ANOTHER SCIENTIST SHOOTS HOLES IN THE PHONY "CONSENSUS" ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

By the distinguished ROBERT H. ESSENHIGH (E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ohio State University, Columbus)

"Last Saturday's "Heating up" editorial on global warming covers quite a lot of territory but still misses the principal point: that man's addition to the carbon-dioxide flux in the atmosphere, by fossil-fuel combustion, is essentially irrelevant.

Of the two main reasons, the first is that nature does a far bigger job in the carbon-dioxide supply rate, and the second is that carbon dioxide is secondary to water as a so-called greenhouse gas. So shouldn't we first try to control water? And behind that again is the alternative warming concept, most generally known as the Arctic Ocean Model, which is considered by many to be the real driver for the temperature oscillations and has been for the last million years or so.

So, is the carbon dioxide driving the temperature, as so many people seem to believe? Or, is the temperature driving the carbon dioxide? If it's the latter, then what's the problem with carbondioxide emissions?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - and can the it be wrong? - nature's rate of carbon supply to the atmosphere (carried as carbon dioxide) and back out again is about 150 gigatons per year. About 60 gigatons per year come from and go back to vegetation, and 90 gigatons per year are from and to the sea.

And from man? That's about 5 or 6 or possibly 7 gigatons per year, which is about the size of the noise in the nature data and is essentially trivial by comparison. And, of the two gases in the atmosphere that do most of the warming, carbon dioxide, as noted, is secondary. Water is responsible for roughly 80 percent to 85 percent of the absorption and re-radiation, and carbon dioxide is responsible for (most of) the balance of 15 percent to 20 percent. The radiation, by the way, isn't "trapped." It is coming and going: It's known as Radiative Exchange (governed by what is known as the Schuster-Schwartzchild or S-S Integral Equation of Radiative Transfer). But, next, when it comes to atmospheric heating, we need the heat anyway. If the atmosphere wasn't warmed, the Earth would be too cold to live on, and we wouldn't be here. So what's the big problem?

What has the correlation between rising temperature and rising carbon dioxide got to do with anything? In fact, quite a lot. First, it is real. Second, if we reverse the drivers as suggested, we then see that it is most probably the rising temperature that is driving up the carbon dioxide, not the other way around. The quantity of carbon dioxide that water - in the sea or lakes or rivers and so on - can absorb will drop as the temperature rises.

You can run the numbers using the Absorption Equilibrium Constant for carbon dioxide in water (this is standard physical chemistry). And if the water can't hold it, it goes into the atmosphere, and there you have a possible, or most probable, answer to most, or all, that is going on with the current rise in carbon dioxide.

These numbers have been around for decades. In the last million years, the world has been subject to a temperature cycle with a 100,000-year period (the Arctic Ocean Model again), and we are currently in the final rise of the latest interglacial period.

We can certainly go for carbon dioxide control and sequestration, but this is likely to be somewhere between highly and catastrophically expensive. And to what end, if that isn't the problem? I'm not alone in this position. Merely one of a large minority. But those with the power evidently don't want to listen. So is this science or just politics?"

Source (A letter to the editor. May not stay online for long. Also online here)




HERE'S ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE "DISSIDENT" SCIENTISTS WHO DON'T EXIST

Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas and has helped produce the "green" world agricultural revolution, according to an Australian climate expert. Rob Carter, from James Cook University in Townsville, said the rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in recent decades had boosted agricultural crop yields. "Carbon dioxide is the best aerial fertiliser we know about," he told the Victorian Farmers Federation in Morwell late last week. Professor Carter, a marine geologist, is research professor in the university's Marine Geophysical Laboratory. He said the Kyoto Protocol would cost billions, even trillions, of dollars and would have a devastating effect on the economies of countries that signed it. "It will deliver no significant cooling - less than 0.02 degrees Celsius by 2050," he said. "The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been the main scaremonger for the global warming lobby . . . Fatally, the IPCC is a political, not a scientific body."

To understand climate change, it was necessary to look at the longer record, he said. Through an examination of material taken from deep below the ocean floor, marine geologists could study layers of earth's history similar to the way a tree's age could be determined by tree rings. "We are in a relatively warm period today," he said. "But 20,000 years ago, it was as cold as it has ever been - that was the peak of the last glaciation." Professor Carter said that over 2.5 million years there had been 50 glacial and interglacial periods. Of the past 400,000 years, the earth had been colder for 90 per cent of the time, with briefer warmer periods of about 10,000 years. He said the earth was now at the end of a warmer period, and reputable climate-change scientists agreed that the climate was going to get colder. The debate was whether it would take tens, hundreds or even thousands of years to occur. On a shorter time scale, Professor Carter said the earth had broadly got warmer in the modern period, from 1860 to 2000, although it had also been warmer in Roman and medieval times. There had also been a Little Ice Age between 1550 and the 19th century, when the Thames used to freeze over. A cooling trend took place between 1940 and 1970, when temperatures began to rise again, reaching a peak in 1998. "This coincided with the biggest El Nino in the 20th century," he said. However, research by the climate research unit at East Anglia University in Britain had shown that the average global temperature had declined since 1998.

Professor Carter said greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide were not causing the earth to warm up. On both annual and geological (up to 100,000-year) time scales, changes in temperature preceded changes in carbon dioxide, he said. This was true even in the famous 1960-1991 graph showing rising amounts of carbon dioxide. Professor Carter said that without the natural greenhouse effect, the average earth temperature would be minus 18 degrees Celsius, compared with the average of plus 15 Celsius that had nurtured the development of life and civilisation. Water vapour made up about 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide was a minor greenhouse gas, responsible for 3.6 per cent of the total greenhouse effect, he said. Of this, only 0.12 per cent, or 0.036 degrees Celsius, could be attributed to human activity. Climate had always changed and "always will", he said. "The only sensible thing to do about climate change is to prepare for it."

Source






LOMBORG TRIES REASON YET AGAIN

Last Tuesday, 11 of the world's leading academies of science, including the Royal Society, told us that we must take global warming seriously. Their argument is that global warming is due to mankind's use of fossil fuels, that the consequences 100 years from now will be serious, and that we therefore should do something dramatic. We should make substantial and long-term reductions of greenhouse gases along the lines of the Kyoto Protocol. This is perhaps the strongest indication that well-meaning scientists have gone beyond their area of expertise and are conducting unsubstantiated politicking ahead of next month's meeting of the G8.

Of course, as scientists, they should point out that fossil fuels will warm the world. This is indeed the majority opinion and likely to be true. Moreover, they should also tell us the likely impact of global warming over the coming century, which is likely to have fairly serious consequences, mainly for developing nations. But to inform us accurately they have to go further than that. They should tell us what will happen even if we implement the fairly draconian measures of Kyoto - which they curiously do not. They do not tell us that even if all the industrial nations agreed to the cuts (about 30pc from what would otherwise have been by 2010), and stuck to them all through the century, the impact would simply be to postpone warming by about six years beyond 2100. The unfortunate peasant in Bangladesh will find that his house floods in 2106 instead.

Moreover, they should also tell what they expect the cost of the Kyoto Protocol to be. That may not come easy to natural scientists, but there is plenty of literature on the subject, and the best guess is that the cost of doing a very little good for the third world 100 years from now would be $150billion per year for the rest of this century. Even after the Brown/Blair exertions to extract more aid for Africa, the West spends about $60billion helping the third world. One has to consider whether the proportions are right here.

This brings us to the strongest evidence that the national academies are acting in a political rather than scientific and informational manner. Why do they only talk about climate politics? Surely this is not the only important issue with a considerable science component? What about the challenge of HIV/Aids? What about malaria, malnutrition, agricultural research, water, sanitation, education, civil conflicts, financial instability, trade and subsidies? The list goes on.

What is more than curious is that the national academies have not found it necessary to tell the politicians that solutions to these many problems should be top priorities too. Even the host of the G8, Tony Blair, has recognised that the problems of Africa should also be a top priority.

Of course, this is because one cannot talk about top priorities from a natural science perspective. What we should do first depends on the economics of where we can do the most good for the resources we spend. Some of the world's most distinguished economists - including three Nobel laureates - answered this question at the Copenhagen Consensus last year, prioritising all major policies for improving the world. They found dealing with communicable diseases like Aids and malaria, malnutrition, free trade and clean drinking water were the world's top priorities. The experts rated urgent responses to climate change at the bottom. In fact, the panel called these ventures, including Kyoto, "bad projects", because they actually cost more than the good they do.

Surely we can all agree that the G8 meeting should do the most good possible, but we already know that this does not mean dealing with just climate change. The national academies must stop playing politics and start providing their part of the necessary input to tackle the most urgent issues first. The urgent problem of the poor majority of this world is not climate change. Their problems are truly very basic: not dying from easily preventable diseases; not being malnourished from lack of simple nutrients; not being prevented from exploiting opportunities in the global economy by lack of free trade. So please, let us do the right things first.

Source






SMELLY WIND-FARMING

As the Government prepares to renew backing for a huge expansion of wind farms, the owner of the world's biggest manufacturer of wind-turbine blades was shown yesterday to be a major donor to the Labour Party. Nigel Doughty gave 250,000 pounds shortly before the election was called. Mr Doughty runs Doughty Hanson, a venture capital company that owns 95 per cent of LM Glasfiber, a Danish turbine blade manufacturer. Details of the contribution will be published tomorrow with the rest of the Electoral Commission's list of donors to political parties. Mr Doughty, 47, is reported to have had dinner with Tony Blair this year, but it is not known whether wind farms were discussed at the meeting, where other potential donors were guests.

Malcolm Wicks, the minister responsible for power generation, will tell a conference on renewable energy tomorrow that the Government is fully committed to an expansion of the technology. Industry figures suggest this may mean 3,500 wind turbines as the Government seeks to reduce greenhouse gases.

LM Glasfiber said recently that its growth would suffer in many areas but potential investors were promised increased returns in Britain and "parts of Scandinavia" in 2005, "based on known on-shore and off-shore projects". Labour said all donations were accurately recorded in the proper way but gave no details of individual gifts. Mr Doughty did not comment.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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