Global Warming: A Convenient Truth…
Coincidence is a really strange thing...
Last week I purchased a copy of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Al Gore’s attempt to cash in on the current trend of docu-movies (and possibly boosting his profile for future political ambitions?). Since I watched it, there has been quite a few new news reports on the topic.
I have to say that I absolutely love these documentary (or propaganda) movies – the issues covered (almost always controversial in nature) and the position advanced with arguments (typically fallacious) never fails to entertain and amuse me. I mean, most (if not all) movies (script-writers, directors, producers, etc) have an agenda (I hope this statement does not surprise you), but I have not yet decided which is worse – overtly advancing a particular position under the mask of truth (we automatically assume that whatever documentaries tell us must be true) or placing such messages and themes subliminally within a fictitional motion picture film. Conspiracy theories are also pushed in movies JFK and the recent Bobby as well as in Fahrenheit 9/11.
These movies as well as others (like Pearl Harbour, Domino, Last King of Scotland, etc) all make similar attempts to re-write historical events. Invariably people get confused as to what really happened and what to believe. Some people, I’m sure, will be quick to blame pluralism and relativism in today’s society, without offering a solution apart from the blanket avoidance of movies (of course this does not solve anything because its contained in print too – I guess they can just find a cave and move in).
I doubt that it really is relativism and pluralism. I think we’ve all been equipped with the capacity to assess information and make decisions – and free will. Besides, people have always had differing opinions (even when there are particular belief systems being enforced, they merely did not voice them out). Anyways, I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourselves.
As I watched the docu-movie, it seemed that the argument goes like this: The Earth is protected by a thin layer called the O-Zone layer; This layer allows the sun’s radiation into the Earth, and traps some of that heat, while allowing the rest to reflect off the Earth’s surface and escape back into space; This trapped heat keeps the temperature of the Earth warm and at a level that will sustain life; Greenhouse gases thickens the O-Zone layer, causing more of the sun’s radiation to be trapped in the Earth, in turn, causing ice glaciers/pockets to melt and causing a whole wealth of problems for all of us (I always thought that these gases caused holes in the O-Zone layer which then allows more of the sun’s radiation into the Earth and melts the ice caps. Admittedly, I’m not much of a scientist!).
The only Greenhouse gas that was highlighted was carbon dioxide (I don't remember hearing any mention of methane, nitrous oxide, and flourinated gases - the other alleged main culprits). In the movie, Gore produces chart upon chart showing how the Earth has been consistently heating up and how this matches rising carbon dioxide levels in the Earth. Of course there are many causes for the rise in carbon dioxide levels – deforestation (the burning of trees in some of our neighbour countries which causes fogs that even affects us here in Singapore once every year), our use of cars and fuels, and the booming population around the world (people breathe out carbon dioxide. More people, more carbon dioxide). All of these were identified by Gore. All of these are human activities.
But rather than present us with an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ I think it does the very opposite. According to Gore’s facts, the main culprit of the carbon dioxide emissions is the United States. Compared with other car manufacturers, those in America have the worse emissions levels – this is why they do not sell well in other countries, they simply do not meet those countries' emission standards. China is the second highest offender, apparently because of their population numbers (I assume nothing can really be done about this, unless he’s advocating some kind of population control – the infamous ‘one child policy’ or worse still killing some of them off. Afterall, all life produces carbon dioxide - even as they decompose). ‘As Is’ it does present a convenient truth – its all America’s fault again! It is a convenient truth, especially when one considers that Singapore meets its carbon emission reduction targets and obligations under the Kyoto protocol.
Gore does not really give us a solution to the problem. Maybe because there really isn’t any! He spends a significant amount of time throughout the movie telling us that he’s been championing this issue ever since he 1st heard of the problem at University. This even culminated in the passing of a bill on the environment during his time as the Vice President under Bill Clinton. This makes me wonder, what was that saying by Einstein that a sign of insanity was ‘doing the same things over again and expecting a different result’?
I suspect that, even if true, these conclusions will not be taken seriously by authorities as well as plebeian folk. I guess this is partly because everyone already has their own views firmly entrenched and that the status quo must be maintained. Governments are receiving huge revenues from fuel taxes, while at the same time their talk and investments in ‘alternative fuel sources’ will bring in more votes (whether they ever actually materialise), businesses have existing as well as new product and marketing opportunities as a result of this on-going environmental concerns (automobile manufacturers, who will always make petrol cars, now can make hybrid and eventually hydrogen-powered cars – while gaining a ‘ethical/responsible company’ billing). As usual, economics rules the day! (China has said time and again that they do not want rich nations to dictate how it should develop its economy). As reported in today's Straits Times, there are fears that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) meeting current held in Thailand will be hijacked by politics (of course there's a co-relation between economics and politics).
Of course, all the above is assuming that the facts as stated are true. This may not be the case. Despite what Gore would have us believe, John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, lead author of the 2001 IPCC report and a contributing author of the 2007 report, flatly says that there is no consensus (even among the scientists).
Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a prominent skeptic said: “The Earth is always warming or cooling, at least a few tenths of a degree. And we're talking about, so far, something on the order of six-tenths of a degree centigrade… We're not even arguing about whether greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level to warming. They most certainly should (but) I would suggest it would be very little.”
In 2003, Dr Willie Soon Wei Hock, an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, told the Harvard Crimson newsletter that “natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed”.
In response to the claims in Gore's presentation, the article in today's newspaper says:
IN HIS presentation, Mr Gore shows how ice core data translate into a sawtooth graph of the world's temperature fluctuations from eons past. He then strategically places below this graph yet another one of carbon level changes in the atmosphere over the same period.
The two graphs obviously move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great panache, Mr Gore concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows.
As surely as night follows day?
Yet if the graphs are mapped onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the other, as Mr Gore does, it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every temperature rise actually precedes the carbon rise by some 800 years.
This undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in times past. If so, factors other than carbon must have set off the various periods of global warming in times past.
If so, the most fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global warming rests on shaky ground. In fact, carbon is a bad candidate for such a theory. After all, methane is 27 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Even more significantly, water vapour and nitrous oxide are each 380 times more powerful than CO2 as greenhouse gases. In addition, there is just so much more water vapour in the atmosphere - 40,000 parts per million by volume of air - compared to C02 which makes up only 370 parts per million by volume of air.
Yet the IPCC specifically and completely excludes water vapour from its climate models because it says it cannot find a consensus on the greenhouse warming capacity of water. Instead, carbon dioxide is made out to be the principal greenhouse gas.
True, we are a carbon-based life form but humans produce just a small fraction of 1 per cent of all carbon. Dying vegetation produces much more.
But the greatest reservoir of carbon is actually the oceans, a fact that accounts for the 800-year gap mentioned above. What something called Henry's Law dictates is that as oceans heat up, they release CO2 dissolved in them. Conversely, as they cool down, oceans suck CO2 in.
Oceans are huge bodies of water, so they take hundreds of years to warm up or cool down, which is why there is an 800-year lag between warming and carbon rises.
Back to the crux of the matter: Since carbon follows temperature, carbon cannot be causing the current global warming.
So if carbon dioxide levels are not causing global warming, then what is?
Howard Hayden, a retired Univeristy of Connecticut physics professor and the editor of The Energy Advocate, said in a lecture criticising the hysteria surrounding global warming that the culprits are more likely to be astronomic and solar events rather than human beings. Furthermore, he argued that climatic history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backwards. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause the Earth to be warmer. Instead, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels. He said that “the sun heats up the Earth and the oceans warm up and atmospheric carbon dioxide rises.” He added that human’s contribution to global carbon dioxide levels is virtually negligible.
Two astrophysicist, Dr Sallie Baliunas and Dr Soon, argue that most global warming is actually caused by changes in the amount of energy the sun emits. When the Danish National Space Centre looked at 400 years of sun spots (a sun spot is an area of intense magnetic activity on the surface of the sun) and global temperatures, it found that when sun spot activity rose, global temperatures rose too - and vice versa - with no time lag (unlike the alleged time lags in Gore’s charts). The record even showed a dip in solar activity in the 1945-1975 period of global cooling.
Solar activity impacts cloud formation, the sun's direct rays heat up the air which then heats up the land. When cosmic ray particles penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, they meet water vapour rising from the oceans to form water droplets, which coalesce to form clouds. The more cosmic rays, the more clouds they help create, the cooler the air gets. Cosmic rays come from exploding stars called novas.
When solar activity increases, the sun's magnetic activity increases. When that occurs, cosmic ray particles tend to get blocked off, so fewer penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and thus fewer clouds form. So when solar activity increases, the sky is less cloudy. With less cloud cover, temperatures rise.
In short, global temperatures are controlled by clouds (water vapour), which are controlled by cosmic rays which, in turn, are controlled by the solar activity.
If the engine driving the Earth's climate change is the sun - not carbon - and the transmission belt is water, then the impact of human activity on global temperatures must be small.
In a previous related story in Sunday’s Straits Times which reported that hurricane researchers from Colorado State University say that ocean currents, not increased carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, cause global warming. They also said that increasing levels of carbon dioxide will not produce more or stronger hurricanes and that the Earth may begin to cool on its own in 5 to 10 years.
***The Great Global Warming Swindle is a very interesting documentary on the differing position to the Global warming movement. It suggests that the movement is not only contrary to science, but is political and have become almost akin to a religion (sounds to me like the whole Darwinian/Evolution position!). They suggests that it is a vehicle used by rich countries to stem the economic progress of developing countries. They say that countries such as Africa shouldn't use coal and oil, which they have an abundance of, for fuel for electricity. They should use wind and solar power - which is not only expensive, but extremely unreliable. Why are the Europeans and Americans not using it themselves? Because of those very reasons. Yet they are trying to impose it on the poorest and most needy countries.
If you have the opportunity, do try to catch it.
Additional reading:
http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070412/APC06/70412050/1036
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_controversies
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/11/EDGS0INK5L1.DTL
Coincidence is a really strange thing...
Last week I purchased a copy of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, Al Gore’s attempt to cash in on the current trend of docu-movies (and possibly boosting his profile for future political ambitions?). Since I watched it, there has been quite a few new news reports on the topic.
I have to say that I absolutely love these documentary (or propaganda) movies – the issues covered (almost always controversial in nature) and the position advanced with arguments (typically fallacious) never fails to entertain and amuse me. I mean, most (if not all) movies (script-writers, directors, producers, etc) have an agenda (I hope this statement does not surprise you), but I have not yet decided which is worse – overtly advancing a particular position under the mask of truth (we automatically assume that whatever documentaries tell us must be true) or placing such messages and themes subliminally within a fictitional motion picture film. Conspiracy theories are also pushed in movies JFK and the recent Bobby as well as in Fahrenheit 9/11.
These movies as well as others (like Pearl Harbour, Domino, Last King of Scotland, etc) all make similar attempts to re-write historical events. Invariably people get confused as to what really happened and what to believe. Some people, I’m sure, will be quick to blame pluralism and relativism in today’s society, without offering a solution apart from the blanket avoidance of movies (of course this does not solve anything because its contained in print too – I guess they can just find a cave and move in).
I doubt that it really is relativism and pluralism. I think we’ve all been equipped with the capacity to assess information and make decisions – and free will. Besides, people have always had differing opinions (even when there are particular belief systems being enforced, they merely did not voice them out). Anyways, I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourselves.
As I watched the docu-movie, it seemed that the argument goes like this: The Earth is protected by a thin layer called the O-Zone layer; This layer allows the sun’s radiation into the Earth, and traps some of that heat, while allowing the rest to reflect off the Earth’s surface and escape back into space; This trapped heat keeps the temperature of the Earth warm and at a level that will sustain life; Greenhouse gases thickens the O-Zone layer, causing more of the sun’s radiation to be trapped in the Earth, in turn, causing ice glaciers/pockets to melt and causing a whole wealth of problems for all of us (I always thought that these gases caused holes in the O-Zone layer which then allows more of the sun’s radiation into the Earth and melts the ice caps. Admittedly, I’m not much of a scientist!).
The only Greenhouse gas that was highlighted was carbon dioxide (I don't remember hearing any mention of methane, nitrous oxide, and flourinated gases - the other alleged main culprits). In the movie, Gore produces chart upon chart showing how the Earth has been consistently heating up and how this matches rising carbon dioxide levels in the Earth. Of course there are many causes for the rise in carbon dioxide levels – deforestation (the burning of trees in some of our neighbour countries which causes fogs that even affects us here in Singapore once every year), our use of cars and fuels, and the booming population around the world (people breathe out carbon dioxide. More people, more carbon dioxide). All of these were identified by Gore. All of these are human activities.
But rather than present us with an ‘Inconvenient Truth’ I think it does the very opposite. According to Gore’s facts, the main culprit of the carbon dioxide emissions is the United States. Compared with other car manufacturers, those in America have the worse emissions levels – this is why they do not sell well in other countries, they simply do not meet those countries' emission standards. China is the second highest offender, apparently because of their population numbers (I assume nothing can really be done about this, unless he’s advocating some kind of population control – the infamous ‘one child policy’ or worse still killing some of them off. Afterall, all life produces carbon dioxide - even as they decompose). ‘As Is’ it does present a convenient truth – its all America’s fault again! It is a convenient truth, especially when one considers that Singapore meets its carbon emission reduction targets and obligations under the Kyoto protocol.
Gore does not really give us a solution to the problem. Maybe because there really isn’t any! He spends a significant amount of time throughout the movie telling us that he’s been championing this issue ever since he 1st heard of the problem at University. This even culminated in the passing of a bill on the environment during his time as the Vice President under Bill Clinton. This makes me wonder, what was that saying by Einstein that a sign of insanity was ‘doing the same things over again and expecting a different result’?
I suspect that, even if true, these conclusions will not be taken seriously by authorities as well as plebeian folk. I guess this is partly because everyone already has their own views firmly entrenched and that the status quo must be maintained. Governments are receiving huge revenues from fuel taxes, while at the same time their talk and investments in ‘alternative fuel sources’ will bring in more votes (whether they ever actually materialise), businesses have existing as well as new product and marketing opportunities as a result of this on-going environmental concerns (automobile manufacturers, who will always make petrol cars, now can make hybrid and eventually hydrogen-powered cars – while gaining a ‘ethical/responsible company’ billing). As usual, economics rules the day! (China has said time and again that they do not want rich nations to dictate how it should develop its economy). As reported in today's Straits Times, there are fears that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) meeting current held in Thailand will be hijacked by politics (of course there's a co-relation between economics and politics).
Of course, all the above is assuming that the facts as stated are true. This may not be the case. Despite what Gore would have us believe, John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, lead author of the 2001 IPCC report and a contributing author of the 2007 report, flatly says that there is no consensus (even among the scientists).
Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a prominent skeptic said: “The Earth is always warming or cooling, at least a few tenths of a degree. And we're talking about, so far, something on the order of six-tenths of a degree centigrade… We're not even arguing about whether greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level to warming. They most certainly should (but) I would suggest it would be very little.”
In 2003, Dr Willie Soon Wei Hock, an astrophysicist at the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, told the Harvard Crimson newsletter that “natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed”.
In response to the claims in Gore's presentation, the article in today's newspaper says:
IN HIS presentation, Mr Gore shows how ice core data translate into a sawtooth graph of the world's temperature fluctuations from eons past. He then strategically places below this graph yet another one of carbon level changes in the atmosphere over the same period.
The two graphs obviously move in lockstep with each other, he says. With great panache, Mr Gore concludes that when carbon goes up, temperature inevitably follows.
As surely as night follows day?
Yet if the graphs are mapped onto each other instead of being counterposed one above the other, as Mr Gore does, it becomes very clear that, very consistently, every temperature rise actually precedes the carbon rise by some 800 years.
This undeniable time lag is critical since what it says is that more carbon in the air did not lead to global warming in times past. If so, factors other than carbon must have set off the various periods of global warming in times past.
If so, the most fundamental assumption of the carbon theory of human-induced global warming rests on shaky ground. In fact, carbon is a bad candidate for such a theory. After all, methane is 27 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Even more significantly, water vapour and nitrous oxide are each 380 times more powerful than CO2 as greenhouse gases. In addition, there is just so much more water vapour in the atmosphere - 40,000 parts per million by volume of air - compared to C02 which makes up only 370 parts per million by volume of air.
Yet the IPCC specifically and completely excludes water vapour from its climate models because it says it cannot find a consensus on the greenhouse warming capacity of water. Instead, carbon dioxide is made out to be the principal greenhouse gas.
True, we are a carbon-based life form but humans produce just a small fraction of 1 per cent of all carbon. Dying vegetation produces much more.
But the greatest reservoir of carbon is actually the oceans, a fact that accounts for the 800-year gap mentioned above. What something called Henry's Law dictates is that as oceans heat up, they release CO2 dissolved in them. Conversely, as they cool down, oceans suck CO2 in.
Oceans are huge bodies of water, so they take hundreds of years to warm up or cool down, which is why there is an 800-year lag between warming and carbon rises.
Back to the crux of the matter: Since carbon follows temperature, carbon cannot be causing the current global warming.
So if carbon dioxide levels are not causing global warming, then what is?
Howard Hayden, a retired Univeristy of Connecticut physics professor and the editor of The Energy Advocate, said in a lecture criticising the hysteria surrounding global warming that the culprits are more likely to be astronomic and solar events rather than human beings. Furthermore, he argued that climatic history proves that Gore has the relationship between carbon dioxide concentration and global warming backwards. A higher concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not cause the Earth to be warmer. Instead, a warmer Earth causes the higher carbon dioxide levels. He said that “the sun heats up the Earth and the oceans warm up and atmospheric carbon dioxide rises.” He added that human’s contribution to global carbon dioxide levels is virtually negligible.
Two astrophysicist, Dr Sallie Baliunas and Dr Soon, argue that most global warming is actually caused by changes in the amount of energy the sun emits. When the Danish National Space Centre looked at 400 years of sun spots (a sun spot is an area of intense magnetic activity on the surface of the sun) and global temperatures, it found that when sun spot activity rose, global temperatures rose too - and vice versa - with no time lag (unlike the alleged time lags in Gore’s charts). The record even showed a dip in solar activity in the 1945-1975 period of global cooling.
Solar activity impacts cloud formation, the sun's direct rays heat up the air which then heats up the land. When cosmic ray particles penetrate the Earth's atmosphere, they meet water vapour rising from the oceans to form water droplets, which coalesce to form clouds. The more cosmic rays, the more clouds they help create, the cooler the air gets. Cosmic rays come from exploding stars called novas.
When solar activity increases, the sun's magnetic activity increases. When that occurs, cosmic ray particles tend to get blocked off, so fewer penetrate the Earth's atmosphere and thus fewer clouds form. So when solar activity increases, the sky is less cloudy. With less cloud cover, temperatures rise.
In short, global temperatures are controlled by clouds (water vapour), which are controlled by cosmic rays which, in turn, are controlled by the solar activity.
If the engine driving the Earth's climate change is the sun - not carbon - and the transmission belt is water, then the impact of human activity on global temperatures must be small.
In a previous related story in Sunday’s Straits Times which reported that hurricane researchers from Colorado State University say that ocean currents, not increased carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, cause global warming. They also said that increasing levels of carbon dioxide will not produce more or stronger hurricanes and that the Earth may begin to cool on its own in 5 to 10 years.
***The Great Global Warming Swindle is a very interesting documentary on the differing position to the Global warming movement. It suggests that the movement is not only contrary to science, but is political and have become almost akin to a religion (sounds to me like the whole Darwinian/Evolution position!). They suggests that it is a vehicle used by rich countries to stem the economic progress of developing countries. They say that countries such as Africa shouldn't use coal and oil, which they have an abundance of, for fuel for electricity. They should use wind and solar power - which is not only expensive, but extremely unreliable. Why are the Europeans and Americans not using it themselves? Because of those very reasons. Yet they are trying to impose it on the poorest and most needy countries.
If you have the opportunity, do try to catch it.
Additional reading:
http://www.postcrescent.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070412/APC06/70412050/1036
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_controversies
http://www.tennesseepolicy.org/main/article.php?article_id=367
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/11/EDGS0INK5L1.DTL
posted by Clem | 1:40 PM
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