l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 “我是个科学家，曾经是靠推销全球暖化吃饭的，我理解相关的证据，我曾是个人造全
球暖化信徒，现在我是个怀疑论者”
Carbon warming too minor to be worth worrying about
By David Evans
The debate about global warming has reached ridiculous proportions and is
full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings. I am a scientist who
was on the carbon gravy train, understands the evidence, was once an
alarmist, but am now a skeptic. Watching this issue unfold has been amusing
but, lately, worrying. This issue is tearing society apart, making fools out
of our politicians.
Let’s set a few things straight.
The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global
warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence
during the 1990s. But the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs,
industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world
government and total control riding on the outcome. So rather than admit
they were wrong, the governments, and their tame climate scientists, now
outrageously maintain the fiction that carbon dioxide is a dangerous
pollutant.
Let’s be perfectly clear. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and other
things being equal, the more carbon dioxide in the air, the warmer the
planet. Every bit of carbon dioxide that we emit warms the planet. But the
issue is not whether carbon dioxide warms the planet, but how much.
Most scientists, on both sides, also agree on how much a given increase in
the level of carbon dioxide raises the planet’s temperature, if just the
extra carbon dioxide is considered. These calculations come from laboratory
experiments; the basic physics have been well known for a century.
The disagreement comes about what happens next.
The planet reacts to that extra carbon dioxide, which changes everything.
Most critically, the extra warmth causes more water to evaporate from the
oceans. But does the water hang around and increase the height of moist air
in the atmosphere, or does it simply create more clouds and rain? Back in
1980, when the carbon dioxide theory started, no one knew. The alarmists
guessed that it would increase the height of moist air around the planet,
which would warm the planet even further, because the moist air is also a
greenhouse gas.
This is the core idea of every official climate model: For each bit of
warming due to carbon dioxide, they claim it ends up causing three bits of
warming due to the extra moist air. The climate models amplify the carbon
dioxide warming by a factor of three — so two-thirds of their projected
warming is due to extra moist air (and other factors); only one-third is due
to extra carbon dioxide.
That’s the core of the issue. All the disagreements and misunderstandings
spring from this. The alarmist case is based on this guess about moisture in
the atmosphere, and there is simply no evidence for the amplification that
is at the core of their alarmism.
Weather balloons had been measuring the atmosphere since the 1960s, many
thousands of them every year. The climate models all predict that as the
planet warms, a hot spot of moist air will develop over the tropics about 10
kilometres up, as the layer of moist air expands upwards into the cool dry
air above. During the warming of the late 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, the
weather balloons found no hot spot. None at all. Not even a small one. This
evidence proves that the climate models are fundamentally flawed, that they
greatly overestimate the temperature increases due to carbon dioxide.
This evidence first became clear around the mid-1990s.
At this point, official “climate science” stopped being a science. In
science, empirical evidence always trumps theory, no matter how much you are
in love with the theory. If theory and evidence disagree, real scientists
scrap the theory. But official climate science ignored the crucial weather
balloon evidence, and other subsequent evidence that backs it up, and
instead clung to their carbon dioxide theory — that just happens to keep
them in well-paying jobs with lavish research grants, and gives great
political power to their government masters.
There are now several independent pieces of evidence showing that the earth
responds to the warming due to extra carbon dioxide by dampening the warming
. Every long-lived natural system behaves this way, counteracting any
disturbance. Otherwise the system would be unstable. The climate system is
no exception, and now we can prove it.
But the alarmists say the exact opposite, that the climate system amplifies
any warming due to extra carbon dioxide, and is potentially unstable. It is
no surprise that their predictions of planetary temperature made in 1988 to
the U.S. Congress, and again in 1990, 1995, and 2001, have all proved much
higher than reality.
They keep lowering the temperature increases they expect, from 0.30C per
decade in 1990, to 0.20C per decade in 2001, and now 0.15C per decade — yet
they have the gall to tell us “it’s worse than expected.” These people
are not scientists. They overestimate the temperature increases due to
carbon dioxide, selectively deny evidence, and now they conceal the truth.
One way they conceal is in the way they measure temperature.
The official thermometers are often located in the warm exhaust of air
conditioning outlets, over hot tarmac at airports where they get blasts of
hot air from jet engines, at waste-water plants where they get warmth from
decomposing sewage, or in hot cities choked with cars and buildings. Global
warming is measured in 10ths of a degree, so any extra heating nudge is
important. In the United States, nearly 90% of official thermometers
surveyed by volunteers violate official siting requirements that they not be
too close to an artificial heating source.
Global temperature is also measured by satellites, which measure nearly the
whole planet 24/7 without bias. The satellites say the hottest recent year
was 1998, and that since 2001 the global temperature has levelled off. Why
does official science track only the surface thermometer results and not
mention the satellite results?
The Earth has been in a warming trend since the depth of the Little Ice Age
around 1680. Human emissions of carbon dioxide were negligible before 1850
and have nearly all come after the Second World War, so human carbon dioxide
cannot possibly have caused the trend. Within the trend, the Pacific
Decadal Oscillation causes alternating global warming and cooling for 25 to
30 years at a go in each direction. We have just finished a warming phase,
so expect mild global cooling for the next two decades.
We are now at an extraordinary juncture. Official climate science, which is
funded and directed entirely by government, promotes a theory that is based
on a guess about moist air that is now a known falsehood. Governments
gleefully accept their advice, because the only ways to curb emissions are
to impose taxes and extend government control over all energy use. And to
curb emissions on a world scale might even lead to world government — how
exciting for the political class!
Even if we stopped emitting all carbon dioxide tomorrow, completely shut up
shop and went back to the Stone Age, according to the official government
climate models it would be cooler in 2050 by about 0.015 degrees. But their
models exaggerate 10-fold — in fact our sacrifices would make the planet in
2050 a mere 0.0015 degrees cooler!
Finally, to those who still believe the planet is in danger from our carbon
dioxide emissions: Sorry, but you’ve been had. Yes, carbon dioxide is a
cause of global warming, but it’s so minor it’s not worth doing much about.
Financial Post
David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now
the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to
2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and
forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with
six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in
electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax
Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23. |
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