Letter to the Editor |
Climateers keep trumpeting alarms that glaciers and ice sheets are melting, thus threatening land-based life with rising seas and supporting their dubious claims that Earth faces catastrophic global warming.
Life on earth cannot be extinguished by a sun-warmed atmosphere or retreating ice – sea levels merely rise steadily as land-based ice melts, animals and plants migrate and the slowly warming seas expel carbon dioxide. This allows the biosphere to thrive with more ice-free land in a benign, warmer, wetter, carbon-rich world.
The threats we should fear are the periodic violent eras of volcanism and the life-killing ice ages many of which start with massive snow/hail storms such as the one that suddenly extinguished the mammoths. This is why many ancient peoples celebrated the warmth of spring and worshipped the Sun God.
For too long the western world has been misled by alarmist claims that a tiny trace of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere will cause catastrophic global warming. In the continuing drama of natural climate change, global temperatures are the result of far greater forces. Climate research should focus more on the cycles of the sun and solar system and their effect on global climate and on the periodic eruptions along our vast sub-marine volcanic belts. These control the ebb and flow of ice ages and most of the many extinction events that Earth has suffered.
Most geological eras have ended with massive volcanism on land and in the long volcanic/tectonic rifts beneath the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans. Outpouring of lava under the seas causes ocean warming and increased evaporation while the dust from land-based volcanoes darkens the skies, creating a frigid atmosphere. Warms seas and cold skies cause heavy precipitation of rain, hail and snow. The increased snow cover then reflects any solar energy that gets through the volcanic dust, thus maintaining surface cooling. That is how the life-killing ice sheets grow.
Atmospheric modellers have dominated the climate debate for too long. It is time to ask well-informed geologists about Earth’s ever-changing climate history which is written indelibly in the rocks. Instead of wasting billions on bigger computers for yet more atmospheric models, let’s do some factual research on volcanoes beneath the oceans. Then ask some astro-physicists about the possible influence of solar cycles, sunspots, cosmic rays, cloud formation, earth magnetism, rogue asteroids and movements of the solar system through the galaxy.
To believe mankind can counter the effect of these powerful natural climate controllers by trading carbon credits and capturing a few sea breezes and sunbeams using green energy toys is indeed a sad sign of the modern climate madness.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood Qld Australia
http://carbon-sense.com
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Well I personally have never heard a more stupid question, not because questions are stupid but because of the intention of your question, which I presumably presume is to prove the exclusive signifigance of not only man-made CO2 exclusivley controlling the planets temperature, but also this exclusive man-made CO2 directly and irrefutably leading to human extinction. There is plenty of childish evidence like your silly question to support both claims, of scientific evidence…little.
Speaking of presumably, presumably you are aware that to make an unreasonable claim is not the same as proving it. Actually even making a reasonable claim is not the same as proving it. Perhaps I presume too much.
Bravo Viv Forbes! The comments you’ve elicited document quite well the narcissistic egotism of perspective common among the lesser scientifically knowledgeable who believe man will actually have, or can, a long term influence on the world. Finding any trace of 21st century man by the end of the next interglacial could be as difficult as finding ‘Lucy’ was in eastern Africa. To believe that man is even the penultimate evolutionary animal, defies any knowledge of geologic history.
Geologic process will continue to be the primary mechanisms reshaping the surface of the earth, regardless of man’s physical influence.
http://geosociety.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/the-constancy-of-change-and-the-new-catastrophism-a-personal-reflection-on-crisis-driven-science/
H/T handjive
http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale_op_712x534.jpg
Showing definitively that CO2 is correlated with temperature. Lamentably, it is both positively & negatively correlated, plus also periodically not correlated at all. At times CO2 levels go up while T goes up, but at other times, concentration goes down while T goes up & goes up while T goes down, but at other times, does nothing while CO2 goes up or down.
One of the most significant features in the graph of CO2 is the huge fall in concentration through the Carboniferous and Permian. Only a modest recovery to the end of the Jurasic; then a steady decline from the beginning of the Cretaceous until now. The Pleistocene glacial put us very close to what would have been a HUGE extinction event: basically all oxygen/CO2 breathing life! Someone mentioned above (sorry I’m on my iPad Mini and it’s quite a chore to scroll back to look for it) that most of the CO2 got sequestered as coal and we are actually doing LIFE overall and ourselves a good deed by burning as much coal as we can to get the CO2 back into the atmosphere. I’d like to go on record here and now in full support of that project! Burn more coal and save the planet. There could not be a more worthwhile goal for humans 😉
I don’t know how anyone who understands what this graph portrays could want anything else.
That above mention: Bert October 14, 2014 at 2:30 am
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has spoken at the opening of the Caval Ridge mine, saying coal should not be demonised.
“Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world,” he said.
“This is a sign of hope and confidence in the future of the coal industry – it’s a great industry, we’ve had a great partnership with Japan in the coal industry.
“Coal is essential for the prosperity of the world.
“Energy is what sustains our prosperity, and coal is the world’s principal energy source and it will be for many decades to come.”
James Abbott wrote:
“Renewable energy provided 21.7% of electricity generation worldwide as of 2013.,,,,”
No so much…
I love how the Greens always try to lump hydro-electric power (which is an excellent and cheap way to generate power and manage water supplies) together with solar and wind energy production to obfuscate the fact that annual global production of wind power (400 TWh/yr) and solar (100 TWh/yr) only account for roughly 2.3% of the 22,000 TWh/yr of total global electricity production.
Trying to get accurate and reliable wind and solar energy production numbers is also a fool’s errand, because the Greens often use nameplate capacity rather than actual power generation to inflate the numbers; it’s like trying to nail jello to the wall….
Even these paltry numbers don’t include: energy inputs to mine/manufacture/fabricate/transport/construct these boondoggles AND the added CO2 emissions required to have conventional power generators (like coal plants) run idle to 100% back up wind and solar plants for those ever-so-rare occasions of: clouds, night, no wind, excessive wind, breakdowns, etc.
Governments have wasted $100’s of billions on these expensive, diffuse, inefficient, intermittent and unreliable wind and solar boondoggles, that have destroyed their industrial sectors and substantially lowered their citizens’ standard of living.
Samurai,
You can watch the sad story of UK renewables here in real time:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Either the UK’s politicians aren’t aware of this site or they choose to ignore it; my money is on the latter.
Yes, the wind’s doing very well isn’t it.
Strange that. When you want to build good clean hydro or geothermal, they scream you cannot do that, its not renewable. yet, when they make claims about renewable generation they always include, hydro and geothermal.
odd that.
http://youtu.be/4Fep_e7QMZA
Warm seas and cold skies cause heavy precipitation of rain, hail and snow
When these trolls come through, they sure do leave a mess. It’s like trying to tell kids not to play tug-of-war with a puppy. They just can’t resist it…cuz it’s so much fun and that troll is so damned cute. 🙂
I’d bet most warmist don’t know or avoid the geo fact that Long Island is part of a couple of moraines created after the last ice age ended and finally melted. Even wikipedia says so, so it must be true. Try it sometime with a warmist.
Just to get back to the topic of Viv’s excellent essay for a moment: When the Laki volcano went off in Iceland, 1783, according to Wikipedia, it put out a Pinatubo’s worth of ash every three days and erupted for many months. Six million people supposedly died from the drastic global cooling crop failures and other effects.
Although it’s true volcanos don’t contribute to long term climate change, we live in a very short term overpopulated and resource stressed world. How many would die if Laki happened today? You can bet that it would be like having the alien overlords arrive in big shiny spaceships – it would be hard to talk about anything else, especially the “threat” of three degrees more heat in 2100.
Today Bardarbarunga is cued up to get serious. Maybe or maybe not – but another important point about these kind of events – they are utterly unpredictable because down there in the mantle Mama Nature is pulling huge levers that we don’t even begin to understand, much less predict accurately.
“… we live in a very short term overpopulated and resource stressed world.”
No…not really. You could put every single human being on the planet in one city the size of Texas with a population density of London, and the rest of the entire planet would be empty. Current estimates on the amount of food wasted range as high as 75%.
The biggest reason we’re stressing resources is our CHOICE to do so. Energy is an excellent example. How much of that resource stress would be relieved/eliminated if we CHOSE to listen to science and move towards nuclear energy? How much time and resources are totally wasted on Ethanol, even though we now know that it’s impact is somewhere between neutral and negative on the atmosphere?
I agree that one good “PUFF” from one of these major volcanoes will knock humanity on it’s ass for awhile though…and that’s going to make C02 research look pretty damned silly.
Should have said even MORE silly…which is a tough bar to hit.
You could also fit the entire population (7billion) on the Big Island in Hawaii in 4′ x 4′ squares and the remainder of the world would be empty (excepting those Amazon tribesmen that blend in and are bypassed)
Who gets to live on the volcanoes?
Price comparison , USA 12c/KwH
Denmark 41 C/KwH
Germany 43 .
As you can see an inverse relationship between being green and being rich.
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/30/average-electricity-prices-around-world/
Or being Green and paying your rent, buying food/clothing, etc. “Rich” is pretty subjective…
“capturing a few sea breezes and sunbeams using green energy toys”
Love this wording.
it is interesting that James Abbott has received adulation and word by word analysis on Hotwhopper. If its not ‘Sou’ herself I’d be very surprised…..far too much time spent praising every word used by JA in response to Viv. She really needs to get over herself. With a volume of papers and reports coming on against CAGW she must be feeling hemmed in.
She must also be revelling in the extra attention of late – its become one of my favourite reads, especially the hotwhoppery and her incredible stamina in producing bile. It can get over the top here and I think thats regretful, but for sheer continuous invective/abuse I can do nothing but admire her persistence.
How anyone can debate with her unless you agree with her, I cant imagine. She must have a ghastly job to have so much pent up anger to expend at the end of the day!!
My prayers for a full recovery are with you Sou
it is interesting that James Abbott has received adulation and word by word analysis on Hotwhopper. If its not ‘Sou’ herself I’d be very surprised…..far too much time spent praising every word used by JA in response to Viv. She really needs to get over herself. With a volume of papers and reports coming on against CAGW she must be feeling hemmed in.