As even young grade school children know, thanks to the propaganda organs of the National Education Association and its retainers, the greatest environmental worry on planet Earth today is that the human release of carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse gases''
Whatever the consequences of the hypothetical construct called
"global warming'' may be, it is clear that the consequences of political acceptance of this construct are likely to be dire indeed. Loss of hydrocarbon fuel use, especially in economically poorer regions, will cause enormous losses of human life and increases in human suffering. Even in well-developed countries, resulting dislocations will be severe.Unfortunately, global warming has a powerful political constituency. Never before has there been such a colorably "well-intentioned reason'' for the extension of global political tyranny. World government, national governments, and the politicians and bureaucrats who control them will have an opportunity to tighten a vise-like grip around all citizens in order to enforce the proposed draconian hydrocarbon controls. This is not freon and ozone. Loss of refrigeration is bad, but loss of access to energy is much worse.
A similar scam was tried once before in the form of alleged "looming shortages of hydrocarbons and the energy crisis,'' but plentiful, undiminishing supplies of hydrocarbons spoiled the game. Global warming is different because it alleges a future catastrophe that is more difficult for untrained individuals to understand Some people who are in the business of "science'' have been quick to realize that the politicians and bureaucrats who are gaining power and wealth from this scare are willing to pay almost any price to increase the scientific credibility of "global warming.'' Essentially unlimited cash in the form of tax-financed research grants, expense-paid trips to world conferences, notoriety in the public media, and appointments to perk-enhanced positions are easy to obtain by simply adding one's dishonorable voice to the "correct'' side of this issue.
The public is, however, becoming a little surly at the prospect of losing its hydrocarbons, so a game called "detection of the first signs of global warming'' has become popular. As chronicled in many past issues of
Access to Energy , this game is consistently being lost by the global warmers. Their response has been to simply declare themselves winners anyway. An international cacophony of "it is'' - "no, it isn't'' - "it is'' - "no, it isn't'' with accompanying name-calling is about all that leaks through to the man on the street.Has modern science really lost the ability to measure temperature and agree upon the results? No. The problem is that, as every child also knows, temperatures fluctuate. So, when they go up, the global warmers cheer, and when they go down, they change the subject to mythical "ozone holes'' and other "concerns.'' The absurdity of all of this is well illustrated by Figure 1 which is adapted from "The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea'' by Lloyd D. Keigwin,
Science 274, pp 1504-1508, 29 November (1996).
It turns out that there is an isotope effect whereby cold-blooded organisms incorporate different amounts of the stable isotope oxygen 18 into their tissues as a function of the temperature of their environment. By measuring oxygen 18 in the remains of tiny marine organisms (living on the surface and sinking to the bottom when they die) in the sediment of a rise in the Sargasso Sea (a region in the Atlantic Ocean) and dating the sediment by means of carbon 14, the graph in Figure 1 of temperature vs. time over the last 3,000 years was constructed. The sedimentary cores represented in Figure 1 were about 20 inches long -7 inches per 1,000 years.
(Carbon 14 is continually produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere, but it is unstable and decays with a half-life of 5,700 years. The exact amount relative to carbon 12 in the atmosphere as a function of time during recent millennia can be checked by reference to tree rings in very old trees and by other means. Therefore, the carbon 14 vs. carbon 12 ratio can be used to determine the time during which dead organisms in samples of unknown age were alive.) There is an effect of changing salinity on oxygen 18 values which reduces the variability shown in Figure 1, but it is also known from direct measurements that sea surface temperatures at this location vary less than the average of other locations. To a first approximation, these two opposite effects may be assumed to cancel. This is also verified by comparison of these measured temperatures with comparable tree-ring, glacier, and other studies at different locations, which confirm the shape and magnitude of the graph (see Keigwin paper for references).
In Figure 1, the direct temperature measurements since 1954 are also plotted as highlighted by the arrow labeled "Station 'S'.'' Note the gradual rise during the past three centuries as the temperature fluctuated back from the lows of "The Little Ice Age.'' The warmer period during the Middle Ages about 1,000 years ago when global climate was milder and more ideal than today is also evident. The range during the past 40 years provides a measure of short term variability, while the overall graph shows long term averages during the last three millennia.
Is the planet warming up? Yes. It is currently in an upward fluctuation from an unusually cold period with today's temperatures still substantially colder than the median of the last 3,000 years. Further perspective on the "global warming'' debate is provided by the fact that the global warmers are currently spending oodles of your tax dollars claiming (without good reason) that they may have detected a dangerous man-made increase in temperature of about 0.2 °C. This is about 5% of the natural fluctuation during the past 3 millennia. Clearly, this claim is ridiculous. Moreover, their current scenarios for future temperature levels
without emission controls are within the range in Figure 1 (see Access to Energy 24, No 2, p 3 (1996)).
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Vol. 24, No. 5
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 24, No. 5 Date: January 01, 1997 03:47 PM Title: Science and Honor
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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