifiable data. Researchers were surprised to discover recently
that the Atlantic ocean has a giant carbon sink produced by the
Amazon river.
A seasonal bloom of ocean plankton
fertilised by the Amazon river pulls much more carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere than researchers had previously
supposed. [12]
And not only that, other rivers probably produce
similar effects.
And although the Amazon is the largest
of the world's rivers, other major tropical rivers such as the
Congo and the Orinoco may have similar effects, he says – a
conjecture he is now aiming to test. [12]
Even with massive gaps in our understanding of
the Earth’s climate and the interaction between the oceans,
rivers, and living organism, vocal global warming experts still
treat anthropogenic global warming as factual gospel! 22.07.09
Moreover, much of this carbon ends up
in long-term storage instead of being recycled quickly like
most carbon in the ocean. That's because the main
photosynthesisers are diatoms, single-celled algae that build
a heavy silica shell around their bodies. [12]
News
References
1.
Global warming, an unsettled science,
by
Simon Roughneen, ISN Security Watch, May 30, 2008.
2.
Next decade 'may see no warming',
by
Richard Black, BBC, May 1, 2008.
3.
The Gaia
Hypothesis
4.
Defenders of
Earth - Are humans Gaia's immune system?,
by
Ronald Bailey Reason Magazine, July 31, 2002.
5.
Exploring the Infinite,
translated from the original book: Het
Oneindiga, 1989, Henry N. Abrams publishers.
6.
From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits Is Global Warming a
Sin?, by Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch
newsletter, April 28-29 2007.
7.
Satellite to study source of 'night shining' clouds,
by
Maggie McKee, NewScientist, April 12, 2007.
8. International
Scientists Now Studying Arctic Ozone Loss,
UniSci.com, January 18, 2000, italics added.
9.
Freezing clouds threaten record
Arctic ozone loss,
New Scientist, January
22, 2000.
10.
Tropical ocean sucks up vast amounts of ozone,
by Nora Schultz,
New Scientist, June 26, 2008.
11.
Greenland ice sheet slams the brakes on,
by Michael Reilly, New
Scientist, July 3, 2008.
12.
Plankton turn tropical Atlantic into a huge carbon sink,
by Bob Holmes, New Scientist, July 21, 2008.
Resources /
Further Research
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