Global Warming, is it real?
First of all, using climate and change in the same sentence is like saying "wet water". The climate has always been changing since the planet began. Until "scientists" allow discussion of this, there will not be discussion. The planet has not been warming for at least 18 years. There is over a million square kilometers larger than the long term average that we think we should have. That is a lot more ice than average, so we are NOT losing ice.
Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday (from September 23, 2013)Here is a UK Daily Mail article to read.
The fact is, there has been global warming, but the contribution of human-generated carbon dioxide is necessarily so minuscule as to be nearly undetectable. Here's why:
Carbon dioxide, considered the main vector for human-caused global warming, is some 0.038% of the atmosphere[1]- a trace gas. Water vapor varies from 0% to 4%[2], and should easily average 1% or more[3] near the Earth’s surface, where the greenhouse effect would be most important, and is about three times more effective[4] a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So water vapor is at least 25 times more prevalent and three times more effective; that makes it at least 75 times more important to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide[5]. The TOTAL contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is therefore 0.013 or less. The total human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution has been estimated at about 25%[6]. So humans’ carbon dioxide greenhouse effect is a quarter of 0.013, works out to about 0.00325. Total warming of the Earth by the greenhouse effect is widely accepted as about 33 degrees Centigrade, raising average temperature to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or under 0.1 degree Centigrade. Global warming over the last century is thought by many to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade.
But that's only the beginning. We've had global warming for more than 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age[7]. Whatever caused that, it was not human activity. It was not all those power plants and factories and SUVs being operated by Stone Age cavemen while chipping arrowheads out of bits of flint. Whatever the cause was, it melted the glaciers that in North America once extended south to Long Island and parts of New York City[8] into virtually complete disappearance (except for a few mountain remnants). That's one big greenhouse effect! If we are still having global warming - and I suppose we should presume we are, given a 10,000 year trend - it seems highly likely that it is still the overwhelmingly primary cause of continued warming, rather than our piddling 0.00325 contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Yet even that trend-continuation needs to be proved. Evidence is that the Medieval Warm Period centered on the 1200s was somewhat warmer than we are now[9], and the climate was clearly colder in the Little Ice Age in the 1600s than it is now[10]. So we are within the range of normal up-and-down fluctuations without human greenhouse contributions that could be significant, or even measurable.
The principal scientists arguing for human-caused global warming have been demonstrably disingenuous[11], and now you can see why. They have proved they should not be trusted.
The idea that we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars and hamstringing the economy of the entire world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is beyond ludicrous in light of the facts above; it is insane. Furthermore, it sucks attention and resources from seeking the other sources of warming and from coping with climate change and its effects in realistic ways. The true motivation underlying the global warming movement is almost certainly ideological and political in nature, and I predict that Anthropomorphic Global Warming, as currently presented, will go down as the greatest fraud of all time. It makes Ponzi and Madoff look like pikers by comparison.
[1] Fundamentals of Physical Geography, 2nd Edition by Michael Pidwirny Concentration varies slightly with the growing season in the northern hemisphere. Links "http://www.physicalgeography.n...http://www.physicalgeography.n...
[2] ibid.
[3] HALOE v2.0 Upper Tropospheric Water Vapor Climatology Claudette Ojo, Hampton University; et al..http://vsgc.odu.edu/src/Conf09.... See p. 4.The 0 - 4% range is widely accepted among most sources. This source is listed for its good discussion of the phenomena determining that range. An examination of a globe will show that tropical oceans (near high end of range) are far more extensive than the sum of the earth’s arctic and antarctic regions and tropical-zone deserts (all near the low end). Temperate zone oceans are far more extensive than temperate-zone desert. This author’s guess of an average of 2% or more seems plausible. I have used “1% or more” in an effort to err on the side of understatement.
[4] NIST Chemistry Webbook, Please compare the IR absorption spectra of water and carbon dioxide. http://webbook.nist.gov/
[5] Three quarters of the atmosphere and virtually all water vapor are in the troposphere. Including all the atmosphere would change the ratios to about 20 times more prevalent and 60 times more effective. However, the greenhouse effect of high-altitude carbon dioxide on lower-altitude weather and the earth’s surface seems likely to be small if not nil.
[6] National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/cl.... The estimated 90ppm increase in carbon dioxide, 30% above the base of 280 ppm, to a recent reading of 370 ppm, equates to just under 25% of present concentration, the relevant factor in estimating present contribution to the greenhouse effect.
[7] Oak Ridge National Laboratory http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projec...
[8] New York Nature - The nature and natural history of the New York City region. Betsy McCully http://www.newyorknature.net/I...
[9] Global Warming: A Geological Perspective John P. Bluemle https://www.dmr.nd.gov/ndgs/Ne... This article, published by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency, is drawn from a paper by the author in Environmental Geosciences, 1999, Volume 6, Number 2, pp. 63-75. Note particularly the chart on p.4.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Wikileaks: Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009 http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Clim....
See also http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... and
http://online.wsj.com/article/... and, more diplomatically: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12.... Et al.