The time has come to burst the Global Warming bubble. So, here we go.
The Earth's Atmosphere weighs about 5 quadrillion tons (that's five thousand
trillion tons) and is composed of:
78% Nitrogen
20.9% Oxygen
1% Water Vapor
0.9% Argon
0.04% Carbon Dioxide
- and about 0.002% everything else.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Report on Climate Change 2007, since 1900, human activities, specifically
the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil, fossil fuels, have caused Carbon
Dioxide (CO2) to increase from 0.028% of the atmosphere to 0.038% of the
atmosphere, an increase of CO2 by 100 parts per million (ppm), more than a
third, which sounds pretty dramatic, and this has caused an allegedly
unprecedented sudden increase in global temperature of (hang on to your hats,
folks), one degree!
Now, this is an increase in CO2 of 0.01% of the atmosphere, or 100 parts per
million (ppm). 100 ppm is the same as 1 part per 10,000, which is 1% (one
hundredth) of 1% (one hundredth). So, in the last 100 years, CO2 has increased
by 1% of 1% of the atmosphere, increasing at a rate of 1% of 1% of 1% per year.
Not much. In other terms, CO2 has increased from (rounding up for convenience)
0.03% of the atmosphere, to 0.04%. Not much.
This seems a bit less dramatic. Same data, different presentation.
Now, just how big a change is this? Let's illustrate.
Suppose you have a swimming pool that holds 10,000 gallons of water. To
imagine how much water that is, most of the big fuel trucks (tanker trailers)
you see delivering gasoline to gas stations are 5,000 gallon trailers. So, it
takes two of the big gasoline tanker trailers that you see on the road every
day, full of water, to fill your swimming pool. Now, 100 ppm, the increase in
CO2 over the last century, is the same as 1 part in 10,000. To put the increase
in CO2 in the atmosphere in a perspecive that's easy to understand, let's
imagine that you increase the water volume in your pool by 1 part in 10,000, in
a hundred years.
In 1907, you have 10,000 gallons of water in your pool. 97,997 gallons are
clear water, and 3 gallons are "blue water," colored blue by safe
nontoxic edible blue food coloring. Each year after that, you add 1.28 ounces
(yes, ounces) of "blue water" to your swimming pool. After 100 hundred years,
it's 2008 now, you have added 128 ounces of blue water to your pool, that's one
(1) gallon, one part in 10,000. You now have 97,997 gallons of clear water in
your pool, and 4 gallons of "blue water" in your pool, for a total of
10,001 gallons of water in your pool.
And that, folks, is how much CO2, the demon gas causing Global Warming, has
increased in Earth's Atmosphere since 100 years ago. According to the IPCC. We
just put it in proper perspective. One gallon in 10,000. One gallon in 100
hundred years. 1.28 ounces per year.
Now, let's look at some Global Warming history, courtesy of www.GlobalWarmingArt.com. Because Global Warming
Art is a proponent of Global Warming theory, I am going to make an assumption
that its graphic representations are substantially true and accurate. I will
stipulate that they be admitted as evidence.
Chart 1.
In Chart 1, above, we see that during the last 5 million years there have
been some fifty or so eras of global Cooling and Warming, with the long-term
trend cooling about 6 degrees from 5 million years ago. But the temperature
variations between Cool Eras and Warm Eras becoming wider. In this Chart, we
also see that the present temperature is similar to that of the eras of Global
Warming approximately 100,000, 300,000, 400,000, and 1,000,000 years ago, and
only about 0.5 degrees warmer than the other Global Warming eras of the last
million years.
In Chart 2, which illustrates the last 450,000 years, the blue and green
lines represent temperature, while the red line represents ice volume, but is
inverted - a high red line represents less ice, a low red line represents more
ice. Warmer temperature, less ice. Cooler temperature, more ice. What we see
here is that there have been six eras of Global Warming in the last half million
years, beginning with our own, at the right, and one peaking about 120,000 years
ago, one about 200,000 years ago, one about 240,000 years ago, one about 330,000
years ago, and one about 400,000 years ago. We also see that four of the last
five eras of Global Warming were warmer than now. Two of them (240,000 and
330,000 years ago) were much shorter than now. And each each of them (a) began
quickly, and (b) ended quickly, in terms of geologic time. We see, also, in
Charts 1 and 2, a history of short Warm Eras, that last about 2,000 to 10,000
years, interrupted by long Cold Eras, or Ice Ages, that last about 100,000
years.
In Chart 3, we see an illustration of temperature changes during the last
12,000 years, our Warm Era, or Holocene, since the end of the last glacial
period, or Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. What we see here are dramatic
short-term fluctuations in global temperature, represented by the thin colored
lines on the Chart, and the average temperature trend line, represented by the
fat black line. The short-term (centuries) fluctuations swing from about 1
degree below to 1.5 degrees above the baseline of zero, with the 2004
temperature well within that historic variation at 0.5 degrees above the
baseline. We also see that during the last 10,000 years, global temperature has
varied from about two degrees cooler than now to about one degree warmer than
now. And we see that "Global Warming" as shown by the black trendline peaked
about 8,000 years ago, and has been following a shallow, but definite, cooling
trend ever since, with minor fluctuations..
While there is a small rise in temperature in the last 200 years, the earth
is still cooler than it was most of the time from 2,000 to 10,000 years ago.
Now let's look at one last illustration, Chart 4.
20,000 years ago, a blink of the eye in geologic time, at the last Glacial
Maximum, or the peak of the last Ice Age, there was so much of the world's water
deposited on the continents in the form of glaciers, ice fields, and permanent
snow fields, that sea level was nearly 400 feet (140 meters, approx.)
lower than now. With sea level 400 feet lower than now, most of the
world's seaports would be high and dry, some of them many miles from water, and
the Pacific Ocean would be lapping at the shores of California near the
Farrallon Buttes (now known as the "Farrallon Islands") eleven miles west of San
Francisco.
Something happened about 18,000 years ago that began the present era of
Global Warming, and it wasn't the invention of the Internal Combustion Engine,
or man's burning of fossil fuels. We've been doing that on a big scale for only
100 years, during which the average global temperature has gone up almost one
degree, and then, in the last year, down almost one degree.
No, about 18,000 years ago (and, before that, about 140,000 years ago, about
200,000 years ago, about 240,000 years ago, about 340,000 years ago, and about
440,000 years ago) something happened that caused the earth to warm, quickly and
dramatically, ending the long Ice Ages and bringing on short eras of Global
Warming that lasted a few thousand years before the earth reverted to its
natural, colder, state of Glacial Advance. And it wasn't us - we weren't here
then, at least not in large numbers, and not with cars, trucks, trains, ships,
and airplanes, burning oil and coal.
We can see, referring to Chart 4, and Chart 3,
that the last Ice Age began to end and the present Global Warming began about
18,000 years ago, and that between 18,000 BP (Before Present) and about 8,000 BP
there was so much Global Warming that it melted off the continental glaciers
fast enough to raise sea level from nearly 400 feet below the present sea level
to the sea level now, in just 10,000 years.
As recently as 10,000 BP, sea level was low enough that the "Bering Land
Bridge," or Beringia, the size of a small continent, some 1,000 miles north to
south, linked Alaska and Siberia, and the English Channel between the British
Isles and Europe was dry land. Glaciers covered most of Canada and Alaska, and
large parts of the northern Midwest, the Dakotas, Michigan, Minnesota, as well
as much of northern Europe, Scandinavia, Russia, Siberia, nearly all of them
melted away in the last 15,000 years, just before recorded human history
begins.
Can it happen again?
On July 14, 1942, a flight of six P-38 fighters and 2 B-17s enroute from the
US to England was forced to land in a severe snowstorm on the Greenland icecap.
All crew survived and were rescued, by dogsled, nine days later, but the
airplanes were too far away from anywhere to salvage, and were left in the snow.
In 1992, one of the P-38s was salvaged, and has been restored to flying
condition as "Glacier Girl," and on June 22, 2007, set out to complete the the
flight to England that had been so rudely interrupted sixty-five years ago.
When the salvage team reached the airplane, it was buried under 270 feet of
ice. The Greenland icecap had grown thicker, deeper, at an average rate of more
than 5 feet per year from 1941 to 1992. Five feet per year.
The long, five-million year history of Ice Ages and Global Warming every
110,000 years or so tells us that Global Cooling and Global Warming are
indisputably natural events that have been going on long before us, and, if
history is any guide, will continue to cool and warm the earth in cycles of
approximately 110,000 years throughout the foreseeable future. Al Gore and the
rest of the Global Warmingists don't mention this. This climate cycling is, to a
substantial scientific certainty, caused by a confluence of changes in solar
(sun) radiation (Maunder minimums and maximums), cyclical changes in the shape
of the earth's orbit and the distance between the earth and the sun
(Milankovitch cycles), and in the thermal (heat) output of the Earth's nuclear
core that drives volcanic eruptions and discharges of lava and gases (see www.NuclearPlanet.com), especially undersea
volcanism that periodically warms the oceans, resulting in more ocean water
evaporation, more rainfall, and the increased snowfall that causes Ice Ages.
The problem with Al Gore & The Global Warmingists is that he, and they,
fail to explain the evidence. To make their case for human-caused Global
Warming, they must explain (a) how and why the many cycles of Global Warming and
glacial retreat and advance, before now, happened, and (b) to be good
scientists, they need to explain why this era of Global Warming, which started
18,000 years ago, is different from the last fifty - but they haven't, and
they can't, because it isn't. Or, if it is, they have the
burden of proof, and they haven't produced the evidence. They haven't explained
what caused the many prior Global Warmings, what caused the present Global
Warming from 18,000 BP to 100 BP, and how and why the last 100 years are
different, when, in fact, the last 100 years are cooler than most of the
last 10,000 years, and the present Global Warming is cooler than 4 of the
last 5 eras of Global Warming (Chart 2).
Al Gore & The Global Warmingists have made the sophomoric error of
assuming that the correlation between a trivial increase in CO2 in
the atmosphere over the last 100 years, which correlates, chronologically, with
a small (one degree) increase in global temperature, caused that
increase in global temperature, ignoring the fact (as most of us should have
learned in our high school science classes) that correlation does not, ipso
facto, prove causation. Just because two things happen at the same time does not
prove that one caused the other.
The IPCC report states: "The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in
2005 (379 ppm) [parts per million] exceeds by far the natural range of
the last 650,000 years (180 to 300 ppm)," and "The amount of methane in the
atmosphere in 2005 (1774 ppb) [parts per billion] exceeds by far the
natural range of the last 650,000 years (320 to 790 ppb)."*
Assuming this is true, and that this "dramatic" increase in CO2 and methane
in the atmosphere is what causes Global Warming, then the global temperature
should "exceed by far the natural range" of global temperature over the last
650,000 years. But it doesn't. It is well within the natural range of
global temperature during the previous eras of Global Warming over the last
650,000 years, and within the last 10,000 years, proving that the unprecedented
increase in CO2 and methane does not cause unprecedented Global Warming,
precisely because it hasn't.
And so we see that the IPCC Report on Global Warming, read and understood
properly, disproves its own conclusion.
Will the present era of Global Warming end? Will there be another Ice Age? If
history is any guide, yes. With record snowfalls and record low temperatures in
many places around the world this winter, some climatologists think it has
already begun.
For a quick and convenient briefing on Global Warming and Ice Age issues,
many of which the Global Warmingists ignore, I recommend a trip to
www.Wikipedia.com and a look at
the articles there on the Bering Land Bridge, or Beringia, Earth's
Atmosphere, Glacier Girl, Glaciers, Global Warming,
Ice Ages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the
Maunder Minimum, the Milankovitch Cycle, and Sea Level
Rise, and for evidence of global cooling to www.IceAgeNow.com.
