Cause or effect?
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, and staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute, has a few more words about CO2 and globaloney:
The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions—a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.
Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.” Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.
Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollution—a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.
Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolution—the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.
Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influence—not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
As we have said, it defies common sense that going from a carbon dioxide concentration of 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million threatens catastrophe when such larger forces are at work. Of course greed is a large force in human life as well, for those who wish to exploit the superstitions and mental frailties of the average American ignoramus.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Of course greed is a large force in human life as well, for those who wish to exploit the superstitions and mental frailties of the average American ignoramus.
Even though their behavior may well prove destructive, IMO not all AGW proselytizers are malevolent or cynical–but some are, obviously; among the ones who are, not all started that way. As for ‘ignoramus’:
As we have said, it defies common sense that going from a carbon dioxide concentration of 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million threatens catastrophe when such larger forces are at work.
To my eye, this sentence seems a bit wide-ranging. Doesn’t it defy common sense that the force which makes a dropped pencil fall is also the force the keeps the moon near the Earth? Doesn’t it defy common sense that a portable amount of a heavy metal can explode to devastate a city?
If this is accurate, the original usage of ‘ignoramus’ is just the attitude that’s needed wrt anthropogenic global warming:
IMO, ‘insufficient evidence to warrant prosecution’ is spot on. As has been discussed at Dinocrat, we don’t understand climate change well enough to justify reconfiguring civilization–with the attendant economic distortion, retarded progress, and prolongation of global poverty.
Climate change is a serious concern. It is a reasonable goal that, say by the end of the century, humanity have developed the capability to make minor adjustments to the planetary environment. Basic and applied research should be funded. But it is only, um, common sense that political, economic, and technological tweakings of the ecosystem be engineered to be reversible.