TEMPERATURE AVERAGES INADEQUATE

An email from F.James Cripwell [jim_jill@ncf.ca] noting that the basic physics of global warming are being ignored

I suffer from the fact that I can find no-one with whom to discuss the fundamental physics of climate change and global warming; despite my best efforts. It seems to me that there are two separate, but interconnected problems, being discussed at the present time. The first is whether the world is warming up due to all causes; such as changes in volcanic activity, earth's albido, solar radiation, and greenhouse gas concentrations. The second is whether increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing the earth to warm up. I am concerned only with the latter.

It seems to me that for the first problem I mentioned, the average global temperature is a good measure of what is happening. But for the question about carbon dioxide, what is required is what might be called an average radiation temperature. Thinking reductio ad absurdum, if the temperature of an area of the desert were to increase from plus 40 degrees Celsius to 41 degrees, while at the same time an equal area of the Antarctic decreased from minus 40 to minus 41, the average temperature of the earth would stay constant. However, under Stephan-Boltzman, more radiation would be emitted by increasing the temperature of the desert, than the radiation loss from Antarctica.

So what is required is not so much an average global temperature, as an average radiation temperature; world global temperatures weighted by Stephan-Boltzman. This could be expressed either as a temperature, or as an emission spectrum showing the average amount of radiation emitted by the earth as a function of wavelength. What is then required is the percentage of this radiation which is absorbed by all the greenhouse gases, before it escapes from the earth.

I am imagining what an infra-red spectrometer, somewhere in space, might observe of the earth's radiation, if the sun were turned off; e.g. sort of like during a total eclipse of the sun. What one would see is the earth's radiation reduced by earthly Fraunhoffer lines. If we had this sort of fundamental data, it would be comparatively easy to assess what the effect of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide actually is, while assessing the effect of water, the dominant greenhouse gas, at the same time, with the same methodology.





Greenpeace goofs over SUVs

You would expect subscribers to a website called TreeHugger.com to be sympathetic to, even fully supportive of, Greenpeace, wouldn't you? Yet recently some of the site's contributors have expressed anger with Greenpeace over its new anti-4x4 advert. `What a terrible ad. Cruelty gets you nowhere', said Nathan. Someone called Dug added: `That childish ad made me regret donating money to Greenpeace.' What so upset Nathan, Dug and others about Greenpeace's latest media intervention?

The `gas guzzler' ad was launched to coincide with last month's International Motor Show in London. It is set in an office in London's city centre. A seemingly affable bloke enters the office building, but straight away we know that something is amiss. The receptionists sneer at him. His workmates seem reluctant to enter into friendly banter. Most strikingly, a colleague spits into his coffee (seriously - a long horrible spit, at that) and then slams the mug on his table. He sits alone at lunch, shunned by those around him, who prefer to squeeze on to already overcrowded tables rather than sit with this guy. And as he walks into the lift to leave work, we see that someone has stuck a note on his back saying `PRICK'.

What could he have done to deserve such treatment? As he enters the bowels of the car park, you expect some terrible horror to be revealed: perhaps he operates a secret sweatshop of children in the basement of the building, or underground meetings of the BNP. In fact, his only sin - and the reason he is treated as a pariah by his workmates - is that he drives a 4x4.

See the ad for yourself here. Have you ever seen such a petty-minded, dimwitted, teenage-angsty little film? This is bitching dressed up as a serious debate. It is also dripping, you will note, with a kind of loathing for the `wrong' sort of aspirational lifestyle. A Greenpeace press release to accompany the ad says: `The advert satirises the aspirational images and glossy marketing used by motor manufacturers to encourage car drivers to purchase an urban 4x4. In the film, a city employee encounters disdain from his fellow employees, but only at the end of the film does the viewer learn why - he owns a city gas guzzler. The ad ends with the line "What does your car say about you.?"' (Yet for all its anti-big-advertising prejudices, Greenpeace is not above learning a few tricks from aspirational lifestyle marketing. As the press release says: `Greenpeace took advice from advertising industry insiders before producing the film.' So the ad is somewhat hypocritical, as well as childish.)

Greenpeace has been campaigning against 4x4s for years, using a combination of tacky media stunts and `direct action' to demonise people who dare to drive such vehicles. Last year Greenpeace activists stormed the Range Rover assembly line in Solihull, forcing it to shut down for a day. Its volunteers also put cardboard clamps on the wheels of parked 4x4s, and stick fake tax discs on their windscreens calling for extra road tax for `gas-guzzling vehicles'. One car targeted by Greenpeace belonged to British actress Thandie Newton, star, ironically, of the Hollywood blockbuster film Crash. Now Newton has reportedly seen the error of her ways: she sold her BMW 4x4 and has replaced it with a hybrid car.

The `spit on the city boy' ad is the latest stage in Greenpeace's anti-4x4 campaigning. This can be seen as a new kind of `moralvert': adverts that communicate a deeply moralistic message but which don't even have the decency to label themselves `public information broadcasts' or `party political messages'. So there are more and more adverts in public loos telling us we're probably suffering from some STD, ads on TV warning women not to get unlicensed cabs in case they get raped, adverts about how much fruit and salt we should eat (a lot of fruit, not very much salt).

Greenpeace and others slate big advertisers for trying to manipulate consumers. Yet its and others' moralverts are even worse. They don't want to seduce us or make us laugh or have some fun with us; they just want to wag their fingers at our bad behaviour and our poor misguided vulnerability. They are far more morally manipulative than anything BMW or Rover could come up with.

It seems that Greenpeace is somewhat red-faced about the bad reaction to its ad - which might explain why you probably haven't yet seen it on TV or in a cinema. For all the money spent on making the ad, there is now little mention of it on the main Greenpeace website, and on other green-leaning websites, and the video-sharing site YouTube.com, there is much vocal criticism of Greenpeace. On YouTube, one user says: `They hate a man for the car he drives? That shows how loving they are as fellow humans.' Greenpeace, it seems, has been hoist with its own green petard. I should think so, too.

Source




OIL COMPANY SAYS THERE IS PLENTY OF OIL IN RESERVE

The world's biggest oil company has rubbished claims the planet is running out of oil, saying barely one-quarter of reserves have been used up in the past century. ExxonMobil Australia chief executive Mark Nolan said the theory that oil supplies had peaked and would dwindle over the next 20 years was of "no value", having surfaced regularly since the 1920s during times of high oil prices. "The fact is that the world has an abundance of oil and there is little question scientifically that abundant energy resources exist," Mr Nolan said yesterday. "According to the US Geological Survey, the earth currently has more than three trillion barrels of conventional recoverable oil resources. So far, we have produced one trillion of that."

Mr Nolan said conservative estimates of alternative oil sources, such as so-called heavy oil and shale oil, would probably push the total recoverable resource to more than four trillion barrels. The oil industry and society had "underestimated" the global resource base and the ability of technology to extend the life of oil and gas fields. "We should not forget that we can recover almost twice as much oil today as when we first discovered it over 100 years ago," he said. "And when you consider that a further 10 per cent increase in recoverability will deliver an extra 800 billion barrels of oil to our recoverable total, we have reason to be sure that the end of oil is nowhere in sight."

In Australia, petrol prices are tipped to fall below $1.20 in most capital cities in coming weeks, and as low as $1 early next year, as crude oil prices slide to a five-month low of less than $US66 a barrel. Analysts believe the commodities boom is beginning to lose momentum. They cite easing political tensions in the Middle East, concerns about the health of the US economy and strong supplies as reasons for the fall in key commodity prices. "The mega-run for commodities has run its course," said Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach. However, there were signs yesterday that some service stations might defy falling wholesale prices, with Coles hiking petrol prices by 11.4c a litre to 129.9c at its Coles Express outlets in Western Australia. Coles and Woolworths control 60-65 per cent of petrol sales in most states.

West Australian Motor Traders Association executive director Peter Fitzpatrick said the Coles Express move was an example of the increasing power of the supermarket chains. "With the supermarket chains having such a big proportion of the petrol market, there's no doubt they are using this to maintain profit levels," he said.

Mr Nolan said despite an increase in emerging and alternative energies, the world would continue to rely on fossil fuels. "In our estimation, if you go out to 2030, fossil fuels - that is, coal, oil and gas - will be supplying about 80 per cent of the world's energy," he said. "Even though those smaller providers of energy, such as solar and wind, will have rapid increases, our view is that they'll be less than 1 per cent of the mix out in 2030." Mr Nolan also questioned the benefits of using ethanol in fuel, given the energy needed to "plough the field, sow the sugar cane, wheat or corn crop, harvest the produce, transport it to the ethanol plant and run the ethanol plant". "ExxonMobil is not opposed to the use of ethanol in petrol where this is commercially viable and is acceptable to consumers. "However, we are strongly of the view that, with the assistance that it has already been given, the ethanol industry should now be prepared to compete with other fuels on a level playing field."

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William Kininmonth says: Don't be Gored into going along

Global warming militants don't know what they're talking about, says William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, is author of "Climate Change: A Natural Hazard" (Multi-Science Publishing Co, 2004)



Climate change is again making headlines as the world becomes mesmerised in the public relations glare of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth. For critics and reviewers alike, the movie is further proof in their minds that we are heading for a climate catastrophe. But what's missing from the debate is sober, rational analysis of some scientific facts. Climate change attracts attention because weather and climate extremes account for 70 per cent of natural disasters. Also, the historical evidence is that climate goes through gyrations that are beneficial or destructive for civilisations.

The periods of the Roman Empire, medieval Europe and the past 200 years were all of remarkable warmth. The Dark Ages of the first millennium and the Little Ice Age of the second were characterised by cold, by advanced mountain glaciers and by social turmoil.

For the past 10,000 years, the Earth has been near peak warmth in the climatic roller-coaster that has characterised the past million years. Yet only 20,000 years ago, great ice sheets covered much of North America and Europe; permanent glaciers were also present over southeastern Australia and Tasmania. The sea level was 130m lower than today and land bridges connected New Guinea and Tasmania with the Australian mainland. The Great Barrier Reef was but limestone cliffs bordering the Coral Sea.

The former US vice-president and his fellow travellers would have us believe that the actions of our civilisation are leading to dangerous climate change, as if climate is not inherently dangerous. There are many inconvenient truths about climate that are being ignored in the scare campaign that is being waged with relentless determination by sections of the community.

Start with carbon dioxide. As a greenhouse gas, it is a spent force for climate change; its present concentration is slightly less than 400 parts per million. Calculations show that 66 per cent of the greenhouse effect of CO2 is caused by the first 50ppm. With each doubling of concentration, (from 50 to 100, then to 200 and 400ppm), the incremental advance of the greenhouse effect is reduced.

Even for a further doubling to 800ppm, as projected by 2100 in the case of unabated fossil fuel usage, the increase in the greenhouse effect will only be 10 per cent of the present component attributable to CO2. Overall, CO2 is a relatively minor contributor to the greenhouse effect, which is dominated by the varying water vapour and clouds of the atmosphere. Increasing the CO2 concentration will have little additional effect.

Evaporation of water vapour will constrain the Earth's temperature and prevent a runaway greenhouse effect. Back radiation from the atmosphere because of greenhouse gases (water vapour, CO2 and so on), clouds and aerosols raises surface temperatures. But surface temperatures are also constrained by evaporation of water from plants, moist soil and the oceans. The tropical oceans generally do not exceed 30C and it is only over the arid inland that daytime temperatures exceed 40C. Any increase in back radiation because of increased CO2 will largely be offset by additional evaporation that will constrain the rise of surface temperature.

The oceans are the flywheels of the climate system. The warm tropical oceans are but a thin lens about 100m in thickness that overlay the cold abyss, extending to depths averaging about 5km. We are familiar with El Nino events, when changed upwelling modifies the entrainment of cold sub-surface water into the warm surface layer of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. As US climatologist Michael Glantz has noted, the changed surface temperature patterns modify the atmospheric circulation and spawn natural disasters such as floods, droughts and storms across the globe.

Global warming is constrained by the need to warm the ocean in advance. The polar ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are fundamentally stable. Ice cores recovered from there confirm that the ice sheets have survived previous interglacials and have likely existed for more than one million years. The surface elevation of the ice sheets is more than 3km above sea level across much of their extensive plateaus and temperatures remain below minus 10C during the brief summer. It is only at the lower elevations of the coastal margins that temperatures rise above freezing for a few months and the strong solar radiation causes ice-melt. Collapse of the polar ice sheets and a sea level rise of several metres is an unlikely scenario.

There are predictions, based on computer models, that Australia's rainfall will decrease as CO2 concentrations rise. According to published Bureau of Meteorology data, Australia (except for the southwest corner) was wetter during the second half of the 20th century than during the first. Against the prediction, as CO2 concentrations increased, there was an increase in continent-wide rainfall. These trends are likely to be no more than coincidence in the cycles of climate variability.

The Earth's climate system is extremely complex and we have only limited knowledge of many of its aspects. International collaboration is slowly unravelling some of the secrets and providing the basis for preparation and adaptation to change. Scientists' continuing inability to predict with confidence a season in advance should be cause for hesitation when projections of decades to centuries are made. Computer models are not reality and alarmist predictions have no sound basis.

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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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