Misunderstanding Global Warming: Alexander Cockburn versus Reality.
Misunderstanding Global Warming: Alexander Cockburn versus Reality.
By Mike Byron, PhD.
Introduction
I was astonished to read Alexander Cockburn’s essay in the April 28th online edition of Counterpunch entitled “Is Global Warming a Sin?” [i] Cockburn’s thesis is that there is no scientific evidence whatsoever linking anthropogenic (human caused) CO2 emissions with worldwide increases in mean temperature “global warming.” Comparing the proposed sale of carbon credits to alleviate future global warming to the medieval practice of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to cancel past sins, Cockburn asserts:
"There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution. Devoid of any sustaining scientific basis, carbon trafficking is powered by guilt, credulity, cynicism and greed, just like the old indulgences, though at least the latter produced beautiful monuments." [ii]
Cockburn bases his conclusions upon the research of Dr. Martin Hertzberg whose conclusions he places above “all the counsels of Al Gore or the jeremiads of the IPCC (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change).” Fair enough, Cockburn wishes to disregard the careful, published, peer-reviewed, findings of essentially the entire global scientific community, in favor of the assertions of his favored climatologist. He can do that; however, we are not compelled follow his astounding leap of judgment. Fairness however, does require me to carefully evaluate and consider Hertzberg’s rival global warming hypothesis and its several assertions.
The Hertzberg-Cockburn Critique of Global Warming
What are these assertions of Hertzberg’s hypothesis? His argument is that temperature changes are driven by long-term changes in the amount of sunlight striking the Earth. These changes are caused by Milankovitch cycles, named for the Serbian scientist who first described them. Wikipedia defines these as follows:
"Milankovitch cycles are the collective effect of changes in the Earth's movements upon its climate, named after Serbian civil engineer and mathematician Milutin Milankovitch. The eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit vary in several patterns, resulting in 100,000 year ice age cycles of the Quaternary glaciation over the last few million years. The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 22,000 year cycle in the equinoxes. In addition, the angle between Earth's rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit changes from 21.5 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000 year cycle. Presently, this angle is 23.44 degrees. The Milankovitch theory of climate change is not perfectly worked out; in particular, the largest observed response is at the 100,000 year timescale, but the forcing is apparently small at this scale, in regards to the ice ages. Various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, or from ice sheet dynamics) are invoked to explain this discrepancy." [iii]
Simply put: the Earth’s orbit around the sun varies somewhat with respect to how circular its orbit is, the degree that is poles are tilted with respect to the plane of its orbit, and the position of its poles with respect to the far stars, which “wobbles” (precesses). These several variations occur regularly in cycles of about 22,000, 26,000, 41,000 and 100,000 years. Their composite effect is to vary the amount of sunlight striking the Earth’s surface.
Hertzberg’s assertion is that this process of variation in the strength of sunlight striking the Earth is what drives global climate change. The primary mechanism for this climate change does indeed involve CO2 release in to the atmosphere, according to this thesis. However, the causal order (which variable causes what effect) is reversed from what we would expect:
"Water covers 71 per cent of the surface of the planet. As compared to the atmosphere, there's at least a hundred times more CO2 in the oceans, dissolved as carbonate. As the postglacial thaw progresses the oceans warm up, and some of the dissolved carbon emits into the atmosphere, just like fizz in soda water taken out of the fridge. "So the greenhouse global warming theory has it ass backwards," Hertzberg concludes. "It is the warming of the earth that is causing the increase of carbon dioxide and not the reverse." He has recently had vivid confirmation of that conclusion. Several new papers show that for the last three quarter million years CO2 changes always lag global temperatures by 800 to 2,600 years." [iv]
More sunlight striking the Earth’s surface causes the planet’s oceans, which account for 71 percent of its surface, to heat up. Because the mass of the oceans is much greater than that of the air—about 100 times greater, in fact—there is a considerable lag before oceanic heating becomes sufficient to cause the oceans to release greater amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. In Hertzberg’s view, the CO2 is an effect and not a cause of global warming.
It is this natural process of variation in sunlight striking the planet, and not anthropogenic CO2 emissions, per Hertzberg, which accounts for the increasing amount of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere. To “prove” this point, Cockburn asserts that CO2 emissions fell significantly due to the Great Depression, while temperatures continued to increase, thus “proving” that planet-wide temperature increase is independent of atmospheric CO2 levels.
Cockburn offers several purported examples from the historical record (the Little Ice Age) and the geological record (the Eocene Period) which supposedly further demonstrate the lack of a link between atmospheric CO2 levels and planetary temperature. He is clearly asserting that there is no causal relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and planetary temperature whatsoever. In other words planetary temperature is independent of CO2 levels in the atmosphere! Not now, not millions of years ago, never, have atmospheric CO2 increases caused temperature increases! That assertion left me stunned, I must admit.
What is the atmospheric component which actually accounts for greenhouse effects according to Hertzberg’s theory? Water vapor! Cockburn asserts that climate modeling by the world’s climate scientists (other apparently than Hertzberg) ignores the effects of water vapor: “And water is exactly that component of the earth's heat balance that the global warming computer models fail to account for.” [v]
Having discounted anthropogenic effects from having any significant effect whatsoever on the world’s climate, Cockburn then makes a vague reference to the Earth itself as being a cause of planetary warming, asserting: “…the human carbon footprint is of zero consequence amid these huge forces and volumes, and that's not even to mention the role of the giant reactor beneath our feet: the earth's increasingly hot molten core.” Whether the Earth’s allegedly “increasingly hot molten core” plays a role in Hertzberg’s global warming theory, or is just another a priori belief of Cockburn’s is not specified. I will therefore subsequently ignore this vague assertion until and unless Cockburn chooses to be more specific about it.
Hertzberg-Cockburn Critique of Global Warming Rebutted.
First of all, until very recently, human civilization has simply not been of sufficient magnitude to cause any significant effects whatsoever upon global climate and temperatures. Therefore, until very recently, natural forces were wholly responsible for changes in the Earth’s climate and its overall temperature. These natural forces were primarily changes in the amount of sunlight striking the planet due to the Milankovitch cycles. The long lag associated with increasing sunlight warming the Earth and the consequent heating of the oceans and frozen bogs (which release methane a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent that CO2) constitutes a kind of “thermal inertia.” However, as these positive (that is, amplifying) feedback loops kick in, including oceanic warming, ice melting (affecting the planet’s reflectivity) permafrost melting etc., the process of warming begins to accelerate.
So it is indeed true that across the geological history of our planet, that at first, planetary surface temperatures increase incrementally due to natural cycles--primarily due to Milankovitch cycles. This natural, external to our planet, warming then triggers greenhouse gas emissions. So far there is agreement between objective reality and Hertzberg’s thesis. However, these emissions themselves trigger additional planetary warming, which Hertzberg’s model disregards.
Eventually, falling levels of sunlight due to these natural cycles reverse the warming process. And that was how it was across countless millions of years, until fossil-fueled human civilization began to become a significant factor affecting the planetary climate in the past 100 or so years.
The primary fallacy in Hertzberg’s thesis is the argument that because natural cycles accounted for all global warming (and cooling) in past ages, it follows that this is still true, and therefore, human activity can be discounted. This fallacy rests upon the supposed lack of any causal relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and temperature. If this is correct, then our carbon emissions are simply irrelevant to the global climate. Instead, it is asserted by Hertzberg-Cockburn that both planetary temperature and CO2 levels are caused by increasing solar radiation, which by heating the oceans, evaporates more water vapor into the atmosphere. This water vapor is purported to be the actual greenhouse gas, instead of CO2.
Yet CO2 unambiguously does cause heat to be trapped on planetary surfaces. Our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus, is about the same size and mass as the Earth. It is only about 25 million miles nearer to the sun than our planet. Originally, it is believed by planetary scientists to have been temperate with liquid water on its surface about 4 billion years ago. Yet, solar radiation on Venus eventually triggered a runaway greenhouse effect which has cloaked the planet in a dense blanket of CO2 which is about 100 times the thickness of our own atmosphere. The effect of all of this atmospheric CO2 is to make Venus’s present-day surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead! [vi] Such is the global warming power of CO2!
On Earth, the relationship of CO2 and temperature since the industrial revolution began is quite clear, as shown in the figure below:
Source: Whole-systems.org [vii]
What we need to understand is that with the onset of the Industrial Revolution something new and unprecedented occurred: anthropogenic CO2 releases compounding over a brief time interval triggered escalating temperature increases, along with overall climate change on a global scale. There is no thousand-year lag in this relationship, simply because the triggering agent is not gradually increasing levels of sunlight; rather, it is humans burning fossil fuels, thereby rapidly releasing carbon into the atmosphere. A thousand year lag is evidence of natural climate change. Rapid onset temperature increases are evidence of something unnatural at work: human civilization.
We know where all of this CO2 which suddenly appeared in or atmosphere comes from: it comes from the fossil fuels we’ve just burned for energy. Period. It is not caused by increasing levels of sunlight. As we shall see presently, these levels have actually been decreasing in recent decades!
We know the physics of CO2 with respect to its trapping heat in the atmosphere. It is the same on Earth as it is on Venus, because the laws of physics are universal. Contrary to Hertzberg’s assertion, climate models do indeed account for water vapor in the atmosphere. They may do this imperfectly, however this is a far cry from asserting that these models “fail to account for” this greenhouse gas.
As to the assertion that declines in the rate of CO2 emissions during the Great Depression did not cause corresponding temperature decreases, Cockburn fails to understand that CO2 concentrations are cumulative. Once released, the gas remains in the atmosphere for centuries—unlike water vapor, which quickly precipitates out of the atmosphere as rain or snow. Temperatures did not fall because, although there was a slowdown in atmospheric buildup of CO2, overall levels of CO2 in the atmosphere were still increasing.
Interestingly, the graph above seems to show a pause in temperature increases, just after the Depression induced slowdown of CO2 emissions. This relationship is what would be expected to be seen if CO2 levels did indeed directly affect temperatures. It certainly does not disprove a causal relationship, as Cockburn misguidedly asserts.
Finally, I would note that throughout recent decades, the amount of sunlight striking the Earth’s surface has actually been diminishing, not increasing, as Cockburn asserts. This process is called global dimming. [viii] It is also anthropogenic, as it is caused by atmospheric pollutants blocking sunlight from striking the Earth’s surface. If the Hertzberg-Cockburn theory were correct, it would follow logically that planetary temperatures would decrease due to global dimming, and not increase as they have done.
Empirical observation thus falsifies the Hertzberg-Cockburn theory. In fact, observation shows that nature behaves exactly as anticipated if the causal relationship of CO2 and temperature were both true and a major climate factor.
Conclusion
In summary, the Hertzberg-Cockburn thesis is falsified by empirical data. The Hertzberg-Cockburn thesis conflates natural and human-caused climate change, while ignoring the fact that this latter process has massively overridden all natural climatic factors. It has also ignored or conflated with natural cycles, anthropogenic factors which act to cool the planet such as pollution-caused global dimming.
Why has Alexander Cockburn made and publicized this unfounded assertion? I believe him to be a decent and honest man. I certainly do not believe that he is, for example, a paid disinformation agent, or something along those unsavory lines.
Rather, my take is that Cockburn is in denial. The magnitude of the problems facing humanity, and the consequent possible future of our civilization is so bleak, that it is far easier to deny this reality. Yet that is the worst possible course of action to take if humanity is to have a positive future. I encourage Mr. Cockburn, along with everyone else who feels similarly, to open your eyes.
I am the author of a recently released book which was written for just this purpose. It is entitled Infinity’s Rainbow: The Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization. Several months ago I e-mailed Mr. Cockburn to inquire if he would like a copy. He responded that he would, so I sent him one. So in closing, I’d like to address a personal note to Mr. Cockburn: Please go back and read (or re-read) this book.
i From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits Is Global Warming a Sin? Counterpunch, April 28, 2007, http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04282007.html
ii IBID
iii Wikipedia, The Free Online Encyclopedia, Milankovitch Cycles, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
iv IBID #1 From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits Is Global Warming a Sin?
v IBID #1 From Papal Indulgences to Carbon Credits Is Global Warming a Sin?
vi Wikipedia, The Free Online Encyclopedia, Atmosphere of Venus, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
vii CO2 and Global Temperature Change, http://www.whole-systems.org/co2.html
viii Wikipedia, The Free Online Encyclopedia, Global Dimming, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml
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I give you credit for publishing to great extent the scientific evidence against human caused global warming, many will not even admit it exists. Since polar ice caps are "melting" on Mars, I have to lean more on the side that humans are not causing global warming. It has been proven that the our sun is putting our more energy than say 50 years ago and this is part of it's cycle. Now, here is what I do believe, overpopulation of the planet is not good. Our very existance pollutes the Earth. Putting synthetic chemicals into our air, land, and water is not healthy for any of us. Tearing down forests and paving over open land for human uses is not healthy for us. So it is time to look at this global warming thing realistically. If we all were to start tomorrow and not have any chemical impact on this planet (ie live in a buble), the temperature would still climb. The Sun and Earth will move through this cycle, we cannot stop that. The only question will be, are we smart enough to survive this cycle? It is time for us to clean up our acts at the personal level and leave the least amount of pollution we can, and worry about the things we can have an impact on...clean air, water, and land.
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I believe in fully understanding alternative theories, points of view etc. I do not believe in dogmatic "knee jerk" rejection of these other points of view.
I believe that I actually state Cockburn's thesis more clearly than he does. Then I *explain* why his thesis fall short, rather than simply dismiss it.
In my opinion, that is fair.
Mike Byron
BTW: At the end of chapter five of Infinity's Rainbow, on page 99, I explain what I think Cockburn is referring to when he talks about the Earth's "increasingly hot molten core" heating up. Research (which I fully cite in the book) shows that rapidly melting glaciation releases pressure on the Eath's surface potentially triggering increases in earthquakes, and possibly volcanoes. I'm guessing this is what he's referring to. If so, he once again conflates effect (increases tectonic activity) with cause (anthropogenic global warming causing glacial melting which in turn causes the increased tectonic activity.
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wake-up call:
These are NASA Deep-Space Probe & Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photos:
3 part investigative report
http://www.enterprisemission.com/_articles/05-14-2004_Interplanetary_Part_1/Interplanetary_1.htm
6 part report:
http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm
http://www.paoweb.com/sn042407.htm
Major global paradigm-shattering announcements soon
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3 part report...NASA photos
http://www.enterprisemission.com/_articles/05-14-2004_Interplanetary_Part_1/Interplanetary_1.htm
6 part report
http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm
http://www.paoweb.com/sn042407.htm
Major global paradigm-shattering announcements soon....Global cabal arrests soon...Global legal coup soon (Roman law, the basis for the world's existing laws, will be globally rescinded...a 'new reality' (first contact) soon
The current chaos is all about Ascension
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Uhh, the rest of the solar system is also heating up at this time too. Global warming is a fraud, and it's time for you to pull your head out of your ass, Mike.
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This comment is all "bark" (insults and dogmatic conclusions) no "bite" (factual analysis)!
However, I do believe in not censoring comments unless they are purely gratuitous, excessively obscene, etc. Also, I will not engage in "flame wars" etc. One posting should say all that needs to be said.
I'll leave it for each reader to assess the merits of this comment for themselves.
I do find it interesting that there is some sort of "anti-global warming" grouping out there. I speculate that most likely it is *mainly* composed by persons with right-wing (doctrinaire Ayn Rand etc.) libertarian beliefs.
I will address one issue that is raised here and by several other posters: the sudden "heating up" of the solar system.
Per Live Science .com:
"While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species. " [Ref: http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html]
While a lot is being made of this, the sun has always varied in its energy output by perhaps as much as 0.5 percent over time. This natural variation, in addition to the Milankovitch cycles (and volcanoes affecting the amount of heat trapping gasses in the Earth's atmosphere) have always been factors affecting the Earth's climate.
The logical non-sequitor here is to conclude that because these variables exist, there is therefore no need to attribute climatological effects to anthropogenic causes. That leap of faith is utter nonsense. Anthropogenic effects are now overwhelming all natural climatological inputs. That is the core of the IPCC Reports, and is the near universal concensus of all of the planets scientists. It is this reality which, for a variety of reasons, some wish to deny.
I note that my citation above at http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html has a good discussion of the solar heating issue which reflects the views of the world's scientific community on this issue.
Mike Byron
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Thanks for your informative response to Mr. Cockburn's, yes, astounding article. I am not a scientist, and like all quasi-informed citizens, must rely on the scientific community to police the situation, while I try to understand what the hell is going on. Mr. Cockburn is an iconoclast with a large audience, but you have done a service by contending with his infatuated assertions that desperately need help. I will concur with what I imagine one to be one thrust of Cockburn's blazings, that the Al Gore wing seems to bring evangelical moral tub-thumping into this disaster, as if by buying some trees you buy some Biblical atonement for the carbon sins you have committed, but first Hitchens goes down holding hands with Bush, now the gallant Cockburn goes off the next cliff with James Imhofe and the Michigan militia -okay, is that it for the Anglo-American journos? Have they all gone barking mad?
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Yes, any article that has Wikipedia in its footnotes is obviously well-researched.
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Wikipedia is instantly available to anyone online at no cost. Citing Britannica would require any reader to either take the word of whoever cited it, or to pay a subscription fee. Citing hard copy published sources would invoke similar difficulties. This then leads to the real question here: How accurate is Wikipedia? I offef this link as a quick answer:
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_5786064
For a more detailed assessment of this question there is the assessment of the prestigious scientific journal Nature:
The most respected scientific journal on the planet, Nature, conducted an evaluation of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica with respect to the accuracy of their scientific entries:
The British journal Nature examined a range of scientific entries on both works of reference and found few differences in accuracy. Wikipedia is produced by volunteers, who add entries and edit any page. But it has been criticised for the correctness of entries, most recently over the biography of prominent US journalist John Seigenthaler. Wikipedia was founded in 2001 and has since grown to more than 1.8 million articles in 200 languages. Some 800,000 entries are in English. It is based on wikis, open-source software which lets anyone fiddle with a webpage, anyone reading a subject entry can disagree, edit, add, delete, or replace the entry. It relies on 13,000 volunteer contributors, many of whom are experts in a particular field, to edit previously submitted articles. In order to test its reliability, Nature conducted a peer review of scientific entries on Wikipedia and the well-established Encyclopedia Britannica. The reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information. "Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia," reported Nature. "But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively." [i]
[i] BBC News , 15 Dec. 2005, Wikipedia survives research test, The free online resource Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopedia Britannica, a study shows, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4530930.stm
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My sarcasm is not factually unjustified. I find Wikipedia to be an invaluable information source, which is usually correct, but at the same time it is an internet source that can be edited at any time. Therefore, even if Wikipedia is correct at the time you used it, anybody else can log on and make ridiculous changes to your "sources" and make them unreliable. Print sources are more accurate in the long run. Using Wikipedia in a supposedly scientific paper simply reeks of laziness.
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"...simply reeks of laziness"!
Obviously, I disagree *absolutely* with this response.
As I've already stated my reasons for this disagreement in my previous reply, I will simply leave it for the reader to decide for themselves.
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Hi Mike:
I appreciate your clear writing and even your perhaps too thoughtful responses to some of the feedback. I've actually read the IPCC's Third Assessment Report and the Fourth. They both seem to brag about how great their models are. I have a few questions:
1. A classmate is the NASA – Jet Prop Lab Project manager for all space shot science experiments. He says that Venus's surface is 100% rock (no oceans) and has 100% cloud cover. The planet rotates on its axis at +/- 3 miles per hour. Yet the atmosphere all moves at > 75 mph up to an altitude of 100 km (or so). The modelers can't successfully model it. If modelers can't figure out this simple system (100% cloud cover, 100% rock, 0% "ocean"), why believe them when it comes to earth? Other than the obvious practical reason that they have all been always wrong in the past.
2 .The planets, especially those with atmospheres, are islands of heat in the ultracold of space. The second law of thermodynamics tells me that any atmospheric forcing is going to be equilibrated by a thermodynamic response (or the temperature on earth and Venus would be infinte). Applying Occam's razor, and understanding that water accounts for +/- 97% of the greenhouse effect, and CO2 some 0.28%, has anyone accurately modeled heat and water only, gotten that right, then added on the perhaps trivial overlays of CO2, NOX, SOX, methane, particulates, etc.
3. It isn't clear that the modelers even know the sign of the forcing due to clouds, let alone clouds at various altitudes, and/or increased/decreased clouds.
4. I think Herzberg's observation that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 didn't drop 30%(or even 1 ppm) when the human CO2 output dropped 30% is powerful because it is a simple declarative statement containing verifiable data which argues for a hypothesis (very well in my mind). It strongly refutes the hypothesis that the CO2 increase is due to human activities. Its simple, inherent credibility contrasts strongly with the absence of similar evidence and statements in support of global warming. Everyone says so, even if true, isn’t evidence. Models aren’t reality and aren’t evidence either. That the CO2 and temp lines increase at the same time does not prove causality. If CO2 lags temperature by 800 years, this, coupled with Herzberg's observation above argues that the recent increase in CO2 is probably due to the increase temp of the Medieval Warm Period. Incidentally, given this 1940-1975 global cooling, what caused it, and when is the next decadal cooling period, and what will cause it?
5. The Third Assessment Report put great stock in the "Hockey Stick" graph and accompanying assertions that there was no Medieval Warm Period, no Little Ice Age, and that the 1990's were the hottest in the last x,000 years. Since the Hockey Stick graph has been obliterated as a fraud, why should anyone believe anything the IPCC says?
Thanks again for the thoughtful response to
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Very thoughtful comments here. I've read much of the several IPCC #4 reports.
Re # 1: I'm not so shure that there are "simple systems" when you have a dense planetary atmosphere. Temperature and pressure vary enormously throughout the Venusian atmosphere. All weather anywhere is caused by uneven heating. Venus's slow ratation creates a considerable temperature differential across the planet. in conjunction with the temperature and pressure differential throughout the atmosphere at different altitudes, these is plenty of unequal distribution of energy to 'fuel' wind! Accurately modeling it is another thing.
Re # 2: You say "...understanding that water accounts for +/- 97% of the greenhouse effect, and CO2 some 0.28%,..." I do not believe that this is correct. Discounting the previous posters complaining about Wikipedia I'll substantiate this statement as follows:
"Discussion of the relative importance of different infrared absorbers is confused by the overlap between the spectral lines due to different gases, widened by pressure broadening. As a result, the absorption due to one gas cannot be thought of as independent of the presence of other gases. One convenient approach is to remove the chosen constituent, leaving all other absorbers, and the temperatures, untouched, and monitoring the infrared radiation escaping to space. The reduction in infrared absorbtion is then a measure of the importance of that constituent. More precisely, define the greenhouse effect (GE) to be the difference between the infrared radiation that the surface would radiate to space if there were no atmosphere and the actual infrared radiation escaping to space. Then compute the percentage reduction in GE when a constituent is removed. The table below is computed by this method, using a particular 1-dimensional model of the atmosphere. More recent 3D computations lead to similar results."
(Source: Ramanathan and Coakley, Rev. Geophys and Space Phys., 16 465 (1978)); see also [3].
"By this particular measure, water vapor can be thought of as providing 36% of the greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide 12%, but the effect of removal of both of these constituents will be greater than 48%. An additional proviso is that these numbers are computed holding the cloud distribution fixed. But removing water vapor from the atmosphere while holding clouds fixed is not likely to be physically relevant. In addition, the effects of a given gas are typically nonlinear in the amount of that gas, since the absorption by the gas at one level in the atmosphere can remove photons that would otherwise interact with the gas at another altitude. The kinds of estimates presented in the table, while often encountered in the controversies surrounding global warming, must be treated with caution. Different estimates found in different sources typically result from different definitions and do not reflect uncertainties in the underlying radiative transfer."
Source: Wikipedia, Greenhouse effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
As to # 4: I think I've dealt with that in my initial article.
Point #5 is false. The "hockey stick" is NOT proved to be "obliterated as a fraud."
Anyway, thanks for your comments. I will of course post your reply if submitted.
Mike Byron
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I'm confused, I have read Cockburn's article and nowhere did I see him "clearly asserting that there is no causal relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and planetary temperature whatsoever". He does state that empirical evidence shows that "carbon dioxide concentrations from the Eocene period...[were] 300-400 per cent higher than current concentrations". He also states that with a 30% decrease in CO2 emissions during the Great Depression there was no drop in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. I don't think that Cockburn is arguing that the Earth is not warming or that CO2 levels aren't rising, he is arguing that human activity is possibly not the culprit.
With so much research money being thrown at the issue of global warming by governments and their agencies it's not surprising that articles like Cockburn's are so vilified by the scientific community.
By the way, in the future you could cite material that is available in public libraries instead of Wikipedia it would greatly enhance your credibility (and Britannica is not a peer reviewed or scholarly publication).
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Reread my article. Cockburn's entire argument is based upon CO2 levels being *effects* and not *causes*.
As to governments and golbal warming consider that ours (the USA government) is activley hostile to global warming.
I will do a blog on Wikipedia soon.
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Climate change and global warming are the religious terms of hypnotized morons.
Are we to believe that suddenly , in this short blink we call the industrial era that oh my gosh we now have PRODUCED climate change and global warming.
In the over 4 billion years of planetary evolution there has been NOTHING BUT CLIMATE CHANGE !
CHANGE BEING THE ONLY CONSTANT AND DRIVER OF THE UNIVERSE.
Change is the bringer , the modifier and taker of life.
In the over 4 billion years SPACESHIP EARTH has been travelling around our sun , through a small part of the galaxy, and even smaller part of the universe there has been a constant ebb and flow .
A CONSTANT CHANGE
IT IS THE LAW OF THE UNIVERSE.
Many cycle fluctuations in relationship with our sun, and it's relationship to the galaxy and universe.
There have been many glacial and inter glacial periods. Periods of major global warming and cooling ,and within these greater cycles, many, many, minor periods of lesser global warming and cooling , all aided and abeited by the universe with ab SOL utely no help from SUV driving americans or motorbike riding vietnamese
The global warming religion is a denial mechanism.
It is an avoidence of the fact, that the overall fate of humanity lies in the hands of the universe ,outside the control of the survival orientated ego , and it's cultural , religious and scientific overlays
If only the dinosaurs stopped driving their SUV'S to the cinema to watch an inCONvenient truth.
Global warming is the religion you have when you don't have a religion.
It's the thing you are doing when you are not doing anything.
While you have been anxiously wasting your energy on the earths ever changing relationship with the sun/ galaxy / universe.
of which you can do zero about,there was a question waiting in the wings. What have you been doing about that which is in your control ? - ie
The poisoning of your life support system.
What have you been doing to stop the contamination of the food chain
through the use of gm seeds /crops
toxuc chemicals?
What have you been doing to stop the use of depleted uranium?
Make your own list .
The bottom line is stop focusing on things you cannot change.
The temperature of the planet may , maybe, maybe not go up 1 degree , 2 degees , five degrees , ten degrees over the next century, decade , year and by some very reliable guy down the pub - next Tuesday.
I mean, like really!!! get over the chicken little sensationalism.
It sells newspapers .
Yep ! corporate control over your life propaganda in newspapers sells,
Well at least to the dumbed down .
No common sense ?
Need a religion ?
ANY RELIGION WILL DO !
GLOBAL WARMING!!
P.S.
Just in from the U.K. Guardian,
We may actually be heading into an ice age
I ACTUALLY THINK WE ARE GOING TO GO LEAP FROG GLOBAL WARMING , LEAP FROG THE ICE AGE AND END UP IN THE SWIMMING POOL IN DISNEYLAND.
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I find it interesting that the "global warming is a fraud" meme has so thoroughly infected a zelous, though mostly sincere minority. Connecting the dots, I now surmise that much of this has been caused by a BBC documentary entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." It is available online at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=global+swindle+warming
I note that it is about 75 minutes in length. This documentary purports to "reveal" the "truth" about global warming--namely that it is a fraud perpertrated upon the public by scheming elites etc.
I was first alerted to in on March 13th when I recieved a somewhat worried e-mail from the lady who ran for Congress for the Democrats here in the CA-49th CD in '06. (I was the nominee in '04). She stated:
So far 2two intelligent & progressive people have sent me the link to this video. It’s long and it’s disturbing because I think it’s a bunch of disinformation and I don’t believe a word of it – but belief is not a reasonable standard for determining if something is or is not true. So PLEASE give me facts that poke holes in this or tell me it could be correct. (geez, I hope you don’t tell me that – not because I wouldn’t be delighted to hear that we can stop worrying about global warming, but because I would hate to think the vast majority of INTELLIGENT people I know have been so completely duped – who can we trust anymore?)
If my gut instinct is correct and this is a con job to destroy the environmental movement, then we have some major damage control to start doing right away because this could collapse the entire effort to get global warming under control -- and it’s spreading. The confusion and self-doubt this movie could spawn will hurt of not just the environmental movement but the progressive movement as well.
Her e-mail elicited a reply from another correspondent who stated that:
Jeeni,
The right-wing blogosphere has been abuzz with the crap for a few weeks now. Lacking any credible evidence to deal with the fact of global warming, they have taken the attack to the messenger. This issue has an incredible consensus amount serious scientists and nobody has presented any evidence to the contrary. What the authors of this movie call “serious concerns” is generally not about the fact of global warming, but about some of the mechanisms and models… this is a far cry from discounting global warming. Remember, I can go out and find a fair number of “scientists” who think the world is only 6,000 years old. A fairly large percentage of the population still thinks the world is flat…
Personally, I think that up until fairly recently, there has been a fair amount of dissention about the amount of the warming caused by humans verses what is natural causes. But most of this has disappeared with the development of new computer models in the last few years. Lawrence Livermore’s atmospheric models clearly show how we can differentiate between “natural” effects and “human” effects. For those of you really into the technical, there is a really good paper by Lawrence Livermore Labs showing the recent computer models: http://www.llnl.gov/str/March04/pdfs/03_04.2.pdf (by the way… that’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory… probably the smartest people on the planet…
This is part of a very well planned and executed attack on the Goracle… Law school 101, when you don’t have the facts on your side, attack the messenger. Do enough damage to the messenger and people will generally forget about the facts…
Mark [rest of name witheld to protect privacy]I replied to this post saying:
Jeeni,
You can find detailed analysis and rebuttal to this disinformation piece at: http://coinet.org.uk/information/swindleresponse .
Additional rebuttal of another part of this disinformation campaign can be found here: http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0314-30.htm
Basically, because most people are unable to understand the deeper scientific realities involved, substituting one plausible sounding story for the actual scientific one is enough to at least created doubt and uncertainty.
On the one hand you have essentially all of the worlds scientists as evidenced by the just released 4th report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see: http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf ). On the other you have a handful of people and well a LOT of industry money as my links above will demonstrate.
Deliberate misinformation, pure and simple.
Best,
Mike Byron PhD,
Author of Infinity’s Rainbow: the Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization.
http://www.MichaelPByron.com
The mention of the "hockey puck graph being discredited" in previous posts is a dead giveaway of the video's influence. This can be proved conclusively by googling "hockey puck graph discredited" and perusing the results of the search.
I note that this "documentary" is itself thouroughly discredited. However, I have provided the link to it for any interested parties to see it for themselves. I've also provided several debunking links about it. As always, you the reader must decide for yourselves.
The "beauty" of this strategy is to utilize those who are most distrustfull of the corporatocracy to do therier bidding in the name of opposing them! Karl Rove would smile at this.
As I do not have time to sit here and endlessly reply to whoever wants to try to spread this corporate sponsored disinformation meme, I must leave it at that. As always, let the reader decide on the basis of facts and rational thinking for him/her self. I have not rejected any anti-global warming post and have provided a link to the source of the misinformation in this post.
That is enough for this topic. On to the next!
Mike Byron
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A great response to Cockburn. We seem to live in an era where there is a great deal of science bashing on both the left and the right. There seems to be a need to politicize science in a way that is inappropriate.
I remain astounded at Alexander Cockburns ignorance of the vast amount of scientific evidence that anthropogenic global warming is real and an imminent danger. What is more staggering is that his arguments are similar to, and as ignorant as those of rightwingers like Rush Limbaugh. Anybody doubting that there is a vast amount of scientific evidence on the subject should checkout www.realclimate.org, a website and blog maintained by a group of eminent scientists actually doing research in the field. They have posted excellent refutations of all the demented, unscientific arguments that show up in Cockburn's writing on the subject. Paid lackey's of Exxon/Mobil publishing through rightwing "think tanks" have tried all these fallacious arguments already.
Whatever good he is doing for progessive causes with CounterPunch has been negated by his ignorance of the scientific proof behind the theory of anthropogenic global warming. He is giving comfort and support to the energy industry and to the rightwing shockjocks that normally he opposes. Their propagand now quotes him "liberally". (pun intended)
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FYI for you and your readers...
My piece on Alexander Cockburn, Climate Denier can be found in my blog here:
www.ecoshock.org/2007/06/alexander-cockburn-climate-denier.html">http://www.ecoshock.org/2007/06/alexander-cockburn-climate-denier.html
This is actually a script for my radio production of the same name, a 23 minute piece (which includes a clip from Sonali of KPFA interview George Monbiot in late May, asking him about Cockburn)
which is here:
www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Cockburn_RIP.mp3">http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Cockburn_RIP.mp3
(22 MB mp3 file)
This will be broadcast twice this week on CFRO FM in Vancouver, Canada, and then rebroadcast on a series of college and community stations.
Alex Smith
Radio Ecoshock
www.ecoshock.org
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Many thanks for this information Alex!
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