Posted on 01/22/2014 5:38:40 AM PST by Kaslin
The Hill, the newspaper that covers Congress, says this year, there will be a major policy battle over "climate change." Why?
We already waste billions on pointless gestures that make people think we're addressing global warming, but the earth doesn't notice or care.
What exactly is "global warming" anyway? That's really four questions:
1. Is the globe warming? Probably. Global temperatures have risen. Climate changes. Always has. Always will.
2. Is the warming caused by man? Maybe. There's decent evidence that at least some of it is.
3. But is global warming a crisis? Far from it. It's possible that it will become a crisis. Some computer models suggest big problems, but the models aren't very accurate. Some turned out to be utterly wrong. Clueless scaremongers like Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Cal., seize on weather disasters to blame man's carbon output. After Oklahoma's tragic tornadoes last year, Boxer stood on the floor of the Senate and shrieked, "Carbon could cost us the planet!" But there were actually fewer tornadoes last summer.
4. If the globe is warming, can America do anything about it? No. What we do now is pointless. I feel righteous riding my bike to work. That's just shallow. Even if all Americans replaced cars with bicycles, switched to fluorescent light bulbs, got solar water heaters, etc., it would have no discernible effect on the climate. China builds a new coal-fueled power plant almost every week; each one obliterates any carbon reduction from all our windmills and solar panels.
Weirdly, the only thing that's reduced America's carbon output has been our increased use of natural gas (it releases less greenhouse gas than oil and coal). But many environmentalists fight the fracking that produces it.
Someday, we'll probably invent technology that could reduce man's greenhouse gas creation, but we're nowhere close to it now. Rather than punish poor people with higher taxes on carbon and award ludicrous subsidies to Al Gore's "green" investments, we should wait for the science to advance.
If serious warming happens, we can adjust, as we've adjusted to big changes throughout history. It will be easier to adjust if America is not broke after wasting our resources on trendy gimmicks like windmills.
Environmental activists say that if we don't love their regulations, we "don't care about the earth." Bunk. We can love nature and still hate the tyranny of bureaucrats' rules.
We do need some rules. It's good that government built sewage treatment plants. Today, the rivers around Manhattan are so clean that I swim in them. It's good that we forced industry to stop polluting the air. Scrubbers in smokestacks and catalytic converters on cars made our lives better. The air gets cleaner every time someone replaces an old car with a new one.
But those were measures against real pollution -- soot, particulates, sulfur, etc. What global warming hysterics want to fight is merely carbon dioxide. That's what plants breathe. CO2 may prove to be a problem, but we don't know that now.
The world has real problems, though: malaria, malnutrition, desperate poverty. Our own country, while relatively rich, is deep in debt. Obsessing about greenhouse gases makes it harder to address these more serious problems.
Environmentalists assume that as people get richer and use more energy, they pollute more. The opposite is true. As nations industrialize, they pay more attention to pollution. Around the world, it's the most prosperous nations that now have the cleanest air and water.
Industrialization allows people to use fewer resources. Instead of burning trees for power, we make electricity from natural gas. We figure out how to get more food from smaller pieces of land. And one day we'll probably even invent energy sources more efficient than oil and gas. We'll use them because they're cost-effective, not because government forces us to.
So let's chill out about global warming. We don't need more micromanagement from government. We need less.
Then free people -- and rapidly increasing prosperity -- will create a better world.
” We can love nature and still hate the tyranny of bureaucrats’ rules.”
The head Climatologist at MIT says we are not warming any longer and have not been in 17 years. You need to get with this "Climate Change" mantra... we are now going to freeze to death. I wonder if the goracle still thinks the Earth has a fever of "millions of degrees"? Here is just one such study. I cannot believe that there are gullible people on FR that still buy into this communist plot. You do know that the head of the UN says that COMMUNISTS are best to handle GLOBULL WARMING?
http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/06/15/forget-the-temperature-plateau-earth-undergoing-global-cooling-since-2002-climate-scientist-dr-judith-curry-attention-in-the-public-debate-seems-to-be-moving-away-from/
"Forget global warming!? Earth undergoing global COOLING since 2002! Climate Scientist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘Attention in the public debate seems to be moving away from the 15-17 year ‘pause’ to the cooling since 2002’
Growing number of scientists are predicting global cooling: Russia’s Pulkovo Observatory: ‘We could be in for a cooling period that lasts 200-250 years’
‘Sun Sleeps’: Danish Solar Scientist Svensmark declares ‘global warming has stopped and a cooling is beginning…enjoy global warming while it lasts’
Prominent geologist Dr. Don Easterbrook warns ‘global COOLING is almost a slam dunk’ for up to 30 years or more
Australian Astronomical Society warns of global COOLING as Sun’s activity ‘significantly diminishes’
By: Marc Morano - Climate DepotJune 15, 2013 2:55 PM
Climate Depot Exclusive Round Up of Global Cooling predictions
Professor Judith Curry of, the chair, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, on June 14, 2013: “Attention in the public debate seems to be moving away from the 15-17 year ‘pause’ to the cooling since 2002 (note: I am receiving inquiries about this from journalists). This period since 2002 is scientifically interesting, since it coincides with the ‘climate shift’ circa 2001/2002 posited by Tsonis and others. This shift and the subsequent slight cooling trend provides a rationale for inferring a slight cooling trend over the next decade or so, rather than a flat trend from the 15 yr ‘pause’.”
Climate Depot Note:
Many scientists in recent years have noted the recent global cooling and predicted many years to decades to centuries of more global cooling. Below is a sampling of scientists and studies on global cooling.
UW-Milwaukee Professor’s Peer-Reviewed Study Predicts 50 Years of Global Cooling – January 2010: ‘A University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor is making headlines for his work suggesting the world is entering a period of global cooling. “Now we’re getting a break,” Anastasios Tsonis, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics at UWM, said in an interview with the MacIver Institute. Tsonis published a paper last March that found the world goes through periods of warming and cooling that tend to last thirty years. He says we are now in a period of cooling that could last up to fifty years."
However your references are correct about the potential for global cooling, The sun primarily warms the oceans (unlike additional "back radiation" from additional CO2). As the solar activity decreases the oceans start to cool albeit unevenly since the sun and clouds are uneven. That cooling is essentially "in the pipeline" but masked by leftover warmth from the historically high solar activity in the 20th century. Here's a chart:
Looking at the chart, what is most likely to happen is cooling in perhaps 6-10 years. Looking at the last century, the cold period peaked around 1918 and it warmed steadily from 1920 to 1940. Even the global warming advocates admit that the warming from 1920 to 1940 was at least 1/2 natural. I think it is more. Likewise a large portion of the warming that we saw in the 90's was natural and can be explained by looking at the chart. A rough formula is solar activity plus a 10-15 year lag and continuing temperature drop as long as solar activity stays low.
But while cooling is likely, none of that invalidates the science behind the "warming ability"* of CO2 nor the near certainty that all the "extra" CO2 is manmade.
*Note: Extra CO2 does not "warm", it only decreases cooling. The earth is always cooling since only the sun provides warmth.
The CO2 boogie man science is just that. Core samples do not back up hansen’s claims. This is one explanation from 2009. More recent data is out there. No sense arguing... I do not think that I will change your mind nor will you change mine. I do research and believe what I see to be the truth. The truth as I see it is that those that claimed that the fish in the seas would be dead by now, Arizona would be the new California and that snow and ice would be a thing children read about in the History books are part of a organized con greater than any ever conceived by man. I do appreciate your civility in the discussion that we have had.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/30/co2-temperatures-and-ice-ages/
CO2, Temperatures, and Ice Ages
Posted on January 30, 2009 by Anthony Watts
Guest post by Frank Lansner, civil engineer, biotechnology.
(Note from Anthony – English is not Frank’s primary language, I have made some small adjustments for readability, however they may be a few passages that need clarification. Frank will be happy to clarify in comments)
It is generally accepted that CO2 is lagging temperature in Antarctic graphs. To dig further into this subject therefore might seem a waste of time. But the reality is, that these graphs are still widely used as an argument for the global warming hypothesis. But can the CO2-hypothesis be supported in any way using the data of Antarctic ice cores?
At first glance, the CO2 lagging temperature would mean that it’s the temperature that controls CO2 and not vice versa.
Carbon dioxide is plant food. The more of it we release into the atmosphere, the easier it is to grow more food to feed humanity.
It shows you how ignorant the left is
That's true. The earth starts warming from solar changes, then CO2 is released from the warming oceans. But look at that chart:
It shows a 50 ppm rise in CO2 for about each 3-4 C rise in temperature or about 15 ppm rise for each 1 degree rise. Following the Little Ice Age which peaked in the late 1800's the earth has warmed about 1 degree (less in the oceans but let's assume they warmed 1C also). That would produce about 15 ppm rise in CO2. In the 1800's CO2 was at 280 ppm. Now it is about 395ppm, a rise of 115ppm. The "extra" amount of rise (100 ppm) is almost certainly from manmade CO2.
There are other possibilities like volcanic origin, but scant evidence for them. The largest volcanoes might emit 100 of MT (Pinatubo was 42) and manmade CO2 is 9000 MT. Another possibility is that some other natural flux is involved. There is a large natural flux of 100's of 1000's of MT each year. But that is mostly released in fall and absorbed in spring by dying and growing plants in the northern hemisphere.
The main problem with suggesting a natural origin comes form the graph. Current CO2 is higher than previous periods as shown by the thin red line on the top right. But it is also true that each increase in CO2 has less of an effect than the previous (a logarithmic rise) So the warming from doubling of CO2 alone will be a very modest 1C subject to possible positive or negative feedbacks.
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