Done deal

Global warmists argue their position mostly by insisting there's no argument.  A relative of mine dismissed the idea that there could even be a discussion.  "It's science," he insisted.  What science it is, he didn't say, but for him and many others, man made global warming is a done deal. 

A Nashua Telegraph Guest Commentary opinion column points up how far along many of us have come to simply accepting that notion.  Contoocook resident Janet Ward, who would like shut down Public Service of New Hampshire’s Merrimack Station, wrote:

'The Climate Action Plan’s authors spent about a year crafting this plan while studiously avoiding making eye contact with the 800-pound gorilla in the state: Public Service of New Hampshire’s Merrimack Station.

Every single year this coal-burning power plant produces 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide, a damaging pollutant that is a key cause of climate change.'

It's almost inconceivable that anybody could believe that carbon dioxide is "a damaging pollutant" -- at least anybody that's heard of photosynthesis.  In reality carbon dioxide is essential to the support of life on our planet.  Without it, life as we know it would not exist. 

'ScienceDaily (Mar. 12, 2008) —  A startling discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution puts a new twist on photosynthesis, arguably the most important biological process on Earth. Photosynthesis by plants, algae, and some bacteria supports nearly all living things by producing food from sunlight, and in the process these organisms release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide.'

But carbon dioxide is said to be the cause of a "greenhouse effect" that global warmists say is responsible for rising worldwide temperatures.  No matter that there has been no scientific proof that there is such as a greenhouse effect. 

In fact, a pair of German math and physics professors claim the proof is on the other side of the argument.  Professor Gerhard Gerlich, who teaches Mathematical and Physics at the Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina in Germany, and his colleague, ProfessorRalf D. Tscheuschner published a paper that thoroughly discredits the theory.  Their paper is entitled, Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics.  

'The atmospheric greenhouse effect, an idea that many authors trace back to the traditional works of Fourier (1824), Tyndall (1861), and Arrhenius (1896), and which is still supported in global climatology, essentially describes a fictitious mechanism, in which a planetary atmosphere acts as a heat pump driven by an environment that is radiatively interacting with but radiatively equilibrated to the atmospheric system. According to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist. Nevertheless, in almost all texts of global climatology and in a widespread secondary literature it is taken for granted that such mechanism is real and stands on a firm scientific foundation. In this paper the popular conjecture is analyzed and the underlying physical principles are clarifed. By showing that (a) there are no common physical laws between the warming phenomenon in glass houses and the fictitious atmospheric greenhouse effects, (b) there are no calculations to determine an average surface temperature of a planet...'

For those of us who are not physicists, the professors offer common sense explanations along with their mathematical arguments. 

'However, as this heat transmission is less important compared to the convection, nothing remains of the absorption and reflection properties of glass for infrared radiation to explain the physical greenhouse effect. Neither the absorption nor the reflection coefficient of glass for the infrared light is relevant for this explanation of the physical greenhouse effect, but only the movement of air, hindered by the panes of glass.'

In other words, a glass greenhouse traps heat by preventing the air inside from circulating higher into the atmosphere where it cools down.  "Greenhouse gases" do nothing to inhibit the circulation of air, nothing to prevent cooling by convection.  For the sake of convenience to their argument, the global warmists ignore the effect of convection altogether.  What choice do they have, really?  It makes their settled science look pretty unsettled.

Comments

[jorod]

It's not science...it's a computer program based on PIPO. Pessimism in, pessimism out.

[Tom Bowler]

Exactly.

[Fritz]

Well... It is fallacious to state that just because CO2 is required at some concentration it cannot be a pollutant or dangerous at a higher concentration. Check out selenium, for instance, which is both a necessary nutrient and a potent toxin.

I am finishing reading Lomborg's _Cool It_. I recommend the book highly. It is a fast read and puts global climate change in perspective. And utterly destroys the claims that we must immediately implement Kyoto and far more to Save The Planet.

[Tom Bowler]

"Well... It is fallacious to state that just because CO2 is required at some concentration it cannot be a pollutant or dangerous at a higher concentration."

I disagree. If you were sealed into a room that had a 100% CO2 atmosphere you would surely die. But you would die from lack of oxygen, not overexposure to CO2. CO2 itself is not harmful. You are exposed to it all the time.

Protecting the environment is not the driving reason for the push to classify CO2 as a pollutant. By officially making it a pollutant, the Environmental Protection Agency would gain the power to regulate everything that might add CO2 to our endangered atmosphere, potentially right down to the act of breathing. And of course once the regulatory framework is in place, decisions would be made without benefit of legislative debate. This is what our dear friends on the left hope to achieve. The goal is to impose their special concept of social justice through environmental regulation.

Come on, Fritz. Somebody's got to make sure you don't take more than your fair share.