Question: Would you buy a second hand car from this guy?? (Q. by Peter)
As global-warming alarmists try to recover from “Climategate,”they have returned to the first principles of selling their product tothe public. Among the most important of these, as any advertisingprofessional can tell you, is delivering simple message. And so,following the script, alarmists world-wide spent a great deal of timelast week declaring that not only is climate science settled, but theways in which climate forces affect the entire planet is also beyonddispute.
In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell last week, the high-priest of the First Church of climate change, Al Gore, said:
“A hundred and fifty years ago this year was thediscovery that CO-2 traps heat. That is a — a principle in physics.It’s not a question of debate. It’s like gravity; it exists.”
One wonders why Mitchell didn’t ask the obvious follow-up questions:If the science is indeed that cut and dried, why are scientists acrossthe globe spending billions of dollars to confirm something soblindingly obvious? Indeed, why did delegates at Copenhagen commit tospending billions more to explore a question that, according to Gore,does not merit further investigation?
On December 8, New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman echoed the alarmists’ party line, writing:
“This is not complicated. We know that our planet isenveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep the Earth at acomfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and othergreenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture,forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.”
Both statements belie a shocking ignorance of the science involved.Even the leading degreed cheerleaders in the alarmist community, likeNASA’s Gavin Schmidt or Penn State’s Michael Mann, would hurry todistance themselves from these sorts of blanket declarations. It’s onething to simplify scientific concepts. It’s quite another to bastardizethem.
Consider Al Gore. There is one ironic truth in Gore’s statement:there is a striking similarity between the theory of gravity and thescience of climate change. Scientists universally acknowledge that aforce known as gravity exists, but, though theories abound, none cansay how it works. In the same vein, it is undeniable that the earth’sclimate fluctuates over time, but anyone who tells you that theyunderstand all of the complex mechanisms that influence those changesdisplays the sort of hubris that would have either struck a chord withancient Greek playwrights.
The most important scientific law at issue, when it comes to climatechange, is Beer’s Law. Put in technical terms, Beer’s Law, which Goreby all accounts has not yet moved to invalidate, says that therelationship between the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere andthe global warming effect of carbon dioxide is logarithmic, not linear.Put in more friendly terms, Beer’s Law is the law of diminishingclimatic returns: The more carbon dioxide one puts into the atmosphere,the less effect it has on the climate.
Water vapor is, by far, our most important global warming gas. Itsglobal warming potential is over forty times that of carbon dioxide andthere is over fifty times more water vapor in the atmosphere thancarbon dioxide. All told, the net warming effect of water vapor exceedsthat of carbon dioxide by a factor of more than two thousand.
The alarmists’ argument, such as it is, declares that increasedconcentrations of carbon dioxide will result in the evaporation of morewater vapor, just enough – in theory – to “tip the balance” and lead toan uncontrollable increase in planetary temperatures. This is a moresubtle, and much more difficult to demonstrate, argument than thatproposed by alarmists like Gore and Friedman.
Skeptical scientists counter that the tiny amount of increased waterevaporation associated with increasing carbon dioxide concentrationsmight just as well result in increase cloud formation, which everyoneacknowledges would have a cooling effect, along with increasedevaporative cooling. The alarmists spend an untold amount of time andan unimaginable amount of dollars attempting to prove that thosemechanisms are not meaningful. It’s the twenty first century equivalentof determining exactly how many angels can dance on the head of a pin,with about as much practical relevance and at much more a cost tosociety.
If the public truly understood the subtle nuances of climate changescience, along with the way that the alarmists have twisted science inorder to further their own agenda and further their grant-funding, it’shard to imagine that any significant portion of public opinion wouldexpress a preference for further climate change legislation orregulation.
The only hope, especially in the aftermath of Climategate, for truebelievers like Gore and Friedman, is to convince the public that thereis nothing remarkable or nuanced or complicated about climate science.
The truth of the matter is quite the opposite. Climate science isenormously complicated. The more we learn about it, the less humanactivity seems to affect the climate. That may be an inconvenienttruth, but based on all of the data we have gathered after spendinguntold billions of dollars that would appear to be the honest truth –even if it doesn’t support Al Gore’s doom-saying prophecies.
Rich Trzupek is a chemist and Principal Consultant at MostardiPlatt Environmental, an environmental consulting firm based in OakBrook, Illinois. He specializes in air quality issues and is the authorof McGraw-Hill’s Air Quality Permitting and Compliance Manual. Rich isa confirmed skeptic with regard to the theory that human activity hascaused global warming. He is also a regular contributor at threedonia.com.