Written by Geraldo Luís Lino, special to Climate Change Dispatch – reposted here at WUWT by request – Note: the opinion of this author is not necessarily the same as mine. I provide this for discussion by CCD’s request. – Anthony
In the not too distant future, it will likely be difficult to understand how so many educated people believed in and accepted uncritically for so long a scientifically unproven theory like the so-called Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).
Taken almost as a dogma, the AGW has been forcefully imposed by means of a barrage of scare stories and indoctrination that begins in the elementary school textbooks and is volleyed relentlessly upon us by the media and many scientific institutions (including some pseudo-scientific ones), while gullible or opportunistic politicians devise all possible means of inserting climate-motivated items into their power-seeking schemes.
The threat allegedly posed by that supposed world emergency would justify the need of at least halving the human carbon emissions until mid-century, meaning a draconian reduction of the use of fossil fuels worldwide. Despite the drastic potential impact of such measures upon the living standards of all nations, the failure to do so and of establishing a “low-carbon economy,” we are told, would usher the environmental apocalypse in. Well, fortunately for Mankind it won’t.
However, that avalanche has gone too far. So, it’s high time to turn the alarmist page and discard the buzzwords with which the subject has been marketed once and for all: (undeserved) hype, (unmotivated) scare, (unnecessary) restrictions and (unacceptable) sacrifices. In their stead new keywords are needed to put the climatic phenomena into their proper perspective again: proportion, knowledge and resilience.
Let’s begin with trying to give the climate theme the right proportion concerning its nature and relationship with Mankind.
The environmentalist propaganda machine has ascribed an intrinsically negative and threatening connotation to the expression climate change, as if the climatic oscillations of the last century and a half were something unprecedented and implying that it should be combated at any cost – even if this would hamper the development perspectives of most of the developing countries (and as if Mankind had the necessary knowledge and means to do so). Notwithstanding, changing is the natural condition of the Earth’s climate – in the historical and geological time scales there has never been and there will never be such a thing as a “static” climate (so, climate change is sort of a pleonasm). As a rule of thumb, during 90% of the Phanerozoic eon (the latest 570 million years) the Earth has experienced temperatures higher than the current ones, and 90% of the Quaternary period (the latest 2.6 million years) have elapsed under glacial conditions and temperatures much lower than the current ones.
The Quaternary has also witnessed the most frequent and rapid climatic oscillations in the Earth’s geological history, alternating between cool glacial and warm interglacial periods in 41,000- and 100,000-year cycles. In the last 800,000 years the longer cycles have prevailed and the Earth experienced eight Ice Ages approximately 90,000-year long separated by eight interglacial periods averaging 10,000-11,000 years (although there are controversies about their length).
During the Ice Ages the average temperatures were 8-10°C lower than the current ones, the sea levels were 120-130 m lower and much of the Northern Hemisphere was covered by an ice pack up to 4 km thick, down to the 40°N parallel (the latitude of nowadays New York). During the interglacials the average temperatures reached 4-6°C and the sea levels 3-6 m above the current ones. Our own interglacial the Holocene, which started 11,500-11,700 years ago, had average temperatures up to 4°C and sea levels up to 3 m above the current ones between 5,000-6,000 years ago (Middle Holocene).
The transition periods between the warming and cooling phases and vice versa, when the average temperatures rose or fell the 6-8°C that make the difference between an interglacial and an Ice Age, have lasted from a few centuries to a few decades. [1]
The genus Homo appeared on Earth soon after the onset of the Quaternary. Our species the Homo sapiens sapiens emerged during the penultimate Ice Age, somewhere between 150,000-200,000 years ago. And our problem-solver, city-builder, technological, scientific, industrial and artistic Civilization has been existing entirely in the Holocene and its warmer temperatures that allowed the advent of agriculture.
Some useful tips emerge from such facts:
- The wild oscillations of the Quaternary are the general climatic condition faced by Humankind ever. We have been coping with them quite successfully and nothing suggests that we cannot continue to do so (as long as common sense and non-partisan science prevail).
- They outline a background “noise” that by far overshadows the tiny rise of the temperature and sea levels (and their gradients) that have occurred since the late 19th century – respectively 0.8°C and 0.2 m, according to the IPCC. [2] This simply means that there is no scientific way to attribute causes other than natural to these, because the background “noise” has yielded much wider and faster oscillations of the temperatures and sea levels occurring before the Industrial Revolution.
- The Quaternary climate dynamics seems to be “self-adjusted” to the boundary conditions outlined by the Ice Ages and interglacials. So, the suggested risk of a “runaway warming” or some kind of climate disruption from the human carbon emissions is far-fetched, specially regarding the much ballyhooed “magic number” of 2°C warming that supposedly could not be exceeded (a political contrivance admitted by its own author, the German physicist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber in an interview to the Spiegel Online website). [3] During the interglacials there were higher temperatures without any kind of “runaway” disturbance.
Real global emergencies
As to the real global emergencies requiring urgent actions on new levels of international attention, cooperation, coordination and funding, there is no shortage of them. For those seriously interested in this business, here are some that do not exist only in supercomputer-run mathematical models and that would benefit very much from fractions of the colossal amounts of money – and human resources – that have been wasted with the non-existent AGW:
- The world’s most serious environmental troubles, particularly in the developing countries, are those related to the lack of water and sanitation infrastructure, like water pollution and the water-borne diseases that kill a child every 15 seconds in the developing countries, according to the World Health Organization. [4] A 2007 poll conducted by the British Medical Journal among physicians all over the world elected fresh water and sanitation infrastructure as the greatest medical advance of the last 150 years – a “privilege” still unavailable for over 40% of the world’s population. [5] In Brazil, less than half of the population have access to sewage systems and two thirds of the child internments in the public health system are due to water-borne diseases. [6] (I’ve never seen Al Gore, Hollywood stars or the major environmental NGOs campaigning for sanitation.)
- Hunger and its consequences kill a child every six seconds, according to the FAO. [7] Almost one billion people all over the world suffer from chronic hunger, a scenario that will surely worsen due to the current speculation-driven price rise affecting some basic staples. [8] Besides the immoral waste of productive lives, the annual economic cost of such a tragedy in productivity, revenue, investment and consumption losses is estimated in the order of hundreds of billion dollars. [9]
- The lack of access by much of the world’s population to modern energy sources. Dung and firewood, the most primitive fuels known to Mankind, are still the basic resources for the daily needs of most of the Sub-Saharan Africans (besides being major sources of deforestation and respiratory diseases). Although with lower figures, the same happens in much of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. And, as over 80% of the world’s primary energy needs are provided by coal, oil and natural gas, it’s not difficult to ascertain the potential consequences of the intended restriction of their uses, as proposed by many scientists, environmentalists, politicians, carbon traders and all the people terrified by the AGW scare stories. Besides that, thermoelectric plants generate about two thirds of the world’s electricity, the rest being almost totally provided by hydroelectric and nuclear plants (also increasingly targeted by the environmentalists). [10]
The list of real troubles is much longer, but these few examples suffice to demonstrate the distortions of the agenda of global discussions, both among the policymakers and the public opinion in general (which, in the case of the climate issues, also reflect a widespread deficiency of scientific education among the educated strata of the societies).
In any case, make no mistake. Barring an unforeseen technological breakthrough, there won’t be large scale replacements for the fossil fuels until late this century at least. Massive national and international investments in efficient and integrated multi-modal and urban transportation systems may and should help to reduce the use of automobiles and trucks, particularly in the overcrowded big cities. For power generation, there are the options of harnessing the hydroelectric potential still available, the expansion of nuclear energy and the interlinking of continental and even inter-continental power grids in order to enhance both the energy efficiency and security for all countries involved (forget the current “alternative sources” for large scale uses, they are not technologically and economically feasible for energizing urban and industrial societies). However – and hence –, coal, oil and natural gas will continue to be sources of development and progress for a long time yet – and it is unacceptable that its growing use be hindered by an imaginary threat.
The author is a Brazilian geologist and author of the book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon was Converted into a False World Emergency” (published in 2009 in Portuguese, with over 5,000 copies sold so far, and soon to be published in Spanish in Mexico).
Sources:
- The Paleomap Project, website of University of Texas (Arlington) geologist Dr. Christopher R. Scotese, provides a good overview on the Earth’s geologic, geographic and climatic evolution over the past 1.1 billion years, with a well-written text and didactic animated maps that are useful and interesting for general readers and professional geoscientists alike (www.scotese.com). For an excellent description of the Quaternary climatic history, see the Chapter 2 of Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science (Lanham: Taylor Trade Publishing, 2009). Spanish language readers may find particularly interesting the website of Dr. Antón Uriarte, a geographer at the Universidad del País Vasco, Paleoclimatologia: Historia del Clima y Cambios Climáticos (http://homepage.mac.com/uriarte/).
- IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report – Summary for Policymakers, http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf.
- Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufette, “A Superstorm for Global Warming Research”, Spiegel Online, 1/04/2010, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,686697,00.html.
- Oliver Cumming, Tackling the silent killer: the case for sanitation. London: WaterAid, July 2008, http://www.wateraid.org/documents/tacking_the_silent_killer_the_case_for_sanitation.pdf.
- Sarah Boseley, “Sanitation rated the greatest medical advance in 150 years”, The Guardian, 1/19/2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/jan/19/health.medicineandhealth3.
- Marcelo Cortes Neri (Coord.), Trata Brasil: Saneamento e Saúde. Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getúlio Vargas, 2007.
- Bread for the World, “Hunger Facts: International”, http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html.
- FAO, “Hunger”, http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/.
- FAO/Alessandra Benedetti, “Hunger on the rise: soaring prices add 75 million people to global hunger rolls”, 9/18/2008, http://www.fao.org/news/story/ch/item/7544/icode/en/.
- International Energy Agency statistics page, http://www.iea.org/stats/index.asp.
Geraldo Luís Lino is a Brazilian geologist and author of the book “The Global Warming Fraud: How a Natural Phenomenon was Converted into a False World Emergency” (published in 2009 in Portuguese, with over 5,000 copies sold so far, and soon to be published in Spanish)
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Peter Miller says:
November 6, 2010 at 4:50 pm
“As a geologist, similar to many others commenting here, I believe most of CAGW is BS, but then again one has to remember:
1. Geology is a real science, which is always seeking and questioning , while ‘climate science’ is like a religious sect, totally rigid in its beliefs, with its adherants committed to distorting the facts for their own personal gain.”
What trash. I’m a chemist, will an underlying theoretical basis that makes geology look not all that rigorous, and I would never say such things in public about other scientists. What arrogant character assassination. What wild presumptions about motive. Is that a demonstration of your scientific approach?
However, AGW´s keep on preaching everyday and everywhere in the world; today at CNN en español, there was a guy preaching on the inminent Climate Change, saying we were already in it….
What so important is it there behind?, it is not money alone, but money and power; and what worries the most is that, if they succeed, forget that word called Freedom, it won´t exist anymore!. Can you imagine how much money is it spent at every moment, all around the world, to pay for these ADS?…”They” will be collecting their investment soon…
Strong;
Nope, neither nor. Now or later. Inconvenience, and some costs, but no devastation to be had.
I’m following (and preaching) MY agenda. It may appear similar to other agendas but this one is mine. And it’s nothing like the one put forth by the pro-AGW/ACC crowd.
A number of commenters here have made the argument that climate has changed in the past, so what’s new? Of course it has changed, many times and in major ways – you think this fact somehow escaped the notice of climate scientists? The question is why? Many of the previous changes, deduced (of all things by by paleoclimate scientists) from proxy or ice core evidence, are understood in terms of orbital or precessional changes of planet earth. Current CO2 increases provide the best understood model for what is now occurring (and plenty is occurring), all of your disinformation notwithstanding.
Right over the target, you are. Meaningless fixes to non-problems, forced upon compliant, unquestioning people yearning to relieve their (unnecessary) feelings of guilt for being so fortunate, when so many are not…
No flames from me (I do question your use of the term ‘crisis’).
But I do have a question: Why is it that every ‘crisis’ facing civilization requires a coercive, centralized, top-down solution?
FYI,
When I first entered this policy world I thought strongly that I needed to better understand Climate. So I joined the AGU and focused on papers on paleo climate, paleo oceanography, paleo geology, etc.. These fields, I found, are not corrupted by the funding for the climate models. These are true fields of scientific inquiry.
The clear conclusion of these intellectual inquiries, over at least a year, was that this climatic system within the current ice age (quartenary) has a consistent pulse of two stable systems. One cold (approx. 100,000 years) and one warm (approx. 20,000 years). The cold is more stable than the warm.
I also was exposed to the theory that as long as one continent is located on one pole or the other that we would stay in the current ice age (since 2.6 million years ago).
So, I view the “current” climate contest discussion of the last one hundred years, and computer “climate” programs discussions as a tempest in a tea pot.
The alarmists have ignored the larger field of data that would shred the AGW proposal. This is so egregious because contradictory evidence exist in abounding depths. These folk just choose to ignore it for a political benefit.
And , by the way, there are those who know this and do it consciously and then there are those who just follow. We need a strategy to address the people that want to find an answer and help them find a way.
So the major point of this post argument is to suggest that people carefully examine the basis of the claim.
I am a friend of Geraldo Luis since the early 90s, and remember he was the first one to use the term “eco-pesimists” when dealing with the ozone hole scare and Greenpeace’s campaign in Brazil against their nuclear stations.
As for books written in Spanish about climate change, there are very few, indeed. The last one published was by book “Clima Feroz”, available from the web in:
Clima Feroz
It was this book that prompted a Spanish official organization, “Casa de América”, to invite me to speak about the impending global cooling on October 9th, 2010, in Madrid. In the same event, two other speakers gave their version of climate change: Martín Caparrós, a well known Argentinean journalist who spoke about the lie “catastrophic” climate change is, and the former Greenpeace Spain head, Juan López de Uralde, who spoke about the urgent need to curb CO2 emissions by adopting immediately solar and wiond energy.
The speeches (20 minutes each) can be seen in: http://www.casamerica.es/temastv/climaferoz ,
Caparrós: http://www.casamerica.es/temastv/el-clima-esta-loco
López de Uralde:http://www.casamerica.es/temastv/revolucion-renovable
In above comment ~12 hours ago Ern Matthews mentioned the movie Agora. I snapped it up at WalMart; Hypatia is one of my heros from antiquity, and the story of the destruction of the Library of Alexandria one of the great tragedies of the latter days of ancient Imperial Rome (although Byzantium went on for another ~1000 years). And I agree those lessons from over 1600 years ago need to be remembered; i.e.: What can happen when politically-correct fanaticizm (”religiously-correct” in that earlier example) gets the upper hand over objective science and hard data.
Geraldo says
———-
The wild oscillations of the Quaternary are the general climatic condition faced by Humankind ever. We have been coping with them quite successfully and nothing suggests that we cannot continue to do so (as long as common sense and non-partisan science prevail).
————-
That’s weird. I could have sworn I was living in a cave at the time and that several times the human race was nearly wiped out. It’s funny how your memory goes a bit funny as you grow older. Maybe the ice ages, the super floods and the continent wide droughts are a figment of my imagination.
Katherine says:
November 6, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Dave Wendt says:
November 6, 2010 at 12:27 pm
In re the graph I mentioned in the post above. You have to click on the photo sequence at the top right of the text several times to get to it. Sorry I neglected to include this before.
Did you mean this image:
Relative sea level record based on dated corals from Barbados, Araki, and assorted Caribbean islands compared to V19-30 δ18O sea level proxy.
Yes, thank you, I couldn’t get the image to come up as a separate page.
Co2 does not provide the best model of what is happening today,co2 has been rising while temperatures have remained the same recently.There is nothing unusual happening with the climate we have today .As time goes on and we reach 2050 and then 2100 and nothing unusual happens with the climate you would think that you will be proved wrong but co2 influence on climate has become dogma .Politics is more important than science in this debate , a small group of people have decided that they know better then us what needs to be done about climate change, the views of the majority must be heard on climate change in the UK and Europe and not just in the US.
Owen says:
November 6, 2010 at 6:45 pm
Current CO2 increases provide the best understood model for what is now occurring (and plenty is occurring), all of your disinformation notwithstanding.
Amazing, isn’t it, and all by the ipcc Climate Scientists purposefully not employing the Scientific Method. Instead, simply repeat CO2CAGW ad nauseum et infinitum, and it comes true!
After all, Owen, “The Monkeys know it is true because they always say it is true.” – Mogli, “The Jungle Book” movie.
Owen says:
November 6, 2010 at 6:22 pm
What trash. I’m a chemist, will an underlying theoretical basis that makes geology look not all that rigorous, and I would never say such things in public about other scientists. What arrogant character assassination. What wild presumptions about motive. Is that a demonstration of your scientific approach?>>
No, I’d say it isn’t a demonstration of his scientific approach. Looked more like an observation to me, rather accurate observation at that.
Oh, and might I ask about this commitment you claim you have to not be critical of other scientists in public. Are you telling me that if you knew the truth about… oh I don’t know, say Laetril, before anyone else, that you wouldn’t go public with the information? What kind of misanthrope are you?
Owen says:
November 6, 2010 at 6:45 pm
A number of commenters here have made the argument that climate has changed in the past, so what’s new? Of course it has changed, many times and in major ways – you think this fact somehow escaped the notice of climate scientists?>>
I think it pretty obvious that they noticed. That’s why the keep adjusting the temperature record to make the warming period in the 30’s and 40’s smaller and smaller. Oh yeah, then there’s that 1,000 year temperature reconstruction using just seven trees (7!) from Siberia (because Siberia represents the climate of the planet you know), weighted ONE of the trees to account for 50% of the data, and all just to make the MWP disappear. Yeah they noticed, and they decided to rewrite history to match their theory.
Owen says:
November 6, 2010 at 6:45 pm
The question is why? Many of the previous changes, deduced (of all things by by paleoclimate scientists) from proxy or ice core evidence, are understood in terms of orbital or precessional changes of planet earth. Current CO2 increases provide the best understood model for what is now occurring (and plenty is occurring), all of your disinformation notwithstanding.>>
Bull. Orbital or precessional changes cause variance in solar flux considerably larger than than the corresponding changes in temperature on earth. The logical conclusion is that there are other (natural) processes that regulate the earth’s temperature and tend to mitigate orbital/precessional changes.
You go on to claim CO2 is the “best understood” model for current changes. You are correct. It is the best understood by far. We haven’t a clue how clouds work, how the oceans circulate at depth, how ice grows and retreats affecting the albedo, and on and on and on. Now of languages other than English, I understand some German. I understand German far better than any other language other than English. For example, snel! means hurry, or right now. OK, I’m out of examples, I don’t know any other words. So despite knowing only one word of German… you get the drift. We know squat about all kinds of things and with Co2 we know just a bit more than squat.
Lastly, if you’re going to claim disinformation, then be specific. You made claims, I addressed them directly. Screaming disinformation without a rebuttal backed by solid explanation of facts together with logical analysis to show that it is disinformation is little more than cryning aloud about the monsters under your bed that you haven’t checked for yourself but you are certain they are there because Billy down the street said they were and they would eat you unless you have him your lunch money. Well there are monsters, but they’re in your head, not under bed, and they only reside there because you believe what Billy said.
Thanks to Cohenite and others who took the trouble to reply to the lame (feeble) efforts of those that accept CAGW alarmism as gospel and keep trying to regurgitate it here, as scientific fact. You guys covered the issue so well, saving me from making some jet lagged intemperate replies !! Cheers!!
Artikel from the Danish Niels Bohr Institute 11. February 2009
Avoid both greenhouse and Icehouse
By controlling the emissions of fossil fuels, we might postpone the start of Earth’s next ice age, new research from the Niels Bohr Institute at Copenhagen University. The results have just been published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Viewed from Earth’s historical perspective, we live in a cold time. The biggest climate challenge that humanity has ever faced has been to survive the ice ages that have dominated climate during the past million years. It was therefore not surprising that prominent scientists as the Soviet climatologist Mikhail Budyko, in the relatively cold 1970 welcomed the manmade global warming from CO2 emissions as a means to prevent future ice ages. There are still proponents of continued high emissions from fossil fuels because of this is a good thing. But is the extreme global warming, which follows a reasonable or necessary price to be paid to keep ice at bay?
The image shows the ice maximum penetration the northern hemisphere during Earth’s last Ice Age. Maybe we can postpone the next Ice Age 500,000 years by regulating afbrændingen out fossil fuel products, according to new research.
Graphics: Martin Jakobsson, Stockholm Geo Visualization Lab.
In an article in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters ‘Long time management of Fossil Fuels two limit global warming and Avoid ice age onsets’, shows Professor Gary Shaffer from Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen University, who also heads the research team at the Danish Centre for Earth System Science (DCESS) how we can keep the Earth out of both Icehouses half million years into the future.
Building the ice caps
Ice ages start when the conditions at high latitudes makes all the snow that falls in winter does not melt but will stay over the summer, so that over time build up thick ice sheets. Such conditions depend mainly on summer solar radiation and atmospheric CO2 concentration. The radiation varies on time scales of respectively 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years, due to small changes in Earth’s orbit around the Sun and the Earth’s tilt relative to the pitch. Critical summer insolation, which will start construction of ice sheets, may be considerably lower if the atmospheric CO2 content is high, because it creates a greenhouse warming effect.
Professor Shaffer made for the next 500,000 years with DCESS model to calculate the evolution of atmospheric CO2 content for different strategies from fuel emissions. He has also used results from models of climate-ice sheet to find out how summer solar radiation at high northern latitudes, which is critical to start an ice age, depends on the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Calculations show that if we continue “business as usual ‘and within the next few centuries burn all 5,000 billion tons of available coal reserves of fossil fuels, we will have a global warming of almost five degrees above current levels. It will mean that the start of the next ice age will be exposed to about 170,000 years from now.
Carbon may delay Ice Age
If we contrast controls the burning of fossil fuels, so the use of fossil fuels must be reduced globally by 20% in 2020 and 60% in 2050 (compared to 1990 levels), the maximum global warming may be less than one degree above the present. Similar reductions in fossil fuel use has been suggested by several countries like Germany and England
In this scenario, the burning of large remaining stocks of fossil fuels will be tailored to increasing atmospheric CO2 content high enough and long enough to ward off the forces that would otherwise start a new ice age around minima in summer as long as possible. In this way the current stable interglacial climate extended for about 500,000 years, or three times as long as in “business-as-usual case.
Ice Age Fighters begins, when conditions on the north-latitudes means that all the snow that falls in winter does not melt in summer, but will remain year after year, so that gradually built up thick ice sheets. Photo: Hans Oerter, Alfred Wegener Inst. Bremerhaven.
Valuable climate control
“It seems that intense ice ages that Earth has experienced in the past million years has been helped by declining levels of atmospheric CO2. Our present atmospheric CO2 level is about 385 ppm (parts per million) is already higher than before the transition to these ice ages, “explains Professor Schaffer, and he adds that” The Earth’s orbit is currently nearly circular, which means that the current minimum in summer at high northern latitudes are not very deep. We have already increased the atmospheric CO2 content enough to keep us out of the next ice age in the next 55,000 years for the current configuration of Earth’s orbit. ”
He concludes that “the reserves of fossil fuels may be too valuable in the regulation of future climate that we can allow the reserves consumed within the next few centuries. Of extreme global warming is also too high and unnecessary price to pay to avoid a new ice age. ”
Links: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/Nyheder/nyheder_09/drivhus_og_frysehus/
Artikel i Geophysical Research Letters: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008GL036294.shtml
Danish Center for Earth System Science, DCESS-modellen: http://www.dcess.dk/
Niels Bohr Institute Universite
Contact: Gertie Skaarup
skaarup@nbi.dk
.
AGW propaganda was never about climate, it was all about setting up Global Institutions with access to Global Taxes. Once you become a taxing authority, you become a self-serving, self-perpetuating organisation capable of anything within the limits of your tax-take.
This is Club of Rome stuff.
http://www.clubofrome.org/eng/home/
This is why we have had a:
Global Sars ‘pandemic’
Global birdflu ‘pandemic’
Global swineflu ‘pandemic’
Global migrations
Global cause of poverty (not sheer laziness)
Global Warming
Global racism (although that seems like an oxymoron to me)
Global financial crash
Call for global currency, to replace the dollar
etc. etc.
http://www.globalissues.org/
In order to defeat the AGW propaganda, you need to know the nature of the beast you are fighting.
.
So the Warmists have diverted billions of dollars away from food, water and sanitation for the poorest people on the planet. One day folk will realise this, unfortunately by then the so called scientists and the polititians and hangers on that supported AGW will have made enough money out of that AGW pot to retire. We need to make sure that when the day comes that we do call time on this nonsense of AGW that a reckoning of some sort happens. Not for our sakes but for all those who died because of AGW. In number terms they will dwarf those of any war fought during that time.
Kev-in-UK @ur momisugly November 6, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Mostly, as you say, it’s better to be a good “steward”. However, being a “greenie” is just wrong since hydrocarbons and their use are, and will be, just about limitless. Take a brief divergence into synthetic fuels and you’ll find, with electricity, we can simply manufacture “clean” hydrocarbons. The folks at Los Alamos even have written studies on the subject. The technology has been around for decades. Simple stuff: make dry ice for carbon and oxygen, electrolyze water for hydrogen and oxygen then dial up whatever form you wish. Add some capitalistic interest along the way and even those systems become even more efficient. Toss in a virtually unlimited energy sources of uranium and thorium and you’re off and running with a few billions of years of energy that fit within our existing infrastructure (i.e., as in gasoline/petrol stations, gas for heating/cooking and, of course, the excess electricity generated from nuclear power plants for your lights). Compare the cost to “go greenie with the mythical renewables supplying all our energy needs” and the difference is truly staggering.
The real issue is the central one: how much longer should the developing world’s fear mongers be allowed to slaughter (yes, right word) humans due to malaria (thanks to Silent Spring), “frankenfood” banning, and the like.
The greenies and others should simply get over the fact that just being human creates waste. Substituting one form for another, mostly with little gain or, worse, usually by increasing the amount of waste, is just plain wrong headed and emotional. Even if you believe in a “managed economy”, it makes 100% no sense to replace perfectly functioning infrastructure with one that is even less efficient versus using the same monies to build a nuke plant in the Sub-Sahara to purify water, provide heating/cooling, clean sanitation, etc. How foolish, selfish and ignorant can one be to allow millions to die all for the sake of bragging about how green you are.
Become a steward and make rational decisions. If not, go build those greenie houses with the organic human waste composter in the kitchen. At least we can smell you when yo go out in public.
———
Policyguy,
You have voiced an important strategy. We should lend all assistance to those who would think for themselves. That is an inspiring thought.
John
I have found an article where Geraldo Luís Lino describes his presentation in a conference of Portuguese-speaking countries on “Global Change and Natural Disasters,” that took place in Rio de Janeiro last June. I’ve translated below the main points he made, as he summarizes them.
http://www.midiaamais.com.br/ambientalismo/3431-geraldo-luis-lino
[…]
–During 90% of the history of this planet, atmospheric temperatures were higher than at present. On the other hand, 90% of the Quaternary period (the last 2.6 million years) has seen glacial conditions with temperatures significantly lower than at present, and layers of ice up to 4 km thick covering much of the northern hemisphere.
–During most of the Earth’s history, concentrations of the much vilified carbon dioxide were 5-15 times higher than at present; in fact, only in the transition between the Carboniferous and the Permian periods –nearly 300 million years ago– were CO2 levels as low as in the Quaternary period.
–Within the Quaternary, sea levels have fluctuated between 130 meters below and 4-6 meters above present levels, and these fluctuations were controlled mostly by the cycles of glaciation and deglaciation.
–The Quaternary is the period with the most drastic and rapid climate fluctuations in the history of the Earth, which means these are the conditions that the genus Homo has had to deal with during its entire existence.
— During the last 800.000 years, the Earth has had cycles of glaciation and deglaciation at fairly regular intervals of almost 100.000 years; with eight glaciations of nearly 90,00 years separated by warmer interglacials of 10,000-12,000 years. The current interglacial, called the Holocene, has already lasted nearly 12,500 years, and evidence suggests that it should be followed by a new glaciation whose precise onset, however, is impossible to predict.
–It is irrational to try to change the entire energy base of the world economy, more than 80% of which depends on fossil fuels (petroleum, natural gas and coal), on account of the current and extraordinary hysteria about a slight rise in the thermometers (0.8 deg C between 1850 and 2000, which is perfectly explainable within the climate cycles observed in the Holocene).
–What is needed with regard to the climate issue is to leave the catastrophism behind; see it rather as a complex, chaotic, non-linear system and try to increase our resilience to any future climate conditions, whether these turn out to be warmer or –as it seems more likely– colder.
Above all, I have repeatedly emphasized the absence of any concrete scientific evidence whatsoever to support the “anthropogenic” hypothesis, which is based mainly on the projections of mathematical models. Even if these models are useful scientific tools, they are nowhere near being able to adequately simulate the complex dynamics of climate. Therefore, they should not be used to justify policy decisions of global reach, such as the proposed restrictions in the use of fossil fuels.
[…]
cohenite says:
November 6, 2010 at 6:11 pm
“eadler says “These omissions are so obvious I am surprised it has taken 40 responses for someone to notice.” To which the obvious retort is that this article is so accurate that it took 40 responses before an acolyte of the faith could muster some sort of specious reply.
John Cook is an authority for nothing; he is a warehouse for AGW agitprop; when comments refer to his site I know intellectual onanism is what is going to be offered. This particular bit of IO from eadler focuses on 2 paradigms of AGW, climate sensitivity and the exceptional nature of today’s “warming”.
In respect of climate sensitivity, Lindzen and Choi’s 2nd paper, Spencer and Braswell’s 2nd paper and Knox and Douglass’s many papers including their most recent one [ http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf ] all show a climate sensitivity much less than relied on by AGW.”
Lindzen and Choi’s paper should not have been published, and was full of errors, and the rebuttal that was published was so embarrassing to Lindzen that he is working on a correction. Space doesn’t permit a full discussion of the other papers. Whatever estimates of climate sensitivity you might believe, this key concept wasn’t really mentioned in Lino’s diatribe against the idea of global warming.
“In respect of past warmings and the role of CO2 it is clear from Beenstock’s analysis that CO2 is a bit player while McShane and Wyner’s analysis of official AGW temperature history reveals that history to be a statistical sham. McKitrick, McIntyre and Hermann’s analysis of the accuracy of the AGW modeling completes the picture of a scientific farrago.”
The pros and cons of modeling are not mentioned in this article which is a part diatribe. The first part is a pure rant, followed by the fallacious argument that climate has always been changing, and therefore the current era is nothing new, followed by the argument that man has survived climate change and has worse problems to contend with, so why bother about climate change.
“For me though perhaps the best analysis of the utter disconnect between CO2 and temperature is contained in Frank Lansner’s piece:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pdf”
This analysis is totally flawed. You must beware of amateurs like Lansner.
The reason CO2 lags temperature is well understood. The end of an ice age is triggered by orbital and axial changes . The temperature rise causes CO2 to increase, which is a positive feedback mechanism further increasing the temperature.
http://naturalscience.com/ns/articles/01-16/ns_jeh.html
Modelling by Susan Solomon shows that the C O2 in the atmosphere is reabsorbed by the earth’s oceans very slowly.
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/07/19/19climatewire-without-carbon-emissions-cuts-the-anthropoce-83697.html
“eadler completes his comment with a few other lies such as climate change was much slower in the past [ http://www.pnas.org/content/97/4/1331.full ] and the usual alarmist claptrap which is predicated on a deep pessimissm and, as has been argued recently, a profound misanthropy towards humanity which underpins much of AGW.”
The article Cohenite cites does point to rapid climate change in the past, but it clearly says that civilized man has not had to cope with rapid climate change, which was my point. Here is the key sentence in the introduction.
“Such abrupt changes have been absent during the few key millennia when agriculture and industry have arisen.”
@cedarhill
Of course, being ‘green’ is more about stewardship rather than pure naked type environmentalism – scrimping and saving on resources for scrimping and savings sake!
Not sure why you needed to mention hydrocarbon production? My view is that all wastefulness is just, well – wasteful – and should be avoided. It matters not, if an item can be replaced cheaply or expensively – if it is at the end of its useful life, fair enough, but wastefulness (IMHO) is tantamount to greed – because by wasting something one is ‘grabbing’ resources that could have been used to produce something for someone in a more needy position? I am not preaching here – just trying to be pragmatic. The fashion type purchases, the unnecessary cars, laptops, etc, etc are something that the developed world comes to expect – what are the developing countries to expect? – what happens when 6.6 billion people ‘expect’ to be able to buy a new car/laptop/steak as and when they want? – because those that currently don’t have that chance (a few billion chinese?), will no doubt ‘covet’ that opportunity? I guess I mean we should be leading by example – any casual observer would surely laugh/cry at our food wastage when they see the starving in Africa?
On the energy front – have you considered that even pumping out gigawatts of nuclear electricity could still potentially affect the climate? At least with renewables, relying on basically incoming energy (rather than stored energy resources) the net thermal effect must be zero? Hence, even if a limitless source of energy supply was available, should wastefulness be encouraged?
Ultimately, I reckon we should take a tip from the N.A. Indians, Aboriginals, and similar ancient tribes – who’s primary mantra was to take only what you need and look after the resource. Animals do it with protection of their food territory, for example. It’s common sense, is it not? I suppose, this is basically my own view of what being green is all about. It’s not about living in mud huts and hugging trees – it’s a mentality against wasteful human greed and the selfish approach – something which we are all guilty of – why do folk eat 16oz steaks when apparently 2oz of daily protein is all thats required for a human body? The answer is simple – it’s because they can (in the developed world) – then said folk are whining on about needing to diet! – but surely, a little bit of ‘self control’ would prevent so much wastage!
Again, I am really not preaching (but I realise it may appear so) – and I’m not advocating any green religion (I am about as religiously inclined as a housebrick) I am just explaining my position – philosophy is deffo not one of my interests, but like everyone else, self preservation is! Ultimately, the human race has to preserve itself and the sooner folk understand and take joint responsibilty the better.
I am totally against the AGW crap – but we could and should be doing more to help our entire environment – and to coin a well known phrase in the UK – ‘Every little helps….’