Climate Sense and Nonsense
Climate Sense and Nonsense
By Dr Martin Hertzberg , 29 October 2012
The fear mongering hysteria contained in the proposed draconian measures for “carbon control” being advocated by some “climate scientists”, government agencies, and others concerned with “global warming / climate change” which is being attributed to human emission of Carbon Dioxide, requires a rational and scientific response.
I served as a forecasting and research meteorologist while on active duty with the U. S. Navy. It was then that I first learned what climatologists and meteorologists have known for over a century and what the current crop of so-called “climate scientists”, EPA administrators, and those concerned with climate change apparently never learned: that weather and climate are controlled by natural laws on an enormous scale that dwarfs human activity. Those laws engender forces and motions in our atmosphere and oceans that are beyond human control. Weather and climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth, and will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone.
Those forces and motions are driven by the following: First, the motions of the Earth relative to the Sun: the periodic changes in its elliptical orbit, its rotation about its polar axis, changes in the tilt of that axis, and the precession of that axis. Second, the variation in solar activity that influences the radiant energy reaching the Earth and modulates cosmic ray activity which controls cloudiness. Third, the distribution of land and water on the Earth’s surface; which controls its temperature distribution, moisture availability, monsoon effects, hurricanes, and other storm tracks. Fourth, the topography of the Earth’s surface which causes copious precipitation on the windward side of mountains and aridity on the leeward side. Fifth, the fluid motions within the Earth’s oceans that determine moisture availability and ocean surface temperatures (El Nino and La Nina cycles).
Water in all of its forms is the main agent through which those forces operate. It provides vapor in the atmosphere, heat transport by evaporation and condensation, and the enormous, circulating mass of the ocean whose heat capacity dominates. And finally it provides the cloud, snow, and ice cover that control the radiative balance between the Sun, the Earth, and free space.
While the presence of 0.04 % of CO2 (carbon dioxide) in our atmosphere is essential for life in the biosphere, the notion that such a minor constituent of the atmosphere can control the above forces and motions, is absurd. There is not one iota of reliable evidence that it does. Furthermore, human emission of CO2 is but a trivial fraction of all natural sources and sinks of CO2. The most recent research by Norwegian scientists Humlum et al. in Global and Planetary Change, and earlier research by Segalstad show that the recent modest increase in atmospheric CO2 is coming from the Southern Equatorial Ocean, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with human emission.
Human emission, mainly from mid-latitudes, dissolves rapidly into the Earth’s oceans and re-circulates within them. The oceans contains 50 times more dissolved CO2 than is contained in the atmosphere. The current small measured increase in CO2 is coming from the oceans: the same place CO2 changes came from during the 400,000 years shown in the Vostok ice-core data. That data show four glacial coolings each followed by an interglacial warming with atmospheric CO2 concentrations near their highest during the warmings and near their lowest during the coolings. In all cases, however, the temperature changes precede the CO2 changes by about 500 – 1,000 years. Each glacial cooling and interglacial warming cycle has a period of about 100,000 years, which corresponds to the periodic changes in the Earth’s elliptical orbit about the sun. Those increases and decreases in atmospheric CO2 occurred long before any significant human emission of CO2. And furthermore, the fact that they were preceded by the temperature changes means that the temperature changes are causing the CO2 changes and not the reverse. As oceans warm, they emit CO2, and as they cool they absorb it. Bubbles of CO2 are emitted from cold soda as it is poured into a warm glass, and soda is produced by dissolving CO2 into cold water.
It is most appropriate that the proof for the absence of any significant human origin for atmospheric CO2, is coming from the brilliant work of Norwegian scientists trying to correct the scientific record. For after all, it was the Norwegian Parliament that made the ghastly mistake of attempting to legitimize the fraudulent Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory by awarding The Nobel Peace Prize to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN IPCC).
All of the believers in human caused “global warming” seem to see something “unprecedented” in the recent changes in temperature. But all recent changes are well within the normal range of variability (see www.climate4you.com). Furthermore the last decade has in fact, seen a modest decline in the average temperature near the Earth’s surface. Any recent, small temperature increases have been matched or exceeded many times in the past: the “dust bowl” era of the 1930’s, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period, the Holocene Warming, and all the major interglacial warmings that preceded them as shown in the Vostok data. They all occurred without any significant human emission of CO2.
The catastrophe that the global warming advocates project may indeed be realized, but only if we are stupid enough to implement draconian measures of “carbon control” based on the fraudulent theory that they espouse.
Dr. Martin Hertzberg
Copper Mountain, CO 970-968-2091
Coauthor: Slaying the Sky Dragon, Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory
Stairway Press, 2011
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