Cold Facts on Global Warming
Although carbon dioxide is capable of raising the Earth's overall temperature, the IPCC's predictions of catastrophic temperature increases produced by carbon dioxide have been challenged by many scientists. In particular, the importance of water vapor is frequently overlooked by environmental activists and by the media. The above discussion shows that the large temperature increases predicted by many computer models are unphysical and inconsistent with results obtained by basic measurements. Skepticism is warranted when considering computer-generated projections of global warming that cannot even predict existing observations.
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4 comments:
Gee, no comments yet. Looks like I'm at the wrong place to make comments, but I can't find one any better.
Mr. Nelson, I find one bone of contention with your analysis. The issue of global warming deals with the carbon cycle. Hence, we can talk about burning hydrocarbons to make carbon dioxide, which means moving carbon around the cycle. This makes no difference at all, since all the carbon will be moving around the cycle eventually anyway, hurrying it along only makes a brief and temporary difference to the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
Or we can talk about mining hydrocarbons, which means removing carbon from where it's been sequestered for eons and injecting it back into the carbon cycle. More carbon in the cycle means more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And not just for a brief period, but for however long it takes for that carbon to get re-sequestered.
When you contend that the half-life of CO2 is 5-10 years, I suspect that number is referring to how rapidly it moves around the carbon cycle -- how long it takes for plants to take it up and convert it into sugars and other hydrocarbons. That's not important. What's important is the re-sequestration rate, which I dunno but is clearly far less than the current mining rate. The IPCC estimate of 50-200 years *might* be referring to this, I dunno. In any case, your contention that ceasing emitting carbon dioxide would immediately result in a return to preindustrial temperatures is clearly flawed. The increased levels of carbon in the cycle will remain in the cycle for a long time, eons probably, which means we won't return to pre-industrial temperatures in the foreseeable future no matter what we do.
Of course, while it's a minor glitch in your analysis, it's a complete disaster for the global warning reactionaries. Buying a Prius does absolutely nothing to stop global warming; you're just pumping the oil a little slower, if some sort of catastrophe were going to result it would still result, just a couple of years later. And the prospect of stopping all mining of hydrocarbons -- oil, natural gas, coal, all of them -- is bleak. You certainly won't convince OPEC to stop pumping and selling their oil with a treaty; it would take a war.
If one were truly worried about global warming, there are only two courses of action that would have any significant effect whatsoever: 1) A crash program of building nuclear power plants as rapidly as possible until we not only can power all our industry with nuclear power but also power all our vehicles with it via electric cars or hydrogen cars or whatever. 2) A crash program to reduce the world's population of human beings by about 90%.
I'd be in favor of both programs, but neither is gonna happen. Failing those two options, we might as well do nothing. Perhaps those who live at the beach might want to plan to move inland sometime within the next 100 years or so.
-- Kirbert
palmk@nettally.com
Sorry Kirbert, I'm not quite sure how my article got to this site--I never come here and will not see any comments. At the moment, the only way to leave a comment is through email shown in the article.
Also, the information in the profile is not correct. I am a Ph.D. biophysicist. The MSEE degree listed in my profile probably belongs to whoever created this entry.
Actually, the information in the profile IS correct.
My name is Tom Nelson, and I linked to an article by a different Tom Nelson.
Re: Your article "Cold Facts on Global Warming"
a. There are limits to anthropogenic CO2 production, being the amount of fossil fuel reserves existing. Burning them all will approx. double atmospheric CO2. (See http://bottombarrelbucks.com/doubleCO2_frames.htm)
b. Using global radiative heat balance and the computation of radiative forcing by line-by-line infrared absorption, the temperature rise due to increasing CO2 can be ESTIMATED. See the same reference. This analysis shows that doubling and quadrupling CO2 will increase mean atmospheric surface temperature by 1.6K and 2.7K, respectively. This includes feedback from oceanic warming due to rise of air temp.
c. The reference includes an analysis of increasing methane in the atmosphere.
Calvin M. Wolff
calvin@cmwolff.com
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