Still wondering what exactly altered Ron Bailey's long-standing position as a mankind-influenced global warming/climate change skeptic when he wrote, "We're all global warmers now."
"We're all global warmers now."
That exact phrase is what Bailey uses as the title of his August 11, 2005 piece in Reason Magazine noting a reversal of his long-standing position challenging global warming.
"We're all global warmers now."
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34079.html
Obviously, we're NOT ALL global warmers now, and especially, not just because he has switched his position.
Global Warming Natural, May End Within 20 Years, Says Ohio State University Researcher
Science Daily — COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years, predicts an Ohio State University researcher.
The researcher suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide -- often thought of as a key "greenhouse gas" -- is not the cause of global warming. The opposite is most likely to be true, according to Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering. It is the rising global temperatures that are naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, he says.
Essenhigh explains his position in a "viewpoint" article in the current issue of the journal Chemical Innovation, published by the American Chemical Society.
Many people blame global warming on carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in man-made devices such as automobiles and power plants. Essenhigh believes these people fail to account for the much greater amount of carbon dioxide that enters -- and leaves -- the atmosphere as part of the natural cycle of water exchange from, and back into, the sea and vegetation.
"Many scientists who have tried to mathematically determine the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature would appear to have vastly underestimated the significance of water in the atmosphere as a radiation-absorbing gas," Essenhigh argues. "If you ignore the water, you're going to get the wrong answer."
How could so many scientists miss out on this critical bit of information, as Essenhigh believes? He said a National Academy of Sciences report on carbon dioxide levels that was published in 1977 omitted information about water as a gas and identified it only as vapor, which means condensed water or cloud, which is at a much lower concentration in the atmosphere; and most subsequent investigations into this area evidently have built upon the pattern of that report.
For his hypothesis, Essenhigh examined data from various other sources, including measurements of ocean evaporation rates, man-made sources of carbon dioxide, and global temperature data for the last one million years.
He cites a 1995 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel formed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to assess the risk of human-induced climate change. In the report, the IPCC wrote that some 90 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide annually circulate between the earth's ocean and the atmosphere, and another 60 billion tons exchange between the vegetation and the atmosphere.
Compared to man-made sources' emission of about 5 to 6 billion tons per year, the natural sources would then account for more than 95 percent of all atmospheric carbon dioxide, Essenhigh said.
"At 6 billion tons, humans are then responsible for a comparatively small amount - less than 5 percent - of atmospheric carbon dioxide," he said. "And if nature is the source of the rest of the carbon dioxide, then it is difficult to see that man-made carbon dioxide can be driving the rising temperatures. In fact, I don't believe it does."
Some scientists believe that the human contribution to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, however small, is of a critical amount that could nonetheless upset Earth's environmental balance. But Essenhigh feels that, mathematically, that hypothesis hasn't been adequately substantiated.
Here's how Essenhigh sees the global temperature system working: As temperatures rise, the carbon dioxide equilibrium in the water changes, and this releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. According to this scenario, atmospheric carbon dioxide is then an indicator of rising temperatures -- not the driving force behind it.
Essenhigh attributes the current reported rise in global temperatures to a natural cycle of warming and cooling.
He examined data that Cambridge University geologists Nicholas Shackleton and Neil Opdyke reported in the journal Quaternary Research in 1973, which found that global temperatures have been oscillating steadily, with an average rising gradually, over the last one million years -- long before human industry began to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Opdyke is now at the University of Florida.
According to Shackleton and Opdyke's data, average global temperatures have risen less than one degree in the last million years, though the amplitude of the periodic oscillation has now risen in that time from about 5 degrees to about 10 degrees, with a period of about 100,000 years.
"Today, we are simply near a peak in the current cycle that started about 25,000 years ago," Essenhigh explained.
As to why highs and lows follow a 100,000 year cycle, the explanation Essenhigh uses is that the Arctic Ocean acts as a giant temperature regulator, an idea known as the "Arctic Ocean Model." This model first appeared over 30 years ago and is well presented in the 1974 book Weather Machine: How our weather works and why it is changing, by Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist magazine.
According to this model, when the Arctic Ocean is frozen over, as it is today, Essenhigh said, it prevents evaporation of water that would otherwise escape to the atmosphere and then return as snow. When there is less snow to replenish the Arctic ice cap, the cap may start to shrink. That could be the cause behind the retreat of the Arctic ice cap that scientists are documenting today, Essenhigh said.
As the ice cap melts, the earth warms, until the Arctic Ocean opens again. Once enough water is available by evaporation from the ocean into the atmosphere, snows can begin to replenish the ice cap. At that point, the Arctic ice begins to expand, the global temperature can then start to reverse, and the earth can start re-entry to a new ice age.
According to Essenhigh's estimations, Earth may reach a peak in the current temperature profile within the next 10 to 20 years, and then it could begin to cool into a new ice age.
Essenhigh knows that his scientific opinion is a minority one. As far as he knows, he's the only person who's linked global warming and carbon dioxide in this particular way. But he maintains his evaluations represent an improvement on those of the majority opinion, because they are logically rigorous and includes water vapor as a far more significant factor than in other studies.
"If there are flaws in these propositions, I'm listening," he wrote in his Chemical Innovation paper. "But if there are objections, let's have them with the numbers."
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Ohio State University.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/06/010615071248.htm
Viewpoint Paper on Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
"Does CO2 really drive global warming? by Robert Essenhigh. Chemical Innovation 2001, 31 (5), 44-46. Copyright (c) 2001 American Chemical Society. This article expresses the views of the author and not necessarily those of Chemical Innovation magazine or the American Chemical Society."
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/may01_viewpoint.html
See http://www.warwickhughes.com/climate/links.htm for Robert Essenhigh article link and more. I thought we had most of the contrarians already listed, but there are more, and more, and more...
Another branch of the far flung NASA Empire, this time with convenient site where you see an image map in red and blue of global temperature anomalies from 1979, collected by satellite, you can choose various layers of the atmosphere and by clicking on the map or making a rectangle with your mouse, can see a graph for that area.
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/
INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, whose President is Professor Nils-Axel Mörner of Sweden. Under the title "Research Topics 5: The expected sea level changes in the next century", the Commission says:
This is a topic of much controversy. … As it is now, the scenarios are primarily presented by people with little or no specialization in sea level research. This is especially true for the IPCC project where "sea level changes" are treated in ways far away from proper observational records.
Sounds like the IPCC I know.
http://www.pog.su.se/sea
World Climate Report: Professor Pat Michaels and colleagues exposing inadequate climate science and all sorts of new material.
http://www.co2andclimate.org/climate/
Search results
http://www.google.com/search?q=Robert+Essenhigh+Chemical+Innovation+2001&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en
The question has popped up on posts contrary to the so-called concensus-that-isn't on man-made (fossil fuels) global warming.
Why is Pluto, warming?
Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 09 October 2002
In what is largely a reversal of an August announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.
Pluto's atmospheric pressure has tripled over the past 14 years, indicating a stark temperature rise, the researchers said. The change is likely a seasonal event, much as seasons on Earth change as the hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun during the planet's annual orbit.
They suspect the average surface temperature increased about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit, or slightly less than 2 degrees Celsius.
Pluto remains a mysterious world whose secrets are no so easily explained, however. The warming could be fueled by some sort of eruptive activity on the small planet, one astronomer speculated.
The increasing temperatures are more likely explained by two simple facts: Pluto's highly elliptical orbit significantly changes the planet's distance from the Sun during its long "year," which lasts 248 Earth years; and unlike most of the planets, Pluto's axis is nearly in line with the orbital plane, tipped 122 degrees. Earth's axis is tilted 23.5 degrees.
Though Pluto was closest to the Sun in 1989, a warming trend 13 years later does not surprise David Tholen, a University of Hawaii astronomer involved in the discovery.
"It takes time for materials to warm up and cool off, which is why the hottest part of the day on Earth is usually around 2 or 3 p.m. rather than local noon," Tholen said. "This warming trend on Pluto could easily last for another 13 years."...
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html
search results for more
http://www.google.com/search?q=pluto+warming&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-40,GGLD:en
Did you all read Don't Believe the Hype
Al Gore is wrong. There's no "consensus" on global warming.
BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN
Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
If you didn't you should.
More news
'Inconvenient Truth' Producer Pens Kids' Global Warming Text
By Randy Hall
CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor
January 30, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - Move over, Chicken Little. A children's book planned for release in September is an attempt to "fill the minds of children with 'sky-is-falling' global warming hysteria," a Republican senator warns...
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=/Culture/archive/200701/CUL20070130b.html
Drudge Report
Two New Books Confirm Global Warming is Natural; Not Caused By Human Activity
Tue Jan 30 2007 10:02:32 ET
Two powerful new books say today’s global warming is due not to human activity but primarily to a long, moderate solar-linked cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, by physicist Fred Singer and economist Dennis Avery was released just before Christmas. The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change, by Danish physicist Henrik Svensmark and former BBC science writer Nigel Calder (Icon Books), is due out in March.
Singer and Avery note that most of the earth’s recent warming occurred before 1940, and thus before much human-emitted CO2. Moreover, physical evidence shows 600 moderate warmings in the earth’s last million years. The evidence ranges from ancient Nile flood records, Chinese court documents and Roman wine grapes to modern spectral analysis of polar ice cores, deep seabed sediments, and layered cave stalagmites.
Unstoppable Global Warming shows the earth’s temperatures following variations in solar intensity through centuries of sunspot records, and finds cycles of sun-linked isotopes in ice and tree rings. The book cites the work of Svensmark, who says cosmic rays vary the earth’s temperatures by creating more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that cool the earth. It notes that global climate models can’t accurately register cloud effects.
The Chilling Stars relates how Svensmark’s team mimicked the chemistry of earth’s atmosphere, by putting realistic mixtures of atmospheric gases into a large reaction chamber, with ultraviolet light as a stand-in for the sun. When they turned on the UV, microscopic droplets—cloud seeds—started floating through the chamber.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flash2.htm
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