Posted on 01/16/2007 8:48:34 AM PST by Graybeard58
When warmists wax on catastrophic climate change, one agency they quote a lot is the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body comprised mostly of warmists bent on proving their man-made global-warming theory, the facts and their limited understanding of how climate works be damned.
The IPCC's last report in 2001 predicted planetary warming of up to 10 F and a sea-level rise of nearly 3 feet by 2100. Since then, it has been "refining" its numbers, weighing new data and supposedly developing a better understanding of climate science. Its "fourth assessment report," due out in February, will conclude civilization's threat has been overstated, so it will lower its warming projection to 2.7 F to 7.5 F, and adjust its guess on sea-level rise to 17 inches.
Still, the IPCC is worried because carbon-dioxide emissions have risen by 3 percent in the past five years. Relying on past IPCC work, The Earth Institute at Columbia University concluded this year that atmospheric concentrations of CO2, now 0.00038 percent, could reach 0.00055 percent "well before the end of the century, with potentially disastrous implications for human well-being and the Earth's natural systems." At the present rate, it would be more than 9,000 years before CO2 reached 1 percent.
Those numbers are meaningless without context, so here's some: CO2 is abundant on Venus, a hellishly hot planet that warmists say portends earth's fate unless mankind curbs its greenhouse-gas emissions now. But Venus' atmosphere is 97 percent carbon dioxide, giving it 255,000 times more CO2 by volume than earth's and making warmists' fears laughably overheated.
But even if fossil fuels were banned tomorrow, the effect on the climate would be at best immeasurably small. "So whether the climate changes we are observing are reversible is a nonissue," said Steve Milloy of junkscience.com. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., put the IPCC's revisions in perspective: "Climate science is always going through these 'refinements.' The media (have) alternated between four separate global cooling and warming scares since 1895, (including) the erroneous prediction of a coming ice age in the 1970s." Still, the IPCC and other warmists should be encouraged to keep refining their data until this latest warming scare disappears.
Global warming is real, but it's a small effect. The avg temp of the Earth's surface/lower atmosphere is about 18oC. By ~2060, the avg temp might be 19oC. That's not a big diff. It's only about a 0.34% increase in energy. It would be a mistake to turn over control of the energy supply to the warmists, simply on the grounds that they BSing and exaggerating with vigor. Beyond that, the long term solution would require something like nuke plants, if most of the world isn't going to be sent into the stone age at their whim.
There....that's better.
SWAG: An acronym for "Scientific Wild Ass Guess".
If not, why not?
Agreed. Tell my freeping PG&E bill about "Global Warming", so I don't end up using twice as much gas to heat the house as in normal years, in spite of turning down the thermostat!
The 0.34% increase in energy is the enrgy increase with a constant solar output. It's in the physics. If the Sun's output goes up, the energy captured by the atmosphere increases.
"Just remind them that German scientists last year, using ice core samples from all over the Alps..."
Wonder if your aforementioned scientists are these scientists -
The high priests of global warming in Europe said their computer tells them that the European Alpine region is undergoing its warmest period in 1,300 years.
The computer also told the scientists that women using hairspray in the 1950s caused the earth to cool. Then it said that since the 1980s, Americans driving evil SUVs caused the Alpine mountain ranges to warm.
Similar warming occurred in the 10th and 12th centuries, said Reinhard Boehm, a climatologist at Austria's Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics.
This, of course, raises the question of what were the Europeans driving in the Middle Ages that caused the warming?
The reconstruction of the Alpine climate involved divining temperature, sunshine and cloud cover over a 1,300 year period by reading computer entrails. The scientists also studied tree rings and ice. However, they have yet to uncover any 10th or 12th century SUV engines.
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