Posted on 12/29/2005 8:15:58 AM PST by scouse
Global Warming? What a load of poppycock!
Here are some excerpts from a great commentary by Professor David Bellamy published in the Daily Mail:
“Whatever the experts say about the howling gales, thunder and lightning we've had over the past two days, of one thing we can be certain. Someone, somewhere - and there is every chance it will be a politician or an environmentalist - will blame the weather on global warming.
“But they will be 100 per cent wrong. Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not.
“Instead, they have an unshakeable in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement. Humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up.
“They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock. Unfortunately, for the time being, it is their view that prevails.
“As a result of their ignorance, the world's economy may be about to divert billions, nay trillions of pounds, dollars and roubles into solving a problem that actually doesn't exist. The waste of economic resources is incalculable and tragic.
“Let me quote from a petition produced by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, which has been signed by over 18,000 scientists who are totally opposed to the Kyoto Protocol, which committed the world's leading industrial nations to cut their production of greenhouse gasses from fossil fuels.
“They say: 'Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are in error and do not conform to experimental knowledge.'
“You couldn't get much plainer than that. And yet we still have public figures such as Sir David King, scientific adviser to Her Majesty's Government, making preposterous statements such as 'by the end of this century, the only continent we will be able to live on is Antarctica .'
“Ah, ice ages... those absolutely massive changes in global climate that environmentalists don't like to talk about because they provide such strong evidence that climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon.
“It was round about the end of the last ice age, some 13,000 years ago, that a global warming process did undoubtedly begin.
“Not because of all those Stone age folk roasting mammoth meat on fossil fuel camp fires but because of something called the 'Milankovitch Cycles,' an entirely natural fact of planetary life that depends on the tilt of the Earth's axis and its orbit around the sun.
“The glaciers melted, the ice cap retreated and Stone Age man could begin hunting again. But a couple of millennia later, it got very cold again and everyone headed south. Then it warmed up so much that water from melted ice filled the English Channel and we became an island.
“The truth is that the climate has been yo-yo-ing up and down ever since. Whereas it was warm enough for Romans to produce good wine in York , on the other hand, King Canute had to dig up peat to warm his people. And then it started getting warm again.
“Up and down, up and down - that is how temperature and climate have always gone in the past and there is no proof they are not still doing exactly the same thing now. In other words, climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels.
“In fact, a recent scientific paper, rather unenticingly titled 'Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Over The Last Glacial Termination,' proved it.
“It showed that increases in temperature are responsible for increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around.
“But this sort of evidence is ignored, either by those who believe the Kyoto Protocol is environmental gospel or by those who know 25 years of hard work went into securing the agreement and simply can't admit that the science it is based on is wrong.
“The link between the burning of fossil fuels and global warming is a myth. It is time the world's leaders, their scientific advisers and many environmental pressure groups woke up to the fact.”
That's because it's not a factor in the atmospheric or oceanic climate heat budget (but subcrustally, the heat flow is important; that, in fact, was what led Thomas Wolery and Norman Sleep to surmise that ocean water circulated through the ridges before any vents were discovered).
ping for bookmark.
What's your take on the 18,000 scientists opposed to Kyoto?
Yes. I re-read your comment, and you said (as close as I can remember) that submarine volcanism is peculiarly absent from global heat budget discussions.
When you say "global heat budget", I equate that with Earth's radiative balance, i.e., the amount of energy that the Earth receives from the Sun vs. the amount returned to space or stored in the climate system. Obviously, the oceans store and transfer a LOT of heat as a major part of the climate system. The amount of heat within the oceanic circulation is so large that any contribution from submarine volcanism is negligible.
And you might find these interesting:
SOME LIKE IT HOT (read the part about megaplumes)
Recent activity at Loihi Volcano (see diagram of thermal anomalies)
Summary: when underwater volcanoes erupt, they can warm up the water above them a little bit and for a little while, but this is not a significant factor in the oceanic heat budget.
For one thing, Kyoto is all about international political grandstanding and very little about climate. But if you're talking about the OISM petition, (a) a lot of the signees weren't from fields directly related to climate science, (b) the document accompanying the petition was made to look like a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper, so much so that the NAS had to issue a warning/disclaimer, and (c) being opposed to Kyoto doesn't necessarily mean that you think global warming is an unimportant issue, or worse, a hoax.
The ice age has already begun. In 20 years it will be in full swing. Learned that on Coast last night.
Figured there was a lot more to it than stated in the article. I've just been very leery of any UN related initiatives like Kyoto that might impinge on our sovereignty.
Our economic reliance on foreign oil imports is going to be a lot more important to our national sovereignty than anything done by the UN that's related to climate change.
Well, actually at the moment the FTAA and the coming American Union ala the EU is the most critical threat to our sovereignty.......if it goes through as planned say goodbye to the Constitution and the protections to our liberty it provides.
This thread immediately plunged into George Noory -- Art Bell without the credibility -- but here is an interesting take on climate change by Dr Michael Crichton.
http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/complexity/complexity.html
Very current, very valid, very thoughtful.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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