As usual, science wins.
Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Other Views
Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ”An Inconvenient Truth,” have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate reported, “Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame.”
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa’s Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, “Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”
Gore claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in February that there has been no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes.
Gore claims global warming is causing more frequent and severe hurricanes. However, hurricane expert Chris Landsea published a study on May 1 documenting that hurricane activity is no higher now than in decades past. Hurricane expert William Gray reported just a few days earlier, on April 27, that the number of major hurricanes making landfall on the U.S. Atlantic coast has declined in the past 40 years. Hurricane scientists reported in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters that global warming enhances wind shear, which will prevent a significant increase in future hurricane activity.
Al Gore won’t admit that he is engaging in pure hyperbole because Al Gore doesn’t recognize hyperbole. He’s a politician, it’s the only language he knows.
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Hmm, speaking of global warming science, I recently did a bit of math regarding the sensitivity of the atmosphere to CO2.
I downloaded the IR absorption spectra of CO2 and water vapor from the NIST site. CO2 has two absorption spikes, one at 4.2 micrometers wavelength, the other at 14.9. Water has a band extending from about 12 micrometers all the way out past 20.
I integrated the absorptivity at each wavelength across the standard atmosphere, adjusting the density with altitude for the two gasses to get the transmittivity. I then integrated that transmittivity across each wavelength of interest, multiplied by earth’s blackbody radiation, got the losses, and looked at the results.
Increasing CO2 concentration should only be effecting very very dry air. Anywhere there is appreciable water vapor content, the atmosphere is already opaque to anything CO2 can absorb, with the exception of the narrow 4.2 micrometer band. With 0.25% water vapor content (average), a doubling of CO2 concentration should only increase the absorbed energy by 0.098%.
I’ve had it pointed out that my model treats the atmosphere as a single absorbing entity, rather than a very deep and dynamic one, but it’s a place to start.
Basically, it means that global warming (due to CO2) can’t be effecting weather in the temperate and tropical zones – it should only be effecting arid or arctic zones with little atmospheric water vapor.
ams:
The relative effect of CO2 when compared to water vapor is well known, as is the fact that water vapor absorbtion pretty much overwhelms CO2 absorbtion whenever the two are together.
What the Global Warming alarmist say is that CO2 has some mysterious, yet-undiscovered, but real nonetheless, “multiplier effect” that makes the water vapor absorbtion worse than it would already be. This is part of the reason I find the whole CO2 link to be so unscientific. When pressed on the science behind it, all the “scientists” have been able to come up with is “well, we haven’t found it yet, but we know it’s there. It has to be there. We just know it.”
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