Yesterday a team of students, faculty and staff held a global warming presentation at
Gallaudet University as part of the Earth Day celebration event. One of Al Gore’s team members made a special visit to the campus to make a presentation as well as Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Again, this is another example of the global warming screamer crowd pandering to a political agenda whose objective is to prey on human's irrational fear. Now, since people have seen the presentation at Gallaudet, we will now have to deal with some of the students, staff and faculty who may likely have very little understanding on the knowledge of earth science and will now take face value of what was presented yesterday. The question is, will these students, staff or faculty members have the necessary critical thinking skill to discern truth from fiction, and not rely on emotional knee jerk reaction? Or will they run amok to everybody else that we must change or Earth will turn into a cooking oven? Will they question the validity of what was presented at Gallaudet University?
Let's hope so but then again I had to actually educate one Gallaudet University alumnus about his misconception of where oil came from. This fellow being an extremely bright and intelligent one actually believed oil came from dinosaurs. Now, my professional background is in the earth sciences covering hydrology, geophysics, geology, hydrogeology and some atmospheric work that I do on my job. But this guy has none of the earth science background. Yet believed oil came from decomposing dinosaurs.
Here is the fact. The source of oil does not come from dinosaurs. The source of oil comes from long past decayed biological materials but not from dinosaurs but from
marine algae!
A primary source of organic material is marine ALGAE. These minute, one-celled organisms form the bulk of plant life in the world's oceans. They are ideally situated for preservation in deep oceans because of their planktonic (ie, free-floating) existence. When they die, algae sink to the seafloor where they are buried within silts and clays. Since burrowing organisms are not present, the algal material builds up to form an appreciable part (1-2%) of the total sediment. Bacterial action releases oxygen from this material, further concentrating the hydrogen and carbon molecules required to produce petroleum.
Now, if an intelligent person believed oil came from dinosaurs, and with no environmental science background, what do you think these students and staff will think about Al Gore’s movie and the Earth Day presentation at Gallaudet University who will now think that human population is responsible for global warming? You see, the global-warming-caused-by-human-population is in fact….a myth!
This is really all about politics and power here. Nothing more. People are being duped left and right on this.
Still, it is stupefying to watch people scream and hyperventilate about "Global Warming" claiming that it is caused by the human population and call this whole thing a "crisis." A crisis? Oh, please! Crisis is when you're facing a rogue country who want to lob nuclear missiles our way.
It is also equally dismaying to watch a few deaf/hh people like the ones in Gallynet-L or other forums run the gamut in a near state of panic to try and get people to help solve this "Global Warming" by sending a message to Congress on
Al Gore's website. A last minute knee jerk panic button for the environmentally guilty. Once they send their message out they'll automatically feel better about themselves thinking they did something great.
Hardly.
Again, pure politics at play here that's entirely misplaced and abused by those who insist earth will collapse into a heaping pile of doo.
What is equally ridiculous is when people try and set up an acceptable “average global temperature” in order to have a baseline data to draw from. You cannot. Temperature changes over the hundreds and thousands of years from extremely warm periods to extremely cold periods such as the ice age. All you have are temperature trends. In fact, 900 years ago (“
medieval period” - click to see timeline) temperature was much warmer back then than today’s. But the warming didn't start then. It began about 10,000 years ago which was when the last ice age ended. That was when glaciers and ice sheets that covered the mid-portion of the United States (geographically speaking) began retreating when world wide climate began to warm up! This would be the start of the warming period over the next 10,000 years to the present.
The premise behind Al Gore's alarm is to get people to feel guilty about using coal, oil, and gas. Or the amount of carbon we use. And by getting them to feel guilty he does the Chicken Little act and repeatedly says that the sky is falling because we drive too many SUVs like John Kerry. Or fly too many planes like Al Gore. Or build too big of a house of 28,000 square feet like John Edwards. After all, many forget that Earth is a carbon based system in the first place which has expelled/released carbon dioxide (CO2) for eons. And much of the carbon excess is recycled back into to the land, plants and ocean that act as “carbon sinks.” Trees require CO2 to survive, and in return it expels oxygen, the stuff that we need to breath and live!
But… but… you say that over the years CO2 has risen, so has the temperature! So what? In the field of science you have to be extremely careful when using trends in the attempt to correlate it with something else. Correlation does not always equate 100% causation. Especially as complex as the earth system and how it works.
This scare tactic is a design by the Al Gore's team along with the rest of the so-called scientists who say that Carbon Dioxide or CO2 that is being spewed out is caused mostly by the human population and sole reason for the global warming. This isn’t true. In fact, it is an outright lie.
The amount of CO2 expelled by man whether it’s from factories, cars, burning of petroleum or our own exhaled breath is extremely small compared to the actual amount of the earth's CO2 it puts out into the atmosphere annually.
In terms of total C02, volume-wise, in the atmosphere compared to the rest of the gas makes up only .03% (or .0003) of the atmosphere. Nitrogen makes up 78% of the atmosphere while Oxygen at 21%, Argon at 0.9% and water vapor at 0.5% (Troposphere only). See the
interactive flash player on atmospheric content of these gases.
What people don’t know is that water vapor such as the amount of humidity we feel around us and in the clouds we see above us have the ability to hold and release heat. Carbon Dioxide or CO2 does not act as heat exchangers. Carbon Dioxide is not known to be a climate driver. It has never been a climate driver. Water vapor helps create clouds. Clouds form and help produce precipitation such as rain. Rain helps keep the earth cool. The cycle continues. Without precipitation earth would simply become too hot for human habitation.
The total human CO2 emissions, primarily from the use of coal, oil, and natural gas and the production of cement, are currently about 5.5 GT C (Gigaton carbon) per year. But lets put these figures in perspective.
It is estimated that the atmosphere contains 750 Gt C; the surface ocean contains 1,000 Gt C; vegetation, soils, and detritus contain 2,200 Gt C; and the intermediate and deep oceans contain 38,000 Gt C. Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 Gt C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 60 Gt C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 Gt C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 100 Gt C ( Schimel, D. S. (1995)
Global Change Biology 1, 77-91).
So, what does the total CO2 emission by man means? It means that the human population produces only 6% of the carbon emission than what the ocean puts into the atmosphere annually. It means that the human population produces only 9% of the carbon emission plants put out into the atmosphere annually. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere constitutes only 0.03% (or 0.0003) of the total gases in the atmosphere. Very small indeed. Again, CO2 has never been known to be the major climate driver. Water vapor, yes. CO2? No.
Now, what many people do not know is that the earth climate system is an extremely complex one with many feedback loops. Scientists have tried to use computer modeling to try and predict what the climate would be like in the future. The problem is when validating such a computer model it must be able to mimic the past and
they weren't able to.
Ask yourself this. How many of you trust the weather man’s prediction of your weather a week later? Two weeks? How about a month later? Would you put your life on the line to say that the weatherman’s prediction will be true? Even though the weather person uses powerful computer modeling to figure out what next's week weather may be like. This is what many people are saying about our own long term climate prediction and that it will eventually, in our life time, wreak untold havoc.
How do you know for sure?
You don’t. It’s a prediction computer model. Not a fact. Though we do and continue to have climate disasters. We may by next year have several volcanos pop its cork and release the ash and gases into the atmosphere and cause a worldwide cooling that could last a decade.
Next we hear claims that the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro are disappearing because of global warming. Hardly. What Global Warming alarmists WON’T tell you is that trees around the mountain have been disappearing through aggressive deforestation practices and the lack of trees is the culprit and reason for
ice and snow disappearing on Mt. Kilimanjaro.
“Although it’s tempting to blame the (Kilimanjaro) ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit.”
Forests at the base of Kilimanjaro have been steadily disappearing for decades. “Without the forests’ humidity,” Mason reports, “previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”
Ah, there it is again. Water vapor helps keep the surrounding local climate of Kilimanjaro cool! Trees expel moisture everyday and helps keep the surrounding air cooler! Of course! Without water vapor that helps make clouds and produce precipitation, the earth surface would simple get warm…too warm for habitable life such as us mere human beings.
The Tanzanian president has now banned deforestation practices in order to try and save Kilimanjaro which is aimed at halting rapid environmental degradation, including the melting of ice on Mount Kilimanjaro. There is no mention that global warming is sole culprit. This is another scare tactic by global warming screamers.
But then you hear screams of panic about glaciers retreating all over the world like the ones in the Alps as proof that it’s global warming (as caused by man, again) to be the culprit. But never mind the fact that glaciers take thousand of years to grow. The recent warming essentially began after the Little Ice Age from 1400s to 1800s when, of course, human population was much lower than today. In short, over the last several hundred years’ earth at the mid-latitude has warmed up with occasional brief periods of cold climate conditions did glaciers and ice respond to the temperature change. Humans were never the culprit. How could they? About 900 years ago the Aletsch and Grindelwald glaciers in Switzerland were much smaller than today! How can that be!! Well, just observe the
timeline here where you will notice references of glaciers retreating starting as early as the 1600s!
A study published in Progress in Physical Geography (Braithwaite, R.J., 26: 76-95 (2002)), analyzed mass balance measurements of 246 glaciers from around the world between 1946 and 1995. According to the study’s author, “there are several regions with highly negative mass balances in agreement with a public perception of ‘the glaciers are melting,’ but there are also regions with positive balances.”
Within Europe, for example, “Alpine glaciers are generally shrinking, Scandinavian glaciers are growing, and glaciers in the Caucasus are close to equilibrium for 1980-95,” according to Braithwaite. Significantly, regarding this most recent 15-year period of time, Braithwaite noted “there is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years.”
Again, the earth system is in a constant state of flux. Earth’s complex climatic system is always changing within the normal parameters of human and animal’s range of habitability. Let's knock off scaring little kiddies about polar bears saying they get stranded on ice floes because of global warming. Another myth to be busted. Polar bears won’t drown for the lack of ice. Nature designed polar bear for swimming in the icy cold waters in the first place. They can swim up to 100 miles at a stretch. Please, none of this stranded polar bear on an ice floe baloney.
All in all, we will still have snow, rain, heat, cold, hurricanes, tornados, winds and water. Instead of becoming a lemming for the global warming screamer crowd will you jump off the cliff with them, it’s better send a message on good environmental stewardship than to scream like a banshee that earth is going to boil over blaming humans for it.
Nonsense.
Use your common sense. Let's hope some of the guys at Gallaudet University will do the same.
