Saturday, November 26, 2011

The Great Global Warming Swindle -- A Summary

[First published on Google Knol on September 20th, 2008]

Summary

There are scientists who dispute the popular belief about the cause of global warming, also known as climate change. They have identified five reasons why man-made production of carbon dioxide cannot cause global warming. They believe that climate change is an entirely natural process.

Introduction

This article is a summary of the documentary called The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007). The documentary asserts that the man-made climate change hypothesis is false. The hypothesis is that man-made production of carbon dioxide, principally from the combustion of fossil fuels, is causing the earth's climate to change.

Origin of the man-made climate change hypothesis

The man-made climate change hypothesis originated at a time when the global temperature was falling. By the early 1970s, the global temperature had been falling since 1940. Climatologists believed that this might continue and lead to extreme weather conditions and even the onset of a new ice age. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) presented this viewpoint in a television series called The Weather Machine (1974). There was a dissenting opinion expressed in the program by the meteorologist Bert Bolin, who suggested that man-made production of carbon dioxide resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels might help to increase the global temperature by a few degrees over a period of about fifty years. Nigel Calder, responsible for the program, was strongly criticized for giving wide publicity to what was regarded as an eccentric view.

Two things happened to change the main-stream view about climate change. Firstly, the decline in the global temperature came to a halt in 1975 and the temperature began to rise. Secondly, politicians became concerned about the security of the supply of fossil fuels. In the United Kingdom in 1984, the coal miners went on strike. The Conservative Party, led Margaret Thatcher, had reason to be concerned about this because strikes by the miners in 1972 and 1974 had led to the downfall of the Conservative government of the time. Concerns also persisted about the security of the supply of oil, because of the 1973 oil embargo by the Arab oil-producing countries. The government wanted to promote the use of nuclear power, though this was being hampered by the fear of nuclear accidents and radioactive pollution. The government was thus keen to highlight possible problems with the use of fossil fuels. They were aware of Bolin's climate change theory and offered research funding to gain support for the theory. The Meteorological Office set up a climate modeling unit, which provided the basis for an international committee called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC went on to produce a report in which they claimed that man-made production of carbon dioxide was causing the global temperature to rise.

Why the man-made climate change hypothesis is wrong

There are five key reasons why the man-made climate change hypothesis is wrong.

Climate change is a natural occurrence

The earth's climate has always changed. There have been periods much warmer and much cooler than today. Over the past one thousand years there have been two such periods. There was a warm period, which lasted from approximately 950 to 1350 and is known as the Medieval Warm Period. This period was then followed by a cold period, which lasted from approximately 1350 to 1900 and is known as the Little Ice Age. Over the past ten thousand years there have been further cycles, most notably a warm period which lasted from approximately 7000 BCE to 4000 BCE and is known as the Holocene Maximum.

Global temperature fell during the period of greatest man-made carbon dioxide production

The man-made climate change hypothesis is based on the belief that carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels during industrialization has caused the global temperature to rise by approximately 0.5 degrees Celsius since the mid-1800s. However, on a global scale, industrial production was still in its infancy in the early 1900s, being restricted to a few countries, and even these were hampered by war and economic depression. The growth in industrialization was most rapid after the Second World War, in a period known as the Post War Economic Boom. In a period of relative peace, mass production of consumer goods spread throughout the world. People of all backgrounds were able to buy cars and travel on planes, things that most people could not afford before the war. If man-made production of carbon dioxide had been the cause of a rise in the global temperature, the bulk of the temperature rise would have occurred after 1940, but in fact most of it occurred before 1940. The global temperature actually fell after 1940 and continued to fall until 1975. There was real concern in the early 1970s about the prospect of further global cooling and the onset of a new ice age.

Carbon dioxide is not a significant greenhouse gas

The Greenhouse Effect is a natural process by which some of the heat received from the Sun is retained in the the lower atmosphere (troposphere) because of adsorption by certain gases in the earth's atmosphere, including carbon dioxide. The process makes the temperature at the surface of the earth warmer than it would otherwise be and is essential for life on earth. Those who support the man-made climate change hypothesis, claim that the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide due to man-made emissions is enhancing the greenhouse effect and thus is raising the global temperature.

Only a small proportion of the gases in the atmosphere are greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide is one of them, but the concentration of this in the atmosphere is 0.054 % and only a small proportion of this is from man-made sources. The most significant greenhouse gas is water vapor, which accounts for 95 % of all greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide thus plays a very minor role in the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is not being enhanced

A consequence of the accepted theory of the greenhouse effect is that an increase in the amount of greenhouse gases leads to a rate of warming that increases from the earth's surface to a maximum at the middle of the troposphere, at an altitude of 10-12 km. However, satellite and weather balloon data show that the actual rate of warming in the troposphere is not higher than the rate of warming at the surface. Indeed, most observations show a slightly lower rate of warming in the troposphere than at the surface. Thus, the increase in the global temperature that is occurring cannot be the result of an enhanced greenhouse effect.

Carbon dioxide concentration lags global temperature

The claim made by proponents of the man-made climate change hypothesis that an increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes an increase in the global temperature, relies on the results of an ice-core survey carried out in Vostok in the Antarctic. It was the key evidence supporting one of the claims made in the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) which was written and presented by former US vice-president Al Gore. In the film, Gore presented a graph of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and global temperature for the past 650,000 years and suggested that changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide had obviously led to changes in the global temperature. What he did not say was that the carbon dioxide data lags the corresponding global temperature data by 800 years. This lag has been confirmed by several subsequent ice-core surveys. Thus, if there is indeed a correlation between the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the global temperature, it would have to be that an increase in the temperature causes an increase in the carbon dioxide concentration. There is no evidence that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has ever determined the global temperature.

There is a rational explanation for the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide increasing as a result of an increase in the global temperature. Carbon dioxide is produced naturally by all living things. The contribution from human beings is small by comparison with the total contribution from the other sources, such as volcanoes, animals, bacteria, dying vegetation, and the oceans. The oceans, which cover most of the surface of the planet, are by far the largest source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the size of the contribution fluctuates because carbon dioxide is slightly soluble in water. Carbon dioxide becomes less soluble in water as the temperature of water increases and more soluble as the temperature falls. Thus, as the surface temperature of the planet rises, the oceans release dissolved carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and as the surface temperature falls, the oceans absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, this process cannot happen quickly because the oceans are deep. The low depths of the oceans may take many centuries to respond to a change in the surface temperature. This is consistent with the observed 800-year lag between the global temperature and the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.

The real causes of climate change

There are other reasons for the observed changes in the environment that have been attributed to global warming.

Rising global temperature

The earth's climate is driven by heat and by far the strongest source of heat on the earth is the sun. However, the output from the sun fluctuates between periods of high and low solar activity. High solar activity is accompanied by an increased magnetic field and the visible sign of this is the presence of sunspots.

In 1893, astronomer Edward Maunder reviewed the records of sunspot activity and noticed that there was a period when very few sunspots were recorded, a period which is known as the Maunder Minimum. This period falls within the Little Ice Age, a period when temperatures were much lower than they are today. More recently, in 1991, the Danish Meteorological Institute found that there had been a very strong correlation between solar activity and global temperature in the 20th century. Solar activity rose sharply until 1940, fell until 1975, and then rose. This pattern closely matches the pattern of the temperature record for the same period. The Danish study was supported by a Harvard University study in 2005, which examined the temperature change in the Arctic over a period of 100 years and found that the temperature correlated with solar activity on a decade timescale, but correlated poorly with carbon dioxide concentration. The Danish study was later extended to the last 400 years and the correlation between solar activity and temperature was also found to be close over this period.

The mechanism by which solar activity influences global temperature is through the formation of clouds. Clouds are formed when cosmic rays from outer space meet water vapor rising from the sea, which results in the formation of water droplets and then clouds. A consequence of an increase in solar activity is an increase in the strength of the solar wind, which is a stream of particles emitted by the sun. The solar wind reduces the intensity of the cosmic rays that reach the earth's atmosphere, and thus when there is high solar activity and a high solar wind, there is a low intensity of cosmic rays, a low rate of cloud formation, and consequently a high global temperature. Supporting evidence for this mechanism has come from a comparison of global temperature and cosmic ray intensity over the past 600 million years, which shows a strong inverse correlation.

Storms

The main cause of serious disturbances in the weather is a difference in the temperature between the tropics and the poles. However, this temperature difference decreases as the global temperature increases. Thus, if there has indeed been stormier weather in recent years, it is not the result of an increase in global temperature.

Melting ice

The polar ice caps naturally grow and recede. Ice breaking away from the caps to form icebergs is part of this natural process, which for the Arctic ice cap, occurs every year in the Spring. There is no evidence that recent increases in the global temperature have resulted in an increase in the melting of ice from the polar ice caps.

Rising sea level

The sea level is governed by two factors, local and global. The local factor is the result of land movement. When the altitude of land falls as a result of plate tectonics, there is an apparent sea level rise. The global factor is thermal expansion. An increase in the global temperature will cause the oceans to expand and the sea level to rise. However, this is a slow process because the low depths of the oceans take hundreds of years to respond to surface temperature changes. Current changes in global sea level are thus the result of temperature changes that took place many centuries ago.

Further information

The International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) is a source of further information and critical views of the man-made climate change hypothesis.

5 comments:

  1. So, is there any truths in the film what so ever?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How can we know with certainty what is true? We can't. The best we can do is consider all of the available viewpoints and evidence, make a reasoned assessment of these, and then form an opinion.

      Delete
  2. The movie - The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007) is based on science and opinions from before 2007.
    In the last 6 or 7 years there have been more data in both direction.

    This year (2013) the antarctic sea ice had grown.
    By most measures there has been no significant increase in global temp for 10 to 15 years.

    Here is what I think is going on.
    1. It is hard for us to sort out the good science (accurate and no agenda) from science that is pandering to political agendas.

    2. Best I can do in my guesses is . . .
    There is evidence of temperature increases through history.
    This may be most closely linked sunspot activity
    There is no evidence that humans are causing anything.
    It would be better to work on pollution control than on CO2

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, the documentary is starting to look a bit dated. Perhaps someone will produce an update. Bearing in mind though the hostile reaction to the original, perhaps not!

      Delete
  3. Carbon Monoxide,one of the products of incomplete combustion is the biggest problem, but people confuse Co with Co2 and use them interchangeably, which is wrong.

    ReplyDelete