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​Global Warming Debate
 
This is unfinished work

Links:

+Basics
++Greenhouse Effect

+++Why it is good
+++Harm Humans Can Cause
+Pro: Most Warming is Due to Human Contributions (Not Necessarily Endorsed)
++Comparing Relationships Between Carbon Dioxide, ENSO, and Global SST
++How Climate Change Influenced Hurricane Florence
++Study Behind the "Hockey Stick" Graph
++Real Climate: In Support of the Hockey Stick
+Con: Most Warming is Due to Natural Processes (Not Necessarily Endorsed)
++Watts Up With That (Anthony Watts)
++Coloring Reality
++Refuting the Hockey Stick
++Cooling the Past Warming the Present
++Principia-Scientific
+++No Link Between Cyclone Strength and Air Temp
+++Svensmark's Solar-Cosmic Ray Theory Correct
+++Trilogy of Failure
+++Trees, Clouds & Cosmic Rays
+++Solar and Cosmic Rays
++Cosmic Ray Flux and Cloud Cover Study
+Decide for Yourself
++Wood For Trees (graph generating and comparing)
++Climate Research Unit
++HadCRUT4 Temperature Data

​
I’m a tree hugger, but not in the way you think. Not in the Jill Stein way. I love the weather and I love nature. It is the most beautiful that exists in our lives, no contest. And there are actions we must take to preserve it. I fully understand that. However, I do not think preserving the environment is most efficiently done by government intrusion and economic destruction. In fact, the most efficient way to work clean energy into our energy sources without destroying jobs and lives is the free market. 
 
Climate change alarmists call people like me “Climate Change Deniers”. That is not true. I am not denying anything. I am not denying that climate changes. Change is inherent in the word climate because climate is defined in meteorology as an average of weather over a period, so every time that period is recalculated, its results are different. Why? Because the weather changes. The weather is far too complex for us mere mortals to master.

The weather is caused primarily by the sun heating different parts of the earth different amounts, which causes temperature differences and therefore pressure differences. And thus we have wind. Right off the bat, the sun is involved and this ball of fire 8 light minutes away is already too complex to understand, which is why meteorologists are never totally right. What is the main greenhouse gas? I know what the media would make you believe. No, it isn’t carbon dioxide; it is water vapor.
 
An important point to realize prior to entering this debate on global warming is that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Humans have been around for 100k or 200k years and have been engaged in heavy industry for just 200 years. And we've only been significantly increasing CO2 levels since World War II. We only live to be a little more than a century at most, so data cannot be flawlessly collected over large amounts of time. For these reasons, humans will likely never find a decisive answer to the issue of global warming. No single storm or set of storms, no pattern of a week or even a few years can tell us much about the history and future of our planet, because its magnitude on the scale of time is practically zero. The atmosphere acts in cycles--very, very complex cycles--because thousands of variables affect the weather and the earth. As a result, any pattern that we see in data can teach us a lot, but it can never tell us decisively about anything, for we only see correlation, not causation. One common misconception occurs when people see the global temperature rising and carbon dioxide rising and see it as carbon dioxide causing global temperature rise, not correlating with it. In fact, it is more likely than not that the temperature drives CO2 levels, not the other way around. 

There is a lot the government and media isn’t telling us. I am not in the business of trying to define their motives, because that is where the scientific argument loses merit and turns into right wing anti-media propaganda. My main point here is that we can’t legislate any harmful regulations until there is a consensus in the science community, and right now, no matter who tells you it is, it isn’t a consensus. So, with that as my main idea, I would like to use part of my time to expose what scientists have figured out that opposes the mainstream argument.
  1. Climate change has happened for millions of years and will continue to happen. It’s what it does. With so many thousands of variables in the earth’s atmosphere, it is practically impossible to single out one variable and suggest it is the main cause for warming.
  2. Sea level is increasing an estimated 7 inches per century, contrary to the 10 to 20 feet that some alarmists suggest and may I add that these are often not scientists suggesting this.
  3. Fluctuations in solar output can amount to 3%, quite significant when talking about a ball of fire that’s over a million times the size of earth
  4. There are these things called cosmic rays that come from other parts of space, and when the solar output increases, it pushes these cosmic rays away from earth. Studies have shown these cosmic rays are essential to cloud formation, and the more clouds we have, the more heat that is reflected away from Earth. A man named Henrik Svensmark has made headway on this topic and has publications that relate these rays to the temperature of Earth.  
  5. Most of the last 10,000 years were warmer than today, and in the grand picture, we are still thawing out from the little ice age several hundred years ago.
  6. CO2 accounts for 0.04% of the earth’s atmosphere and is responsible for just 3% of the greenhouse effect. In the words of Dr. Don Easterbrook, who has 50 years of experience in climate studying, “if you double nothing, you still have nothing”
  7. Apocalyptic estimates about temperature increase and sea level rise are based off climate models, which have severely flawed algorithms. You can make a computer tell you whatever you want it to say. So, these climate “scientists” got together and created algorithms that imply an increase in CO2 would increase water vapor, which accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect. The opposite has been proven true; therefore, these models have no merit.
  8. An increase in CO2 cannot make the earth more than 0.1C warmer than it is now because of relatively basic physics. To make it simple, carbon dioxide can only absorb certain wavelengths of solar radiation, and those wavelengths are already being absorbed. More CO2 won’t increase absorption because everything is being absorbed already.
I could go on all day about these topics and their influence on climate, but I realize I’m out of time and would suggest this. I think we need to be in a holding pattern until this one-sided story stops. Once both sides recognize the others’ arguments and the people of this country can make an informed decision, we shouldn’t make any further regulation and should work to repeal some of the existing regulation that harms our businesses. I would propose that government can give tax breaks to companies that use renewable energy, acting as an incentive for clean energy. Regardless of the scientific debate, I am not against clean energy, just the damaging regulation that comes along with it.

Carbon dioxide makes up 0.039% of the atmosphere. Per the EPA, about 4% of total atmospheric CO2 comes from humans. About 16% of human CO2 emissions come from the United States. Therefore, the United States’ total CO2 emissions account for about 0.00025 percent of the atmosphere. It is nothing. If we stopped entirely, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
 

 
Quantifying CO2’s effect, with its increase of only one molecule out of every 10,000 molecules of air over a 100-year period, against the grand slam of climate, especially in light of the earth having had ice ages at 7,000 PPM and warmer times at 250 PPM, is grasping at straws at best. Then again, desperate people zealous about another issue would do that if they felt this would help them get their way.
 
We have the objective satellite measurements now, so let’s measure temperatures as the Pacific cools again and as the Atlantic follows suit. Let’s see if we are back where we were in 1978 by 2030.
Why 1978? That is when the Pacific flipped into its warm cycle and, coincidentally, we started measuring by satellite! So naturally, you would have a cooler starting point. The Pacific was in its warm cycle from 1978 to 2007, and temperatures responded by warming. The Atlantic joined in 1995 and will be there 5-10 more years before turning cooler. This is not hard to envision: When the tropical oceans warm, we get warming of the air until the air adjusts to the warming. It then levels off. As the oceans cool, the air will cool. That is what this graphic below is showing you. The CO2 “correlation” was coincidental and was not the cause of the warming.

 

Sunspots & Solar Output
 
Some solar physicists suggest that sunspots and irregularities in the sun's power/light production can cause its total output to vary by up to 3%, which may not seem like a lot, but when we are talking about a ball of fire a million times the size of earth, its easy to see how gigantic a 3% difference is. Perhaps warming cycles are caused by fluctuations in the sun's output, not the amount of CO2 in the air. 

Cosmic Rays & Clouds
 
The idea is that cosmic rays seed clouds by ionizing molecules in Earth's atmosphere that draw in other molecules to create the aerosols around which water vapor can condense to form cloud droplets. The low-lying clouds that result then have the effect of cooling the Earth by reflecting incoming sunshine back out to space. Since the Sun's magnetic field tends to deflect cosmic rays away from the Earth, the planet will be warmer when solar activity is high and, conversely, cooler when it is low.
 
 
Ocean Cycles
 
Irregularities in Earth’s Orbit
 
Water Vapor and Carbon Dioxide

​One crucial point to take note of is that carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere and composes around a tenth of the greenhouse effect. 
 
Global SSTs Control Global Temp
 
Volcanoes
 
Volcanic eruptions can alter the climate of the earth for both short and longer periods of time. For example, average global temperatures dropped about 0.5oC for about two years after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, and low air temperatures caused crop failures and famine in North America and Europe for two years following the eruption of Tambora in 1815.
 
Volcanoes affect the climate through the gases and dust particles thrown into the atmosphere during eruptions. The effect of the volcanic gases and dust may warm or cool the earth's surface, depending on how sunlight interacts with the volcanic material.
Volcanic dust blasted into the atmosphere causes temporary cooling. The amount of cooling depends on the amount of dust, The duration of the cooling depends on the size of the dust particles. Particles the size of sand grains usually fall out of the air in a matter of a few minutes and stay close to the volcano, and therefore have little effect on global climate.
 
Dust-size ash particles will float around in the lower atmosphere for hours or days, causing darkness and cooling directly beneath the ash cloud, but these particles are quickly washed out of the air by rain. However, dust reaching the dry upper atmosphere, the stratosphere, can remain for weeks or months before they settle back to the planet surface. These particles block sunlight and cause cooling over large areas.
Volcanoes that release large amounts of sulphur compounds like sulphur oxide or sulphur dioxide affect the climate more strongly than other volcanoes mainly ejecting dust. The sulphur compounds usually rise easily into the stratosphere. There they combine with water vapour to form a haze of tiny droplets of sulphuric acid. These tiny droplets are very light in colour and reflect a great deal of incoming sunlight. Although the sulphuric acid droplets eventually may grow large enough to fall to the earth, the stratosphere is so dry that this process usually takes months or even years. Consequently, reflective hazes of sulphur droplets can cause significant global cooling for 2-3 years after a major sulphur-bearing volcanic eruption.
 
Sulphur hazes are believed to have been the primary cause of the global cooling that occurred after the large Pinatubo (1991; see below) and the Laki (1783-1785) and Tambora eruptions (1815).
 
Volcanoes also release large amounts of water and carbon dioxide, the two most important greenhouse gasses. From an isolated point of view, a volcanic eruption might thus be expected to result in atmospheric warming. However, there are large amounts of water and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere already, and even a large eruption will not be able to change the atmospheric composition of these compounds much. In addition, the water generally condenses out of the atmosphere as rain within a few days, and the carbon dioxide quickly dissolves in the ocean or is absorbed by plants. Usually, the volcanic sulphur compounds therefore have a greater effect, and cooling typically dominates following volcanic eruptions.

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Copyright © 2011-2016 Mike's Snow Watch
Forecasts only apply to Northern New Jersey. The accuracy of this information is not guaranteed.
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