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Written by Jim Warner |
| Thursday, 27
September 2007 |
The latest fear to gain a grip on the throats of America's
unhinged Left is global warming. Most of those expressing
global warming fears are not scientists, and some who call
themselves scientists hold degrees in so-called soft sciences.
What I have just said is a logical fallacy called the "ad
hominem fallacy." The term ad hominem is a Latin
phrase meaning "to the man." It is a fallacy because it seeks
to discredit an argument by casting doubt on the character of
the person asserting the argument, rather than finding an error
in the argument.
I make this point because ad hominem argument is about
96% of the "science" presented to prove the case of the global
warming alarmists.
I begin by admitting I am not a scientist. However, I am a
patent lawyer and the patent office requires a rigorous
education in hard science before they will allow an attorney to
take the patent bar examination. A patent lawyer's job is to
understand technical descriptions and to explain these in terms
that others can understand. I will attempt to do this with
global warming.
Solar activity is the primary factor in creating the cycles of
warming and cooling. Studies have been done using ice cores
from the Antarctic ice pack. Examination of ice content tells
the dates and climatic conditions that prevailed at given
times. The ice reveals that there have been several warming and
cooling cycles over the last 450,000 years.
Each warming period was accompanied by an increase in carbon
dioxide (CO2). In most warming periods the increase
in CO2 lagged behind the increase in
temperatures. This is to be expected.
Most of the CO2 on earth is trapped in the oceans.
As temperatures increased, the seas became warmer. As water
becomes warmer its ability to hold a gas in solution is
decreased, so more CO2 was released into the
atmosphere. The CO2 increase did not cause the
warming periods. The warming caused the CO2
increase.
The earth has entered a warming cycle since the end of the
"Little Ice Age" around 1850. However, most of the observed
increase in average temperature seen in the last century came
about in the first fifty years. That is, it came before the
increase in human-caused CO2 emissions.
Even if there were global warming and "greenhouse gases" were
contributing to it, the focus on CO2 is misplaced.
There are four main "greenhouse gases: water (H2O),
carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and
ozone (O3). These gases absorb heat radiated during
the day from the sun-warmed earth. This heat excites the
molecules of the gases and at a certain rate for each gas this
heat is released and radiated in all directions, including back
down to earth.
CO2 is not the most important of these gases. Water
has somewhere between five and seven times as much heating
effect as CO2. In fact, if the Kyoto Treaty were to
be adhered to, by the year 2050, according to the alarmists' own
models, the net effect would be to slow the increase in average
temperature by less than seven one hundredths of a degree
Celsius, a number too small to measure.
If water is five times more important than CO2 in
warming, why has there not been a Kyoto type conference to
convince nations to reduce their water footprint? Shouldn't
liberals pay five times as much for water credits as they do for
carbon credits?
If San Francisco bans bottled water because carbon is released
when bottled water is transported, why not just ban water
because water is released when water is used? Maybe Mayor
Gavin Newsome is a paid mouthpiece for "Big Water," i.e., the
San Francisco municipal water supply. After all, those who
question CO2 fears are hinted to be "paid mouthpieces
for Big Oil." Isn't Big Water five times more scary?
The reality is, there is nothing which humans can do to reduce
the main greenhouse gas, water. If we risk destroying our
economies to meet Kyoto expectations, the best we can do to
limit a minor greenhouse gas, CO2, would have an
undetectable result.
In fact, as the sun warms in the current cycle, the warming seas
would release more CO2 than we can take away by our
feeble efforts. Further, it does not appear that any of the
models on which Kyoto is based take into account an increase in
water vapor which would accompany an increase in solar activity.
Maybe the best thing we can do is to invent some new, scary, yet
harmless menace with which to frighten liberals. Then we can
sit back, relax, use carbon (by lighting cigars), drink water
(mixed with bourbon), and let nature take its course. It always
has.
Jim Warner is a retired attorney. He served as a domestic
policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1985 until 1989.
Serving as a Marine aviator in Vietnam, his aircraft was shot
down over North Vietnam. His Communist captors held him in the
"Hanoi Hilton" and other prisoner-of-war torture camps for 5½
years.
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