I recently had the following debate with a proponent of global warming regulations on a blog, which is worth preserving:
Does continuing to burn coal, gas and oil, have no effect on the atmosphere?
It has no effect on global warming. It can emit actual pollutants into the air. (CO2 is not a pollutant by any sane definition.) But it has nothing to do with global warming.
If our planet were 5 degrees warmer, would that be a good thing for polar regions?
Since the polar regions are MORE THAN 5 degrees BELOW freezing, it would make absolutely no difference to the polar regions. If water freezes at 0 degrees Centigrade, and you warm the poles from -31 degrees C to -26 degrees C, is ice going to melt? Since when does ice now melt at less than the freezing point?
Please explain how the temperature at which water freezes has CHANGED?
Is the ice getting thicker in the Arctic region?
Yes, actually, it is. As nature is wont to do, it is ALWAYS CHANGING. It is getting thicker in some places and thinner in other places. It is ALWAYS CHANGING.
Have you seen the photographs of liquid ocean at the North Pole found by a photograph, I think 80 years ago? Nature is not a static thing.
Should folks ignore 90% of climate scientists from around the world?
No, 90% of TRUE climate scientists tell us that WE DON'T KNOW if human activity is affecting the global temperature. If you ignore the vocal minority, including those who are not climate scientists, you should listen to those who tell us there is no evidence for man-made global warming.
Are they a worldwide scientific conspiracy to control republicans?
Not to control Republicans, but to control T H E M O N E Y , H O N E Y, hell yes it is a POLITICAL conspiracy to abuse science to control people's lives and steal money from countries like the USA.
Is the earth’s global temperature different or the same at different locations around the earth? Why is that?
While there should theoretically be a concept of a global temperature, in reality there is no such thing as a practical matter. Temperatures vary wildly throughout the Earth and over time. NOBODY HAS THE FOGGIEST CLUE what the global temperature is, or was over time.
No one can tell you TODAY what the global temperature is, in part because only parts of the Earth are measured with weather stations. They cannot tell what the global temperature was yesterday, last month, last year, 10 years ago, or 100 years ago.
Widespread weather stations distributed throughout the Earth only began -- and have not yet been achieved -- with the rise of aviation between World War I and World War II. Prior to around 1850-1880, there was not standardized SCALE for measuring temperature and recording it in a meaningful way. Prior to World War 2, only a few scattered places on the globe were being measured -- and most of those cities.
Most weather measurements (that are regularly recorded) have been taken over time at airports, which consist of ASPHALT installations that collect heat, and which have CHANGED from propeller planes to JET ENGINES, and which have systematically been surrounded by urban sprawl. There is a known "heat effect" of construction. So as cities have surrounded the airports, the "heat effect" of buildings and roads (which absorb the sun's heat) has made temperature measurements at airports reflect the changing conditions at the weather stations -- not a fundamental change in the Earth's climate.
So those weather stations have measured a REAL rise in temperature at that location caused by the increased heat from jet engines (changed from earlier prop planes), expanded asphalt from larger runways and more buildings, and the change in the environment around the airport from undeveloped land covered with foliage to urbanization encroaching around the airport.
One measuring station was found to be directly in the path of jet blast from jets taking off on the runway.
One measuring station on the roof of a building was found to be directly next to a huge industrial air conditioner, so that heat from the air conditioner was blowing on to the temperature gauge.
What’s the current carbon dioxide measurement Moseley? Why is it changing?
CO2 is an extremely tiny component of the atmosphere. The geological data shows that increased CO2 occurs * 800 YEARS AFTER * a rise in global temperatures.
Yes, there is an inconvenient truth for you. Over the history of the Earth, when temperatures rise, CO2 rises on average 800 years *LATER* in time. Only in the la-la land of liberal world does something that happens 800 years AFTERwards count as "cause and effect."
Is the idea of man-made global warming a hoax? YES. Because proponents hide the fact that increased atmospheric CO2 occurs on average 800 years AFTER warmer temperatures in the geologic record.
The fact that global warming activists HIDE this fact from the public qualifies their efforts as a hoax and a fraud.
This is probably due to warming of the oceans, which lowers the capacity of the oceans to hold dissolved CO2, causing more to be released into the atmosphere.
Is carbon dioxide an irrelevant chemical in the atmosphere that should be ignored?
The idea that anyone knows is a complete fantasy. There is no data available that in the context of a complex system like the atmosphere atmospheric carbon dioxide has any affect on warming the Earth. It is equally likely -- it has never been TESTED -- that when CO2 absorbs heat, AND HOT GASSES *RISE* TOWARD OUTER SPACE, the CO2 radiates the heat at high altitudes, thus COOLING the Earth. Once again: If CO2 traps heat, THEN RISES TO HIGH ALTITUDES because warm air rises in relation to colder air, that the net affect is to TRANSPORT heat from the Earth's surface up to higher altitudes, where it is radiated and part of it is radiated into outer space. In other words, it may function exactly like an air conditioner, trapping heat near the Earth's surface and trasnsporting heat up to the upper atmosphere.
The problem comes from ASSUMING that what happens in a controlled simplistic situation in a laboratory translates into the complex global weather pattern of the atmosphere. Yes, CO2 absorbs heat... AND THEN WHAT? You think HOT gas just sits there and stays still and never moves? If CO2 traps heat, why do you imagine it remains anchored in a fixed place, never moving, hovering a few feet off the ground? Hot air rises.
BOTTOM LINE: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT EFFECT INCREASED CO2 HAS.
The only thing we know for certain is that over the Earth's history, the Earth warms AND THEN LATER, about 800 years later, more CO2 is measured in the atmosphere.
Has the sun been hotter in the last ten years?
10 years is not the measure, but since 1973, because there are long time delays in the impact. And the answer is *YES* the effective energy STRIKING all of the planets has been greater. Across the spectrum of radiation and output of solar wind, the IMPACT of energy on the Earth, Mars, Pluto, the moon Triton, and Jupiter and Saturn INCREASED.
One reason for this appears to be that dramatic changes in the Sun's magnetic field affect how much interstellar dust enters the solar system. (The sun is MOVING through the galaxy -- and quite rapidly -- as it circles the galactic center. We are moving INTO clouds of gas and dust from time time as we circle the galaxy.) This seems to create more or less dust FILTERING the amount of energy hitting the planets from the sun. As the sun's magnetic field lets more dust in, there is more dust FILTERING the radiation hitting the Earth.
The Sun is a big blob of gas. The orbits of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, and to a lesser extent Uranus and Neptune cause the sun to WOBBLE around the solar system's center of gravity, and the sun to SLOSH around the mutual center of gravity of all of the planets taken as a whole. Like a large bowl of water, if you pivot around in a circle, the orbits of the planets causes cyclical changes inside the sun.
Those cyclical changes create variation of the sun's activity on an 11 year cycle (really two halves of a 22 year cycle), 170 year cycle, a 400 year cycle, etc.
See my detailed explanation, citing to (gasp) SCIENTISTS about all of this, at:
http://usnavjonmoseley.blogspot.com/2009/04/global-warmings-astronomical-origins.html
In January, Japan's prestigious Society of Energy and Resources gave an "astonishing rebuke" to scientists promoting the idea of man-made global warming. JSER, a government advisory board, compared global warming theories to "ancient astrology." JSER noted that the Earth stopped warming in 2001 (other say 1998), but in general the Earth has merely been recovering naturally from the "Little Ice Age" that occurred between around 1400 and 1800.
The Japanese scientists criticized over-reliance on inherently-unreliable computer models, without real-world testing of the hypothesis. JSER concluded that cycles in the sun's activities cause variation in the Earth's climate: "Through the 11 year sunspot cycle, ultraviolet rays vary considerably, the ionosphere and ozone layer
are affected."
Poland's Academy of Sciences recently published a document that rejects man-made global warming, also known as Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). The Polish Academy notes that over the history of the Earth, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased an average of 800 years AFTER warmer temperatures. This data decisively proves that carbon dioxide does not cause global warming. Global warming comes first. Then carbon dioxide increased later. (Most likely dissolved CO2 evaporated from warming oceans.)
Is there no anthropogenic CO2, other than from breathing?
Mankind does not create anything in terms of physical material. All we can do is move it around. Nature created the CO2, and the constitutent chemicals. It is arrogant vanity to ascribe so much power and impact to humans. Yes we can chemically combine carbon and oxygen into CO2, but it was photosynthesis that previously converted CO2 into C and O2. So all we are doing is shuttling back and forth among what nature created.
What is now considered the CO2 tipping point?
The concept of a tipping point is a fantasy, stacking assumption upon assumption. Not only is it an untested guess, but the logical path is obviously flawed.
Furthermore, the more CO2 in the atmosphere THE MORE PLANT LIFE WILL BE STIMULATED, converting CO2 back into Carbon and free oxygen. CO2 in the atmosphere is like fertilizer for agriculture, forests, and algae in the water. Combined with a naturally occurring warming of the solar system, increased plant life in the warmth will eliminate the increased CO2 and convert it back into free oxygen and trapped carbon.
Is the sun turning the oceans acidic?
Well the oceans are not becoming acidic, other than in hysteria-driven computer models, but if the sun is warming the Earth, causing more dissolved CO2 to escape from the oceans, then the alkaline-acidic balance of the oceans would be affected by the evaporation of CO2 previously dissolved in the ocean's seawater.
Of course, plant life (including the vast quantities of algae in the gigantic oceans) wil then gobble up the CO2 and convert the CO2 back into oxygen.
Is methane 70 times more powerful GHG than carbon dioxide? Is free releasing methane a good thing?
Methane -- like water vapor -- is a more powerful chemical at THEORETICALLY trapping heat than carbon dioxide. But what does that have to do with anything? By your logic, it would be a very good thing to harvest all the methane we can, BURN IT, and turn it into CO2. As you know, methane does escape NATURALLY from pockets including under the sea floor. If methane traps more heat than CO2, than we should aggressively grab as much of it as we can, BURN IT FOR FUEL, and convert methane into CO2, which is less harmful.
However, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and even electric battery cars, cause more water vapor to be emitted into the atmosphere. The water vapor from fuel cell cars is a greater danger to global warming than the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels.
