Using the WMO terminology, 2006 is set to become the “sixth warmest year” after 1998, 2005, 2002, 2003, and 2004: see WMO’s top five Nevertheless, when a naive and innocent girl would read most of the newspapers, she would most likely start to think that we live in an era of a spectacular global warming. In reality, we live in an era of a spectacularly inexpensive propaganda produced by unusually blinded zealots.
And that’s the memo.
Figure 1: Global cooling. This graph, depicting 6 warmest years since 1998 according to their rank, shows how Al Gore and other people with comparable moral and scientific standards would be presenting the recent temperature records if cooling became more convenient for their goals than warming.
How did you know I was left handed johnboy. As for Ad, apparently he does not understand what he reads, so of course will follow the envirowackos. Today there were two stories on the news, one interviewing a tourist operator, complaining of lack of snow for the skiers, and trying to find other things for them to do. Another one had a store manager complaining he had not sold his winter boots and parkas etc. These are retailers complaining not getting the climate change usually associated with winter. Cold springs and summers, they complain about not selling suntan lotion etc. We have climate change at least 4 times a year, every year, and kyoto credits and wackos can do nothing about it. Sometimes it happens sooner than expected and other times much later. For the greens, ndpers and dion trying to scare us with the term climate change shows how ignorant they are all, along with all of you that think it is a new thing. In 1953 we had no snow at Christmas, or cold weather till Jan. 1954. The world survived. I would ask johnboy and ad this, what have you personally done to implement the kyoto accocrd in your own life. Did you buy any new electrical appliances, any electronic goods, turn your heat down, quit driving, or what. And even if you bought sweaters to wear instead of using your furnace, production of those sweaters used energy. Do you have a christmas tree, do you have lights on it. Did you buy presents. Somebody or some industry had to cause emmissions so you could enjoy your life.
A good primer on CO2 levels.
So if 500 million years ago CO2 levels were considerably higher than now, some 20 times current levels, why is it suddenly a “bad” thing when C02 levels are rising now?
Something the CO2 alarmists haven’t accounted for is there were considerably less humans on the planet then yet somehow we managed to ‘evolve’ to the present form.
So we get bigger date palm trees and larger fern forest vegetation. In what way is this catastrophic? Hey, I like dates anyway.
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml
Carbon Dioxide through Geologic Time
Introduction
Since of the Earth’s atmosphere is out-of-balance with the conditions expected from simple chemical equilibrium, it is very hard to say what precisely sets the level of the carbon dioxide content in the air throughout geologic time. While scientists are fairly certain that a 100 million years ago carbon dioxide values were many times higher than now, the exact value is in doubt. In very general terms, long-term reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 levels going back in time show that 500 million years ago atmospheric CO2 was some 20 times higher than present values. It dropped, then rose again some 200 million years ago to 4-5 times present levels–a period that saw the rise of giant fern forests–and then continued a slow decline until recent pre-industrial time.
History of Atmospheric CO2 through geological time (past 550 million years: from Berner, Science, 1997). The parameter RCO2 is defined as the ratio of the mass of CO2 in the atmosphere at some time in the past to that at present (with a pre-industrial value of 300 parts per million). The heavier line joining small squares represents the best estimate of past atmospheric CO2 levels based on geochemical modeling and updated to have the effect of land plants on weathering introduced 380 to 350 million years ago. The shaded area encloses the approximate range of error of the modeling based on sensitivity analysis. Vertical bars represent independent estimates of CO2 level based on the study of ancient soils.
Carbon Cycling, Plate Tectonics and Organic Matter Burial
Most scientists agree that carbon dioxide has decreased over the last 200 million years because of speeding up of the passage of carbon atoms from their volcanic sources into sediments. As we learned in the last section, to lower the CO2 content one needs fresh rocks to provide calcium, and it also helps to bury organic matter.
Fresh rocks are provided through plate collisions and mountain building, that is, uplift of land and a drop in sea level. On the whole, there has been a trend to make more mountains during the last 100 million years, and especially since the last 40 million years. This is seen in the strontium isotope content of marine carbonates. The type of strontium derived from igneous rocks on land has increased relative to the type of strontium from other sources.
Organic matter is buried in swamps (plant remains turn into coal) and in continental margins (marine algal remains become hydrocarbons). The climate cooled as the planet acquired mountain ranges (like the Himalayas) and as sea level dropped. Trade winds became more vigorous. Coastal upwelling of nutrients in coastal waters increased. Thus, more organic matter was buried along the coasts of continents. Also, an increase in the amount of mud from the rising mountains helped to bury the organic matter.
As time went on carbon dioxide was more readily turned into sedimentary carbon and the planet cooled some more. Methane hydrate could have formed on the sea floor, trapping methane and denying another source of carbon to the ocean-atmosphere system. (The exception might perhaps have been during sporadic release of this methane, followed by strange jumps in climate.)
Carbon Cycle and Computer Models
So many processes have to be considered in the carbon cycle that it is extremely difficult to keep them in mind, and impossible to calculate without building a computer model to simulate them. Scientists interested in the carbon cycle have built a number of such models over the years. Such models can have between 50 and 100 interacting equations describing all the different processes of the carbon cycle that are relevant to the problem of how carbon dioxide changes through geologic time.
To what extent should the answers generated from such models be trusted? Consider this: if there are a dozen processes which we need to understand, and we only grasp each process within an error of 20 percent, the sum-total of the error adds to more than 200 percent! That is, if we now state that the content of carbon dioxide in the air so many million years ago had to be X, the true answer could be anywhere between 3 times X (200% more than stated) and X divided by 3 (200% less). Even if we make the reasonable assumption that half of the errors will cancel, we still get roughly a factor of two error on either side of the uncertainty statement. Thus, at the present state of knowledge, computing the answers will get us ballpark estimates and overall trends but not much more. Now you can appreciate why the range of errors plotted in the figure above are so large.
back to MaryT for what i have done, yes i have turned down the thermostat, i ride my bike, and now i am forced into public transport due to the weather in the cold praries, i buy organic products, i try my best. Kyoto being a Hoax to somehow “steal” money from our pockets and give it to complying nations, i just don’t know if i can buy into it. I agree that we should not be taking money out of our economy if penalized for complying to the standards, we should reinvest it into our capabilities to produce cleaner emissions. I know there a lot of extremists out there on either end of this spectrum, and i would just hope that everyone could settle down and look at each argument reasonably. There has got to be some middle ground, and it seems apparent that Kyoto is not the answer. If every other country buys into Kyoto and Canada does not, then we have to prove that we can do it without the Kyoto regulations.
Ummmm. MaryT.
Maybe you have me confused with someone else. If you look at all my posts you will see that I am against Kyoto, although I think that there are things that can be done to reduce our impact on the environment. I just don’t think it’s a doomsday scenario.
Oh, and i don’t have a Christmas tree with lights on it either! hehe.
I live with my two friends, we can’t afford those kinds of luxuries!
Ad,
With all due respect. There a many people like you in Canada who sincerely believe they are doing the right thing and for the most part are. However, the problem lies in what is deemed a pollutant. There are serious problems involving noxious gases that pollute our air, water and earth and they need to be addressed. However, the issue facing us here is the massive fraud of climate change politics. I have studied both sides and have found that the evidence the UN used to build its infamous hockey stick curve is based on pure and unadulterated fantasy with variables that are impossible to predict and then entered into a computer to produce a exaggerated outcome.
Junkscience.com has been a proponent of exposing faulty science like the DDT Ban fraud which caused the deaths of millions of poor people from malaria over the years. This horror was caused by the “consensus” of Scientists who had falsely claimed it was bad for the environment. DDT is now back in use, however, the damage these people caused is immeasurable and all in the name of Environmental protection. Junk Science is now working hard to prove how the science behind the global warming hysteria is false before economies and resources are diverted to the wasteful endeavor of controlling a non pollutant and set back the world economies by decades. The real crime here is it also diverts attention from real problems like the deaths of millions from TB and Malaria.
It has been said the road to hell is paved with good intentions and in the case of DDT and now the Climate change hysteria nothing could be further from the truth.
I don’t quite get why anyone reasonably educated in at least high school science would insist on denying that by cutting down an enourmous amount of trees and burning enormous amounts of fossil fuels would have an effect on the earth’s atmosphere.
Kate knows it’s true, she’s not that stoopid.
So why is there the denial anyway?, because the Lefties say it’s so?
PS- I don’t think the chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere cares who is president. (I say as my full size V8 SUV sit’s in the driveway)