Global Warming.
By R. J. Del Vecchio
First, I am a trained and long-practicing scientist, and I look
at data dispassionately. Just the facts, the data, the logic, please, and
we try as much as humanly possible to push for objectivity and suppress any
emotional reactions we might have.
When the subject of what is properly
called Anthromorphic Global Warming (AGW), that is, planetary warming caused
entirely by human activity, came up years ago, I was immediately
interested. As a chemist I know that the CO2 molecule is excited by sunlight
and generates heat, thus a rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration was a logical
suspect for the possibility of warming.
However, the Romans had a saying about
poisons, that dosage size is all important, and that's very true. You can
kill yourself drinking too much water, or taking too much salt, both of which
are essential to life. When it comes to CO2 and warming, it turns out
that all the calculations show that you need a high concentration, like a
few percent, of it in the air to really trap enough heat so that the planet
can't reflect it back out to space fast enough and the temperature must rise
over time.
However, the level of CO2 has gone from
under 300 parts per million to just about 400 ppm in the last hundred years or
so. Even at 400 ppm, that is actually 0.04%, and nobody, even the most
fervent believers, will maintain that such a level of CO2 can, by itself, warm
the planet.
So how do they all make the dire
predictions we've seen? By the theory that a small rise in CO2 brings on
a large rise in water vapor in the atmosphere, and the H2O molecule is the one,
at actual percentage levels, that will trap all the heat. Only problem is
that there is total ZERO data supporting this theory, and on a planet with 2/3
of its surface covered by water, hit by the sun, and whipped up by winds and
waves, it would seem really more likely that other factors are what control
planetary humidity.
Can the planet be warming? Sure it
can, we're still coming out of the last ice age. But the best data we
have on planetary temperature is from the millions of satellite readings, and
they show no serious trend in temperature climb for the past 18 years.
The believers call this "the pause" and have no explanation for it.
If indeed warming is underway, and that
is possible, it is very slow, and related to things other than human produced
CO2. Since India and China and other parts of the world aren't even really
considering slowing down their use of coal and fuels, nothing we can do will
make any difference, other than to raise the price of energy here, cost us all
more money, make us less competitive internationally, and make the fat cats who
want to run the "carbon exchanges" billionaires. The right
answer to whatever warming there is will be breakwaters, dikes, levees, etc,
which human beings have been able to make for a very long time already.
Thinking we can somehow stop and reverse whatever warming is going on for the
planet is like the ant running up the elephant's leg with intentions of rape.....
way, way too ambitious!
Some references I recommend (out of a
list of over 200 I've collected)
Posts
I love that you're still disavowing and denying climate change. That's perfect.
ReplyDeleteI guess reading skills are in decline. It doesn't say there's no warming, it just observes that whatever there is, does not fit the computer model prediction of the last 18 years, and that human generated CO2 cannot be tied to any change with solid scientific data and logic. It also says that the right thing to do is plan for possible change. There is no "disavowing and denying" as such, but of course anyone not agreeing entirely with the current hoopla MUST be wrong. Sigh....
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