Rationing the earth

Imagine you're making a wool blanket. It's going to be a thick heavy blanket made with 8 pounds of virgin lambs' wool. Already you can tell it's going to be a nice warm blanket, but you think you can make it even warmer if you add a magical ingredient. Cashmere wool. That's the magical stuff that'll give your blanket special warmth on the coldest nights. The magic formula directs you to carefully mix in one eighty-fourth of an ounce of Cashmere to the 8 pounds of virgin lambs' wool and begin to make your blanket. Only in a fairy tale would such a tiny bit Cashmere make a difference in the warmth of an 8 pound blanket. In real life you'd never know it was there.  But fairy tales come true when we talk about the causes of global warming.

Global warming is the latest rationale for folks on the left to propose some sort of rationing. Rationing is the answer to everything.  For poverty it's income redistribution, rationing everybody's combined income. When it's not income it's oil. Back in the 70's they were frantic with predictions that oil would run out.  Washington was actually printing ration stamps before somebody had the good sense to get rid of the oil price ceiling. Before oil, they went on about over population and the impending worldwide famine. Family planning's the ticket. We'll ration people. Now it's global warming.

It's a given among the environmentalists of the left, that people do only harm to the earth. Let me qualify that. Western people, particularly Americans, are the ones who harm the earth. It's our greed, you know. We drive SUV's, and by doing that we take more than our fair share. Our gluttony poisons the planet by adding to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. 

The atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, inter alia, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) have grown: by about 30%, 145%, and 15%, respectively (values for 1992). These trends can be attributed largely to human activities, mostly fossil­fuel use, land­use change and agriculture.

So what exactly does it mean that carbon dioxide rose by 30% and methane by a whopping 145%?  According to this chart, between the years of 1750 and 2003 carbon dioxide is thought to have gone from 280 ppm to 372.3 ppm, an increase of 92.3 ppm, and methane went from 730 ppb to 1843 ppb, an increase of 1113 ppb. For those not in the know, "ppm" stands for "parts per million" and "ppb" stands for "parts per billion".

Do the arithmetic. Carbon dioxide concentration comes out to be .03723% of the troposphere, while methane represents .0001843%. The combined estimated increase in these two gases represents .0093413% of the total atmosphere. By the way, that percentage of 8 pounds is roughly one eighty-fourth of an ounce.

We're being asked to conclude that these trace gases in Earth's atmospheric blanket have some magical impact on its insulating qualities, while nitrogen, which makes up 78% of the atmosphere, and oxygen, which makes up 21% of the atmosphere have little bearing.  Does this make any sense?  Take a good look at the wording in this paragraph.  It's from Manchester Metropolitan University Atmosphere, Climate & Environment Information Programme

Despite their relative scarcity, the most important trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere are the greenhouse gases. Most abundant in the troposphere, these gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapour and ozone, so-called because they are involved in the Earth natural greenhouse effect which keeps the planet warmer than it would be without an atmosphere. Apart from water vapour, the most abundant greenhouse gas (by volume) is carbon dioxide. Despite being present in only 370 parts per million by volume of air, carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases help to keep the Earth 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere. Through emissions of greenhouse gases however, mankind has enhanced with natural greenhouse effect which may now be leading to a warming of the Earth climate.

Notice the part about how the "greenhouse gases help to keep the Earth 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere."  They know they're pushing a load of crap.

Consider this from Steve Antler

...reader Harold Brashears sends in the following comment on this recent post:

I was amused to see the quote from Stephen Schneider. He was a prominent global cooling enthusiast, not long ago.

His paper on global cooling: Schneider S. & Rasool S., "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols - Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate", Science, vol.173, 9 July 1971, p.138-141.

A more recent Schneider quote:

"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."

(In interview for "Discover" magagzine, Oct 1989).

There's another little problem with the global warming theories. Research by Harvard University is said to prove that there was a period in the middle ages when the climate was much warmer than it is today.

The review, by a Harvard University team, examined the findings of studies of temperature proxies such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts that allowed scientists to estimate temperatures.

The findings prove that the world had a medieval warm period between the ninth and 14th centuries, with world temperatures significantly higher than today's.

They also confirm claims that a little Ice Age set in about 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up, but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

The end of the little Ice Age is significant because it implies that the records used by climate scientists date from when the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature rise.

How entertaining that both global cooling and global warming have the same supposed cause - burning fossil fuels. It may very well be that there is a crisis, but if there is I suspect it's not with our climate.  If there's a crisis it's a crisis of the liberal psyche, driven to ration something, anything, but finding fewer and fewer excuses to do it.

Comments

[Scott]

Interesting analysis, Tom.

[John Weidner]

Tom, you are right to be sceptical of Global Warming, but you are using the wrong reasons. There is no question about the existence of the Greenhouse Effect, or that it is caused by greenhouse gases, and that without it the Earth would be too cold to be habitable.

If you are in a mood to raise doubts, you might notice that one of the greenhouse gases is water vapor. It's NOT a trace gas. It is in fact responsible for about 99% of the Effect. The GW types don't like to mention that.

The real problem with GW is that it is mostly based on computer models of great complexity that work with a hodge-podge of data. Trying to correlate the tree-rings of Bristlecone Pines with core samples from the Greenland Icecap is fraught with difficulty. When the "liberal psyche" takes a position, the computer models seem to mold themselves to the expected result...

The other problem is that, thought there has clearly been some warming over the last century, we don't know how much warming might be normal. Some researchers thing the warming may have countered another "little ice age." We don't really know enough...

[Tom Bowler]

John, I'm not disputing that the earth is warming. Nor am I disputing that gases in the atmosphere provide an insulating quality that keeps the earth warmer. But even the folks at Manchester Metropolitan University hesitate to conclude that greenhouse gases are solely responsible for insulating the earth. Again, note their wording, "greenhouse gases help to keep the Earth 33°C warmer than it would otherwise be without an atmosphere." Without an atmosphere.

I'm skeptical that such a miniscule quantity of any component of the atmosphere could have the dramatic effect that's been alleged. And I question role we play in it in our day to day lives, SUV's notwithstanding.

I left out one of the juicier quotes about water vapor because the piece was getting to be way too long. From NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Observatory/Datasets/cldforc.erbe.html "Clouds play a significant role in our world's energy balance -- they exert both a cooling effect on the surface by reflecting sunlight back into space, and a warming effect by trapping heat emitted from the surface. Clouds are one of the greatest areas of scientific uncertainty with respect to how much they influence climate on a global scale." Uncertain about the effects of clouds but convinced on CO2. Hmmm.

[Scott]

I'm enjoying the discussion. I've never had strong feelings about the GW debate so I find any information about it, pro or con, enlightening.