From: Entropyfoe (Entropyfoe@aol.com)
Date: Tue Dec 09 1997 - 21:21:39 MST
Is global warming trendy pseudo science with a statist control eco- agenda?
Or is it a merely climatological fluctuation delaying the next ice age? The
basic physics, of increased carbon dioxide (CO2) and increased temperature is
well known. The historical data for the last few hundred thousand years seems
to show a correlation between CO2 and temperature. But it is not clear, does
warming cause increased CO2, or does increased CO2 cause warming? In either
case, the CO2 levels go up and down naturally, thousands of years before
humans burned hydrocarbon fuel. Even more interesting are the cyclical
patterns of cooling and warming every few 10,000 years or so. There are
several frequencies of cycles in both the CO2 and temperature data. The cause
of these big cycles and little cycles is still unknown. Numerous theories
have linked some fluctuations to earth's orbit, or continental drift, but
subtle links to solar activity cycles has recently come forward. I am
currently placing my bets on a slightly brighter sun, as a major factor in the
current warming. There are tiny climate fluctuations and patterns perhaps
best explained with fractal mathematics or chaos theory as applied to
dynamical systems. Rather than get whipped up into climatic speculation, let
us look at the data. Lots of hard work has been done figuring out the
temperature history of the earth. Numerous ice cores, ocean sediment cores,
chemical analyses later, scientists have charted the temperature over the past
thousands even million years. Dates and temperatures are correlated through
historical records, tree rings, pollen counts, and isotope ratios of oxygen
in ice. The real data are usually not shown in the newspapers, so the average
citizen has no context to decide if a 2 degree warming in the next 100 years
is significant. The media at the behest of government environmental scare
mongers has no interest in displaying the facts. The facts are that the
global climate fluctuates all of the time. You can check the data fo
The Vostok ice core data ia available on the web. Point your browser
to http://ingrid.ldgo.columbia.edu. Go to their search engin, type Vostok,
and follow the links. Who is to say that the current climate is optimum?
Examination of the data indicates temperature and CO2 are certainly not
stable. A “global warming investigator” 130,000 years ago, looking at the
data, would come to the conclusion that the CO2 is increasing, and the climate
is warming. “ Oh NO” Grok, “we had better stop burning those camp fires !”
Why do we assume stability, when the data do not support our fond hopes.
Global warming proponents claim the earth will be warmer in the next century
than ever before. Wrong, 130,000 years ago, the earth was much warmer than
today. Carbon dioxide was also higher. More recently, there was a warmer
period called the medieval optimum. In the history this coincided with the
age of the Vikings. From the year 900 to 1200 the climate in the northern
hemisphere was warmer than today.. Oats and barley were regularly grown in
Iceland. There were wine vineyards in England. Canadian forests were tens of
kilometers north of present lines and the Vikings inhabited Greenland. All
totalled, climate estimates are 1.8 to 3.6F warmer than today. This warm
spell did not last, by the 14th century, the Vikings abandoned their northern
settlements, and the English vineyards declined. There was a mini-ice age
after 1450AD to about 1650, where glaciers in Europe advanced, springs were
delayed sufficiently to cause crop failures. Canals in Holland, normally ice
free, were frozen over along with the Thames. This is associated with a
sunspot minimum, known as the Maunder minimum, where solar activity was quite
low. The current “inter-glacial period” is quite warm. This is good. If we
slide back into an ice age (as scientists were predicting in the 1950 and
1960s), a 200 foot thick sheet of ice grinding over our houses and farms would
be really a drag. I have also hear the argument that the , “
gs faster than previous
cycles. Wrong, the warming after the “Younger Dryas cooling” 11,500 years
ago was rapid. An estimated 7C rise in nearly 50 years. No man-made CO2
emissions to blame there.
Current international pressure, UN stuff, with Al Gore cheerfully making
impassioned pleas for governmental controls on green house emissions. Gore is
quoted as saying that the threat of global warming is the greatest threat the
country faces. Really, more than poverty, more than declining wages for the
workers, more than an uneducated population? But all this is policy
based upon software models, complex computer simulations, where the outcomes
involve major economic impacts. The state of current climate models is
rather crude, as can be seen in the accuracy of rudimentary weather
prediction. The warming partisans cannot predict the weather accurately two
days or weeks ahead, but blithely assert predictions based on simulations 20
and 200 years ahead.
The warming propagandists and government activists frequently fail to
mention the green house gas with the largest impact . What is it? Water
vapor ! Many uncertainties exist in the models, such as the many feed back
processes, involving the oceans, or the way to model clouds. One of the big
feed back mechanisms is the reflection of solar energy (heat) by clouds back
into space. When the earth heats up, more clouds form, reflecting more energy
back into space, causing a cooling effect. Clouds are subtle, their fractal
variety is still beyond a computer simulations plugging some average cloud
reflectivity coefficient or formula into the computer code. There are
problems with the models prediction of regional warming. One recent model
that predicted an average warming due to CO2 emissions, showed areas as big
as western Canada warming, when actually a cooling was observed. Antarctica
is getting cooler. One model predicts this , many others do not describe
this empirical finding.
And much recent data, shows a cooling. The earth m
show a small warming at
the surface, but satellite measurements show the atmosphere cooling slightly.
This was written in earlier posts. 0.05C per decade in some linear regression
over 20 years is meaningless in the context of the last 1000, 10,000 and
100,000 years. While some may say, these issues are complex, so we defer to
the preponderance of scientific opinion on global warming. But the consensus
of scientists is not nearly so monolithic as the main stream press would have
us believe. Dr.Fred Singer has a statement opposing the global warming
hysteria, signed by over 100 PhDs, top professors of meterology (U of I ,
MIT U of Arizona...), weather service directors etc. The decision is too
important to leave to speculation. The computer models are not that accurate
!
On shaky grounds for science, and possessing powerful rhetoric, why does the
enviroestablishment want a reduction of economic activity? Their vision is
that of zero population growth, less industry, returning to a totally
unrealistic idyllic rural ecotopia. Instead of viewing more people as a
valuable resource, they view more people as a burden. This is the misrabilist
view point. The more people we have, the more ideas, the more crafty
inventiveness, and problem solving we also have. Implicit in this is the
rate of solving problems is greater than the rate of creating problems. This
assumes that people are educated and skillful in technical methods. The
answer of course moare Extropy.
Or the misguided policy might be a plan to stabilize the gap between wealthy
Americans or countries and the poorer citizens or developing countries. The
earth’s rotation is slowing down also. Do we expect a massive government
effort to speed up the rotation? The bureaucrats want to create an atmosphere
where the government will solve all of our problems. It is the old
centralized control model, which proved too slow for the communist
bureaucracies to prepare for the 21st century. For the centralized
bureaucrats, a global warming control
s a wonderful exercise in self
perpetuation.
William Calvin, in his wonderful book, The Ascent of Mind, has made an
excellent case that the warming and cooling associated with the ice age cycle
has been a major influence for the increase of human intelligence and
evolution. Will the current temperature changes spur further gain in
intelligence? Or, will the natural changes, be a used as a weapon for the
benighted forces of stupidity and regression?
Instead of restricting energy use, we should be spending lots of energy
preparing a life boat... climate control and space migration.
-Jay Cech
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