Anyone who looks carefully at radiation science and the thermodynamics of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will come to the conclusion that carbon dioxide alone cannot cause a global warming crisis. Even sensible warmists know this.
So warmists invoke “positive feedbacks” or multipliers, which they say will tip earth into runaway global warming.
Their theory is that an initial small warming will increase evaporation of water from the oceans and methane from the tundra. These two “greenhouse gases” will then cause more atmospheric warming, progressively expelling more carbon dioxide from the warming oceans. “Oceans will boil” claimed warmist leader James Hansen. They also claim that after a postulated “tipping point”, Earth will never recover its balmy equilibrium.
However, they ignore substantial negative feedbacks that act to moderate any tendency to excessive global warming. For example, evaporation cools water bodies and carries surface heat into the upper atmosphere where it dissipates to space. Extra evaporation also produces more clouds that reflect heat and cool the surface. Also methane oxidises and extra plant growth absorbs more solar energy, water vapour and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Moreover, the long history of the Earth reveals periods when temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were far higher than today but life flourished and Earth always returned to cooler times – sometimes an ice age. Earth’s climate oscillates like a see-saw, with periodic changes in cycles in the sun and the solar system keeping the see-saw slowly oscillating.
There is no evidence supporting the theory of a global warming tipping point.
Today we live in a balmy climate cycle but in the grand climate cycles, the barren hungry ice is always waiting its turn.
Every human alive today is descended from a long line of smart and adaptable ancestors. Those who stay smart and adaptable will survive future see-saws of the climate.
Viv Forbes,
Rosewood, Qld, Australia
Viv Forbes, Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition, has spent his life working in exploration, mining, farming, infrastructure, financial analysis and political commentary. He has worked for government departments, private companies and now works as a private contractor and farmer.
Viv has also been a guest writer for the Asian Wall Street Journal, Business Queensland and mining newspapers. He was awarded the “Australian Adam Smith Award for Services to the Free Society” in 1988, and has written widely on political, technical and economic subjects.
