A Big Picture Reminder on Climate Change

We are in the brief warm period of the Pleistocene Ice Age called the Holocene.  We are constantly being told that a 1.5C temperature increase means the end of human civilization.  In order to prevent that, we must embrace a substantial decrease in our standard of living.  Let us examine the temperature record of the past and where we stand amid the temperature cycles of natural forces:

 

The claim that a 1.5C temperature increase means the end of humanity might be tempered against the catastrophe of a 8 - 11C temperature decrease that appears to await mankind in the not too distant future.  In comparison, the warming would be welcome.  Actually, such a warming would likely do more good than harm even compared to our present temperatures.

Should the natural temperature drop of past ice age cycles occur, mankind will find it most difficult to maintain a human population anywhere near 8 billion human souls as food production will surely shrink.  Let us have warmth as long as possible!

Nearly doomed by too little CO2

During the last ice age, too little atmospheric carbon dioxide almost eradicated mankind

by Dennis T. Avery

Aside from protests by Al Gore, Leonardo Di Caprio and friends, the public didn’t seem to raise its CO2 anguish much above the Russians-election frenzy when Trump exited the Paris Climate Accords.

Statistician Bjorn Lomborg had already pointed out that the Paris CO2 emission promises would cost $100 trillion dollars that no one has, and make only a 0.05 degree [Celcius] difference in Earth’s 2100 AD temperature. Others say perhaps a 0.2 degree C difference, and even that would hold only in the highly unlikely event that all parties actually kept their voluntary pledges.

What few realize, however, is that during the last Ice Age too little CO2 in the air almost eradicated mankind. That’s when much-colder water in oceans (that were 400 feet shallower than today) sucked most of the carbon dioxide from the air; half of North America, Europe and Asia were buried under mile-high glaciers that obliterated everything in their paths; and bitterly cold temperatures further retarded plant growth.

In fact, Earth’s atmosphere had only about 180 parts per million CO2, compared to today’s 400 ppm: 0.018% then versus 0.040% today.

The Ice Age’s combined horrors – intense cold, permanent drought and CO2 starvation – killed most of the plants on Earth. Only a few trees survived, in the mildest climates. Much of the planet’s grass turned to tundra, which is much less nourishing to the herbivores prehistoric humans depended on for food and fur. Recent Cambridge University studies conclude that only about 100,000 humans were left alive worldwide when the current interglacial warming mercifully began.

The few surviving prey animals had to keep migrating to get enough food. That forced our ancestors to migrate with them, in temperatures that routinely fell to 40 degrees below zero (both Fahrenheit and Celsius). The Neanderthals had been living in relatively warm caves protected from predators by fires at the cave mouths. They had hunted their prey by sneaking through the trees – which no longer existed. They apparently couldn’t adapt, and starved. Cambridge found no evidence of genocidal warfare.

The most successful human survivors – who provided most of the DNA for modern Europeans – were nomads from the Black Sea region. The Gravettians had never had trees, so they invented mammoth-skin tents, held up by salvaged mammoth ribs. They also developed spear-throwers, to kill the huge beasts from a safe distance.

Equally important, Gravettians domesticated and bred wolves, to protect their tents from marauders, locate game animals on the broad tundra, and harry the prey into defensive clusters for easier killing. The scarcity of food in that Glacial Maximum intensified the dogs’ appreciation for the bones and bone marrow at the human camps.

When that Ice Age ended, moreover, CO2 changes didn’t lead the warming. The atmospheric CO2 only began to recover about 800 years after the warming started.

Carbon dioxide truly is “the gas of life.” The plants that feed us and wildlife can’t live without inhaling CO2, and then they exhale the oxygen that lets humans and animals keep breathing.

Our crop plants evolved about 400 million years ago, when CO2 in the atmosphere was about 5000 parts per million! Our evergreen trees and shrubs evolved about 360 million years ago, with CO2 levels at about 4,000 ppm. When our deciduous trees evolved about 160 million years ago, the CO2 level was about 2,200 ppm – still five times the current level. 

There’s little danger to humans of too much CO2 in the air they breathe. Even the Environmental Protection Agency says 1000 ppm is the safe limit for lifetime human exposure. Space shuttle CO2 alarms are set at 5,000 ppm, and the alarm in nuclear submarines is set at 8,000 ppm!

If there’s little danger of humans having too much CO2 in their air, and a real danger to civilization from having too little, what’s the ideal level of atmospheric CO2? The answer? There’s a broad safe range – with far more risk of too little than too much. At low levels, with few or no plants, there’d be no people or animals, let alone civilization.

Human numbers, moreover, expanded strongly during the Holocene Optimum, with temperatures 4 degrees C higher than today!  Even now, residents of the tropics keep demonstrating that humans can tolerate much higher temperatures than most of us experience. (As we utilize the new malaria vaccine, the tropics will prosper even more.) And far more people die from “too cold” than from “too warm.”

The crops continue to produce record yields in our “unprecedented” warming – and the extra CO2 in our air is credited with as much as 15% of that yield gain!

It’s not whether more CO2 in the air raises Earth’s temperatures. We know it does, by some small but still hotly debated amount. Both sides agree that a redoubling of CO2 in the air – by itself – would raise earth’s temperature by only about 1 degree C.

That’s hardly noticeable or measurable in the midst of all the local temperature variations, with the myriad of natural forces that govern planetary climate, with all the discrepancies among the various measuring systems, and amid all the errors, biases and missing or revised data that have crept in.

Moreover, 1 degree C of warming was obviously not enough to frighten the public.

So, the computerized models cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made another assumption: that a hotter world would hold more moisture in its atmosphere. Since water vapor is the most effective greenhouse gas, the climate modelers claimed Earth might heat by 5 or even 10 degrees C. One scientist (who supposedly advises Pope Francis) recently claimed 12 degrees C (21 degrees F) of overheating!

The awkward truth, however, is that NASA has monitored moisture in the atmosphere since 1980 – and water vapor has not increased despite the higher levels of CO2 in the air. Is that why the IPCC models have predicted more than twice as much warming as we’ve actually seen?

The year 1936 recorded the hottest thermometer readings of any year in the last 5,000. However, these days NOAA reports only its “adjusted” temperatures, which always seem to go only higher. In fact, the first surge of human-emitted carbon dioxide after World War II should have produced the biggest surge of warming – if CO2 is the control factor. Instead temperatures went down from 1940 to 1975.

Why did the computer models fail to predict (or even factor in) either the Pacific Oscillation’s current 20-year non-warming or the coming solar sunspot minimum?

Only one model has verified itself by back-casting the temperatures and weather we’ve had over the past century. That model is from Nicola Scafetta at Duke University, and it’s based on solar, lunar and planetary cycles. The latest data from the CERN particle physics lab have also produced a model based on cycling – and it foresees no runaway warming. Instead, it sees an impending cold solar minimum.

Is the long, wrong-headed war against carbon dioxide finally fading? Science certainly says it should. But perhaps there is still too much money, prestige and power in climate alarmism for that to happen.

___________

Dennis T. Avery is an agricultural and environmental economist and a senior fellow for the Center for Global Food Issues in Virginia. He was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State and is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years. 

My Comments:

"It’s not whether more CO2 in the air raises Earth’s temperatures. We know it does, by some small but still hotly debated amount. Both sides agree that a redoubling of CO2 in the air – by itself – would raise earth’s temperature by only about 1 degree C."

The first couple hundred ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere may have raised the Earth's temperatures a very little bit, but additions to the present levels probably actually cool the Earth very slightly. Initially, the additions did much more to absorb the Earth's surface thermal radiation than additions can now do. That absorption effect is logarithmic and largely saturated. The ability of CO2 to radiate energy into space from the upper troposphere and above is not at all saturated, so additional CO2 has a strong cooling effect. Because the mean free path for infrared absorption by CO2 is already short, added CO2 provides a small speed-up in the transport of energy upward through the lower atmosphere as an adjunct to thermals or the latent heat of evaporation.  In addition, CO2 absorbs some of the incoming radiation from the sun, which cools the surface, and that effect is also not as saturated as is the absorption of radiation from the surface of the Earth.  Consequently, doubling the present 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2 would most definitely not make a change in temperatures as large as 1 degree Celcius and that effect would be a cooling effect.

Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery was the first book on the issue of the climate and its cycles that I read when I started to become interested in the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.  I found it a very useful book.  While Avery is a lukewarmer, he has done great work in tamping down the alarmism on man's role on the climate and has earned my respect.  In the end, however, it will be discovered that I am right and the effects of additional CO2 are minuscule and are cooling effects at that.

Sea level rise -- or land subsidence? by Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek

At the request of Paul Driessen, I am posting this article:

Sea level rise -- or land subsidence?

Alarmist claims about rising seas inundating coastal areas blame the wrong culprit 

Paul Driessen and Roger Bezdek 

In his 2006 Inconvenient Truth mockumentary, Al Gore infamously predicted melting ice caps would cause oceans to rise “up to 20 feet” (6.1 meters) “in the near future.” Kevin Costner’s 1995 “action thriller” Water World presumed totally melting planetary ice would almost submerge the continents. 

However, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in 2007 that seas might rise up to only 2 feet by 2107. By comparison, oceans have risen nearly 400 feet since the last ice age ended, reflecting how much water was trapped in mile-thick glaciers that buried much of North America, Europe and Asia. In recent decades, though, global sea level rise has averaged just 7 inches per century – which may explain why Mr. Gore bought an $8.5-million mansion on the California coast in 2010. 

And yet “rising seas due to dangerous manmade climate change” remains a contentious issue, with profound land use, wildlife, economic, insurance and policy implications – especially for certain regions, like the Atlantic Coast’s Chesapeake Bay region. Some say “seas could rise” 2.5 to 7 feet (2.1 meters) or more by the end of the century around Norfolk, Virginia, a huge population and agricultural center and home to America’s largest Navy base. Even if that happens, the prediction combines multiple causes. 

Saltwater intrusion clearly has been an increasing problem across much of this region for several decades, and storms have sent tides and waves further inland than in the past, flooding and battering homes, croplands and wildlife habitats. Climate alarmists attribute this danger to human fossil fuel use. 

As a new report by Dr. Bezdek explains, reality is much different. (His report awaits publication in a scientific journal.) At least for the Chesapeake region, Houston-Galveston, Texas area, Santa Clara Valley, California and other places around the globe, the primary cause of seawater intrusions is not rising oceans – but land subsidence due to groundwater withdrawal from subsurface shale and sandstone formations, and to “glacial isostatic adjustments” that have been ongoing since the last glaciers melted. 

The solution therefore is not to continue trying to control Earth’s climate – an impossible, economy-busting task that would further impede fossil fuel use, economic development, job creation, and human health and welfare. The solution requires reducing groundwater removal in these coastal areas. 

Ice age glaciers buried continental land masses under trillions of tons of ice. Land under the ice was pushed downward, while areas somewhat beyond the glaciers were forced up. Once the ice was gone, the compressed areas began to rise, while lands that had bulged upward began to sink. Isostatic subsidence is still occurring, at about 1 millimeter a year (4.4 inches per century) in the Chesapeake region. 

While Chesapeake farms and cities have been utilizing groundwater for centuries, withdrawal rates from Virginia Coastal Plain aquifers skyrocketed between 1950 and 1970, as modern pumps took over. The rates have remained high ever since, causing significant land subsidence.  

The aquifer systems involve layers of porous sandstone with water in the interstices between sand grains. These layers are sandwiched between layers (lenses) of impermeable but wet shale and clay. As water is pumped from the sandy layers, the shale-clay layers are squeezed like a sponge by hundreds of feet of overlying rock and sediment, forcing their water into less compressible sands, and then into pumps. 

The amount of water in a system, its recharge rates (from rain, snowmelt and other sources), and the degree of compaction depend on how much water is being withdrawn, the thickness of sand and clay layers, and how compressible the layers are. Most of the pumped water ultimately comes from the clays, as they are squeezed dry. Analysts have estimated that 95% of water removed from Virginia Coastal Plain aquifers between 1891 and 1980 came from their clay layers, which have steadily compressed as a result. 

Compression means subsidence, at 1.1-4.8 mm/yr – for an average rate of 11 inches per century, on top of the 4.4 in. per century in isostatic subsidence, and compared to the average sea level rise of 7 in. a century. 

The net effect in Virginia’s Coastal Plain can thus be nearly 2 feet of subsidence per century. The impacts on land, habitat and property loss, saltwater intrusions, inland storm surges, farming, homes and other buildings, regional economics, wharves, piers and naval bases, and insurance rates is easy to discern. 

Confusion arises because discussions often involve “relative sea level rise” – which combines glacial isostatic and groundwater subsidence, along with actual sea level rise – just as we just did with our 2 feet per century total. However, the term obscures what is really going on and lends itself to climate alarmism, by leaving the false impression that the entire problem is melting icecaps and rising seas. 

It clearly is not. Focusing attention on alleged “manmade climate cataclysms,” supposedly driven by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, will result in our spending hundreds of billions of dollars to replace oil, gas and coal with expensive, subsidized, land-intensive renewable energy systems – while foregoing hundreds of billions of dollars in jobs and economic growth. Meanwhile, China, India, Indonesia and other developing nations will continue doing what they must to lift billions out of abject poverty and disease: burn more fossil fuels, thereby emitting more CO2. 

Those nations are not about to succumb to the Obama EPA “social cost of carbon” con game. This is the fraudulent scheme under which bureaucrats blame US oil, gas and coal for every climate and weather event, habitat and species loss, and other problem that they can possibly conjure up anywhere in the world – while completely ignoring the phenomenal and undeniable benefits of using those fuels, and the equally important benefits of having more plant-fertilizing carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. 

President-Elect Trump’s nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA underscores his intent to end climate-obsessed government by junk science and Executive Branch decree. 

What can be done about the real-world problems of “relative sea level rise”? Sea levels will continue to rise (or fall) in response to ice growth and melting, caused by powerful natural forces over which humans have no control. Glacial isostatic subsidence will continue – albeit at a glacial or geologic pace – unless another ice age buries continents under more miles of ice, again lowering sea levels hundreds of feet, and wiping out arable land, growing seasons and agricultural productivity. 

Moreover, once water has been squeezed out of the clay and shale, it cannot easily be replenished. That means the subsidence process cannot be reversed. However, we can nevertheless reduce or even halt subsidence due to groundwater extraction. 

Rates and locations of land subsidence and relative sea level rise change over time. Accurate predictive tools and measurements are thus needed to improve our understanding of subsidence in particular areas. Although subsidence rates are not as high on the Atlantic Coast as they have been in the Houston-Galveston area or Santa Clara Valley, the problem is nonetheless serious because of the southern Chesapeake Bay region’s low-lying topography and consequent susceptibility to ocean water intrusion.

In the Houston-Galveston area and Santa Clara Valley, resource managers have moved groundwater pumping away from the coast, reduced groundwater withdrawal rates, increased aquifer recharge and substitut­ed surface water for groundwater supplies. These actions have successfully stopped subsidence in the Santa Clara Valley and slowed the process in the Houston-Galveston area. 

Similar steps could be taken in Virginia’s Tidewater or Coastal Plain region. In addition, pipelines could bring fresh water from nearby lakes and rivers, replacing at least some of what is now provided by wells. Yet another option might be to construct one or more desalination plants (in California and Texas, as well), utilizing nuclear or natural gas power to operate facilities that utilize new Israeli technologies that employ a chemical-free reverse osmosis process that converts seawater into freshwater for pennies per gallon. 

The new Congress and Executive Branch need to focus our limited money and resources on real problems and viable solutions – not on their false, politically correct, anti-development alter egos. 

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org), and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.Roger Bezdek is an internationally recognized energy analyst and president of Management Information Services, Inc. (www.MISI-net.com).

NASA Finally Agrees that Antarctic Ice has Long been Increasing

A NASA paper published in the Journal of Glaciology found that Antarctic ice has long been increasing in agreement with many other studies, but in disagreement with the UN IPCC report of 2013.  Its main conclusions are:

• The Antarctic ice sheet had net gains in ice of 112 billion tons per year from 1992 to 2001.
• Antarctic ice from 2003 to 2008 had a net gain of 82 billion tons per year.
• Extra snowfall in East Antarctica began about 10,000 years ago as the Earth warmed after the last Ice Age and this snowfall thickened the East Antarctic and the interior regions of the West Antarctic by 1.7 cm/year.  This accumulation over vast expanses more than offsets the melting of ice on the West Antarctic peninsula which gets so much publicity.
• The increased ice in Antarctica is now acting to reduce sea levels by 0.23 mm/year.

One of the more interesting observations on this data is that the global warming due to the end of the last Ice Age caused more snowfall in Antarctica, which serves to counterbalance the rise in sea level due to the thermal expansion of water in a warmer world.  This is one of many ways in which the Earth moderates climate changes.

The findings of this study were the result of more accurate measurements of the small thickening of the ice in most of Antarctica from satellite measurements, with the exception of the ice core investigations by others that indicated the increase in snowfall beginning 10,000 years ago.  It would not be surprising if the application of these satellite analysis methods to Greenland were to find that previous claims of large ice losses there were also wrong.  It is easy to observe large glaciers calving into the ocean while missing the slow increases of ice thickness over much larger areas.

John Holdren Claims New Ice Age Likely

John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, believed that the earth was cooling due to urban air pollution, dust from agriculture, and volcanic ash. He said this caused a 0.2 degree C cooling over the last 25 years. He noted that this seems small, but only a 4C temperature drop is needed to start a new ice age. He said that a 1% increase in low altitude cloud cover would decrease the temperature by 0.8C. We are feeding this effect by adding man-made condensation nuclei to the atmosphere with jet contrails and by other means. Finally, we are changing the earth's reflectivity by urbanizing, deforestation, and enlarging deserts. This is what he wrote in Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man in 1971. The sixth chapter of the book was his essay with Paul Ehrlich, called Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide.

You can read a bit more about it at Climate Depot. Marc Morano reminded everyone about this. John Holdren was also one of the first to become an alarmist claiming the likelihood of man-made global warming, which is why he holds his position with Obama. Marc Morano evaluates him thusly:

My personal opinion is that Holdren is a “doom peddler” who latches onto the nightmare-scenario-du-jour — overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, global cooling, global warming (all of which he’s trumpeted at various points in his career) — and then wildly exaggerates it in order to scare the public into adopting his politicized “solutions.”

Holdren does indeed seem to fit that modus operandi very well. While Chicken Little was quickly seen to be ridiculous, John Holdren always seems to escape that fate to rise Phoenix-like once again to scare the public with another doomsday scenario. Somehow the doomsday just never arrives, but meanwhile, Holdren gets lots of attention. He is clearly an effective gloom and doom con-artist, which makes him just the kind of man one would expect Obama to draw upon for advice.

A Long-Term Perspective on Global Temperatures

A while back I read the book Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007). This book marshals a wealth of information about past temperature changes on Earth. The awesome power of those temperature changes and some of the consequences for mankind are important lessons for us all to learn.

In their review of the ancient climate history, they note 100s of millions of years when the Earth was very much warmer than today. A mere 2 million years ago, the Earth settled into a pattern due to the Earth's orbit and relationship with the sun of Ice Ages lasting commonly 90,000 to 100,000 years. These were terminated with brief warm periods or interglacials of 10,000 to 20,000 years length. The onset of the glacial periods is slow, but the end of an Ice Age is often abrupt. The average global temperature rises 5 to 7 degrees Celsius in the interglacial period.

The last Ice Age was at its coldest about 17,000 to 21,000 years ago. About 14,000 years ago there was a sudden temperature increase. The ice sheet began retreating and sea levels began to rise. About 12,500 years ago, there was a return to a new Ice Age called the Younger Dryas, with the cooling occurring in a mere 100 year timespan. 11,500 years ago there was another sudden warming, producing the present interglacial period, called the Holocene. Following this, much of mankind was able to make significant advances in knowledge and technology.

The Climate Optimum was from 9,000 to 5,000 years ago and most of the Earth was warmer and wetter than it is today. There may have been a brief colder and drier period about 8,200 years ago, which especially affected Africa. About 2,600 years ago, there was a cooling, though the period stayed humid.

More recently, from 600 to 200 BC, there was a cool period. This was followed by the Roman Warming from 200 BC to 600 AD. The Dark Ages were characterized by another cold period, which contributed to an increase in human misery, lasting from 600 to 900 AD. This was followed by the Medieval Warming (or the Little Climate Optimum) from 900 to 1300. Then from 1300 to 1850 mankind suffered through the Little Ice Age, which had a slight warming period (1400 to 1550) which still left temperatures below the recent temperature averages.

Since the end of the Little Ice Age, the Earth's temperature has continued to undergo temperature cycles. From 1850 to 1940 there was warming, with a particularly large temperature increase from 1920 to 1940. From 1940 to 1975 there was cooling and many experts were worrying about or predicting the onset of the next Ice Age. In 1976 and until 1978, there was a sudden warming. Since 1979, surface thermometers on land have shown a significant warming but weather balloons and satellites have shown much less warming. To this, we can add that from 1999 to the present, there has been a slight cooling. If you reference this interval to 2001, there has been no net change in surface temperature.

The Global Warming alarmists are fond of talking about the increase in temperature since 1850 or what they call the start of the Industrial Age. Or they start the clock in 1900 or in 1975 when warming cycles were underway. What they never point out to the reader or listener is that other periods as warm or warmer have played an important role in man's history. They also do not point out that man commonly flourished best in these warmer periods, such as the Roman Warming (Greek and Roman civilizations), the Medieval Warming when food production increased and so did the human population, and certainly man has prospered and the population has grown tremendously since 1850 and the end of the Little Ice Age. Perhaps a little warming is a good thing!

There is a great document called A Global Warming Primer produced by the National Center for Policy Analysis, which gives a graphic presentation about greenhouse gases, tracks temperatures back for 600 million years, and tracks CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere back 550 million years. This gives a perspective on the ability of the Earth to change its temperature readily without the help of man. It also shows that through most of these years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and the average temperature of the Earth do not track one another! So, there are mechanisms to bring about large temperature changes which do not depend upon carbon dioxide concentrations. Through most of this period, the Earth's temperature and its CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere were much higher than they have been in the last 400,000 years.

However, in the last 400,000 years, there has been a correlation between the CO2 levels and the average temperature. But, we are not sure which serves as the cause and which is the effect. The CO2 concentrations and the temperature appear to have about a 120,000 year cycle in this time, which is about the same as that due to adding the glacial periods to the interglacial periods. Clearly, man was not causing these cycles. Presently, the CO2 levels are high compared to other times in this short 400,000 year period, but there is a time in each of the previous 4 cycles, when the CO2 concentrations were comparable or higher.

More recently, the CO2 concentration has steadily increased since about 1760, with a generally increasing rate since 1850. The temperature has mostly increased since then, but its curve does not have the shape of the CO2 curve. The CO2 increase has been rapid since 1950, but as we discussed above, the temperature was cooling from 1940 to 1975. There was certainly a failure to show correlation in that time frame.

Recently, it has become clear that increases in CO2 tend to bring on increases in water vapor and that this usually results in sufficient cloud cover that sufficiently more sunlight is reflected off into space to cause a cooling response to increased levels of CO2. This is still not a well-understood effect. Water vapor itself is a greenhouse gas and makes up 95% of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But, when it forms clouds, they help to hold heat in at night while reflecting the heating rays of the sun in the daytime. The empirical evidence is that increasing water vapor seems generally to lead to a cooling effect. Part of this is due to the heat absorbed by a water molecule in becoming a vapor rather than liquid. The other part is the added reflectivity of the clouds.

A Global Warming Primer also gives a chart to show the Per Capita emission of CO2 by country. The U.S. is one of the highest per capital emitters, but Australia and Canada are not far behind. We are considerably higher than Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. I wonder what is the reason for this grouping. Perhaps it has to do with the density of the population, the expanse of the country, and the amount of farming done. Note that Australia and Canada, like the U. S., do considerable farming, they are big, expansive countries, and people are scattered over large distances. Well, just shoot us all for living where we do! Oh, and while we are at it, how about the rest of the world doing without the huge amounts of food that we produce and export. It costs a lot of energy to produce so much food. It is also interesting to look at the chart that shows how U. S. CO2 emission increases compare with those of the European Union in recent years. The E. U.s increases are much greater.

There are also charts showing sea level rise, the range of estimates for ice mass loss or growth in Greenland and Antarctica, the number of hurricanes by category of severity, and the number of weather-related deaths which seems to have peaked in the 1920s and 1930s when we had a previous high temperature spell, but have been much lower in the recent supposed period of increased temperature. There is a chart showing the U. S. land area affected by droughts since 1895, showing peaks in the 1930s, the late 1950s, and then again in early 1990s. The late 1950s were a cooling period, so there is no correlation here with rising temperatures. There is also a chart showing the benefits of increased CO2 levels for plants, especially those with suboptimal water. Then there are charts showing how little effect the Kyoto Protocol will have on temperature change, malaria, hunger, and coastal flooding.

The perspective given by all of these facts should make us hesitant to accept the claim that man is causing global warming by emitting CO2, without clear and certain evidence that this is the case. A few half-baked computer models which cannot predict the temperatures of the past should not be trusted to predict those of the future and to dictate policy with respect to reductions in our individual rights. If you want to reduce my rights, you had better have a very strong, rational argument for doing so. Do not attempt this with the flimsy arguments of the anti-man Global Warming alarmists.

Global Warmer's Attack on Science

Those who claim that man is responsible for the global warming between about 1970 and 2000 are fond of claiming that this theory has been proven beyond any reasonable scientific doubt. Despite this, there are hundreds of climatologists and other scientists interested in the science of the atmosphere, the seas, the sun, the flora and fauna, and the history of climate both in recorded history and during prehistoric periods who are unconvinced. The world has generally warmed since the last Ice Age, but there have been many back and forth temperature movements. There have been ice ages with carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere many times what it is now. There was the Roman Warming, then the cooling that helped to bring on the end of the Roman Empire, then the Medieval Warming, then the Mini-Ice Age that ended about 1850. While warming has generally dominated since, there was a cooling period from 1940 until about 1970. Indeed, in the late sixties, there was alarm in the media about the coming Ice Age. Indeed, such a cooling as would accompany an on-coming Ice Age would be a human disaster, while the general warming after the last Ice Age, the Roman Warming, the Medieval Warming, and the present post-Mini-Ice Age have all been very kind to man.

Despite these well-known facts, some computer modelers have determined that an increase of carbon dioxide due to the use of organic fuels must lead to great temperature increases. This despite the high carbon dioxide levels of previous Ice Ages. Despite the fact that the models cannot make predictions consistent with the known history back to the pre-Roman historical periods. Despite the fact that the models predict that the temperature should increase with altitude in the lower atmosphere, while in fact it falls. There is a problem in that carbon dioxide increases seem more often to follow than precede global temperature increases. This makes sense, since as the temperature increases, then the seas will evaporate off dissolved carbon dioxide. No matter how little truth is revealed by these models of carbon dioxide induced warming, they have many eager believers.

The fact is that variations in the sun's radiance accounts for most of the variations in the earth's temperature. There are also effects due to cosmic radiation and to cycles in the ocean currents which seem to be of importance. What is missing is evidence that man has significantly changed the world temperature.

These eager believers are largely socialists who have become somewhat weary of directly supporting socialism with its many known failures. They have turned to other arguments for essentially the same ends. They seek power over their fellowman, though always in the name of a paternalistic, or now an increasingly maternalistic, concern. There is always the pretense that the would-be thug-hirers have only the interest of the people at heart even as they threaten constantly to use force to get those many who are full of Original Sin to do their bidding.

Science draws men to pay attention to reality. This is not at all what those who seek power wish. It is much easier to control men who do not understand reality. So, the claim that science supports the idea that man has caused global warming, has two purposes. It may give those who claim this power in the short-run. If, however, there is a failure in time to convince men that man is destroying the world by using organic fuels, then the unconvinced will turn against science. This too suits the purpose of the power seekers.

The anti-man environmentalists seem to be on the road to the power to squeeze the economy and to deny men the advantages of inexpensive and sufficient power. They have shut down the construction of further nuclear power plants and brought on so much uncertainty about the future of coal-burning power plants that many projects to build them have been canceled. They supposedly support wind power, geothermal power, and photovoltaic power plants, except in their backyard or anywhere where some living animal might be inconvenienced or at least they might make a case that it might be. It is impossible to believe that the proposal in the January 2008 issue of Scientific American to cover 46,000 sq. mi. of the American Southwest with solar arrays will ever be allowed to happen. The environmentalists themselves will surely turn against any such project. Only projects to starve Americans of power are ever fully embraced for the long haul.