The enclosed review ("Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide'' by Robinson, A. B., Baliunas, S. L., Soon, W., and Robinson, Z. W., January 1998) was written for scientists, although most of it is readable by laymen. The science here is relatively easy to understand. If you find it difficult reading, concentrate on the figures - which tell the whole story. Figures 1 to 4 below may help. See the review for captions, details, and references for these figures. Figure 1 illustrates the nature of the controversy. It is important to understand that past and projected increases in carbon dioxide cannot warm the atmosphere significantly - even though the overall greenhouse effect, especially from water vapor, is an important factor in maintaining hospitable global temperatures. The warmers claim that a small increase in temperature from the radiative effect of increased carbon dioxide will throw the entire temperature control mechanism of the atmosphere out of balance and lead to runaway warming, largely due to increases in water vapor. There have been, however, numerous such small increases in temperature over the past 3,000 years - many beginning from temperature levels much higher than today - and no such runaway warming has 
Moreover, atmospheric carbon dioxide equilibrates rapidly with other reservoirs, which contain more than 50 times as much CO
2 as does the atmosphere. Carbon 14 measurements illustrated in Access to Energy 22, no. 1, p 3, give a half-life of CO2 in the atmosphere of about one decade. As documented in the review, the atmosphere annually exchanges about 20% of its CO2 content with vegetation and the ocean. The warmers claim that carbon dioxide "can remain in the atmosphere for centuries.'' Sure it can - in tiny amounts or after cycling through huge natural reservoirs that dwarf atmospheric quantities.Each year, mankind is releasing about 5.5 gigatons of carbon (Gt C) as carbon dioxide, as compared with an estimated total ocean, biological, soil, and atmospheric quantity of more than 40,000 GtC - which explains the legitimate remaining uncertainty as to whether or not mankind is responsible for the approximately 150 GtC increase in atmospheric CO
2 during the past two centuries (mostly during the second half of the 20th century).
The bottom line is, of course, the temperature. It is simple thermometers that have invalidated the global warming hypothesis. In figure 2 are shown both the weather balloon measurements and the satellite measurements of total average global temperature in the lower troposphere at an altitude approximately two miles above the earth. The global warming computer models, upon which the entire global warming hypothesis depends, predict that temperatures in the lower troposphere should be rising rapidly with increases in CO2. In fact, during the past two decades in which the highest CO2 values have been recorded, the lower tropospheric temperature has actually decreased.
Of greater interest to most people is, of course, temperatures where they live on the Earth's surface. Figure 3 shows average surface temperatures in the contiguous United States for the past 103 years. Current temperatures are now near the 103-year mean. Global averages are the most relevant to the warming debate, while regional temperatures are of greatest public interest.
There are two global surface compilations that are used by the warmers. These two compilations contain essentially the same sorts of artifacts and uncertainties, which disqualify them as useful information in evaluating global warming. The research literature comprehensively addresses this question. The flavor of this is illustrated by the bias that has been introduced into the NASA-GISS compilation through the urban heat island effect in California and the obviously biased choice of measuring stations as shown in figure 4. The California stations alone cannot account entirely for the large errors in these compilations, which are continually used in "warmer'' propaganda. They do, however, illustrate the poor quality of the NASA-GISS work.
Never forget that the global warming debate is not about minor greenhouse warming. Nor is it about natural temperature fluctuations as experienced, for example, during the past 300 years while the Earth recovers from the Little Ice Age. Warmers want the public to believe that the detection of any temperature increase at all is proof of their claims. Indeed, the slight drift downward in tropospheric temperatures during the past two decades is simply fortuitous. With essentially equal probability, global temperatures could have been drifting upward during that period. Figure 2 in the review shows the wide range of temperatures that has prevailed during the past 3,000 years.
Warmers, politically unlucky in the current natural temperature cycle, are trying to convince the public that the first sign of temperature increase will presage disaster. In the absence of that increase, they are invoking all sorts of nonsense such as butterfly migrations, on the premise that butterflies can detect temperature changes that still elude human thermometers.
Global warming is not about mild changes in temperature - up or down. The definition of "global warming'' which is now seared into the public mind by the warmers' propaganda campaign is: catastrophically large temperature increases giving rise to global climatological disasters in the forms of continental flooding, erratic and severe weather, and massive damage to the Earth's biological environment. It is this claim that has been scientifically invalidated.
"Global warming'' has nothing whatever to do with the minor increases in temperature that will surely be observed eventually, since the current natural temperature trend cannot, of course, continue permanently downward.
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Vol. 25, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 25, No. 6 Date: February 01, 1998 04:48 PM Title: Seadrift
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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