The Shed

If the world heats up, we’ll survive,

IT’S THE NEXT ICE AGE THAT WILL KILL US –

unless we find out how to CREATE the Greenhouse effect to keep warm.

19 years ago I read Peter Sawyers Book ‘The Greenhoax Effect’ – it opened my eyes to what was really happening and not just what we are being told. At the time of print, we were being told to sell our beachside homes and move inland – The GreenHoax Effect predicted we were actually heading into a period of drought and the best investment was a water truck- he was right!!

The book pointed out that chlorofluorocarbon gas (CFC) which had just been banned because it supposedly was depleting the ozone layer, was actually heavier than air, you could pour it into a bucket and it stayed there- so how was it getting into the ozone?? Most interestingly, the patent for it, owned by Giant Chemical Company DuPont, was running out. DuPont actually donated money to the research for a new gas, and guess who owns the patent on HCFC? Yep – DuPont

Reading the Greenhoax Effect made me look closely at news reports- was a scientist mentioned by name ? or just ‘THEY say…”. For over 20 years I’ve listened and read a lot about climate change, and formed my own opinions.

If the world cools down we’re in trouble, when the next Ice Age arrives we are going to need to keep warm for maybe 16,000 years– will we get paid back all out carbon credits then?

UPDATE: August 2011. When I first posted this article, the supposed problem was called ‘Global Warming’, then the Northern hemisphere had a seriously cold winter. Oops, ‘Global WARMING ‘ ? Apparently not.  So the name subtly altered to ‘Climate Change’ – which covers both too hot and too cold. About as useful as a weather forecast for ‘sunny with rainy periods’.

Carbon Tax: When we were first invited to pay a Carbon ‘offset’, I knew it would eventually be a tax.

Lets get this straight, the proposed tax is not about CARBON it’s about CO2, a gas that we exhale.

If CO2 is so deadly to the planet, it suggests that we weren’t designed correctly in the first place- hmmm who should we sue? I think Billy Connolly already had a go at that (The Man Who Sued God Movie 2001)

Professor Brian J O’Brien who was closely involved in the Apollo moon missions became involved in climate issues a long time ago. He was the Director of Enviroment and Protection in Perth early 70’s.  He said the idea to reduce emissions by 20% at the 1988 Toronto conference on emissions was created by a half day workshop, by about 20 of the scientists at the conference.

They decided they wanted to reduce the demand for electricity and they thought a ‘challenging figure’ would be 10%.
They also said they wanted to increase the efficiency with which it’s used  and thought a ‘challenging figure’ would be 10%.

They added them together and that’s the Toronto target of 20%, but that then became adopted as if it was scientifically backed up instead of being ‘plucked from the entrails of Toronto’

Makes me wonder how many other targets and schemes have been plucked so carelessly – hmm can anyone say ‘CARBON TAX’ !!!!

So lets get some facts straight- where does the heat for Global warming come from? There’s only one place – THE SUN.

Here’s my view on the issue –

Without the sun, the temperature on the earth would be about the temperature of space, around -270C.

The amount of solar energy reaching the earth is not constant, but varies in several independent cycles of different degrees of magnitude, which may or may not reinforce each other.

These cycles include a 100,000-year cycle, which results from the elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun, a 41,000-year cycle, which results from the tilt of the earth on its axis, a 23,000-year cycle which results from changes in direction of the earths axis relative to the sun, and an 11-year sunspot cycle, during which solar radiation increases and then declines.

Each 100,000-year peak in radiation appears to last about 15,000 to 20,000 years, and each has been coincident with massive surges of carbon dioxide and methane (the green house gasses), into the atmosphere, causing de-glaciation of the Polar and Greenland ice caps.

Surges of these greenhouse gasses have always been vastly greater than the amounts currently being generated by burning fossil fuels. For example, the most recent 100,000-year cycle raised sea levels 400 feet in the first 10,000 years, but since then sea levels have risen very little. In the current warming period, sea levels are rising only about 3 millimeters per year, and temperatures over the last 100 years have risen a modest 0.6 of a degree C.

Superimposed on this latest 100,000-year peak have been 6 secondary warming periods, each coincident with additional surges of carbon dioxide and methane, lasting about 200 years and then subsiding. Each of these previous warming periods was warmer than the current warming period, and current temperatures are below the median for the last 3000 years. No human industry involved!

There are thousands of scientific papers in the geological literature that show massive climate changes, massive changes in Earth History, which are totally unrelated to human activity. If you take a holistic view of the earth’s history you would be hard pushed to argue that the slight changes that are now recorded are anything else but natural changes.

What we are seeing today with this movement of ‘Human Induced Climate Change’ is a religious/political movement which is frightening people witless. Paying a tax on carbon emissions is akin to people buying an ‘Indulgence’ in the Middle Ages- all your sins were forgiven.

Joanne Nova, A freelance science presenter, writer, professional speaker & former TV host and author of The Skeptic’s Handbook, posts a lot of scientific climate facts on her website. Each facts is credited, there is information and graphs. “It wasn’t CO2: Global sea levels started rising before 1800” has tidal data going back to the 1800’s.  Much more reading linked from her  Climate Science page.

Ian Rutherford Plimer (born February 12, 1946) is an Australian geologist, academic and businessman, and professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide. He says-

“We have had massive climate changes in historical times over as short a period as twenty years. The change from 1280 to 1303 was profound (from the Medieval Climate Optimum to the Little Ice Age) – that was a time when Greenland had Barley and Cattle. Thats amazing!!

We’ve had a massive increase in CO2 in previous times geologically, where temperatures have changed very slightly but CO2 went up to 5% in one geological time and up to 20% in another. That change is very significant compared to the changes we are now getting which are measured only in parts per million.

If we look at the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by human activity, it really is quite small compared with the degassing of the ocean, with CO2 released from life, CO2 released from geological process such as volcanic activity. Most of those are not documented in the current arguments.

There’s a great body of evidence showing the amount of CO2 released by natural geological process’s; for instance there are 10,000 earthquakes a year and every time you break a rock you release the 3 main greenhouse gasses- Water Vapour, Methane & Carbon Dioxide. Another process never mentioned is the swarms of earthquakes in mid ocean ridge areas which herald the rise of molten rock, that releases a huge amount of gas into the oceans most of which is dissolved and released later on ocean currents.

We are bombarded with information that humans are changing climate – this can only be valid IF we ignore astronomy & IF we ignore Geology.

In Geology we have seen massive climate changes, we’ve seen sea levels go up and down. No-one has any problem with climates changing because they’ve always changed. What has to be demonstrated is that any of the very slight changes that we can measure now are related to human activities and actually not natural processes. “

Water vapour is the largest component of Greenhouse gasses, yet it is the one gas that humans don’t have control over.

Water Vapor H2O 36 – 72 %
Carbon Dioxide CO2 9 – 26 %
Methane CH4 4 – 9 %
Ozone O3 3 – 7 %

My Conclusion –
I’m convinced there is, was and always will be, Climate Change, but not that Humans are the cause. I think the Carbon Tax is just another tax. All the evidence I have read points towards a continuing global pattern, with cycles within cycles.

I doubt that taxing CO2 will prove to be much more than another way to tax us. However, it makes good sense that we use this time as an opportunity to clean up our act, for the long term good of the planet, that makes total sense.

Footnotes

Some of the information quoted here, from –

Ian Rutherford Plimer: an Australian geologist, academic and businessman, and professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide.

Dr. D. Bruce Merrifield: a former Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs and Professor Emeritus of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He holds Masters and Doctoral degrees in physical organic chemistry and currently is a member of the Visiting Committee for Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago.

1. Science, August 26, (2005); Science Feb. 28 (1997) pp1267; Science News, Feb3, (2007) Vol. 171, pp67; Science Vol. 312, June 9 (2006) pp1485-89. http://www.Skymetrics.US/background/glossey.php -21k

2. Science, June 6, (2006) pp1454; A.V. Federov, P.S. Dekens et al, The Pliocene Paradox, Science, Vol. 312, June 9, (2006) pp1485-89; D.R. MacAyeal, Dept. Geophysical Sciences, Univ. of Chicago, http://www.Geosci.uchicago.edu

3. Kenneth Clark, Civilization, Harper and Row, (1969), pp33; Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, Science (1996); L.D. Keigwin, The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea, Science, Vol. 274, Nov. 29, (1996) pp 5292;

4. The End of Angkor, Science, Vol. 311, March 10, (2006).

5. Gerald Dickens, A Methane Trigger for Rapid Warming?, Science, Vol 299, Feb. 14, (2003); Seth Borebstein, Methane A New Climate Threat, Nature, www.nature.com/nature ; C. Frankenberg, J.F. Meirink et al. Assessing Methane ; C. Frankenberg, J.F. Meirink et al. Assessing Methane Emissions From Global Space-Borne Observations, Science, Vol. 308, May 13, (2005).

6. Charles Higham, Civilization of Angkor; pp14-16

7. Methane Since 1684, Climate and Environmental Physics, Physics Inst of Bern, Sidlerstrassa 5, Switzerland.

8. Hudson Canyon Map: http://www.pubs.usgs.gov/of%202004/1441/index/.htm; Wallace Broeker et al. Earth Observatory, Columbia Univ. Lecture at Amer Geographic Society, Baltimore, Spring 1999.

9. Severinghouse, Science, Vol. 286, Oct. 29 (1999) pp 930-4.

10. D.F. Ferretti, J.B. Miller et al, Unexpected Changes to the Global Methane Budget over the Past 2000 Years, Science, Vol. 309, Sept. 9 (2005).

11. Mysterious Stabilization of Atmospheric Methane May Buy Time in Race
to Stop Global Warming, Geophysical Research Letters, Nov. 23 (2006). Mysterious Stabilization of Methane, Scientific American, Nov. 21 (2006).

12. C&EN, Aug 8, (2005) pp16

13. Science, Feb 28 (1997) pp1267; Geothermal Geophysical, Geosystems Vol. 10 (2001) pp1029.

14. I.S.A. Isakreacta, et al, Radiation Forcing of Climate, Inter-Government Panel on Climate Change (2003).

15. Urban Renaissance Inst., http://www. Urban-renaissance.org; Eva Bauer, Martin Clausen, V. Broukin, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 30, No. 6 (2003) pp127

16. Milankovitch Cycles – Wikipedia Encyclopedia

17. Richard Mueller, Gordon MacDonald (1977) Glacial Cycles and Astronomical Forcing

18. J. Howard Maccabee, http://www.nuc.berkely.edu, (colloquium)