The global warming scam

Asia Times ^ | 02.25.05 | Derek Kelly, PhD

[Dr. Marten]

The global warming scam
By Derek Kelly, PhD

Scam, noun: a swindle, a fraudulent arrangement.

A chronology of climate change
During most of the last billion years the Earth did not have permanent ice sheets. Nevertheless, at times large areas of the globe were covered with vast sheets of ice. Such times are known as glaciations. In the past 2 million to 3 million years, the temperature of the Earth has changed (warmed or cooled) at least 17 times, some say 33, with glaciations that last about 100,000 years interrupted by warm periods that last about 10,000 years.

The last glaciation began 70,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago. The Earth was a lot colder than it is now; snow and ice had accumulated on a lot of the land, glaciers existed on large areas and the sea levels were lower.

15,000 years ago: The last glaciation reaches a peak, with continental glaciers that cover a lot of the sub-polar and polar areas of the land areas of Earth. In North America, all of New England and all of the Great Lakes area, most of Ohio, Indiana, Minnesota and the North Dakotas, lie under ice sheets hundreds of meters thick. More than 37 million cubic kilometers of ice was tied up in these global sheets of ice. The average temperature on the surface of the Earth is estimated to have been cooler by approximately 6 degrees Celsius than currently. The sea level was more than 90 meters lower than currently.

15,000 years ago to 6,000 years ago: Global warming begins. The sheets of ice melt, and sea levels rise. Some heat source causes approximately 37 million cubic kilometers of ice to melt in approximately 9,000 years. Around 9,500 years ago, the last of the Northern European sheets of ice leave Scandinavia. Around 7,500 years ago, the last of the American sheets of ice leave Canada. This warming is neither stable nor the same everywhere. There are periods when mountain glaciers advance, and periods when they withdraw. These climatic changes vary extensively from place to place, with some areas affected while others are not. The tendency of warming is global and obvious, but very uneven. The causes of this period of warming are unknown.

8,000 years ago to 4,000 years ago: About 6,000 years ago, temperatures on the surface of Earth are about 3 degrees warmer than currently. The Arctic Ocean is ice-free, and mountain glaciers have disappeared from the mountains of Norway and the Alps in Europe, and from the Rocky Mountains of the United States and Canada. The ocean of the world is some three meters higher than currently. A lot of the present desert of the Sahara has a more humid, savannah-like climate, with giraffes and savannah fauna species.

4,000 years ago to AD 900: Global cooling begins. The Arctic Ocean freezes over, mountain glaciers form once more in the Rocky Mountains, in Norway and in the Alps. The Black Sea freezes over several times, and ice forms on the Nile in Egypt. Northern Europe gets a lot wetter, and the marshes develop again in previously dry areas. The sea level drops to approximately its present level. The temperatures on the surface of the Earth are about 0.5-1 degree cooler than at present. The causes of this period of cooling are unknown.

AD 1000 to 1500: This period has quick, but uneven, warming of the climate of the Northern Hemisphere. The North Atlantic becomes ice-free and Norse exploration as far as North America takes place. The Norse colonies in Greenland even export crop surpluses to Scandinavia. Wine grapes grow in southern Britain. The temperatures are from 3-8 degrees warmer than currently. The period lasts only a brief 500 years. By the year 1500, it has vanished. The Earth experiences as much warming between the 11th and the 13th century as is now predicted by global-warming scientists for the next century. The causes of this period of warming are unknown.

1430 to 1880: This is a period of the fast but uneven cooling of Northern Hemisphere climates. Norwegian glaciers advance to their most distant extension in post-glacial times. The northern forests disappear, to be replaced with tundra. Severe winters characterize a lot of Europe and North America. The channels and rivers get colder, the snows get heavy, and the summers cool and short. The temperatures on the surface of the world are about 0.5-1.5 degrees cooler than present. In the United States, 1816 is known as the "year with no summer". Snow falls in New England in June. The widespread failure of crops and deaths due to hypothermia are common. The causes of this period of cooling are unknown.

1880 to 1940: A period of warming. The mountain glaciers recede and the ice in the Arctic Ocean begins to melt again. The causes of this period of warming are unknown.

1940 to 1977: Cooling period. The temperatures are cooler than currently. Mountain glaciers recede, and some begin to advance. The tabloids inform us of widespread catastrophes due to the "New Glaciation". The causes of this period of cooling are unknown.

1977 to present: Warming period. The summer of 2003 is said to be the warmest one since the Middle Ages. The tabloids notify us of widespread catastrophes due to "global warming". The causes of warming are discovered - humanity and its carbon-dioxide-generating fossil-fuel use and deforestation.

Anyone else find something fishy about the final sentence?

Comments
The above chronology of recent (geologically speaking) climate changes should place global-warming catastrophists (such as those who developed the Kyoto treaty) in an awkward position. Their fundamental assumption is that Earth's climate was stable and was doing just fine before the Industrial Revolution started interfering with climate's "natural" state. It is the Industrial Revolution, and in particular the use of fossil-fuel-burning machines, that has led us to the brink of environmental catastrophe due to global warming caused by increasing amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

But it is plain to see that both warming and cooling occurred numerous times before the Industrial Revolution. Similarly, all the dire predictions of global-warming consequences - sea-level rise, for example - have happened in the past. In fact, the greatest warming period was when dinosaurs walked the land (about 70 million to 130 million years ago). There was then five to 10 times as much CO2 in the atmosphere as there is today, and the average temperature was 4-11 degrees Celsius warmer. Those conditions should have been very helpful to life, since they permitted those immense creatures to find an abundance of food and they survived.

The Cretaceous was an intense "greenhouse world" with high surface temperatures. These high temperatures were due to the much higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere at the time - four to 10 times as much as is in our air today. The biota was a mixture of the exotic and familiar - luxuriant green forests of now-extinct trees flourished within the Arctic Circle and dinosaurs roamed. The global sea level was at its highest ever during this period, peaking during the Late Cretaceous around 86 million years ago. It is certain that the global sea level was well over 200 meters higher during this time than it is today. The Earth was immensely hotter, the CO2 vastly more plentiful, and the sea levels much higher than they are today.

The Earth has also been immensely colder, the CO2 much less plentiful, and the sea levels much lower than today. Fifteen thousand years ago, the sea level was at least 90 meters lower than it is today. The land looked bare because it was too cold for beech and oak trees to grow. There were a few fir trees here and there. No grass grew, however, just shrubs, bushes and moss grass. In the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia there was still tundra. The animals were different from today too. Back then there were woolly mammoth, woolly rhinos, cave bears (the former three now extinct), bison, wolves, horses, and herds of reindeer like modern-day reindeer.

The major "sin" for the global warmists is CO2. The Kyoto treaty is meant to reduce the amount of this gas so as, they say, to reduce the degree of warming and eventually return us to some stable climate system. If we look at the historical situation, however, this is cause for alarm. For one thing, there has never been a stable climate system. For another, the level of CO2 in our atmosphere is near its historic low. In the long run, the greatest danger is too little rather than too much CO2. There has been a long-term reduction of CO2 throughout the 4.5-billion-year history of the Earth. If this tendency continues, eventually our planet may become as lifeless as Mars.

Glaciation has prevailed for 90% of the last several million years. Extreme cold. Biting cold. Cold too intense for bikinis and swimming trunks. No matter what scary scenarios global-warming enthusiasts dream up, they pale in comparison with the conditions another ice age would deliver. Look to our past climate. Fifteen thousand years ago, an ice sheet a kilometer and a half thick covered all of North America north of a line stretching from somewhere around Seattle to Cleveland and New York City.

Instead of reducing CO2, we should, perhaps, be increasing it. We should pay the smokestack industries hard dollars for every kilogram of soot they pump into the atmosphere. Instead of urging Chinese to stop using coal and turn instead to nuclear-generated electricity, we should beg them to continue using coal. Rather than bringing us to the edge of global-warming catastrophe, anthropogenic climate change may have spared us descent into what would be the most serious and far-reaching challenge facing humankind in the 21st century - dealing with a rapidly deteriorating climate that wants to plunge us into an ice age. Let's hope Antarctica and Greenland melt. Let's hope the sea levels rise. All life glorifies warmth. Only death prefers the icy fingers of endless winter.

What do you think?

Derek Kelly, who has been an American university teacher and a computer-software developer, is now trying to help Chinese university students speak English.

[taxesareforever]

Geneology of the Bible establishes that the earth is in the vicinity of 8 to 10 thousand years old.

[Always Right]

I've never seen a better example of mass stupidity by smart people than the "consensus" that global warming is actually happening and it is caused by increasing CO2 levels.

LOL, very true and well put. "Mass stupidity" is a great way to describe the whole gorebull warming issue.

[Protagoras]

Geneology of the Bible establishes that the earth is in the vicinity of 8 to 10 thousand years old.

Not literally of course. Numbers in the bible are explained. To God one day is like a thousand years. And visa versa.

[nuke rocketeer]

Radioactive decay products in different rocks. The same 'theory' that runs nuke plants and makes bombs go boom also enables one to detrmine the decay products and determine how long they were there. Based upon these observations, the age of rocks are established. Also see all the articles on the natural reactor found in Africa. This planet is very, very old and no amount of biblical literalism can erase that fact. I also speak as a christian conservative. Until you can disprove nuclear theory, you will have absolutely no basis for stating that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.

and BTW....measurement error and assumptions gives an uncertainty of 10% or so. Heck even at 50% uncertainty it would still be at least 2,000,000 yrs old at minimum.

[KC_for_Freedom]

LOL, very true and well put. "Mass stupidity" is a great way to describe the whole gorebull warming issue.

I have no doubt that some proponents of the warming scam are stupid, but the vast majority of them are democrats and this "issue" is one of the collection of democrat issues used for garnering votes for the rest of their agenda. This agenda was the one Kerry never quite seemed able to spell out for us. (World wide socialism, with democrats in charge? Is that is Mr. Kerry?)

No most global warmers are hot for political power and are warming up for the next election. On hot days you will hear its warming all over, on cold days and stormy days you will hear that the warming has created more severe weather. All this will stop once democrats get their way. Conservatives will do well to do more than laugh at their efforts.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

What does the "Precession of the Equinoxes" have to do with it? I will buy into the obliquity of the ecliptic, which is changing and which certainly is one of the "astronomical driving functions" of global climate.

[hosepipe]

[ Anyone else find something fishy about the final sentence? ]

I do....
Obviously the author believes republicans will only remember, after reading all that, the last sentence and democrats will only remember the last half of the last sentence..

Pretty sneaky.. them left wing scientologists.. The follow up expected is on the dread poison di-hydrogen oxide.. It'll kill you if you get too much of it.. and it is also produced by them pesky glaciers melting..

[pageonetoo]

Believe it or not, it does not make any difference. This planet is 4,000,000,000+ years old. Your beliefs will not change that FACT.

Who do you know that has been around to verify that FACT?

Some Scientists believe the earth is that old. There are some that don't...

... In contrast to the narrow specialization of present-day scientists some great physicists in the nineteenth century made significant contributions to numerous branches of science. England recognized this breadth and depth in Sir William Thomson and elevated his title to Lord Kelvin. It was Kelvin's brilliant thermodynamic analysis that gave us the absolute temperature scale that bears his name. When the Atlantic cable was laid it took the ingenious electromagnetic developments of Kelvin to make it a workable device. His best papers are to be found in a six volume set, Mathematical and Physical Papers, Lord Kelvin, (Cambridge University Press, 1911). Many of those papers employed physics to expose the errors inherent in the long-age concepts held by uniformitarian geologists. One paper was entitled: "The 'Doctrine of Uniformity' in Geology Briefly Refuted"; another was entitled: "On the Age of the Sun's Heat". Many of his papers dealt with the age of the earth... -PHYSICS: A CHALLENGE TO GEOLOGICAL TIME

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-016.htm

[taxesareforever]

Not literally of course. Numbers in the bible are explained. To God one day is like a thousand years. And visa versa.

However, days were made for man and not for God. To be in God's presence a day is like a thousand years. We are not in God's presence until we die or the end of the world comes. The account of creation to the presence is not literal, it is truth. Add it up.

[taxesareforever]

And of course science is infallible. Wouldn't want to make so-called scientists appear to be wrong. How could they make money on their teachings and books and government grants?

[Protagoras]

So you are saying that the universe was created in six sessions which were defined by the amount of time the earth spun on it's axis in relation to the star called the sun?

And dinosaurs and men walked together? And a year is 365 days and Methusla lived nine hundred earth years?

It takes all kinds.

We are not in God's presence until we die or the end of the world comes.

Nonsense, where did you get that fable? God is everywhere in his creation.

[taxesareforever]

We are not in God's presence until we die or the end of the world comes.

Nonsense, where did you get that fable? God is everywhere in his creation.

So, does a day seem like a thousand years to you?

So you are saying that the universe was created in six sessions which were defined by the amount of time the earth spun on it's axis in relation to the star called the sun?
And dinosaurs and men walked together? And a year is 365 days and Methusla lived nine hundred earth years?

No, I'm not saying, all I am doing is citing what God says in the Bible. If you dispute this, take it up with God.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Don't have a really good answer but from :

Precession of the Equinoxes

I find this:

Since planetary precession due to perturbations from Jupiter and Saturn causes the perihelion of the Earth's orbit to precess, the precession of the Earth's axis relative to the Sun has a period of 21,000-22,000 y.

11,500 is aproximately half of 22,000

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOX

The Earth's rotation axis is not fixed in space. Like a rotating toy top, the direction of the rotation axis executes a slow precession with period of 26,000 years for the entire ecliptic of our planetary bodies to travel around our sun, a trip of 360 degrees. Each one of the 12 signs of the zodiac takes about 2100 years for our solar system to pass through. Every 72 years we actually move backward 1 degree. After 2100 years we move out of one age and into another.

The precession is like a star clock that helps us date the rotations of earth in our solar system through our galaxy.

At the time of the birth of Christ we were moving out of the Age of Aries which was the Roman Empire into the Age of Pisces. That happened around 60 BC. The early Christians were aware of this and used as their symbol the 2 fishes going in opposite directions.

Since the rotation axis is precessing in space, the orientation of the Celestial Equator also precesses with the same period. This means that the position of the equinoxes is changing slowly with respect to the background stars. This precession of the equinoxes means that the right ascension and declination of objects changes very slowly over a 26,000 year period. This effect is negligibly small for casual observing, but is an important correction for precise observations.

[Protagoras]

No, I'm not saying, all I am doing is citing what God says in the Bible.

Actually you are making up your own interpretations of what God says.

Centuries and centuries of theological study by people who actually understand what is being said have thankfully prevailed over the kind of nonsense that would have surely resulted in the end of faith if adopted by anyone other than a few people in obscure cults.

Does your cult have a name?

[taxesareforever]

Does your cult have a name?

I don't call it a cult, but I do call it Christianity.

[taxesareforever]

Does your cult have a name?

I don't call it a cult, but I do call it Christianity.

[Sam Cree]

Thanks.

[O Neill]

This planet is 4,000,000,000+ years old.

That assumes that the parameter 'time' has remained the same over time. But Einstein established that 'time' is itself an equation that depends upon the velocity of the observer relative to 'zero velocity' in the universe. We don't know how fast we're traveling through the universe relative to that 'zero velocity'. Very recent evidence suggests that expansion of the universe is SLOWING, while at the original 'big bang' creation moment, the mass that now makes of our Earth would have been moving at phenomenal speed.

Many physicists now believe that the ultimate 'end of the world' will actually be a humongous FIZZLE, with atoms ultimately moving so slowly, they will not be able to maintain their particulate integrity.

Thus, carbon dating may be subject to enormous error to an Earth-bound observer, especially during the first milliseconds of the 'big bang'.

The future with God is much brighter, so bright in fact I'm gonna need shades....

[Protagoras]

I don't call it a cult, but I do call it Christianity.

You can call it what you like, but so did the Branch Davidians.

Don't you have name for your little group?