Man Made Global Warming Myth??

Global Warming Myths??

Fact: There is Global Warming. No disputing It. 

 

Global Warming Debate

 

The Myth?: It's caused wholly mainly by human CO2 emissions?

There is currently much argument about the extent of human involvement in the global warming that we are currently experiencing. Arguments for and counter views for it not being caused by humans are being put forward.

 

There is a whole band wagon of "Global Environmentalists" (not always scientists) who only get funding by banging on about human CO2 emissions, and so they do. But at the moment there is no sure evidence that the current temperature rises are anything except natural, and within the ranges of the geological past. It's possibly sheer human arrogance to assume that the last 5,000 years (which the global warming brigade use) is the defining period in a geological timescale of 4.6 billion years.

Over that period we have had periods up to 10 degrees warmer than now, and in fact the "little ice age" of the 14th century is what we are currently coming out of, hence the idea that we are just rising back to the real normal i.e. The temperatures of the medieval warm period, when according to Chaucer there were "vineyards in the north of England". The "Holocene maximum" of 8,000 years ago was warmer than even the medieval warm period ... incidentally, Polar Bears survived through that period when the Arctic ice sheet must have been a lot less than now. 

Human CO2 emissions only started becoming recordable in the atmosphere in the last 50 - 60 years. If that was solely the main driver of global warming, then the temperatures should have been more stable in the past, but they weren't, so some other mechanisms must also be driving the temperature rises. It could be volcanic (creating cloud cover) or Sun temperature variance (creating cloud cover .. see below) or maybe a combination of causes ... but not solely by human CO2 emissions as we are led to believe by some campaigners.

Global Warming Gases:

Water vapour is the largest green house gas, CO2 only makes up a small percent of the atmosphere, and the proportion of CO2 that humans are responsible for is even smaller. While the atmospheric parts per million of CO2 have continually increased during recent decades, atmospheric temperatures have risen, and fallen, apparently uninfluenced by any CO2 rises. 

 

'Atmospheric temperatures respond to realities, not myths'. 

 

As for the amount of the increase of atmospheric CO2 from 2002 to 2003, it was approximately two and one half parts per million, 2.54/1000000.00 to be precise. 

The major natural greenhouse gases are:
 

Water vapor H2O, which causes about 36-70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); Carbondioxide CO2, which causes 9-26%; Methane, which causes 4-9%, and Ozone,which causes 3-7%.
 

No one is yet able to state for certain which gas causes what percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive. It's also not currently clear whether these gases are the causes of, or functions of Global Warming. Two of these other main greenhouse gases are methane and nitrous oxide. Both gases have a much smaller presence in the atmosphere than CO2 but are much stronger greenhouse gases; methane has over 20 times the effect of C02, while nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times stronger. These are also rising in volumes.

Temperature Records:

The last 120 yrs land temperature records shows that there were big rises in temperature before 1940, and that it actually fell when the post war industrial boom was taking place between 1945 and 1970... in fact in the early 1970's there were predictions that we were heading back to the ice age again (we are in fact in an inter glacial period). It started rising again during the world depression on the 1970's, when economic activity fell, which goes against the logic of the currently popular theories.

Warming Mechanism:

Ice cores show that first there is a temperature rise (driven by solar activity), and then up to 800 yrs later the CO2 levels rise. In other words it's possibly the temperature rising that produces the CO2, and not the other way round as proposed by Al Gore and others. The mechanism for this is, that as sea temperatures rise, the the seas gives off more CO2 as they warm up, and that as the oceans are so huge, it takes hundreds of years for the seas to warm up in response to those land temperature rises.

This is time response lag is known as "ocean memory", and means that the current sea temperature rises, and the consequent CO2 emissions, are a response to events hundreds, and possibly thousands of years ago. So for instance the warming that occurred after the end of the last ice age (or possibly the little ice age), are the causes of the current sea temperature rises and it's this that drives the current CO2 rises.

Solar Activity (Sun Spots) and Global Temperatures:


There is very strong evidence that the earths temperature is much more influenced by the Suns activity and sunspots. 

Known as the 'Maunder Minimum', the lowest amount of sunspots recorded was during the mini ice age in the 14th century (when it was cold and temperatures fell), and the most solar activity recorded has been in the last 100 years when temperatures have risen. Dr Henrik Svensmark has demonstrated the very exact correlation between cosmic rays, cloud cover and warming on Earth.

The theory is that when ever a star goes supernova, it blasts trillions of charged particles into space, and it's those particles that are constantly hitting the earths atmosphere. Because these particles are positively charged, they attract water molecules and create a large proportion of the earths clouds. When the sun is active, the stronger solar wind prevents the particles hitting the earth, and less clouds are produced, and the temperature rises. When the sun is inactive, more particles hit the earth and the cloud cover rises and the temperature drops.

This strong evidence that this is the biggest cause of temperature rises, but the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ignored it, and published unproven Human CO2 emissions as the most "likely" causes of temperature rises, because it fits the current popular thinking.

In this graph, please note the correlation to temperature graphs on this page. During the periods 1350 - 1500AD, the drop in sunspots which correlate to a global cooling period called the little ice age.

The other dips correspond to cold periods e.g. 1850 AD .. Charles Dickens recorded ice skating on the Thames river around then.

This is the commonly accepted temperature map for last 1,000 odd
years. There is some dispute about the "hockey stick" spike at the end, with some people claiming that it was modelled in correctly. Other web sites detail this dispute.

However it is still used by the press so its produced here.

The mapping of solar events (inversed to relate to temperature) on to a temperature map, shows an exact correlation between the two.

Political Aspect:
Much though it makes most climate scientists uncomfortable, they are in bed with some strange and woolly bedfellows, from the bare chested anarchists who use any cause as an excuse to attack the police on rallies, to the Anti Nuclear, Anti Global trade, Anti Everything "western" brigade. 

 

This makes some of their arguments dangerous at worst and suspect at best because underlying their demands is a political agenda.
 

It's no coincidence that the rise in the "Green" movement is in direct correlation to the fall of the old style Socialist & Marxist movements, and many of this creeds former adherents in the West, are now leading the marches advocating anti capitalist ideology, under the guise of anti "global warming". They are often Anti-American, Anti-Science and Anti-Business, which is a bit of a clue as to where they are coming from. In the pursuit of their political goals, they will act against the needs of the Industrialised World as well as Third World countries who are rich in Oil and Coal, by insisting that they don't go for the rapid industrial growth that would take them out of poverty.

Ask Dr Patrick Moore, the co founder of green peace, who has turned against the current policies of this organisation. Moore said. "They (political green activists) are anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade, anti-globalization - not just free trade, but all trade". He said people who embrace extremist views and philosophies believe all large machines are inherently evil, and - worse - science is used to justify positions "that actually have nothing to do with science." Moore believes these viewpoints are naive, including the oft-stated wish to return to a "Garden of Eden." How ironic, he said, that these same people use cell phones, laptops and jet planes as the main tools of their trade.

It's sad that governments, who could afford to check the science, have, led by left leaning governments such as the UK, jumped entirely on the "Human made Global Warming" band waggon, and now advocate restricting peoples activities to suit, what is basically a political creed, rather than totally proven science. Language such as "catastrophic", "irreversible", and "accelerating" are not the words of rational debate.
 

Addendums:

• A Russian scientist (Habibullo Abdussamatov, Head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory has just reported that Mars, with no humans in sight, has been showing signs of warming up over recent years. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said. This conclusion is disputed, however it does add to the general theory that the sun is the driver of temperature on Earth & Mars.

If correct, then this cannot be because of human intervention, so it must be because of irradiance from the Sun, which has been warming up for the last few decades. No doubt this will fall on deaf ears in the "Green" community, but never the less is another possible indication that human CO2 plays little part in the current warming of the Earth.

• Two leading UK scientists, both advocates of the bad affects of human CO2, have warned that some environmentalists are jumping ahead of the science when making claims about the affects of Global Warming. It appears that some scientists, are just realising that they may have over egged their case in order to get funds, and that they have created a monster that they can no longer control, one which could end up consuming them as well. A bit late but maybe there's hope for a rational debate even now.... but I doubt it, the genie is out of the bottle now.

One of these Human CO2 scientists called alternative global warming theories "Junk Science" on the BBC, and said he would welcome taking on those who say the human CO2 theory is not proven .... well I would like that as well, because then we might get a real answer, rather than a politicised argument we are currently being fed. 

The BBC science website have promised to show more on the alternative solar variance theories, after I asked that they not act as though it's a closed debate on anything except "Human CO2" as the main cause.

"Feedback [NewsWatch] : Thanks for your email. I will have a look at the graphics page (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6322083.stm) and see whether we can come up with a form of words stating clearly that H2O is the main gas in the 'natural' greenhouse effect, and CO2 the main anthropogenic contributor. More on solar variance within a couple of months, I promise you."
 

Mainstream fightback:
 

In a spirit of editorial fairness I am editing this old blog because the BBC, true to its word, has published a new article on the solar influence on climate. Of course its an article purporting to prove that this influence is negligible or non existent. 

Frankly I still found it unconvincing, because although the last 20 yrs data shows a divergence from trend for 13 of those years, but in reality it has the same weakness as all the pro CO2 (as main driver of global warming) brigade. That is that it relies on data from a very small time scale of the last 50 or even 20 years upon which to base an assumption of trend for the next 300 years. 

This is just not sustainable in any other scientific context, where a 20 year blip in a trend taken out of 5,000 years would not be considered significant, and certainly not enough to refute a long term set of data. In fact this is rather a good illustration of how we are being driven by an unscientific agenda on what should be a wholly evidence driven discussion. 

NB: Recent studies have found that the ice never completely melted when the last warm period occurred and that some parts of the solar ice caps got thicker (hence the survival of Polar Bears?) ... there is evidence that this is occurring even now. The jury is still out in my world, but I'm willing to believe when more data available.

Update 2022: How times have changed ... this was written in 2007 when the global warming debate had just started ... the science was arguable and many scientists opposed it. Now, 15 years later (where have the years gone?), its pretty much universally accepted that global warming is going on and accelerating in a reinforcing loop-back cycle ... human CO2 is a major driver. I am not on the fence as I was back then but I believe that other factors such as the sun are also occurring, in a nasty coincidence.

 

Some interesting links for the sceptics:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/influence-of-cosmic-rays-on-the-earth.pdf

http://www.basinelectric.com/NewsCenter/News/FeaturedArticles/Greenpeace_founder_d.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece

http://www.john-daly.com/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1245729/posts

http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20070211-16012900-bc-britain-globalwarming.xml

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3869753.stm