Forums

Posted: 24-10-2001 22:22 Post subject: The myth of Global Warming

There follows an abridged version of an article in Sept 2001 edition of the Chemical Engineer. It is written by Philip Stott, professor of biogeography in the University of London.

"I believe the Kyoto Protocol is bad for science, for economics, for politics and for society in the widest sense. The idea that we can control, in any predictable manner, climate change through the management of one tiny set of variables, namely human-induced greenhouse gas emissions, is so fundamental a lie that it beggars belief.

"Climate is the ultimate coupled non-linear chaotic system. Unsurprisingly, our general circulation models remain intrinsically simplistic, with even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admiting publicly that it knows next-to-nothing about 75% of the major proxy variables involved.

"It is deeply alarming that a whole series of recently published heavyweight scientific papers questioning both the relationship between CO2 and temperature and the data/modelling underlying the concept of global warming have been basically ignored by the UK and European media. These scientific papers are found in major journals such as Nature, Climate Research, and the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and involve institutions of the highest scientific distinction, inclusing NASA, the Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of the Ruhr/Ottawa-Carlton Geoscience Centre, Harvard University, the Smithsonian, and Stanford University. Yet, despite their undoubted scientific legitimacy, the papers have received scant public attention, above all because they do not support and legitimise the socially-constructed myth of global warming. I have tried to persuade environmental correspondents to report such work, only to be met with incredulity that such science might even exist.

"One critical focus has been on the role of that most important 'greenhouse gas' of all, water vapour (not CO2), and on the palaeo-geological relationships between water vapour, CO2 and temperature. Jan Veizer's work, for example, is widely regarded as magisterial in its decoupling of temperature from CO2, so much so that one editorial commentary written for the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change regards his work as creating a crisis in the global warming myth.

"A second focus has been on the many missing, or little-known, variables in the IPCC and other climate models, including newly discovered 'Pacific' vents...If confirmed...this effect alone, which is not recognised in current climate models, could significantly reduce estimates of future climate warming. Another neglected variable is particulates. New work on black carbon and aerosols was reported in the US, but hardly at all in Europe, yet may be responsible for 15-30% of global warming, although it is not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change.

"A third focus has been on the need to correct many temperature measurements, especially those taken over oceans...Studies have demonstrated that, when scientists take proxy sea-surface temperatures out of the global temperature record for the past 20+ years, and replace them with air temperature data gathered more accurately by ships and buoys, the global warming trend...drops markedly by about one third. Other scientists argue that land temperature measurements and records are equally flawed, reflecting primarily the process of urbanisation and the well-documented 'urban heat island' effect rather than any significant rise in global temperatures.

"Climate is governed by a billion variables and it is intrinsically chaotic. These variables range from the flip of a butterfly's wing, through the changing albeldo of the earth's surface, erupting volcanoes, shifting ocean currents, waves and salinity, the dynamic geometry and cycles of the earth and the sun, the ever-changing mix of gases 'natural' and 'man-made', to planetary dust and meteors. The grand narrative that we can ultimately affect or 'control' climate change in any meaningfully predictive way simply by playing about with one or two politically selected variables has to be challenged publicly.

"Even if all 180 countries ratfied the protocol and then actually met their targets - a highly unlikely scenario - we still might only affect temperature by between 0.07 and 0.2 degC, and even this could be thrown out by a couple of erupting volcanoes or altering landscape albedos.

"According to recent models, implementing Kyoto will cost anywhere between $100bn and $1000bn, with a mean around $350bn. Now that amount of money could pay off the debt of the 49 poorest countries of the world and provide clean drinking water for all."

In a letter in the following edition of The Chemical Engineer, a reader quoted Kirchhoff's Law:
"At a given temperature the ratio of the emissivity to the absorptivity for a given wavelength is the same for all gases and is equal to the emissivity of an ideal black body at that temperature and wavelength. Or in layman's terms, there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas."

Discuss!

Posted: 24-10-2001 23:16 Post subject:

Echoes several of the things I've thought about Kyoto.I don't think most of the signatories were ever really sincere about living up to the strictures of it anyway.They knew full well what it would mean for the modern industrial economy.It is the height of folly to believe that by a few adjustments we could alter such an infinitely complex system as the global climate.

Posted: 24-10-2001 23:16 Post subject:

There is a very worrying trend I've noticed over the years with the "Friends of the Earth", for them to come up with an ecological scare, then when that is disproved, to simply switch to another scare.

No one seems to be willing to question their past track record of failed scare campaigns. Remember the oil that was going to run out in another twenty or so years? Remember how the world would suffocate with de-forestation & the replacement of leaded petrol with unleaded, which is just as nasty if in diffrent ways?

Global warming, seems to be the one thing that the "Friends" can cling onto & even if it is taking place, are the reasons for it caused by man? There are so many climatic variables from decade to decade, let alone century to century. As an extreme example, would we want to go back to the mini Ice Ages of the 17th & 18th Centuries when the Thames froze & great frosts lasted for several months at a time?

Posted: 24-10-2001 23:26 Post subject:

When I was in high school in the early 70's,they said greenhouse gasses would cause a new Ice Age.

Posted: 25-10-2001 01:45 Post subject:

Very interesting DD, I'll be looking to see what the various periodicals have said about this.

Indeed, there is much controversy about Global Warming. This is why research must continue. And in the meantime, reduce industrial emissions. Why? becuase Global warming (or cooling, or whatver) is not their only effect. They change local air quality, release heavy metals, and generally damage the local habitat. And it may seem obvious, but all life on Earth consits of various local habitats.

Also, Philip Stott is professor of biogeography, a facinating dicipline, but not climatology (on the other hand, I am neither... yet roll eyes (sarcastic)

) Despite the chaotic nature of the atmosphere some models have been produced which although much simpler than reality, are effective to a degree. Then theres also the blindingly obvious fact that with such a chaotic system the last thing you want to do is bung in a wildcard like industrial emissions. We don't know what the results will be, but we're going to find out if we're not carefull...

Posted: 25-10-2001 16:55 Post subject:

It doesn't matter if you throw in a wildcard, if you have no idea which cards you have in the first place.

And just how effective are the climate models, when they can't even simulate past climate properly. Look at the papers that has been published on global waming through the decade. You will find that the temp we were going to have in a 100 years have kept going down. Reality simply didn't care about their models.

Posted: 25-10-2001 17:53 Post subject:

I suggested elsewhere that, perhaps, Global Warming Theory wasn't necessarily anything more than something fashionable to wear for a while, and got accused of being a 'republican' of all things...

Slightly off topic, but David brought it in. My beef about FotE

Something not widely reported is the FotE engineered eco disaster waiting to happen as they strip down that oil platform they wanted to sink in a fjord. Basically, the deep sea would have dealt with the heavy metals, and other toxic crap, since that's what it does with black smokers on the sea bed anyway. The oil platform wouldn't be as toxic as one of those things... FotE admitted they were wrong, very quietly, by which time the Oil Company was commited to strip it down at the surface, where the eco-system cannot absorb the type of contaminants that were going to be released... Basically a no win. Many more cock ups like that and the Moral High Ground is going to be pretty diffcult to hold.

Having said all of the above FotE are dedicated, motivated and above all caring people, who do a job that should be done by the mouthing Governments; that is police big business. One of the biggest jobs I was involved with was triggered by FotE showing to EU environmental control that one of the big chemical companies was pumping hot sulphuric acid into one of our river esturaries. That time they were right, and the aformentioned company was almost closed, until fitting an interesing bit of kit that converted hot H2SO4 into cool, slightly brackish tasting, water and CO2 sold for bottling.

However, they really should try and get their facts, as far as there are fact in this issue, right, especially in high profile cases.

Just my twopennoth, now i have to go burn some old tyres Devil

8¬)

Posted: 25-10-2001 17:56 Post subject:

Posted: 25-10-2001 18:32 Post subject:

Posted: 25-10-2001 20:09 Post subject:

Here's some more from the article above, which was too long type in. I concentrated the above down to the facts, but there are some more 'Fortean' thoughts in the article regarding the mythology around global warming:

"Scientists have allowed themselves to be used and manipulated by groups with strong political agendas so that science was becoming 'legitimised' by European political correctness and not by the cautious processes of science itself.

"Global warming is pure politics and myth. It is a grand narrative, invented in 1989, which carries with it both the language and the baggage of an obsessive, nearly fundamentalist, set of New Age beliefs. Global warming has become the legitimising 'science' for stemming Neo-Malthusian population expansion, limiting economic growth, controlling the car, blocking all development, attack the evil American empire, and fighting capitalism and globalisation. The recent juxtaposition of the Genoa violent anti-capitalist protests and the Bonn pro-Kyoto/anti-Bush demonstrations says it all.

"Thus when Christine Todd Whitman, Bush's newly-appointed administrator of the EPA, announced last March that the US held 'no interest in implementing that treaty', meaning the Kyoto protocol, the European 'green' movement, including European governments, went hysterical. The 'Toxic Texan' had not just rejected a treaty; he had blasphemed against the new religion so that he was instantly transmogrified into what one German newspaper, Die Woche, has called 'The Climate Killer'.

"Belief in this powerful European myth demands allegiance to a number of strict articles of faith. First, climate change over the last decade must be faster and worse than at any time during the past 1000 years or more, despite the fact that we are rising out of a 'Little Ice Age' that ended around 1880. Secondly, the cause of this dramatic change has to be human greed and growth, not 'natural' climate drivers or forcings, so that, only by sacrificing ourselves to the earth , can we atone for our sins and save the planet.

"In this sense, the religion is hardly new, because it emulates so closely the sacrificial demands of many ancient religions. Moreover, the Kyoto target for controlling the emissions of greenhouse gases must hurt economically and politically, especially the Americans; this is part of our self-flagellation...Finally, the prime sinner must be America, with its gas-guzzling, growth-orientated, polluted, Erin Brokovich world.

"Kyoto is fundamentally about a religious belief in global warming and about authoritarian 'command and control' target economics that simply will not work."

Posted: 25-10-2001 20:28 Post subject:

Posted: 25-10-2001 20:28 Post subject:

Thanks harlequin for your reference to deep sea dumping!!!

Something that really puzzles me & for which I don't have an answer, is that during the Battle of the Atlantic, during WW2, several million tons of shipping went down in the Atlantic.

These days, whenever we have an oil spill that reach the beaches, it's analysed and it's origins identified, none seemingly, is ever identified with a WW2 wreck.

It therefore seems to follow, that the products of deep sea dumping, do not fetch up on the continental shelves, BUT, it is still condemed by the Friends of the Earth.

It seems to be a case of ideology over sense!!!!!!

Posted: 25-10-2001 22:37 Post subject:

Out in the deep trenches there are some pretty weird things... and some of those eat petro-chem. Very little deep oil gets to the surface either because its waxed due to the temperature,or is digested by the single celled horrors that live down there. The ocean floor has a biosphere used both to heavy metals and organic seepage from oil deposits. Thats why we dont get much of that sort of thing

8¬)

Posted: 26-10-2001 01:49 Post subject:

Philips Stotts article is most certainly an actual opinion.

I have more say but am tired. Proper response requires some research, so more soon.

Posted: 26-10-2001 10:18 Post subject: News From Annanova

Thought this might be interesting as a possible psychological threat caused by climate change roll eyes (sarcastic)

Researchers are claiming global warming could threaten British traditions like the Sunday roast.

Analysts say the Britain's psyche is so intrinsically linked to the weather that many uniquely British traits will be threatened.

Sponsor of weather forecasts Powergen, questioned 1,000 British men and women on what they feel are the top five British cultural traits.

The findings show that the British feel that each of the top five "typically British" cultural behavioural patterns, could indeed become lost to long hot summers.

Sunday roasts could become a thing of the past, with 50% saying they shun Sunday dinners in the heat and opt for barbecue type food.

Talking about the weather could cease to be the nation's favourite pastime with 61% of people admitting that guaranteed heat will make the subject boring.

Visiting the pub for a pint, could become a rarity as 54% admitted that when the weather heats up they choose a ice cold lager from the fridge, instead of a long hot walk to the pub for a pint of warm beer.

*Climate change story sent by Ananova

See this story on the web at http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_433008.html