timeimmortal

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The list of only those scientists whose (last) names begin with ‘K’ has 1,495 entries. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is a bit more than half the number of scientists who produced the latest IPCC report, no? And there are twenty-five more letters in the alphabet.

Related: It’s U.S. data, but April 2008 was fully one degree (F) colder than average in America, which makes it the coldest April on record in the last 11 years.

TheSpaceAdmiral writes in with a question about this article.

What exactly did you find misleading in the CanWest article about HD 189733b? Do you really think they jumped to any conclusions about life on other worlds?

The article implied that life on HD 189733b is unlikely (”a world too hot for conditions favourable for life as we understand it”) and was very clear that it’s the process, not the discovery of methane itself, that is the major milestone (”But the ability of scientists to analyze its atmosphere and detect carbon-based molecules is a crucial feat in efforts to find planets that may harbour extraterrestrial life”). In no way does the article imply that it’s at all likely HD 189733b harbours life. The lead-in (”Astronomers have found organic chemicals on a planet outside our Solar System, a milestone in the hunt for extraterrestrial life”) is vague, but not incorrect or misleading, since it’s quickly clarified.

I think what I found to be potentially misleading was the title of the article relative to its content. “Clues found to alien life” really isn’t an accurate headline for an article that talks about the discovery of methane in the atmosphere of a faraway planet, especially since methane can be created by non-organic processes. I’d be skeptical of taking the presence of methane, especially in an environment such as the atmosphere of HD 189733 b, as any sort of indicator on the road to discovering extraterrestrial life.

It just seems that every time there’s any kind of discovery made about another planet, the writer reporting on the discovery jumps very quickly into the discussion of the possibility of alien life, even when it doesn’t seem particularly justified, by the actual nature of the discovery, to be doing so.

I realize that article writers and stringers don’t necessarily have control over the headline of the article they submit. But that’s also why I kind of find the article misleading — whoever wrote that headline gives the impression, I think, that something actually living might almost have been discovered, or that a necessary precursor for life (some kind of amino) might have been stumbled over. Finding out that it was just methane was, I daresay, something of a let down.

This Edmonton Journal piece is a bit misleading.

Astronomers have found organic chemicals on a planet outside our Solar System, a milestone in the hunt for extraterrestrial life. Researchers also identified water in the atmosphere of the so-called alien planet, a world too hot for conditions favourable for life as we understand it.

But the ability of scientists to analyze its atmosphere and detect carbon-based molecules is a crucial feat in efforts to find planets that may harbour extraterrestrial life. Reported today in the journal Nature, the feat makes the alien planet possibly the best understood of the 270 detected so far. It is named HD 189733b and was discovered in 2005 in the constellation Vulpecula, a realm 63 light years from Earth.

The organic chemical in question is methane. The presence of an organic hydrocarbon in a planet’s atmosphere, while interesting, is hardly an indicator of the probability of finding alien life, either on HD 189733 b or on any other planet yet discovered — especially since methane can be created by non-organic sources (and the planet’s atmosphere does have a lot of water vapour in it; if it also had a high carbon concentration, this would probably provide sufficient pre-conditions for methane formation). And at any rate, the planet itself is not exactly hospitable — its atmospheric temperature is on the order of 700 degrees C.

Maybe there is alien life out there somewhere, or maybe there isn’t. All we know right now is that we don’t know of any other life besides that which has emerged on Earth; for all intents and purposes, we are alone. I can understand the excitement that accompanies every discovery made about other planets in the galaxy…I just wish people would exercise a little restraint, and take a little time to think, before jumping to a not particularly likely conclusion about life on other worlds.

Mike Brock has an interesting analysis of changes in average global temperature relative to changes in solar activity. While a lot of people still attempt to downplay the role of the Sun in changes in Earth’s climate (sidetracking the discussion into things like CO2 and methane), the best evidence we have still seems to suggest, in no uncertain terms, that all the gases humanity can pump into the air count for almost nothing compared to the effect that the Sun has on Earth’s climate.

Indeed, since the ending of the last solar cycle, since which time no new sunspots — a good indicator of an active star — have been observed, the Earth’s global average temperature has reversed almost all of the 0.6 C rise above “average” that was observed at about this time last year.

That’s not to say that humanity should just pump industrial and agricultural emissions into the atmosphere all willy-nilly — that would be stupid, because some of those emissions have other harmful effects not related to global warming (although others are mostly harmless). We should do our best to curb the emission of substances which cause, for example, cancers or respiratory maladies. But there is no point in trying our damndest to break otherwise healthy, functioning Western economies in pursuit of a phantom goal of “reversing” a trend over which we have no control anyhow.

It might have seemed timely that in New York an array of leading climatologists and other experts should have gathered for the most high-powered international conference yet to question the “consensus” on global warming. After three days of what the chairman called “the kind of free-spirited debate that is virtually absent from the global warming alarmist camp”, the 500 delegates issued the Manhattan Declaration, stating that attempts by governments to reduce CO2 emissions would “markedly diminish further prosperity” while having “no appreciable impact” on the Earth’s warming.

This inevitably attracted the kind of hysterical abuse that has become so familiar from warmist fanatics, tellingly contrasting with the measured arguments put forward by the scientists present. One was Anthony Watts, the meteorologist who last year famously forced NASA’s Goddard Institute to correct a fundamental error in its data on US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s but the 1930s.

On his website, Watts Up With That, he is currently posting a corrected version of the global temperature graph, combining satellite and surface data from all four main official sources. A measure of his scrupulous reporting is that although this shows a recent dramatic dip in temperatures, he cautiously explains that it is not yet conclusive evidence that the world has entered a new cooling phase (as he points out, there was temporarily an even sharper drop after the “peak” El Niño year 1998).

But can we doubt that, if the data showed the opposite, the media would be rushing to report this as yet further “proof” that the planet is heating out of control? The fact is that, for all their caveats that this drop in temperatures can be explained by the cooling effect of La Niña, the official orthodoxy that “more CO2 means more warming” is facing its most serious challenge yet. In light of the colossal price we are all in so many ways being asked to pay for it, the data in coming years will be more than interesting.

One cannot, hopefully, have failed to notice that the climate change alarmism movement has become a moneymaking enterprise for some, while for others it has become a vehicle through which policies of massive state intervention in industry — that is, socialism — is demanded and advocated for. The science upon which the movement is based is shoddy and uncertain at best (if not outright an outright fallacy in many respects), and the outcomes of the changes that folks like Al Gore and David Suzuki are demanding would be crippling and disastrous.

It’s a good thing, then, that more and more evidence is now coming to light demonstrating just what kind of lies are being told to us, the Western public.

Count Roland writes in again with some follow-up regarding my previous response to him.

Agreed.

But the hypothesis was looking at the methane produced by large swaths of putrifying organic matter, as in vast rice paddies. Also, the period of NA buffalo depopulation coincides with the tail end (1700-1850) of a deepening mini ice age between ~1300 and ~1900. At the begininng of that, likely somehow related, the bl;ack death eliminated populations in Eurasia, likely impacting rice production among other things, reducing methane as well.

Also, it did not say that human induced methane production caused global warming - it said that such production slowed global cooling such that by now, given solar output, a pivot point for the commencement of an ice should be well past but we have not arrived at it, yet. But then again, perhaps the sun is acting a little differently this cycle.

However, a point that can be gleened from this hypothesis. If it is solar activity that is the principal factor and is in a ‘downward’ general cycle with some upticks (we are talking 1000’s and 100’s of years respectively) our human global warming, as little as it may be, may be the only barrier between us and and ice age which would cover most of the developed world with ice. Another way to say this is to remember that the last hundred years’ supposed “hockey stick” is but a fraction of an average glacial cycle let alone the longer solar cycles we have yet to gather the data for. Last time I checked, looking at the smallest fraction - a prooftext, of data and giving a conclusion is not good science.

I think the maxim “correlation does not imply causation” is relevant here with regard to the observation of the correlation between buffalo depopulation (1700-1850 AD) and the “tail end” of a “mini ice age” (1300-1900 AD), especially since a) the aforementioned “mini ice age” was already long in progress by the time buffalo depopulation began, and b) while significant, buffalo were not the only source of methane production in the world, and it seems suspect to suggest that even as catastrophic a decline in population as they underwent would precipitate sweeping changes in global average temperature, especially since by the time the buffalo were being hunted to the brink of extinction, the rice paddies would have been back in action.

There is also to be considered the observation that post-1850, the “mini ice age” came to an end (i.e. temperatures began to rise), even though the buffalo herds were no longer churning out massive quantities of methane (and at the time, cattle farming wouldn’t have made up the shortfall; it doesn’t even manage to do that today). One could potentially point to the Industrial Revolution as the culprit in this case, although given the analysis that has been done about the insignificance of CO2 and other industrial emissions as a driver of global temperature change, that thesis also falls deeply into question.

It serves to note that the Sun is only now coming to the end of an unusually energetic cycle that has, among other things, triggered warming trends on other planets in our solar system, Mars and Neptune to name but two. That diminishment in solar activity has already triggered a downward shift in global average temperature that has more or less undone the warming trend that Al Gore et. al. were so up in arms about, as one would expect if one accepts the theory that CO2 does almost nothing to affect changes in global average temperature, and that the Sun effects profound changes in same.

I also question whether it is humanity’s minimal contribution to changes in the average global temperature that stave off a coming ice age; personally, I tend to think that even under the most carefully controlled conditions, nature will do whatever it damn well pleases. Yes, there are cyclical patterns in climate, as there are in many things, but those patterns can shift for any number of reasons. The Sun has been unusually active for the last while, and is now entering a phase where it is much less energetic than it has been. This may trigger a mild drop in the global average temperature, or it may trigger an extreme drop in same, thus ushering in a new ice age. Either way, I don’t think anything humanity does, in terms of emissions, will offset the results to any meaningful extent. It has been said that even if humanity ceased all CO2 production (even from out of our own lungs), we would have an effect on the global average temperature that one would need percents of percents to measure properly — i.e. statistically and quantitatively insignificant. Even if methane had a hundred times the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere, cutting all our methane emissions would still only result in a change in global average temperature of a percent, or perhaps a few percent (if we were lucky).

If humanity wanted to really stave off a coming ice age, we’d find a way to maximize our production of water vapour, since it is vapour that contributes the most to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. But even then — next to the natural water cycles of the planet, our contribution at present is almost meaningless, and it would be a mighty effort indeed to change that.

Count Roland writes in some commentary with regards to this article about global warming, climate change, and CO2’s negligible effect on changes in the average global temperature.

Well, CO2 may not be as big a force as once thought.

However, I remember seeing at least a hypothesis that human activity has stopped the next ice age for another reason, and a reason with much more powerful greenhouse gases involved. The increased methane production from thousands of years of domesticated animals and from rice and other water/organic material intensive farming, not to mention systematic transformation of forest into farmland has had a much greater impact - in slowing a temperature drop over the past several thousand years. If I remember correctly, the hypothesis tracked global temperatures (from ice cores and others) and indicators of caqrbon, methane, sunlight and found that sunlight and temperature and the rest tracked together and should have us living on ice right now if not for human activity.

We may be alive only because of human global warming (aside from God’s grace). But, the big ball of fusing hydrogen and things like galactic and atmospheric dust [does] have a much bigger impact (witness the ‘year without summer’ after a rather large volcanic eruption in the 1800’s) than our cars. Now, we should, perhaps, limit our comsumption of materials for other stewardship related reasons such as sustainability…

I distinctly remember a radio show some years ago, in which David Suzuki was giving an interview in regard to methane production from agriculture in North America. His assertion rather matched Roland’s assertion, that human livestock farming and its attendant methane production (let’s face it, O Reader — cows are quite flatulent) was causing a rise in the average global temperature. The interview was going along quite well, until one caller phoned in with a question about North America before humanity’s major emergence there. We don’t know exactly how large the buffalo herds were, but even during the first few decades of European colonization, what figures we have on those populations suggest that there were more buffalo in North America back then than there are cattle in North America today. And buffalo, this caller reminded Dr. Suzuki, are both much larger and much more flatulent than cattle. And yet we observe, in the historic temperature record, that temperatures fluctuated quite a lot between those years and the modern era.

The caller was quite particular on that point, and David Suzuki had to beat a hasty retreat from the points he’d been making, conceding that yes, there were many more buffalo back then than there are cattle today, and that yes, there would have been a lot more methane produced by those much larger herds.

In one sense, I do agree with Roland about methane production — it is a stronger contributor to global warming than CO2 is. At the same time, it’s still not a strong contributor — the major culprit is water vapour. And there is very little that humanity can do to limit or control vapour levels in the atmosphere, anymore than we could do anything to stop the rain when it comes. I also do agree with Roland that there, but for the grace of God, humanity goes. I even agree that, for reasons of stewardship, humanity should be careful in its use of resources for any number of reasons; we ought not to be wasteful, we ought not to be gluttonous, and we ought to care for the world that God has given to us. We ought to care for each other, furthermore, by limiting to all reasonable extents the quantity of truly harmful pollutants that we put into the atmosphere; sulfur dioxide, for example.

At the same time, I continue to doubt that humanity makes a meaningful contribution to global warming; we’re fairly insignificant as regards biomass to begin with, and most of the emissions from our industrial processes, even the ones that are harmful to us to breathe, are not major contributors to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. Even our production of water vapour is, as I understand it, rather insignificant next to the naturally occurring vapour from the planet’s water cycle. This is equally true as regards methane; there was a time in history where the animals of the Earth, roaming freely, produced vastly increased amounts of methane as compared to what we see produced by livestock today — during those centuries, the Earth’s temperature fluctuated quite a lot, at times rising well above the point at which the global average temperature is at today, and at times dipping well below same.

For an explanation of those cycles, I still look to the Sun.