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Global Warming; A Semi-Educated Rebuttal

Global Warming; A Semi-Educated Rebuttal. The Fact, The Fiction, & The Myth Surrounding Gore’s “Mockumentary”, An Inconvenient Truth D Taylor, 2006. -or-. Gore-Bull Warming; An Inconvenient Media-hype. The Fact, The Fiction, & The Myth Surrounding Gore’s “Mockumentary”,

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Global Warming; A Semi-Educated Rebuttal

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  1. Global Warming;A Semi-Educated Rebuttal The Fact, The Fiction, & The Myth Surrounding Gore’s “Mockumentary”, An Inconvenient Truth D Taylor, 2006

  2. -or- Gore-Bull Warming;An Inconvenient Media-hype The Fact, The Fiction, & The Myth Surrounding Gore’s “Mockumentary”, An Inconvenient Truth D Taylor, 2006

  3. Personal Introduction • I am NOT a(n) • Atmospheric Scientist • Oceanographic Scientist • Environmental Scientist • Climatologist • Catholic • Dumb • Although, some will debate this issue…

  4. Personal Introduction • I AM • A Physics/Math teacher • Degreed and certified in both in multiple states • 30 years experience • Pretty good at conducting research based on published scientific papers. • Concerned about science literacy in the USA. • Going to attempt here to separate the proverbial chafe from the real science involved with this hot-button issue called Global Warming…

  5. What is Global Warming? • Popular beliefs, including Al Gore’s, posit several claims. 1. There is a scientific consensus that the world is heating up at such a rate that polar caps and glaciers are disappearing and certain doom is imminent. 2. The drastic temperature increase within the last 100 years is due to human production of greenhouse gases; CO2, CH4, and SO2. 3. We, as a civilization and species, can stop it and reverse it’s ill effects. 4. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural catastrophes are increasing in number and strength due to this warming.

  6. What is Global Warming? • What is the Greenhouse Effect? • “Covering” the atmosphere with material that traps the sun’s heat like a blanket at night. • Culprits? • H2O, CO2, & SO2 (Source: Ramanathan and Coakley, Rev. Geophys and Space Phys., 16 465 (1978))

  7. What is Global Warming? • Are these claims true? If so, why? If not, why not? • First, a little history…

  8. Earth HistoryBerkeley Univ :http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/phyla/phyla.html • Earth is 4.5 Billion years old. • Hadean Age (4.65 – 3.8 BA) Surface temp; 250oC. • Earth and sun form out of interstellar gas and dust, perhaps triggered by a supernova explosion. Mostly just a big ball of hot stuff; no land, no real shape. • Archaean Age (3.8 to 2.5 BA) Srf temp; 100oC • Life begins; Photosynthesis in blue-green algae. • Atmosphere of water, carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, nitrogen, but no free oxygen. • Proterozoic Age • Paleoproterozoic Era (2.5 to 1.6 BA). Srf temp; 80oC • stable continents first appeared • living organisms, mostly bacteria and archaeans. By about 1.8 billion years ago eukaryotic cells appear as fossils too. • Mesoproterozoic Era (1.6 to 0.9 BA). Srf temp; 70oC • first evidence of oxygen build-up in the atmosphere • This global catastrophe spelled doom for many bacterial groups, but made possible the explosion of eukaryotic forms. These include multicellular algae, and toward the end of the Proterozoic, the first animals.

  9. Earth HistoryBerkeley Univ :http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/phyla/phyla.html • Earth is 4.5 Billion years old. • Paleozoic Era (540 - 250 MA), Srf temp; 40oC • Largest mass extinction, still unknown cause, in history wiped out approximately 90% of all marine animal species • animals, fungi, and plants alike colonized the land, the insects took to the air • Continent formations • Mesozoic (250 – 65 MA), Srf temp; 10oC • Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous • “Mesozoic” means “middle animal” • Except for birds, dinosaurs became extinct at the end of the Cretaceous. • Asteroid hit Yucatan Peninsula. • Cenozoic (65 MA – Present); Srf temp; 10-20oC • sometimes called the Age of Mammals, because the largest land animals have been mammals during that time • Mammals were around LONG before this, though. They survived the dinosaur’s demise. • Mammals took over. Even though we are outnumbered by insects a trillion to one and by flora by about the same…

  10. BUT, before there wasGlobal Warming,there wasGlobal Cooling!

  11. Global Cooling • Yes, GLOBAL COOLING! • 1960’s - 70’s • Science Magazine; 12/10/76 • Warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.” • Science Digest; 02/73 • Reported that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we “must prepare for the next ice age.”

  12. Global Cooling • Christian Science Monitor; Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster than Even Experts Expected , 08/27/74 • Reported that “glaciers have started to advance, growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter, and the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.”

  13. Global Cooling • Newsweek; The Cooling World, 04/28/75 • Agreed that meteorologists “are almost unanimous that catastrophic famines might result from this global cooling.” • NY Times; 09/14/75 • The “recent cooling may mark the return to another ice age.”

  14. Global Cooling • Time; 05/21/75 • “A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable” now that it is “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since the 40’s.” • All these reports started with the research by one guy who ‘found’ that average global temps dropped 1.4oC from 1945-1960. This lead to a spate of spin-off research that all pointed the same way… • Data was ±2oC.

  15. Global Cooling • Paul Ehrlich. (Ehrlich, P., 1998) • a Stanford University professor and a renowned entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera (butterflies). ls well known as a researcher and author on the subject of human overpopulation. • Took part in surveys of insects on the Bering Sea and in the Canadian Arctic in the 40’s & 50’s.. • Had data that the butterflies were heading further South each year due to cooler temps.

  16. Global Cooling • Fashions change. As Michael Crichton points out in State of Fear(An excellent book akin to Brown’s DaVinci Code, riddled with more fact than fiction even though the overall story is fiction.), “one year it suddenly became unfashionable to look at cooling factors in the Earth’s climate. Today’s academic climatologists are forced to publish within the accepted paradigm that the Earth is warming, that this trend will continue regardless of natural events, and that warming is bad.”

  17. Global Cooling • Of course, none of this really matters anyway! • On April 13, 2036, asteroid 99942 Apophis (320m wide and mass of 4x1010kg) is going to hit the earth and cause utter destruction and death of all things except bacteria and roaches before global warming can do its nasty deeds. • This is, without saying, due to the overwhelming 0.00004% probability that it will actually be close enough to us to be attracted by our gravity… Otherwise, it’ll miss by a million miles ±a million… • And just my luck! It’s 6 months AFTER my mortgage is paid off!

  18. Global Cooling Newly Paid-OFF Taylor Manor!

  19. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up… The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two. (Lindzen, 2004)

  20. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up… • According to AccuWeather™, the world’s leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."(Bastardi, J., 2005) • Biases that include a ±0.6oC data range.

  21. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up… • Since 1976, NASA satellite data indicates a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years; -0.06oC. These satellites use advanced technology, including a GPS system that is still classified, and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers. • ie. The ‘BIG’ picture. • Data error ±0.03oC

  22. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up… • Scientific consensus? • This wouldn’t be such a hot topic if there actually were a consensus…

  23. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up… • Scientific consensus? • A 2004 Gallup® survey indicated that only 17% of the members of the American Meteorological Society andthe American Geophysical Society thought the warming of the 20th century was the result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. (Gallop, 2004) • Meanwhile, Times™ reports that 87% of the population thinks so. (Times, 2006) • Can you say, “ignorant masses”?

  24. Global Warming: Claim #1The world is heating up…

  25. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • FACT: Nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do; totally contrary to popular (Gore) view. • For example, when Mount Pinatubo (April 1991, Philippines) volcano erupted, within just 3 hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tonnes (metric ton=1000kg) of sulfur dioxide (SO2); 4x as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States do in an entire year. • Oceans emit 90 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) (NOAA, 2003), the main greenhouse gas, every year. • Decaying plants & animals throw up another 90 billion tonnes of CO2. • Compare these numbers to just 11 billion tonnes a year from humans. (NOAA, 2004)

  26. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… Science published a study last week claiming that a tree ring analysis found striking similarities between 20th century increases in global temperature and the Medieval Warm Period -- a period lasting from 1330 AD to 1600 AD which saw similar increases in temperature. Researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sties on three continents. According to Edward Cook of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory…

  27. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… “We don't use this as a refutation of greenhouse warming, but it does show that there are processes within the Earth's natural climate system that produce large changes that might be viewed as comparable to what we have seen in the 20th century.”

  28. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… Not surprisingly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's climate models simply ignore the Medieval Warm Period. The models simply compare current temperatures to those of the immediately preceding pre-industrial societies. It is almost as if the Medieval Warm Period simply never happened as far as the IPCC is concerned (which makes it a lot easier to claim the current warming trend is completely unprecedented and, therefore, must be due to human-induced changes in the climate. Source: Tree Ring Study Shows Warm Cycles. Paul Recer, The Associated Press, March 21, 2002.

  29. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Mount St. Helens, Washington (1980). • The massive ash cloud grew to 80,000 feet (18 kilometers) in 15 minutes and reached the east coast in 3 days.  Although most of the ash fell within 300 miles of the mountain, finer ash circled the earth in 15 days and may continue to stay in the atmosphere for many more years. • Estimated at 45 MILLION tonnes (USGS, 1980)

  30. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Mount St. Helens, before.

  31. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Mount St. Helens, after.

  32. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Mount St. Helens, during.

  33. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Mount St. Helens, now.

  34. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Indonesia’s Mount Merapi, the one in the news right now, could be building up to an eruption. • Cone has increases 330 feet in last 10 days • Emitting ½ million tonnes of gas each day • Combo of CO2, SO2, and ash. • That’s already 7 MILLION tonnes. • One more than we do in a year…

  35. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • Natural CO2, CH4, and SO2 emitters : • 90,000,000,000 tonnes from the ocean • 90,000,000,000 tonnes from decaying icky smellies • 30,000,000,000 tonnes from the occasional volcano • Totals a staggering 210,000,000,000 tonnes • Us? • 11,000,000,000 tonnes • 4,000,000,000 from us in US. (Is that US2?)

  36. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • 98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources. (NOAA, 2005) • NOT a guess, REAL data, REAL science… • Since water vapor is a major component of greenhouse effects, are the proponents suggesting “drying out” the air? • 1978 : 275 ppm CO2 • 1999 : 331 ppm CO2

  37. Global Warming : Claim #2WE are doing the heating up… • By most scientific accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly, 0.45oC remember, in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to WWII - 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Balling, R., 2004)

  38. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • First, yeah, right! • Weather forecasting is only about 50% accurate for 10 days into the future. There exists no “magic crystal ball” in the form of a computer program that can predict the plethora of parameters for the distant future; 10 yrs, 50 yrs, 100yrs… • Can we stop hurricanes? • Hint; nope. • Can we stop the sun from pumping out so much radiant energy? • Hint; nope. • Can we educate the masses of these things? • Hint; nope. But, I’ll try…

  39. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • Projections of future climate changes are uncertain, at best. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans and future solar activity, are still not well known and often not represented in the climate change models although all play a major role in determining our climate.

  40. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are “probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation.” • Seems like a PC way of saaying they aren’t as right as they think they might be… • Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

  41. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • The idea that global warming would melt the ice caps and flood coastal cities seems to be mere science fiction, like Costner’s Waterworld; still a classic... A slight increase in temperature, whether natural or mankind induced, is not likely to lead to a massive melting of the earth ice caps as sometimes claimed in the media. Also, sea-level rises over the centuries relate more to warmer and thus expanding oceans, not to melting ice caps.

  42. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • Larger quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer climates would most likely lead to an increase in vegetation anyway. During warm periods in history vegetation flourished, at one point, circa 1300AD, allowing the Vikings to farm in now frozen Greenland. • If the entire world is included and CO2 emissions are severely restricted, the science is not clear what impact, if any, it would have on the world’s climate.

  43. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • Repeat: If the entire world is included and CO2 emissions are severely restricted, the science is not clear what impact, if any, it would have on the world’s climate. • So to claim otherwise, is mere speculation.

  44. Global Warming : Claim #3WE can stop it… • Stabilizing emissions at 1990 levels by 2010 would reduce the growth of US per capita income by 5% per year. (Yohe, G.W., 2006)

  45. Global Warming : Claim #4Causes increased hurricanes & such… • Nov. 29, 2005 — The nation is now wrapping up the 11th year of a new era of heightened Atlantic hurricane activity. This era has been unfolding in the Atlantic since 1995, and is expected to continue for the next decade or perhaps longer. NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. These cycles, called “the tropical multi-decadal signal,” typically last several decades (20 to 30 years or even longer).

  46. Global Warming : Claim #4Causes increased hurricanes & such… • As a result, the North Atlantic experiences alternating decades long (20 to 30 year periods or even longer) of above normal or below normal hurricane seasons. NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming. (NOAA, 2005)

  47. Global Warming : Claim #4Causes increased hurricanes & such… • In a Discover Magazine interview, William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science and famous hurricane predictor, discounts Global Warming. (Discover, 2005) • Disc: You don’t believe global warming is causing climate change? • Gray: No. If it is, it is causing such a small part that it is negligible. I’m not disputing that there has been global warming. There was a lot of global warming in the 1930s and ’40s, and then there was a slight global cooling from the middle ’40s to the early ’70s. And there has been warming since the middle ’70s, especially in the last 10 years. But this is natural, due to ocean circulation changes and other factors. It is not human induced.

  48. Global Warming : Claim #4Causes increased hurricanes & such… • In a Discover Magazine interview, William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science and famous hurricane predictor, discounts Global Warming. (Discover, 2005) • Disc: That must be a controversial position among hurricane researchers. • Gray: Nearly all of my colleagues who have been around 40 or 50 years are skeptical as hell about this whole global-warming thing. But no one asks us. If you don’t know anything about how the atmosphere functions, you will of course say, “Look, greenhouse gases are going up, the globe is warming, they must be related.” Well, just because there are two associations, changing with the same sign, doesn’t mean that one is causing the other.

  49. Global Warming : Claim #4Causes increased hurricanes & such… • In a Discover Magazine interview, William Gray, Professor Emeritus of Atmospheric Science and famous hurricane predictor, discounts Global Warming. (Discover, 2005) • Disc: With last year’s hurricane season so active, and this year’s looking like it will be, won’t people say it’s evidence of global warming? • Gray: The Atlantic has had more of these storms in the last 10 years or so, but in other ocean basins, activity is slightly down. Why would that be so if this is climate change? The Atlantic is a special basin? The number of major storms in the Atlantic also went way down from the middle 1960s to the middle ’90s, when greenhouse gases were going up.

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