Posted on 06/06/2011 10:18:30 AM PDT by neverdem
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out of our politicians.
Let's set a few things straight. The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous pollutant.
Let's be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.
Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet's temperature, if just the extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.
The disagreement comes about what happens next.
The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything. Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in 1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet, which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a greenhouse gas.
This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon dioxide warming by a factor of three -so two-thirds of their projected warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due to extra carbon dioxide.
That's the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that is at the core of their alarmism.
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10 kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, '80s and '90s, the weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.
This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
At this point, official "climate science" stopped being a science. In science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory -that just happens to keep them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great political power to their government masters.
There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is no exception, and now we can prove it.
But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much higher than reality.
They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade -yet they have the gall to tell us "it's worse than expected." These people are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.
One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.
The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be too close to an artificial heating source.
Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not mention the satellite results?
The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850 and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to 30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase, so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.
We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government -how exciting for the political class!
Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their models exaggerate 10-fold -in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in 2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!
Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you've been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it's so minor it's not worth doing much about.
Just in time for Flip Flop Romney to embrace them but not to worry, he’ll be changing his position back in 10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7 . . .
It's making fools out of quite a few scientists as well.
*bump*
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Some noteworthy articles about politics, foreign or military affairs, IMHO, FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
ping
Eastern Sierra Nevada Forecast Valid: 11am PDT Jun 6, 2011-6pm PDT Jun 12, 2011
Today: Scattered snow showers. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 34. West wind around 15 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than one inch possible.
Tonight: A 20 percent chance of snow showers before 11pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 27. West wind between 5 and 15 mph.
Tuesday: Scattered rain and snow showers after 11am. Some thunder is also possible. Snow level 9300 feet. Partly sunny, with a high near 45. South wind between 5 and 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. Little or no snow accumulation expected.
Tuesday Night: A slight chance of rain and snow showers before 11pm. Some thunder is also possible. Snow level 9400 feet. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 33. North wind between 5 and 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
If reality matched official government sanctioned computer models the porkulus bill would have driven the unemployment rate into negative numbers by now.
If we seeded the clouds on Venus could we get it to rain enough to cool the place down?
If we seeded the clouds on Venus could we get it to rain enough to cool the place down?
bttt
Scientist changes mind after facts don’t meet the computer model predictions.
Those people are as far from "scientist" as is possible to conceive.
What they are (besides a source of such complete embarrasment I've seriously considered denying my own technical degrees and background) is little more than what we scorned during Grad School as Grant Whores. "Tell us the results you want and give us cash, we'll have a Big Time University Study for you on whatever schedule you name."
Academic integrity? Peer review? Scientific method?
How Old School can you get?
/sarc
Actually, all this has had a positive in my personal life. I no longer feel any need to respond to any Alumni begathons and I can please both myself and my Don't-Take-Me-To-Fancy-Parties-Because-I-Can't-Tolerate-Stuffed-Shirts little bride and skip all uncoming Class reunions.
Saves me money AND the chance that I'd lose what little patience remains to me and kick somebody's butt over this con game.
I’m reading “Set Up & Sold Out” by Holly Swanson. GW was never about the environment, it’s just about another way for leftists to seize property rights & overthrow our gov’t.
Thanks for the ping!
CO2 follows warming, it is leads it.
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