Soon after I arrived in America, JFK was killed. Yet I was never tried for murder, because correlation does not imply causality
¾ except in the case of global warming. We have an undisputed in-crease in CO2, and we have a formerly undisputed increase in global temperature. We also have one of many possible mechanisms linking CO2 to temperature (~he greenhouse effect), without the slightest inkling of the extent to which it might be im-portant. That's all.Now it turns out that even the temperature rise is very much in doubt [AtE Nov 89], a devastating threat to the theory. (In the anal-ogy: is Kennedy dead?)
I don't know that there is "a broad consensus among scientists" or that "the great majority of climatologists are agreed . . . ," since such phrases come out of sewers like the New York Times. But what if they are true? Scientific theories are not made by majority vote, but by the simplest way to interpret all the available evidence. So the first stop for any layman should be at the dissidents, and the second at the establishment's reply. (If it has none, that tells him something, too.)
Among the many dissidents is Prof. Sherwood Idso, whose objections I noted six years ago l AtE Dec 83]. They still lack wide publicity, but Idso, a research physicist with the USDA and adjunct professor of botany at Arizona State U., has now publish-ed a book, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition (292pp., sftbd., typewritten offset, $19.95 from Inst. f Biospheric Res., 631 E. Laguna Dr., Tempe, AZ 85282). Almost half of it are references, and it is not easy reading. But a layman can follow it, and nobody interested in global warming can afford to miss it. Why has the book not been published by a regular publisher? Because it is not called Before the Greenhouse Fries Your Future, in which case Norton and McGraw Hill would have jumped for it as a sequel to Secret Fallout and Killing Our Own.)
Idso does not question the temperature increase, but notes, as have others, the counterevidence of history. His particular con- tribution is the normal CO
2 content of the late 16th and early 17th centuries (from ice borings in Peru glaciers) which is uncorrelated with the "Little Ice Age" of the time. [And what warmed up the big ice ages? Dinosaur Power & Light?]He also asks the heretic question, what's so bad about a com- paratively high CO
2 concentration? Plants love it. [But Rifkin has just come out against cattle, you sinners. Absurd, but consistent, for they belch methane. Rifkin belches only CO2.]But his main point is a thoroughly documented and experimen-tally supported point: When it gets warmer, there is more evapora-tion. And water vapor keeps more of the incoming energy out in the first place. CO
2 only keeps the heat in; water vapor alters the overall reflectivity of the earth (its albedo) and keeps more of it out. And guess which of the two gases plays a bigger role in the atmosphere. The main short-term effect of the water vapor could well be a regulatory overshoot that leads to global cooling. In fact, Idso gives strong reasons for the terrestrial albedo being already close to its limit now.Limp Wimp Bush, Hong Kong Maggie and all other vote-greedy pols are pushing the global warming fad because it is an excellent political coalition builder. But why has much of the scien-tific establishment, cheered on by the media, never noticed the role of water vapor in the atmosphere?
Because they have their heads in the clouds.
[For another recent sober assessment of global warming see A.R Solow, "Is it getting stuffy in here, or is it just my imagination?" Chance (Statistics and computing), vol.2, no.3, 1989. See also the "Gaia" theory [AtE Aug 88].]
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Vol. 17, No. 4
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 17, No. 4 Date: December 01, 2004 03:25 PM Title: No more threats to energy security?
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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