Should you be concerned about Global Warming?

One Opinion

Many will disagree with me, but I believe that No, you should not be concerned about global warming.

First of all, though most people - even most people on my side of the argument - believe that global temperatures have increased over the last 100-150 years, I believe this to be an artifact. The Urban Heat Island phenomenon is well known in meteorology, and dictates that temperatures in heavily-populated areas are higher than nearby rural areas. This phenomenon is readily observable on your local TV news weather forecast. The magnitude of this effect varies, but it's generally around 3 degrees Celcius. This in itself would not be a problem if urban centers were constant in size. But they aren't. Urban centers have a habit of expanding.

Here's how it affects observed temperatures. You see, even 100 years ago, meteorologists knew about the Urban Heat Island effect (though they probably didn't call it that). So, to remove this effect from their records, they set up many of their observation stations OUTSIDE of major metropolitan areas. Of course, they had to be JUST outside the city, or it would be impossible to get the data in a reasonable amount of time. Here's the problem. In the last 100 years, all of these major metropolitan areas have expanded to encompass the observation stations that were formerly outside of the major metropolitan areas. The areas around these stations are now just as heavily populated and just as heavily industrialized as the central cities, and therefore subject to the same urban heat island effect. So, if a meteorologist looks at temperature data for, say, Arlington, Virginia, and sees an increase from 1900 to 2000 of 2 degrees Celcius, this is easily explained away by the fact that, in 1900, Arlington, VA was very much rural, but in 2000, it was a heavily populated, "inside-the-Beltway" suburb of Washington, DC.

To be fair, global warming alarmists claim that they have adjusted their temperature data to allow for the Urban Heat Island effect. But few will state exactly HOW they adjusted their data. The few who will part with this information say that they adjusted their temperature data by about 1 degree Celcius. You need only watch your local weather forecast to know that that is not nearly enough. It is therefore my contention that most, if not all, of the observed temperature increase over the last 100 years is a direct result of the Urban Heat Island artifact, and not of genuine global warming. Please note that that "observed temperature increase" over the last 100 years, is approximately 0.7 degrees C, or less than a fourth of the typical UHI effect. Therefore, if just one fourth of all temperature observation stations are affected by the UHI, then the UHI completely explains the observed temperature increase.

Second, even if temperatures are rising, it has not been conclusively established that mankind is causing it. The prevalent theory is that our burning of fossil fuels is pumping billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that this additional carbon dioxide is artificially enhancing the natural greenhouse effect, causing temperatures to rise. The problem with that is that even all this carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels and other human industry (which is about 26 billion MT, by the way) is a drop in the bucket compared to other, natural, sources of carbon dioxide. Still, they claim, it's just enough to tilt the balance. Fair enough, IF the link between CO₂ and temperature is valid.

There is a great deal of "skeptic" research out there that claims the link is NOT valid. One line of reasoning says that CO₂ acts as a greenhouse gas only up to a certain concentration, and that we are well above that critical concentration, and thus additional CO₂ in the atmosphere will not cause additional warming. I won't go into details here, but that's the long-and-short of it.

Here's another consideration. CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere was not directly measured before 1958. All data on atmospheric CO₂ prior to 1958 is taken from proxy data, the most common of which is CO₂ concentration in air bubbles trapped in polar ice at various times in the past. Scientists drill down into this polar ice and recover "ice core" samples. They then find air bubbles trapped inside this ice and insert probes to detect the CO₂ concentration. Once they date that particular level of the ice core, they can state that X years ago, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere was Y. But this method depends on a couple of assumptions.

First, that the air trapped in the bubble all those years ago was representative of the atmosphere as a whole at that time. Second, that the composition of the air inside the bubble has not changed in all that time. That second assumption SEEMS to be valid, but at least one researcher has seriously questioned it, and after reading his paper, I question it as well, but again, I won't go into the details. This researcher notes that there are OTHER proxy methods for determining historic CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere, most notably stomata density in fossilized leaves, which clearly indicates that CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere were significantly higher than what is indicated by ice core air bubbles, and even higher than the actual observed CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere now. Furthermore, at many of those times when CO₂ concentrations were at their highest (according to the stomata proxy data), temperatures were lower than they are now, and when stomata-proxy CO₂ was at its lowest, temperatures were often well above today's temperatures.

But I have also come up with a very valid reason to question the first assumption in the ice-core air-bubble data. By definition, ice core samples must be collected in polar regions, the only place on Earth where ice will remain frozen year round, and thus accumulate over multiple years. But the coldness of polar regions, aside from making ice core samples possible, has a significant effect on the composition of the air trapped inside those ice cores. You see, carbon dioxide is soluble in water. Not only that, but its solubility increases geometrically as water temperature decreases, reaching maximum solubility at the freezing point. Now, this is true for nitrogen and oxygen as well, but CO₂ is significantly MORE soluble in water, at all temperatures, than nitrogen or oxygen. In fact, at 0 degrees C, CO₂ is 30 times more soluble than oxygen and a whopping 70 times more soluble than nitrogen. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the atmosphere in polar areas, which are surrounded by huge volumes of very cold liquid water, has quite a bit less CO₂ than the atmosphere in general. It is this air, the air in the polar atmosphere, that is getting trapped in bubbles, to be found years later in ice cores. And this air, most certainly, cannot be representative of the atmosphere as a whole at the time the air was trapped.

All in all, it seems far more likely to me that any real temperature increase over the last 150 years is caused by other, natural, reasons. For example, about 150 years ago, the Earth began to emerge from a "Little Ice Age". That emergence is still ongoing. There are many factors outside of human control that effect climate. Many of these factors are not even ON Earth, but controlled by the ebb and flow of our solar system and even the galaxy. These factors are the cause of the ice ages, as well as the brief warming periods between them, of which this is just one of many. We did not cause it, and we cannot stop it. We need only wait it out. And hope that the Ice Age that begins when the current warming period ends is not as bad as the last one. If it's half as bad as the last one, we'll be doing everything we can to CAUSE global warming.

Third, even if global warming is really occurring, and even if mankind is causing it, I do not believe that the effects are nearly as bad as the alarmists claim they will be. Al Gore predicts a 20-30 ft rise in global sea levels. Even the IPCC (which in my opinion is a bunch of alarmists) only predicts 1-2 ft. And that is based on the possibility of massive ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland, which, despite supposedly higher global temperatures, has not occured yet. In fact, total volume of ice in Antarctica and Greenland has been INCREASING.

Global warming alarmists are on record as claiming that higher temperatures will cause more, and more severe, hurricanes and tornadoes. These alarmists seemed to be on the money after the 2005 hurricane season. But the two years since then have put the lie to those theories. No major hurricanes have made landfall in the US in the last two years. And far fewer named storms (including tropical storms) have even developed than in 2005.

Alarmists predict that global warming will make it much more difficult to grow food, resulting in massive food shortages around the world. But reason does not agree. There are 3 things that agricultural crops need more than anything else: warmth, CO₂, and water. All of these things are INCREASING under any reasonable global warming scenario. Warmth obviously will increase during global warming. But some say that temperatures will be TOO warm to grow crops, that crops will die from excessive heat. If that turns out to be a problem, the growing season for those crops can easily be adjusted to take advantage of the warmer fall, winter, and spring weather, and avoid the hot summer months. Moreover, many areas that are currently too cold to grow crops successfully will become warm enough. These areas actually will have an advantage over traditional crop-growing regions because they have not had their nutrients depleted from decades or centuries of growing crops. Carbon dioxide has been shown, time and time again, to be the number one limiting factor in plant growth and development. In fact, greenhouse growers can double the rate of growth of their plants by artificially increasing CO₂ inside the greenhouses. Even increasing CO₂ to up to several times the atmospheric concentration, growers have not seen any "diminishing returns" from additional CO₂. What about water? Alarmists claim there will be widespread drought if global warming persists. There may be LOCALIZED drought, in some areas, due to shifting weather patterns, but, for the planet as a whole, rainfall will increase. Warmer temperatures will cause more evaporation. More evaporation means more water vapor in the atmosphere, which means more rainfall. And if we build a few thousand miles of canals, we can effectively control flooding in those areas that receive too much rainfall, while at the same time relieving drought conditions in those areas that don't receive enough rainfall.

Fourth, even if global warming is real, even if we're causing it, and even if its effects are as bad as the worst-case scenarios predicting by the most alarmed alarmists, the things that we will have to do to reverse global warming are far, far worse. I'm not talking about Kyoto, which, according to its most avid proponents won't reverse, or even stop, global warming, but will only delay it by a few years. Kyoto itself will completely cripple the world's economy, but to reverse global warming, we're going to have to go a whole lot futher. First, if burning fossil fuels is really the culprit, then we have to STOP burning fossil fuels. Not cut back. STOP! That means no cars. Not even public transportation. That means no tractors, and therefore no food. Oh, we could switch to electric motors for transportations and agriculture. But were will the electricity come from? Currently, the vast majority of it comes from BURNING FOSSIL FUELS. In the long run, we could switch our entire electricity production capacity to nuclear, but the same alarmists who demand we stop global warming refuse to even consider nuclear, because they believe it is not environmentally friendly. But let's say we overcome those moronic objections and convert to 100% nuclear. What will we have accomplished? We will have STOPPED global warming, but we still haven't REVERSED it. We're going to have to plant billions of acres of trees to suck up all the carbon dioxide we pumped out over the last 150 years, which means less space available for humans to live. But that's okay because the world's human population will be reduced by about 90% due to starvation, heat stroke, and hypothermia, since we won't be allowed to use home heaters and air conditioners.

In summary, no I don't believe you should be concerned about global warming. But you should be very much afraid of the efforts to combat global warming.

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