Peter Landon Ward, PhD ,
The Paris Climate Accord is an important step forward, but Peter Langdon Ward PhD (a presenter at the AGU’s Fall 2015 Meeting) asks, “Are we Solving the Right Problem?” While the leaders of 195 countries crafting the historic climate change agreement Saturday deserve praise for their foresight and hard work, they may have been blinded to the real cause of global warming by the laser focus of most climate scientists on greenhouse gas warming.
While the leaders of 195 countries crafting the historic climate change agreement Saturday deserve praise for their foresight and hard work, they may have been blinded to the real cause of global warming by the laser focus of most climate scientists on greenhouse gas warming. “Throughout Earth history, sudden warming has occurred as frequently as every few thousand years. Warming typically starts suddenly and cools slowly,” says Dr. Peter Langdon Ward, author of the just published book, What Really Causes Global Warming?
Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion? Ward worked 27 years with the US Geological Survey studying volcanoes and other natural hazards around the world. “Sudden warming usually occurs when basaltic lava flows form over large areas,” Ward continues. “Such lava flows deplete Earth’s ozone layer, allowing more solar ultraviolet radiation to reach Earth, causing global warming. There is no obvious way for slowly increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases to cause frequent periods of sudden warming.” The largest basalt flow in 231 years formed around Bárðarbunga volcano in Iceland from August 2014 through February 2015, covering an area of 33 square miles—the size of Manhattan—and causing 2015 to be the hottest year on record. Dr. Ward presents his findings this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting—a gathering of 24,000 Earth scientists —in San Francisco.
“Global warming was significant from 1970 to 1998,” Ward explains, “caused by manufactured CFC gases depleting the ozone layer and forming the Antarctic Ozone Hole.” “Greenhouse warming theory,” Ward says, “has never been confirmed in the laboratory or in the field. Increased concentrations of greenhouse gases have never been shown experimentally to increase air temperature substantially.
Narrow frequencies of infrared energy are absorbed by greenhouse gases, but the amount of heat involved is small.” That is why Dr. Ward issued The Climate Change Challenge last month, offering to pay $10,000 to the first person who can demonstrate experimentally that warming caused by greenhouse gases was actually greater than warming caused by ozone depletion. Spending trillions of dollars reducing greenhouse-gas concentrations could have no significant effect on reducing global warming. Can we afford to make this mistake?
Source: https://fallmeeting.agu.org/2015/press-item/paris-climate-accord-an-important-step-forward-but-are-we-solving-the-right-problem/
The best solution to any problem posed by the climate is prosperity. The worst tHing we can do in the face of any climate challenge is impoverish ourselves through useless posturing. In what way is this an important step forward? In what way do these people deserve praise?
“Historical”? I certainly hope not. Historical is not necessarily a good thing.
It would be great to hear from the ozone hole orthodoxy about these issues. Careers and fortunes have been built on ozone depletion via CFCs. Dessler comes to mind in light of the political power he developed, along with his pressuring academics to sign off on agreements
“But are We Solving the Right Problem?”
Heck, are we solving ANY problem?
For that matter, is there a problem to be solved?
Hmm…
If the problem is having too much money
…An Important Step Forward, But are We Solving the Right Problem?…
If you are not addressing the ‘right’ problem, how can you claim that this is a step FORWARD?
I’m sorry Dr Ward, but, anyone who has read the ‘historic agreement’ cannot, in good faith, call it an ‘important step forward’. It is about as empty and agreement as I have ever seen. The only thing it ‘commits’ ‘developed nations’ of the signatories to do is 1) create voluntary ‘national goals’ for overall emission reduction (taking into account sources & SINKS – without defining what exactly is a sink and how much said sinks actually absorb) without any corresponding commitment to actually meet those goals, 2) ‘refine’ the voluntary ‘goals’ every 5 years (hopefully making them ‘more ambitious’ – the goals not the actual reductions, if any), 3) file reports with a new bureaucracy that will sit on a shelf somewhere and most likely never be read. It ‘commits’ the ‘developing nations’ to proceed as they have been and continue to increase their ‘CO2 emissions without limit until 2030 at which time they have to ‘think about’ how they might reduce their emissions. That is, of course, if they don’t decide to ‘opt out’.
In truth this ‘historic agreement’ is less definitive than Kyoto (which nobody followed either).
It really reminds me of the old Soviet ‘5 year plans’.
Watch the segment in the movie ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ concerning the ‘management consultants’ dealing with the threat of a planet killing meteor for a comparison to COP21.
The size of Manhattan….33 square miles. Deccan Traps? The Columbia Plateau? The Columbia Plateau is 100,000 square miles. So even if a quarter of the area, 25,000 square miles, was a seething cauldron….roughly 750 times the effect, times 0.02 degree per 33 square miles….15 degrees! Chik-ching!
But wait….using one relatively tiny fissure eruption to confirm a dubious “warmest year”….? Man, that’s desperate for grant money. Facepalm.
Hypocrisy was the main feature of Paris. Thousands jetted in adding no value except their own aggrandizement. Typical socialists want every one except themselves to make sacrifices Gore and his electricity usage. When making funds available to the third world came up delegates yawned and left the room. Developing countries are losing the tools provided by capitalism -oil and coal and getting no help. So called aid money never reaches its intended destination. Hypocrites. They don’t really care.
It occurred to me to say CONGRATULATIONS! we are already well on the way to cooling the planet by taking the steps we have already taken. You see, according to calibrated satellite measurements, the earth has cooled slightly since 2003 (A better claim than NO cooling since 1998, and very true). Obviously, they way overestimated what it takes to stop the warming, and nothing more need be done. ALSO, as cooling accelerates per Theodor Landscheidt, Carl Smith, and Geoff Sharp (see http://wp.me/p4unP5-8T) for the next 20 years, the sensitivity will be shown to be either negative or zero. BASICALLY, there is no urgency to STOP warming, and there will be urgency to MAKE warming as deadly cold grips the Earth with increased cloud cover that shades solar panels.