7 Billion Machines
by Anthony Paul Bright
There are presently 7 Billion bipeds walking about on this Earth and they are expected to number 10 Billion by 2050. These 7 Billion machines are you and I. We are factories. We burn Carbon with the help of Oxygen and we produce Carbon Dioxide, night and day. We bipeds are on the increase. We produce heat. We humans are combustion machines. Without Oxygen we could not burn the Carbon we ingest in the form of food, nor could we produce Carbon Dioxide either.
All heat has to be generated. The Sun generates enormous heat at some 6000K on its surface. A fire generates heat. A central heating system generates heat. Friction – rubbing two sticks together generates heat. An electrical current in contact with a coiled wire resistance produces heat. All animals produce heat, and incidentally produce Carbon Dioxide. Carbon Dioxide in no way produces heat. It is the result of heat production. Both Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapour are coolants, as is well known. They are both used to extinguish fire and restrain combustion.
It is very easy for Sceptics, who talk to each other, to believe that the battle is won, because the arguments against Carbon Dioxide causing Global Warming are so overwhelming. Anyone who reads Climate Depot will see one scientist after another coming to the Sceptic side. ‘James Lovelock fallout – Warmists into their last days’. The news from Benny Peiser on ‘fracking’ is encouraging on the availability of fresh sources of natural gas. The arguments employed by Johnny Ball against Wind Turbines are overwhelming. It would seem that the battle is almost over, and victory for common sense is in sight.
That is partly because, for most Sceptics, reading The Guardian is nauseous. Alas we have to read such things as the Guardian and the Met Office website to know the arguments of the Alarmists. They make dispiriting reading. Here are alarming headline from recent Guardian:
- We can have safe, sustainable energy With renewables we can contain consumption – and climate warming at 2C – if the big users act now Maria van der Hoeven guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 April 2012 22.50 BST
- Governments failing to avert catastrophic climate change, IEA warns – Ministers attending clean energy summit in London to be gravely warned about continuing global addiction to fossil fuels
In spite of all the evidence from the Climatic Research Unit itself that no warming has occurred for a decade, the warmists stick to the idea that they must contain warming at 2C. How can we deal with people who live in cloud cuckoo land? And just who is this Maria van der Hoeven?
The arrogance of human machines imagining that they could contain the temperature of the Earth has to be seen to be believed. In the first place there is no World temperature. There is no huge thermometer which one could stick under the tongue of Mother Earth, no armpit to take a reading. Oh! I hear, but scientists are taking readings from thermometers all over the place and they are working out averages.
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If the average temperature at the North Pole is minus 30C and at Accra it is plus 30C, what is the average? The average is meaningless. There are thousands and thousands of micro-climates. Everywhere we live on this Planet the temperatures of our given locations are varying minute by minute, second by second, according to sunrise and sunset, according to the seasons, according to the angle to the Sun and its distance from our Planet. We live on a huge sphere. At any one time half the sphere is in darkness, while the other half is in light. But that again is only half true, because the sphere is revolving. Nothing is static. So it is warming and cooling. Futhermore only one part at any one time is directly perpendicular to the Sun’s radiation. The tropics receive much direct radiation and the Poles hardly any at all. So some say, but look at the glaciers. Yes? Some glaciers have retreated over the past 30 years, but equally some have advanced, so I understand. But so what? If some warming has occurred in some regions, what is the cause? The Alarmist leap on Carbon Dioxide, or they lump together Greenhouse Gases. But, with what justification? It is not a scientific response, it is simply hysteria. While we are about to enter the coldest May for many years according to the astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, the Alarmists point to the North Pole and the Arctic ice. But the latest reports show that Arctic Ice cover is at maximum extent. It ebbs and flows with the seasons. Nothing in Nature is constant. |
The assumption that any supposed warming is caused by Carbon Dioxide is simply fraudulent. While it is true that Carbon Dioxide absorbs infrared, it is also true that it cools as it rises with the adiabatic lapse rate. So it cools by conduction and convection. So much is evident and well known to any layman. For that reason the Alarmists have to invent another totally spurious idea called ‘back radiation’. In fact it is on this back radiation that the whole theory of man-made global warming rests. But when this idea is examined critically it simply collapses. As hot air rises it cools as the molecules grow farther and farther apart. So the extra warming, which is supposed to be caused by greenhouse gases and which is in fact not happening, is purported to arise from back radiation, – back convection and back conduction being naturally ruled out.
This back radiation presupposes that a body can heat itself. Tell that to a pensioner dying of the cold. Heat, so they say is trapped. That is supremely false. Nowhere, no way, at any time anywhere is heat trapped. It only needs a little thought and a little common sense and common observation to realise that this scenario is completely false.
Tell me one single place that heat is trapped. Heat has to be generated. Heat is always flowing from hot to cold. Heat is only maintained while heat is being constantly generated. Watch a bonfire. As the smoke rises up, so does the carbon dioxide. Within barely 100 feet it has lost its heat. Are these cold and rapidly cooling molecules supposed to re-radiate a heat that they have not even got? Heaven preserve us from such chicanery!
In every case it is clear that it is the activity of the Sun or its lack of activity that has the most profound effect upon the climates (note plural) and the weather systems of the world. It is clear that a quiescent Sun produced the Little Ice Age that lasted some 450 years until approximately 1850. A more active Sun has produced the present warming, such as it is, and the campaign against Carbon Dioxide as a cause is simply spurious and non-scientific. Only something of the magnitude of the Sun could possibly cause Global Warming.
The Met Office argues that the Greenhouse Gases trap heat. Effectively they are saying that the Greenhouse Gases act as insulators, meaning that they delay the exit of heat. That may well be, but heat is not trapped. If an insulator delays the exit of heat, far more important is the observable fact that they obstruct the entrance of heat from the Sun. We can see that this is an observable fact by watching the effect of double-glazing. Double-glazing on a conservatory reduces incoming heat far more that delaying the exit of heat. It is the same principle for the atmosphere. The atmosphere reduces the effect of the Sun’s radiation far more than it impedes the exit of heat from the Earth. The argument that Greenhouse Gases cool the atmosphere is proven by simple observation. And the huge swings in the temperatures of the Moon prove that the Earth’s atmosphere does more to keep us cool than it does to keep us warm.
The Warmists, the Alarmists, in spite of everything, have still won the public debate, by the simple repetition of lies, reinforced by Government funding. The Skeptics have won the scientific argument against anyone who is prepared to enter the lists. But the Alarmists will not argue the case for fear that they will certainly lose.
The man-in-the street will never be convinced by scientific arguments, which are above their heads. What does ‘radiative forcing’ mean to the average man? Or the argument about whether the atmosphere is a ‘black body’ or not? How many people have even heard of the ‘adiabatic lapse rate’? In the face of such terminology the common man rolls over and leaves it all to the ‘scientists’.
Unfortunately the scientists who have had the best propaganda machine are the Alarmists. The idea that we must save the Planet, which will be doomed if we were do nothing, was a mantra that was easy to sell, especially as there was a Government remit to establish by hook or by crook Anthropogenic Global Warming. When this was supported by the BBC, the Met Office, the Climatic Research Unit and a howling mob of Gore-sprung activists, the odds were stacked against the Sceptics.
Since everyone feared for their jobs that did not toe the Party Line, it is small wonder that the 31,000 Skeptic scientists are largely made up of retired Professors. As Tim Ball says in his ‘Analysis of Climate Alarm’ in the opening Chapter to “Slaying the Sky Dragon”: “The challenge facing anyone trying to counter the exploiters is to bring logic, clarity and understanding in a way that the majority of people can understand.”
It is for that reason that I attempt to bring in homely references, which are easily understood. If a house is insulated with loft insulation and the cavity walls are filled, will the house be warmer or cooler? A well-insulated house will actually be colder vis-à-vis the sun’s radiation, but it will be warmer inside if and only if some heating is generated.
This is a homely illustration, which in fact mirrors what the atmosphere does. But it must be remembered that the radiation from the Sun is infinitely greater than the infrared radiation coming from Earth. In this way it is clear that the atmosphere, in which Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide play a part is to preserve us from the extremes of heat and likewise to delay the exit of heat from the Earth. In this way we can see that the Greenhouse Gases, far from having a warming effect, in truth have a net cooling effect.
Everything by itself is cooling; all heat is flowing from hot to cold. This is a fact that everyman can observe, whether because the radiators in his house cool once the boiler switches off, or because red hot lava cools to black basalt. There is nothing whatsoever in Nature that grows hotter and hotter, unless heat is being generated to make it hotter.
Since I declare to all and sundry that I am a Climate Sceptic, I engage in all sorts of disputes. Two things stand out. But, Tony, what about the Arctic? But, Tony, I have seen glaciers, as they were thirty years ago and how they are today.
Sure, there has been warming, which we can see in hindsight. From about 1650, which was the depth of the Little Ice Age, the Earth has been gradually warming. That much nobody will dispute. It is clear that the freezing conditions of the Little Ice Age and the subsequent warming had nothing whatsoever to do with man, but with the forces of Great Nature. It is abundantly clear that the cooling and the warming were directly related to the activity of the Sun.
As to the Arctic Ice this varies from season to season. This variation has much more to do with the flow of warm ocean currents than with Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. As to glaciers, this is a study in itself. There may well be some glaciers that have retreated, but the dramatic pictures of glaciers calving, with huge chunks falling into the seas, is evidence of advancing glaciers, not retreating.
All these phenomena of Great Nature can in each and every case be assigned to natural causes, and the biggest cause is the Sun, supplemented by geothermal heat and the warmth from the oceans.
This is something that is agreed by all independent scientists. Ah, you might say that that is a colossal sweeping statement. Yes, it is true, because I distinguish between propagandists and scientists.
All those whose remit is to find a human fingerprint are propagandists. They are not scientists in the true sense. When people say to me, ‘Scientists say …’ and you can see these words on the website of the Met office, what is really meant is that ‘Propagandists say…’
Propagandists in the form of scientific advisers have the ear of many Heads of State throughout the world, with the result that there is creeping mange over the Earth of useless wind turbines and solar panels. Where it is sensible to look for the cheapest and most available forms of energy creation, governments have been persuaded to look for so-called sustainable solutions. And the only thing that is sustained is mendacity.
Anthony Bright-Paul
Arctic Sea Ice Comparison
Please to note Arctic Sea Ice extent, and see the dates at the top of the charts.
This should settle any arguments about whether the North West Passage is open or not.
The sea ice is there without doubt. What causes the warming such as it is? Certainly not man-made Carbon Dioxide! Without doubt, warm ocean currents cause the seasonal melting. And what causes the oceans to warm? The sun’s irradiation.
Water has 1,000 times the heat capacity compared to air. By the 5th of March the sea ice had extended beyond the Bering Straits down toward the north of Japan.
May 2012
Anthony Bright-Paul
Trapping Heat
Trapping heat? Now that is something I would really like to do. If I could trap heat I would not need my central heating system. I could trap it like one traps a ferret in a sack or a rabbit in a box. I could trap this heat in my home. Ah! Would it stay there all the time? Would I be able to let it out like a pet dog for a run around the garden and then bring it back inside when the evening cooled?
If I could trap heat I could help a lot of old lady pensioners and old men pensioners. Come to think of it I could help a lot of poor people as well. And not just poor people who live in England and America I could help the Eskimos and the Laplanders, the Mongols and those incarcerated in Siberia.
Now a lot of scientists write reams about trapping heat, and they are really worried about it. They are afraid that we are all getting much too hot, that the whole globe may warm by 2?C. The Government evidently is in two minds about this as they give a subsidy to people wanting to put in loft insulation or to fill up their cavity walls. If there are these Greenhouse Gases that can trap heat, as some scientists say, why bother with messy insulation? After all we can easily provide our own Greenhouse Gases – we do so all the time.
I have a friend and he has a little monitor, with which he can see how much Carbon Dioxide he has in the place where he lives. This is normal… This one is high: –
Gee, Hans, you must have been hot with all that trapped CO2 in your house. How did you do it? That is almost 10,000 ppmv, enough for a Greenhouse! Tell me do you have no heating bills?
Enough horsing around! Even a simpleton, even an Alarmist, even a ‘Scientist’ must see that that there is no way, no possibility whatsoever, that heat could be trapped. Even in a home we have constantly to burn something in order to maintain a fairly steady temperature. Heat refuses to be trapped either in my home or on the Equator.
The BBC have just shown the first two episodes of an excellent programme with Kate Humble and Dr Helen Czerski, concerning the Orbit of the Earth around the Sun. From that we understand that the Equator and the Tropics are those areas that receive the most direct irradiation from the Sun. Not heat mind, but radiation. It is a bit like electricity. Electricity has no heat, but when it encounters resistance as in a light bulb it produces light and some heat, or if it encounters the coiled wire of an electric fire it produces heat and some light.
So the Equatorial regions receive this energy from the sun more than say the Poles. And as the air warms up it rises and then seeks to equalise with the colder air in the Poles, and this causes winds. But then the Coriolis effect comes into its own, as winds in the Northern Hemisphere, having deposited their moisture as rain on the Equatorial forests, bend to the right and come down to leave in their wake desert areas. In the Southern hemisphere much the same thing happens except that the winds bend to the left, all caused by the Earth’s rotation.
So when the radiation from the Sun, which has passed through the vacuum of Outer Space collides with the mass of this Earth, heat is produced. As all heat does in a liquid or gas, it moves upwards and as it does so it cools. It is true that the Greenhouse Gases, like Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide warm up, but like everything that warms they also cool. Yes, everything that can warm up can also cool down. This is a Law of Physics.
There is nothing in the whole wide world that remains constant. The Warmists are very keen on the idea of trapping heat. Tell me where? Oh! Conveniently up there somewhere in the atmosphere, somewhere in the Troposphere. Is there a little box up there, suspended like a Chinese lantern, with some lovely heat trapped in it? Of course if this ‘heat’ is trapped, well, it is trapped. It is utterly useless and has no function. It is what might be called ‘dead heat’!!
The truth of the matter is that nowhere can heat be trapped. Heat is not animal, or vegetable or mineral. It is true that we can measure it to a degree and we can measure the absence of it. As the Earth whirls round the Sun it is also rotating on a tilted axis. One rotation takes 24 hours, and it takes as whole year for the Earth to complete one orbit. Outer Space is a vacuum and since a vacuum by definition is empty, it is empty of everything, for which reason Outer Space has no temperature. If there is nothing there then there is nothing to get either hot or cold. There is no substance, no mass.
The fact that we are surrounded by a vacuum is a fact that the Warmists rarely, if ever, take into account. Far from it! In spite of the fact that they know well that the Earth moves in the gravitational field of the Sun, in spite of the fact that they also know well that this orbit is an ellipse of which the Sun is not even the centre, in spite of the fact that they know even to the day the perihelion, that is the day when the Earth is closest to the Sun and the aphelion when we are farthest away; in spite of the fact that they know that we are tilted at an angle of approximately 23?, they still insist that Greenhouse Gases afford a sort of blanket that, wait for it, ‘traps heat’.
What an unfortunate expression! By now surely these Alarmists should know that a blanket or a duvet, does not trap heat, but only slows down heat loss. There is a world of difference between these two. Consider the following. A person goes to bed and dies in his or her sleep, and is not discovered for a couple of days. Would the heat still be trapped in the bedclothes? Of course not! The bedclothes would be as cold as the corpse. What does that show? That shows that while the man is alive he is a machine that through his intake of food and of oxygen is constantly producing heat. It is the body that is heating the blankets. The blankets are only delaying heat loss. No heat is trapped.
It is the same with clothes, which we wear, or at least some of us do, for the same reason, namely to prevent heat loss. With the fairer sex there are other considerations and they will often suffer in order to add to their allure! Never mind, the principle remains the same. If this morning I put on the same shirt and trousers that I wore yesterday, would I discover therein a pocket of trapped heat? Don’t be daft! Let the Alarmists preach such twaddle, for the day is near when they will be publicly laughed to scorn.
Intelligent people question everything. Is this so? How does this happen? Why do we assume this? Sceptics are by definition intelligent people. Sceptics question everything, and they even question other Sceptics. And that is right and proper, because understanding also is not static, but is increasing with every further revelation and insight.
All heat derives from the Sun’s energy, excepting perhaps only the Earth’s internal heat. The amount that we enjoy depends entirely upon our position in the Sun’s gravitational field, the location where we live and the angle of the Sun. The idea that a gas, CO2 that is less than 0.04% of the atmosphere could even ‘cause’ warming is utter moonshine. There is no such thing as Anthropogenic Global Warming and there never has been and never will be. Heaven forbid that man with his limited understanding should try to interfere with the checks and balances of Great Nature.
If for one moment the Warmists and the Luke-Warmists could be persuaded to think rationally, which is difficult or next to impossible I grant you, if for one moment they could just consider, then surely they would realise that our whole problem as a human race is precisely this – we cannot trap heat. If we could, if we could trap heat, we would not need coal-fired power stations, gas-fired, oil-fired or atomic. The whole of our energy problems would be solved. Or would they? We would no longer live in a dynamic, dramatic Universe but in a dead static Planet.
When one considers the great forces of Nature, when one considers the Solar Wind alone at near 1 million miles per hour, as here: –
When one considers also that the Earth wobbles as it spins as discovered by Milutin Milankovich, when one considers the extraordinary cosmic miracle that we call rain, when one considers the gigantic forces that affect the Earth as it hurtles around the sun and then you think of the jabbering ignorance of those who believe in ‘carbon footprints’ and ‘man-made Global Warming’, words fail – there is no comparison.
But for Solar Warming that is another matter. Hallelujah for Solar Warming!
Effects and Causes
My Dear Rachman, While woken from a deep slumber I found it difficult to follow your grasshopper mind, as it ranged from Cause and Effect, to Global Warming, swooped down to the Antarctic, flew up to the Arctic and the North West passage, then on to your swim in the cold Irish Sea. Was this cold dip meant to contradict the Gulf Stream?
Now let us deal first with your argument that an Effect can become a Cause. Your example was that if you biffed me on the nose the resulting pain might cause me to become angry. I am afraid, old friend, that you would not pass an exam for logic. The blow is the cause and it can have multiple effects. The pain and the anger are equally results from your hypothetical foul action. Nevertheless this is a fallacy that besets nearly all the Alarmists, and sadly not a few Sceptics. So many find it difficult to distinguish between Cause and Effect, the chief culprit being Vice President Al Gore.
This naturally, at least for you, led on to Global Warming, the proof of which was the Antarctic, then the Arctic and the opening of the Northwest Passage. In spite of the fact that we have all experienced some of the coldest winters ever in Europe and North America, and more importantly a series of cool summers, yet the Warmists always plump for the Poles, which mostly they have never visited. It is curious how they prefer hearsay from a BBC documentary rather than their own first hand experience.
So let us stick with one subject for a while, namely Global Warming. Is there such a thing? Well, there is no doubt of it. It is a matter of first hand experience that as night falls the atmosphere becomes cooler, and as the sun rises the temperatures rise. How far they rise depends upon location and various other factors like cloud cover and precipitation and of course the wind. So as the Earth spins on its axis and whirls around the sun it warms and it cools and it warms again, as a daily experience.
Moreover since the axis of the Earth is at an angle, we have seasons, so that while there is summer in the Northern Hemisphere there is winter in the Southern and vice versa. Great Nature has arranged all of this long ago, so daily and seasonal warming are the norm. However the Warmists, the Alarmists, would have it otherwise. They argue that Carbon Dioxide is causing the Earth, our Planet, to warm unnaturally. They argue that man-made Carbon Dioxide resides somewhere in the Upper Troposphere producing a Greenhouse Effect, and this in turn is producing Climate Change.
Ok then. Let us look at a picture of the gases of the Atmosphere: –
It is accepted by both sides of the argument that atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels are rising and amount to 396 parts per million by volume, as measured at Mauna Loa.
However if you look at this diagram you cannot fail to notice that Carbon Dioxide is but a trace gas in the atmosphere. 396 ppmv translates to 0.0396% of the atmosphere. Now the IPCC, the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change, concede that the totality that is produced by man is 2.9% of that total. So let us do some simple mathematics – 0.0396% x 2.9% = 0.00114%. From this simple calculation we can see that the total man-made contribution is but a trace of a trace. Yet billions of Dollars and Pounds Sterling and Euros are being spent in order to reduce ‘emissions’ of this trace of a trace.
Our mutual friend Max Potty does not agree to the figures of the IPCC, but cites some others. But even if 50% of the CO2 were man-made it still remains that the totality in the atmosphere is a negligible amount. And since we know from Climategate that all sorts of so-called reputable sources are bending the facts in order to get Government funding, his sources can hardly be called dependable.
Furthermore Max called into question the figures I had quoted of the amounts of CO2 produced just by the geysers in Yellowstone National Park based on the writings of Professor Ian Plimer, the world-renowned Geologist, in his book ‘Heaven + Earth’. He, Max, prefers the opinions of a rabid environmentalist, George Monbiot of The Guardian, to the carefully annotated writings of Professor Plimer. Max is entitled to his opinions, we are all free to think what we will; however it does methinks reflect on his powers of judgment.
However small the amounts of CO2, yet it is still argued by the Warmists that CO2 is a powerful gas. This is based on the experiments long ago in a tube at ground level done by Tyndall that showed that Carbon Dioxide is susceptible to infrared. In simple layman’s language this means that when the radiation from the Sun encounters the mass of the Earth, the land and the seas, this infrared, which bounces off, warms the Carbon Dioxide. Yes, that is correct, that Carbon Dioxide will warm. However with typical warmist logic, they then regard this result as a cause. But the cause of the warming is the irradiation from the sun, and the warming of the CO2 is but a result. This can further be proven by the fact that CO2 can also be cooled to make Dry Ice, which is colder than water ice. Carbon Dioxide is a reactive gas and therefore by simple logic cannot ever be a causative one. Even some eminent Skeptic Physicists fail on this simple test of logic.
Let us take as an analogy a simple central heating system. It might be argued that the radiators heat the room or office, and that the ceiling and windows trap the heat, and that Carbon Dioxide performs in the same way in the atmosphere. But this argument is immediately annulled if the boiler goes on the blink, as has happened in our household twice this winter. Without the boiler being fired the radiators remain stone cold. So the boiler is the cause and the flow of hot water into the radiators is the result. That the heat is trapped is due solely to the solid surface of the ceiling and the window panes.
A gas in the atmosphere cannot possibly trap heat. If a Physicist says as much, then it means only that he or she has contempt for language. It is a matter of semantics, and a student of linguistics here is better qualified than a Professor who uses language in a cavalier fashion.
This is even clearer if we take water vapour as an example. It is simple to boil a kettle, but it is inadvisable to put your hand in the direct path of the steam, for danger of scalding. So water vapour can be very hot, but freezing fog, which is also water vapour, can be extremely cold. We all know that heat in a liquid or a gas always rises and as it rises it cools and loses its heat. So much any simple layman can know, simply by watching a bonfire. We all know that heat also always by itself flows from hot to cold and never vice versa. We therefore are bound to conclude that as CO2 rises it also cools, and if it is cooler than the surface from which it has departed then there is no way that it could add heat thereto. There is no Greenhouse Effect and there never has been. All talk of such an effect has been a huge swindle used to gull susceptible people.
What is worse is that Governments in many countries throughout the world have been taken in by this huge scam, with the result that they have spent millions on seeking to provide a low carbon economy, which itself is another prime example of the misuse of language. Or, what is worse, they have not been taken in, they have used the ignorance and the hysteria of the masses in order to raise taxation and to hide the faults of their own governance. For Governments have no money of their own. The money that the Chancellor, for example, manages is our money. Furthermore, while urging the general populace to tighten their belts and not live beyond their means, Governments borrow huge sums with a profligacy that is to be seen to be believed. I should say understood, because the economics are wrapped up in terms beyond the wit of the average man.
I digress. Let us return to Global warming. What does the word ‘Global’ mean to you? It suggests something that pertains to the whole Globe. So since this warming has been going on for a decade or more, can I see any evidence of unusual warming or steady state warming above average in the place I have lived for some forty years? No, here in Farnborough, England I can detect nothing. What about you then, Rachman, since you now reside in Perth, Australia, where it is pretty hot anyway, have you experienced any warming out of the norm? I will ask my friend Aleksander, who lives in Canada – are your temperature readings showing an increase in warmth?
Perhaps, after all, this word ‘Global’ is not apt. If we go aloft into the atmosphere at say 5,000 feet we find the average is still freezing, 0.0° centigrade. This is confirmed by radiosonde balloons, by satellites and by ordinary commercial aircraft, which criss-cross across the globe daily. Not to be outdone the Warmists, the Alarmists, produce their trump card – The Arctic, coupled with the North West passage. Let’s take a peek: –
Ah! It does not appear that the North West passage is open. Alas! For, while the alarmists regard any warming as bad news, I would regard any warming in the far north of Canada and Siberia as the best of all possible news. If the North West passage could be opened up to commercial shipping that would be a boon, but nothing compared to the opening up of huge stretches of territory in northern Canada and Scandinavia, Russia and Siberia. There is huge wealth to be found beneath the permafrost, but the Alarmists are such killjoys! They live in fear of Climate Change, with Panels and Ministries devoted to opposing it. Great Nature will march on regardless.
However there is some truth in what the Alarmists say about the Arctic. The sea-ice does ebb and flow with the seasons, it does recede and form again. After all the Arctic is a sea, whereas the Antarctic is a huge land-based mass. But the question is, what causes this ebb and flow? Could it be caused by a warmer atmosphere, infrared warmed Carbon Dioxide, so beloved of the Warmists? No chance. Even in mid summer the temperature rarely climbs above freezing, 5°C at the most. In no way could that cause the ice to melt and break up. There must be some other explanation. And there is one – warm ocean currents that come up from the Equator. Water has 1,000 times greater thermal capacity than air; only warm water could cause the sea-ice to melt.
At this point it is interesting to juxta-pose the Wind patterns: –
At once we can see the relation between prevailing wind patterns and ocean currents, as the warmed air over the tropics seeks to equalise with the colder air at the Poles.
This argument between Anthropogenic Global Warmists and Sceptics would seem to be academic, were it not for the profound affects that it has had on the living standard of large numbers of people throughout the world. Very often the connection is not made. Through a total misunderstanding of the truly benevolent role of Carbon Dioxide in the Carbon cycle, – for without the photosynthesis from green plants which take in CO2 they could not produce the Oxygen, the breath of life for all mankind, – fanatics try to reduce emissions, even to sequester it under ground, at great and utterly useless cost.
In order to produce electricity huge Wind Farms have been created, yet the latest figures show that these Wind Farms do not even produce 1% of the worldwide demand for electrical power. Furthermore the latest review by Professor Gordon Hughes of Edinburgh University, cited in the Daily Mail of March 7th, 2012, shows that to produce £150,000 worth of electricity costs some £250,000 – the extra £100,000 being made up in government subsidy. So the consumer is paying twice – first he, as taxpayer, is funding the subsidy and then he is paying extra for the gas and electricity he uses in his home. This is perfidy.
Everything hinges upon understanding the correct role of Carbon Dioxide. It is ironical that those who most stridently claim to be Saving the Planet are the very ones who are most actively destroying it. It is the environmentalists who are against the environment. It is the Greens who would have us all live in a brown world devoid of the very green vegetation they profess to protect.
Anthony Bright-Paul
Irrelevant CO2
If one Googles Ian Plimer, the world famous Australian Geologist and author of Heaven+Earth, one is forced also to find a large section on George Monbiot of The Guardian, who claims to have defeated the Professor in a debate.
The matter at issue was over a remark that Plimer had made that volcanoes could in one burp produce more CO2 than humans produced in a year.
For example, he maintains that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activity. The US Geological Survey (USGS) reports that human beings produce 130 times as much CO2 as volcanoes.
George Monbiot made much of his ambush, over a question of Fact. But can these facts be established in reality? Can the USGS actually make any assertion whatsoever about the amount of CO2 that is produced by volcanoes? Even more how have they measured the amount produced by human beings?
When one looks into this matter one finds very questionable results. Anyone who has recently had their car MOTed will notice that the car is tested for CO, that is Carbon Monoxide, and that there is no figure for Carbon Dioxide. Why is that? So just how is the amount of Carbon Dioxide established? Well here is one answer: –
How do you measure carbon dioxide emissions?
How do countries measure their carbon dioxide emissions? Jenny Boyd
We put this to Gregg Marland at the Environmental Sciences division, Oakridge National Laboratory in the US:
Gregg – Actually, I think there’s a misconception that CO2 emissions are measured. What you try to do is to measure how much fuel is burned and if you know how much carbon is in the fuel, you can calculate how much CO2 must be produced, and very seldom is that, in fact, measured.
So here we see that Carbon Dioxide emissions are not actually measured , but calclulated from the amount of carbon in a given fuel. If that is the case then just how much carbon is there in a volcanic eruption? And in the case of Carbon Monoxide in the exhaust fumes of motor car and aeroplanes, just how long does it take for a molecule of CO to join up with an molecule of Oxygen in order to become CO2? There may be answers to all of this, but it is all too easy to accept the answers of those ‘experts’ who are paid especially in order to find the human fingerprint.
There is a huge scientific estalishment at Mauna Loa for testing levels of atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, amongst other things. Can we rely on their findings, namely, that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing year on year? Perhaps we can, and perhaps not. Apart from the fact that Mauna Loa itself is in an especially volcanic region, it is also in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. It is well known that the ocean is a sink for CO2 and that warmth leads to its release. So can the increase automaticlly be attributed to the activities of man? The answer is not at all. No such assumptin can be made, although attempts are made to identify the human imprint. In the enormity of the atmosphere it is surely impossible to identify what part is human and what part is natural, when the IPCC themselves only claim that the human contribution is but 2.9% of the total.
If the total Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is say 396 parts per million by volume, that is less than 0.04 % of the atmopshere, then the human part is a mere 0.00118%. So Monbiot may have scored a debating point, which in fact cannot be proven either way, as heretofore explained, but it still does not resolve the central question – does Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere lead to Global Warming?
That is a bit like asking, Does one unprovable assertion prove that an undefined warming is happening? Let us look at some websites to find adequate definitions, if that is possible.
What is global warming?
Global warming is the rise in temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/
Well that is an interesting definition, is it not? A pretty dumb one, I would say, designed only for dummies. It does not take much research to find that there are four levels in our atmosphere. Has the Thermosphere warmed? Try copying Captain Kittinger and ascend there 20 miles up in a balloon. Has the Mesophere warmed? Has the Stratosphere warmed? No, non, nein. Whatever language you speak the upper levels have not changed one wit. What about the Tropophere where we experience our weather? Has the upper Troposphere warmed? Ask any Airline Pilot who flies habitually at around 30,000 feet, how warm it is up there? Pretty warm, I would say about MINUS 40 degrees centigrade.
Of course, they did not mean that. They meant near ground level temperatures, an average of. That is difficult, is it not? According to the Met Office the daily temperatures are varying, much as they always have done. We have had some ten days of balmy Spring like weather in the South of England, but now snow is sweeping Scotland, is expected in the Pennines tomorrow and by Wednesday the snow should reach parts of Souhern England. Is the Troposphere warming? Well, it appears to be warming and cooling, warming in the daytime and cooling at night. Anything unusual there?
But, Scientists say… I always freak out when I hear that expression. What scientist says that the Globe is getting warmer? Is he or she an independent scientist, who has not already been paid to find a human imprint? Can one trust anyone at the Met Office, or anyone under Uncle Phil Jones at the Climatic Research Unit, who is in cahoots with Michael Mann of the Goddard Institute? Even if the Climategate emails were only half true, it is evident that these scientists are shit scared of finding any cooling! Why, how many mortgages would be on the line if the whole Global Warming farrago were to go up in smoke?
Here is another gem: –
What are the greenhouse gases?
Greenhouse gases are made out of:
- water vapour
- carbon dioxide
- methane
- nitrous oxide
- ozone
- chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)
They are all natural gases, but extra greenhouses gases can be made by humans from pollution.
Just examine that last sentence. So Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide are natural gases. I am sincerely glad to hear that, but extra greenhouse gases can be made from pollution. Really? So it is pollution that makes these ‘extra’ gases, is it? Extra in what sense? That is a new angle. Say we had a little extra Oxygen as the result of the extra CO2 would that be bad? If plant life thrives with extra CO2, as can be demonstrated every day, can that be bad? If increased food production results for the growing numbers of humanity, can that be bad?
Here from another site: – http://library.thinkquest.org/
The greenhouse effect is when the temperature rises because the sun’s heat and light is trapped in the earth’s atmosphere.
Now that is interesting, is it not? The heat and the light are trapped? What is meant by the word ‘trapped’? And just whereabouts is it trapped? At 1,000, 10,000 or 20,000 feet? And if it is heat, if it is a kind of energy, does it conduct? Does it convect? And does it radiate? Because if it does any one of these three things it is not trapped. If it conducts it loses its heat to the surrounding molecules, if it convects that means the heat ascends, and if it radiates then it must be subject to the inverse square law.
There is a difficulty. Even though the Sun is some 91-95 million miles away yet its surface is calculated at some 6000K, so I am well informed. So we receive this radiation in spite of the huge distance. Apart from which the Sun’s diameter is some 109 times the diameter of the Earth. Compare that with the size of a molecule? Just how far can a molecule, which you cannot even see under a microscope, just how far – taking into account the inverse square law – just how far can its radiation travel? That is of course, if it was hot in the first place. Since the adiabatic lapse rate is inexorable, so I believe, then these molecules have no heat to radiate that is hotter than the surface.
Disingenuously the same site uses the analogy of a car in the sun to prove their point.
This is like when heat is trapped in a car. On a very hot day, the car gets hotter when it is out in the parking lot. This is because the heat and light from the sun can get into the car, by going through the windows, but it can’t get back out. This is what the greenhouse effect does to the earth. The heat and light can get through the atmosphere, but it can’t get out. As a result, the temperature rises.
The temperature rises it is true, as long as the engine of the sun’s radiation is heating the interior continuously. Should a black cloud obscure the sun the temperature will fall. Should the car stand in the sun all day, will the heat remain once the night advances? Of course not. Neither will radiators in a house remain hot once the boiler switches off. The heat is not trapped.
The analogy is further falsified as the atmosphere has no roof, but is a continuum to Outer Space.
Boil up a kettle and fill a hot-water bottle. Have I trapped heat? No, I have trapped some hot water, but as the night wears on the heat seeps out. Heat simply refuses to be trapped. The idea of trapped heat is a myth conjured up by bad scientists.
There are even some Sceptic scientists who argue that there is a Greenhouse Effect, but that it is so small that it makes no matter. I prefer the point made by Gary Novak in his Climate Basics. “To claim that carbon dioxide is a heat trapping gas is like setting a jar of pickles on the kitchen table and saying it absorbs heat, therefore it heats the kitchen; and if you remove the pickles the room will be as cold as the outdoors. What it means is heat going into the carbon dioxide comes from the environment and goes into the environment. It isn’t an addition of heat, and it has nothing to do with the rate of heat escaping into space”.
To my mind, nothing illustrates better than the above quotation the utter irrelevance of CO2 in the Climate debate.
Anthony Bright-Paul
PS1
- Heat is not a commodity.
- All heat has to be generated.
- All objects are either being warmed or they are cooling down.
- Heat cannot be trapped.
- Gases can be warmed and can be cooled. They neither generate nor trap heat.
Therefore there is no such thing as Man-made Global warming. For Mankind to warm the Globe they would have to create a Sun. Happily that is impossible.
Anthony Bright-Paul
PS2 Global Warming Hoax
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