By Bob Hoye ——Bio and Archives--May 6, 2023
Global Warming-Energy-Environment | CFP Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Yes, during the prolonged starvation and famines caused by the cooling trend during the Little Ice Age learned magistrates burned witches at the stake. In Northern Europe during the 1500s, thousands of innocent women were legally executed. Nowadays, the blame game for “threatening” weather is more democratic, with all women, men and children right down to the newly born being culprits in calamity.
Of course, the current “calamity” is the opposite – warming.
Note that the famine was due to the Little Ice Age that today’s consensus cannot explain. This was a natural disaster that followed the long warming trend that dramatically reversed in the early 1300s. With that warming trend, agriculture expanded, the population expanded and there was enough prosperity to build magnificent churches and cathedrals. When climatology was unbiased, it was called the “Mediaeval Optimum”. An earlier warming trend was called the “Roman Optimum”; you get the form.
However, in June 1989, eons of warming being good for all forms of life suddenly ended. It did not end by geological catastrophe, it ended by political fiat. Just like that. At a Congressional hearing Dr. James Hansen declared that warming was a drastic threat to modern life. There should be special units to measure that unprecedented lurch to audacity.
Revision One: Warming is suddenly dangerous. Revision Two: With your money we can stave off disaster, for a while. And for the more excitable in the cult, disaster is a 1.5 C increase in the global temp. The more patient wring their hands about a 2-degree C increase, despite how beneficial it would be.
Revision Three: Since life evolved on our uniquely hospitable planet, carbon dioxide has been essential for most life forms. Unless you are sulfur-based shrimps or crabs living next to a “black smoker”.
So two key items essential for life have been reversed to threats. This writer has been in the financial markets for six decades and readily recognizes a promotion, especially one so glaring.
And the passions are so intense that the movement has yet to realize that the temp has dropped by 0.75 C since the high in 2016. A drop of half of the touted threat should be celebrated.
So let’s review the promotion and in going back to 2007, Dr. Nir Shaviv recalled his view on CO2 and warming:
“A few years ago if you asked me I would tell you it’s CO2. Why? Because just like everyone else in the public I listened to what the media had to say.”
It is worth noting that amongst his awards, Shaviv in 2014 was given the Einstein Fellowship in physics at Princeton. Later he joined Svensmark on the effect of variation in cosmic rays upon climate change. Changes are as short as a week, with coronal mass ejections which reduces the penetration by cosmic rays. Called a Forbush decease this is accompanied by reduced cloud cover and the periodicity has been traced out to 32 million years as the arms of our galaxy sweep by. It also works in the lab.
And this implacable mechanism right down to the motions of our Solar system does not include atmospheric concentrations of CO2. The promoted notion of the equivalent of a real glass roof up there that holds the heat that would otherwise escape by convection is not valid. Nicely simple, but that is not the way it works. Those little CO2 molecules get vibrated by heat radiation no matter where it is coming from, and then in an instant lose the heat.
Rather than reflecting the heat just to planet Earth, it goes in all directions. Making up some 0.04% of the atmosphere, CO2 truly is a trace gas. On a warm humid day in the tropics, water vapor can be as high as 5%.
And it can vary in showing its hold-the-warmth nature. It is well-known that in dry desert regions when the Sun goes down the air temp can plunge from hot to freezing. Whereas in humid regions the temperature declines relatively little overnight.
The following chart shows the frequencies that “warm” CO2 molecules as well as the frequencies of water vapor molecules. At the risk of a wrong word, the latter “swamps” the former. The notation on the chart should be “Without Water Vapor……”.
Support Canada Free Press
There is no distinct theory that increasing CO2 causes warming. And beyond this, there is no empirical evidence. And to make a point; warming causes CO2 to increase. The following chart shows that when the temp turns up, CO2 follows by some 800 years:
Of course, there is an explanation for this in one of the Gas Laws. Simply stated, Henry’s Law states that the solubility of a gas in water increases with lower temps. So, the cooler the ocean, the more CO2 it can hold. Conversely, as the ocean warms up it emits CO2.
You could place a CO2 generator over a square meter of ocean and inordinately increase the atmospheric concentration, but if the water is saturated at that temp it won’t take any more. On the other hand, as the ocean surface warms up it naturally emits CO2, as shown in the next chart:
And the following chart covers the history of Temperature Change vs Cosmic Rays:
The next chart shows the remarkable increase in CO2, as well as the temperature history since the late 1950s. There was a brief correlation that could be coincidence. Always visible on the chart, are the seasonal fluctuations driven by regular temperature changes involving outgassing surging with photosynthesis – year by year. Natural forces change CO2 concentrations seasonally, as well as over millions of years.
For those who enjoy the “sea-side” aroma, it is dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which is part of photosynthesis near the ocean’s surface.
The last chart shows the temperature over the last 500 million years, with the glacial periods noted. Life under an ice sheet whether over land or sea is limited. Image the life forms under a mile of ice at where Chicago is now. Very limited as it is under the permanent ice on Greenland, for example.
Also noteworthy is that over 500 million years that included some geological drama, the temperature range was some 10 degrees C. And CO2 concentrations have ranged from 7,000 ppm to around 150 ppm at glacial maximums. Today’s 400 ppm is geologically low. At 140 or lower would threaten life as we know it.
View Comments
Bob Hoye (BobHoye.com) has been researching investments for decades, which eventually included the history of financial and political markets. He considers now to be the most fascinating time for both since the Great Reformation of the 1600s. Bob casts a caustic eye on all promotions and, having a degree in geophysics, is severely critical of the audacity that a committee can “manage” not just the economy, but also the temperature of the nearest planet. He has had articles published in major financial journals and, as a speaker, has amused assemblies in a number of cities, from London to Zurich to Tokyo.