VIEWPOINT: GLOBAL WARMING NATURAL, MAY END WITHIN 20 YEARS

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/nowarm.htm ^

[Reform Canada]

VIEWPOINT: GLOBAL WARMING NATURAL, MAY END WITHIN 20 YEARS http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/nowarm.htm

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years, predicts an Ohio State University researcher.

The researcher suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide -- often thought of as a key "greenhouse gas" -- is not the cause of global warming. The opposite is most likely to be true, according to Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering. It is the rising global temperatures that are naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, he says.

Essenhigh explains his position in a "viewpoint" article in the current issue of the journal Chemical Innovation, published by the American Chemical Society.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "According to Essenhigh's estimations, Earth may reach a peak in the current temperature profile within the next 10 to 20 years, and then it could begin to cool into a new ice age." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Many people blame global warming on carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in man-made devices such as automobiles and power plants. Essenhigh believes these people fail to account for the much greater amount of carbon dioxide that enters -- and leaves -- the atmosphere as part of the natural cycle of water exchange from, and back into, the sea and vegetation.

[TChris]

Too late. Anthropogenic Global Warming is now a fixed dogma. Those who question it are heretics and will be punished.

[cogitator]

What say you?

Got this from the article:

"Some scientists believe that the human contribution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, however small, is of a critical amount that could nonetheless upset Earth's environmental balance. But Essenhigh feels that, mathematically, that hypothesis hasn't been adequately substantiated." [WRONG -- the fluxes are quantified well enough that historical estimates of energy use starting in the 1950s -- pretty easy to estimate, actually -- matches the Keeling curve of CO2 increase.] "Here's how Essenhigh sees the global temperature system working: As temperatures rise, the carbon dioxide equilibrium in the water changes, and this releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere." [WRONG -- it's not nearly enough CO2 from a slight warming of the surface ocean. And, the oceans are a net sink; a known fact substantiated by thousands of at-sea measurements.] According to this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide is then an indicator of rising temperatures -- not the driving force behind it."

Two things. Everything about Essenhigh posted here seems to date from 2001. (Yeah, I've seen it before.) He's done nothing since except fade away? If true, that says something right there. I don't know if he's still alive or not; he looked very "emeritus" in 2001.

Two: the oceans have absorbed roughly half of the total anthropogenic CO2 released during the "Industrial Age". But as they absorb more, they become less effective absorbers. This factor could exacerbate attempts to slow down the rate of rise of atmospheric CO2.