Humans Cause Global Warming???

Our local "news" paper recently opined that we must do something about global warming. My husband who holds a degree in Aeronautics and studied meteorology responded. It is too good to pass up, so it follows. {Note: The Democrat controlled Vermont legislature has made this their number one issue this session}

My Husband wrote...

The Stowe Reporter editorialized that even if global warming isn't happening we should do something about it. This is like saying "Even if the earth isn't flat we should act as if it is, less someone falls of the edge."

The Stowe Reporter repeats the claim that "almost all scientists agree that humans are causing global warming." This claim is repeated so often it is accepted as fact. Yet I have yet to hear of a poll of all scientists or even all scientists in relevant fields to prove this statement is true. Lacking such a poll there is no basis for claiming how many scientists do believe humans cause global warming.

The bases for this claim appears to be the fact that 2500 so called "scientists" participated in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I say "so called" because the UN is fundamentally a political organization not a scientific one. Every country was allowed at least one scientist on the panel. Some countries are not exactly world super powers in science. Therefore some of these "scientists" had their degrees in Pharmacology.

Then again it is irrelevant how many scientists believe in human caused global warming. Science is not advanced by the most popular theories, but by the correct ones.

Before Galileo, almost all scientists said the earth was the center of the universe. In 1904 virtually everyone thought that Newton's F=MA was as far as things went . Then in 1905 Einstein showed that F=MA was not enough, now E=MC² was needed. In the 1940's many aerodynamicists thought that the "sound barrier" was a real barrier that could not be "broken" (they thought that drag builds up infinitely at supersonic speeds). Chuck Yeager proved them wrong.

There are very many flaws in the global warming theory and a book could be written on these problems. In fact many excellent books have been written about the flaws in the theory, but not just books, a number of articles in peer review journals point out flaws. Do to lack of space I will discuss just a few of the flaws.

One of the claims made in the general press and in recent movies on global warming is that Antarctic ice core samples shows an increase in CO2 followed by an increase temperature, however as Dr Robert Carter points out, the increase in CO2 is preceded by the increase in temperature not the other way around, and the increase in temperature precedes the increase in CO2 by 100 to 1000 years. For this he cites: Mudelsee, M. 2001, "The phase relations among atmospheric CO2 content, temperature & global ice volume over the past 420 ka" Quaternary Science Reviews 20, 583-589.

Global warming theory claims that the poles will warm faster than the equator, yet 80% of the Antarctic has cooled and there has been no net increase in polar temperatures my sources for this are: Comiso, J. C. (2000): "Variability and trends in Antarctic surface temperatures from in situ and satellite infrared measurements." J. Climate 13, 1674-1696 and: Doran, P. D., Priscu, Et Al. (2002): "Antarctic climate cooling and terrestrial ecosystem response." Nature 415, 517-520.

This is very significant, because many claimed that warming at the poles would be proof positive that global warming was occurring, and because computer models known as General Circulation Models (GCMs) use the temperature trends at the poles in many of there calculations (Computer are only mathematical model run on computers. If the mathematics is wrong so is the whole model). If these GCM are totally wrong in one very significant aspect then they are totally invalid. This is because GCM are suppose to represent the real world.

In an article titled "New Little Ice Age Instead of Global Warming?" published in the Journal "energy and environment" Dr. Theodor Landscheidt predicts that the world will enter a cooling trend that will be coldest around 2030. He predicts that we will notice this cooling well before that.

He basis this on his and many others studies of solar activity. He also states that the IPCC estimates of human induced warming are way over stated. He points to a number of studies that shows flaws with GCMs. He cites too many studies to mention here.

Even if man made global warming is occurring it might make sense to "do something about it" if there was no cost to "doing something." However there is a cost. I have heard estimates from $500 billion to $1trillion per year for the United States to implement the Kyoto accords. That is real money.

Then again can Vermont even do anything? It is estimated that If California stopped producing all CO2 It would reduce world wide CO2 by .02%. Because Vermont has a population of about 1/100th the size of California it is fair to guess that if Vermont stopped producing CO2 it would represent about .0002% of the world wide total.

It is imposable to completely stop producing CO2 (we have to exhale) therefore realistically Vermont would have even less of an impact, yet the cost would be huge.
It makes no sense to attempt to stop something that might not be happening and that we can not stop anyway and will cost a fortune to try to stop.

Thank You Tom!!!