> Global Warming and Cooling - The Reality
> by Stephen Wilde
> Stephen Wilde has been a Fellow of the
> Royal Meteorological Society since 1968.
> Wilde explores the mechanics and mechanism
> involved that are attributed to the Earth's
> Warming and Cooling.
> Global Warming and Cooling - The Reality.
> It’s all very well doing what alarmists do which is
> to say that Co2 is rising and temperatures are
> rising so in the absence of any other known cause
> it must be man made CO2 that is warming the
> planet. That approach ignores both the differing
> scale of the possible influencing factors and the
> clear historical relationship between cooler
> climates and periods of a less active sun. The
> presence of the sun must be a much bigger
> influence on global temperatures than the
> greenhouse characteristics of CO2 on it’s own.
> At most the greenhouse effect can only be
> marginal though some have tried to talk it up by
> asserting that the planet would be very much
> colder without a greenhouse effect, which is
> correct, but avoids the issue of the rather small
> proportion of the overall greenhouse effect
> provided by CO2 and the even smaller proportion
> provided by man. It also begs the question as to
> whether the oceans are slowly releasing CO2 as a
> result of natural warming. If the oceans warm for
> any reason they will release CO2 into the
> atmosphere because water holds less CO2 at
> higher temperatures.
> The greenhouse effect, as a whole, may smooth
> out rises and falls in temperature from other
> causes but is not itself the determining factor for
> global temperature. If the heat from the sun
> declines the global temperature will fall with or
> without any greenhouse effect and if the heat
> from the sun increases the global temperature
> will, of course, rise. The greenhouse effect does
> not create new heat. All it does is increase the
> residence time of heat in the atmosphere.
> climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1041&linkbox=true
> In the ice core record, CO2 increase has always
> lagged behind temperature rises and the lag
> involved is estimated to be 400 to 800 years.
> There has never been a period when a CO2 rise
> has preceded global warming. I have seen it
> argued that the past 30 years has been so
> exceptional that it MUST, for the first time in the
> history of the globe, be CO2 driving the warming
> trend. That is an assertion of such low probability
> that it should require very powerful evidence to
> support it. I have seen no such evidence. Indeed,
> on a cursory inspection the slow but steady
> increase in atmospheric CO2 is clearly not
> coming through in a slow but steady rise in
> global temperatures. Instead we see rises and falls
> in global temperatures that bear no obvious
> relationship to the steady rise in CO2 unless one
> puts the cart before the horse and announces that
> there is no other possible reason and the trend
> period adopted is carefully chosen to suit the
> proposition.
> All it needs to cast doubt on the CO2 theory is an
> alternative possibility to explain a rising global
> temperature trend over the past 500 years and
> there is one. Everyone will have heard of the
> Little Ice Age and the global temperature would
> appear to have been recovering from it ever since.
> On a balance of probability is that not the more
> likely explanation of an overall warming trend
> ever since? Why introduce manmade CO2 at all
> except for politically motivated reasons? By all
> means exclude a recovery from the Little Ice Age
> as the reason if one can but the burden of proof is
> heavy and probably impossible to discharge with
> current knowledge. There was also a Mediaeval
> Warm Period (MWP) that preceded it. It has
> been asserted by some that the MWP was not as
> warm as the planet is now but there is evidence
> to the contrary such as Viking settlements in
> Greenland at the time. It has also been asserted
> that the MWP was not worldwide but some recent
> indications have been found in South America
> that it was warm there at about the same time. In
> any event it is unlikely that such a warm period
> affecting Greenland and Western Europe would
> not be worldwide. The heavy burden of proof is
> on those who would seek to deny it.
> Be that as it may, there is a probability rather
> than a possibility that the warming trend since
> the lowest point of the Little Ice Age is
> continuing to this day and is the real cause of
> recent observed warming with only a minimal
> contribution, if any, from man made CO2
> emissions.
> Then there is the matter of scale. The greenhouse
> effect is mainly a phenomenon of the land surface
> and the atmosphere because more of the incoming
> heat is absorbed by water as compared to land and
> a lower proportion is reflected to participate in the
> greenhouse effect. However the surface of Earth
> is 70 % water. Water has a hugely greater heat
> carrying capacity than the land or the atmosphere
> above it. Land loses most of the heat it receives
> during the day via overnight radiation and the
> atmosphere loses heat rapidly via convection,
> rainfall and radiation to space despite the
> greenhouse effect. The true heat store that we
> need to consider, dwarfing by far any
> atmospheric greenhouse effect is all that water. I
> describe the implications of that below.
> It seems so complex but the global heat balance
> only comes down to three parameters that swamp
> all others.
> Heat from the sun.
> The fact that 70% of the planet is water covered.
> Heat, radiating out to a very cold Space.
> Extra heat is constantly being generated within
> the Earth by convection and movement caused by
> external gravitational forces from the sun and
> other planets but that only seems to disrupt the
> basic scenario intermittently.
> The heat from the sun varies over a number of
> interlinked and overlapping cycles but the main
> one is the cycle of 11 years or so. That solar cycle
> can last from about 9.5 years to about 13.6 years
> and appears to be linked to the gravitational
> effects of the planets of the solar system
> combining to affect the sun’s magnetic field
> which seems then to influence the amount of heat
> generated and incidentally affects the number of
> sunspots. For present purposes I will concentrate
> on the past 1000 years during which the 11year
> cycle has been the main factor linked to observed
> temperature changes. For pre thermometer
> numbers we have to rely on less reliable indicators
> of past temperature.
> It is clear that temperatures have varied so much
> over the past 1000 years that there have been
> substantial effects on human societies so
> disruption caused by weather and climate is by
> no means unusual. Many civilisations have fallen
> as a result of entirely natural changes in climate.
> Interestingly, they often blamed themselves for
> offending the Gods, nature or the planet (that
> sounds familiar!).
> It is necessary to note that those disruptive
> changes have occurred quite quickly. A decade
> or two is quite enough to see changes that result
> in considerable hardship.
> Because 70% of the planet is covered by water
> most heat from the sun is accepted by water. The
> seas take a long time to warm up or cool in
> comparison to land. Heat reaching the land by
> day is soon radiated back out to Space at night.
> Water has a much greater lag both in warming
> and cooling which also means that as a store of
> total heat the oceans are hugely effective. The
> strongest sunlight reaching the Earth is around
> the Equator that is primarily oceanic. The
> equatorial sun puts heat into the system year in
> year out whereas loss of heat is primarily via the
> poles with each alternating as the main heat loser
> depending on time of year.
> The Earth therefore accumulates or loses heat to
> and from, primarily, the oceans. The land and the
> atmosphere are largely an irrelevance. That heat
> then has to find it’s way out into Space over time.
> Before it can be radiated out into Space heat has
> to pass through the atmosphere.
> The planet cannot maintain and does not maintain
> a constant temperature. It is not even possible to
> identify a specific current temperature for the
> whole planet and for present purposes there is no
> need to do so.
> All I need to assert at this point is that whatever
> the Earth’s temperature is at any given moment
> it will always be in the process of warming or
> cooling and, of course, the rate of that warming
> or cooling is highly variable.
> Because the Earth is always either warming or
> cooling the point of balance could well be very
> fine so to attribute ‘blame’ to any particular
> factor we have to ascertain the scale and degree
> of sensitivity of each factor we wish to consider.
> The point I need to make here is that on the basis
> of historical evidence from weather and solar
> cycle records the largest single factor influencing
> global temperature, whatever it might be at any
> time, is variations in the input of heat from the
> sun.
> It is clear from the historical record that warmer
> weather accompanies short solar cycles and
> cooler weather accompanies longer solar cycles.
> Although I refer to weather the fact is that
> weather over time constitutes climate so for
> present purposes they are the same. During the
> recent warming the cycle lengths were less than
> 10 years so that meant we were getting more
> heat from the sun whatever the alarmists say
> about Total Solar Irradiance (a flawed and
> incomplete concept).
> So far, the current solar cycle (number 23) is into
> the 12th year in length and may go to the full
> 13.6 years for known astronomical reasons. The
> very fact that it is longer than the previous two
> cycles suggests we are getting less solar energy
> already and, surprise, surprise, it is
|
