Global Warming Politics 
Professor Takeda then goes on to compare the present use of ‘global warming’ with previous control paradigms:
“In the 1930s, militarism was considered best; in the 1960s, mass production and mass consumerism. Then in the 1990s the main topic was the environment. Every 30 years we switch what we believe in. This paradigm will pass, too.”
These are my sentiments precisely, but it is especially interesting to hear such a trenchant analysis from so distinguished a scholar, a man who is a member of nearly every prestigious academic and government entity in Japan, and who has been Vice Deputy President at the Shibaura Institute of Technology (1993-2001), Professor at the famous Nagoya University (2002-2007), and Professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Research, Chubu University (2007 onwards).
No wonder Professor Takeda’a most recent book, Hypocritical Ecology, has been flying off the bookshop shelves at the rate of 100,000 a month since being published in June [Hypocritical Ecology, 偽善エコロジー (I trust I have got the correct page), is available here from Amazon.co.jp for Japanese readers]. I very much hope that it will be translated into English soon.
And, how very refreshing it is to find a scholar who is unashamedly willing to take on the latest version of ‘the establishment’ in so vigorous a manner.
Bravo Professor!
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2 comments:
Professor Kunihiko Takeda has no qualifications in climatology and is talking nonsense. Like so many others he has not examined the evidence, but is just saying what he wants to be true. It isn't.
Changes in the sun cannot account for the increase in average global temperatures since 1975 and no amount of burying his head in the sand over this matter will make it otherwise. He even goes so far as to deny, by implication, the natural greenhouse effect, since if "emissions make absolutely no difference" then neither would the naturally occurring amount of greenhouse gases either. That is a profoundly ignorant position.
The graph of average global temperature and total solar irradiance since 1885 is linked to below. From it it is evident that there was a reasonably close correlation between the two UNTIL the current warming phase, caused by anthropogenic emissions, became significant in the 1970s. Without those emissions we would have had a slight cooling during that time. The warming of the last three decades was not caused by the sun. See:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/tsi_vs_temp.gif
Similarly, Takeda's claim that "Every scientist knows" that "Soon it will cool down" is frankly idiotic.
These comments were taken from an interview with a journalist. Perhaps they had previously had a substantial and well lubricated lunch.zkdvrb
Solar activity is indeed, as the good professor claims, controlling the temperature on Earth. It currently heats it to what would be an average ambient surface temperature of -15C. The temperature above that is largely due to the small amount of some gases, primarily CO2 and methane which raise atmospheric surface temperature sufficiently for air to then hold water moisture which raises the temperature further.
The levels of these gases are critical in establishing the actual current temperature which averages +15C, and is still within the very narrow range of temperature which supports the biosphere and the agricultural systems at the levels on which 6.5+ billion of us precariously depend. And that is where the hazard lies - the critical further changes in temperature which can be caused by small changes in minor gas components of the atmosphere, and can cause disproportionate temperature and climate effects resulting in flooding, desertification, and crop failure.
Should we be lucky enough that changes in solar activity balance out the effects of our input of greenhouse gases, then we can continue on our present course until, in a few years, the factors of population and exhaustion of energy and other natural resources force us to take many of the same types of measures as those being proposed to offset climate change. The questions then are whether we should rely on luck, and why we should delay action which is urgently necessary anyway.
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