Environment - alternative views

"Our young people have a universal negative view of the future. They don't have the accumulated life experiences to put the environmental predictions of doom into proper perspective." (Editor)

Contents

• Summary
• Global Warming
• Kyoto Protocol
• Is CO2 really a problem?
• The Earth won't last forever
• How did the greenhouse hysteria begin?
• Why don't we hear much about the opposite view?
• If it is not true, how does the story keep going?
• What can I do about it?

Summary

Every branch of the media, education resources and political life would have us believe man is totally destroying the environment. The result of this idea is to cause young people to abandon hope. "Live for the moment - tomorrow is ruined" they are reminded daily!

Seventeen thousand scientists (half of whom are trained in physics, geophysics, climate science, meteorology, oceanography, chemistry, biology or biochemistry) recently signed a petition written by Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, declaring that there is no compelling evidence to justify reducing greenhouse gas emissions at all. (26)

Global Warming

There are three methods used for measuring the temperature of the earth:

• Satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere (accurate to 0,01 degree - able to measure the temperature increase caused by the moon shining on the earth!)
• Measuring sondes carried through the atmosphere by weather balloons
• Measurements at established weather stations (source of television temperature data)

Satellites and balloon sondes give the same results and both show extremely small if any increase in the earth's temperature.

Surface readings however, show a large increase in temperature in the last 100 years, mainly as a result of urbanization effects that encroach on weather stations and change locally the physical environment where the temperature is recorded. (the photo shows a car park acting as a heat sink surrounding a weather station. Building development would also affect the prevailing breezes)

Conclusion: One of the fundamental concepts that global warming is based on (observable rising temperatures on earth) isn't backed up by all the available evidence - only selective evidence!

Read a full report about temperature measurement: ‘Global Mean Temperature’ and how it is determined at surface level"

The Kyoto Protocol

How often have you heard in the media that we could fix the environmental effects of CO2 if only USA would join in with the Kyoto Protocol?

If every country participated in the protocol, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere in 100 years time would rise to 190% of what it is now. Without Kyoto it is predicted to be 200% higher. Many large polluting non-developed nations are exempt from complying with the Protocol, therefore the best that could be expected is maybe 195% of present levels. (23)

Killing the coal industry to reduce temperatures 1/7th of 1 degree 50 years hence is justified by treaty advocates as a necessary "first step" of about 30 that must necessarily come. Treaty opponents do a quick cost/benefit analysis and conclude that treaty supporters have lost their grip on reality. (26)

Apart from the misleading public debate, the case for the Kyoto Protocol is pretty threadbare. If the past is any prologue, the case for ratification will continue to weaken. (26)

While the Kyoto Protocol envisions significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, scientists on all sides of the debate agree that its impact will be virtually undetectable. (26)

Further reading: "Latest Science Debunks Global Warming Hysteria"

Is CO2 really a problem?

The main absorbers of infrared in the atmosphere (greenhouse effect) are water vapor and clouds. Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect. Nevertheless, it is presumed that increases in carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases will lead to significant increases in temperature. (27)

It should be noted that for much of the Earth's history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come. (27)

Evidence from the analysis of ice cores and after 1958 from direct atmospheric sampling shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been increasing since 1800. Before 1800 the density was about 275 parts per million by volume. Today it is about 355 parts per million by volume. The total source is estimated to have been increasing exponentially at least until 1973. From 1973 until 1990 the rate of increase has been much slower, however. (27)

Conclusion:

Evidence shows that CO2 has gradually been increasing

True

The level of CO2 has been much higher in the past than it is today

True

The increase in CO2 aligns closely with industrialization

False

Increasing CO2 means much higher global temperatures

False

The earth won't last forever!

We are using resources at a rate that can't be sustained. Since the earth only has finite resources, it is true, they must be exhausted sooner or later.

The important question is: Does it really matter?

The Bible is very clear that Jesus is returning to Earth and it seems not too far into the future. After that the earth is to be of no further use! The resources of the Earth don't have to last forever!!

Conclusion:

Do we plunder the resources we have left?

No

Do we fear about the future?

No

Do we trust in God to supply all our needs as he has promised?

Yes

How did the greenhouse hysteria begin?

The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two. (27)

Despite the fact that those remarks were virtually meaningless, they led the environmental advocacy movement to adopt the issue immediately. The growth of environmental advocacy since the 1970s has been phenomenal. In Europe the movement centered on the formation of Green parties; in the United States the movement centered on the development of large public interest advocacy groups. Those lobbying groups have budgets of several hundred million dollars and employ about 50,000 people; their support is highly valued by many political figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern. "Global warming'' has become one of the major battle cries in their fund raising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of those groups as objective truth. (27)

Other scientists quickly agreed that with increasing carbon dioxide some warming might be expected and that with large enough concentrations of carbon dioxide the warming might be significant. Nevertheless, there was widespread skepticism. By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United States were declaring that "all scientists'' agreed that warming was real and catastrophic in its potential. (27)

In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford (a film star) at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate. (27)

Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that "scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.'' It seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger was not of "global warming'' itself. (27)

Further reading: "Latest Science Debunks environmental hysteria (about 1/3 through from the top of the article)

Why don't we hear much about the opposite view?

As most scientists concerned with climate, I was eager to stay out of what seemed like a public circus. But in the summer of 1988 Lester Lave, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to me about being dismissed from a Senate hearing for suggesting that the issue of global warming was scientifically controversial. I assured him that the issue was not only controversial but also unlikely. In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyzes that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity. In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and ample expressions of impatience with science. (27)

By the fall of 1989 some media were becoming aware that there was controversy (Forbes and Reader's Digest were notable in that regard). Cries followed from environmentalists that skeptics were receiving excessive exposure. The publication of my paper was followed by a determined effort on the part of the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Richard Hallgren, to solicit rebuttals. Such articles were prepared by Stephen Schneider and Will Kellogg, a minor scientific administrator for the past thirty years. (27)

Outside the world of meteorology, Greenpeace's Jeremy Legett, a geologist by training, published a book attacking critics of warming---especially me. George Mitchell, Senate majority leader and father of a prominent environmental activist, also published a book urging acceptance of the warming problem (World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth). Sen. Gore recently published a book (Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit). Those are just a few examples of the rapidly growing publications on warming. Rarely has such meager science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not understand the subject in the first place. (27)

The activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists deserve special mention. That widely supported organization was originally devoted to nuclear disarmament. As the cold war began to end, the group began to actively oppose nuclear power generation. Their position was unpopular with many physicists. Over the past few years, the organization has turned to the battle against global warming in a particularly hysterical manner. In 1989 the group began to circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the great danger to mankind. Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any involvement in climatology. Interestingly, the petition had two pages, and on the second page there was a call for renewed consideration of nuclear power. When the petition was published in the New York Times, however, the second page was omitted. In any event, that document helped solidify the public perception that "all scientists'' agreed with the disaster scenario. Such a disturbing abuse of scientific authority was not unnoticed. At the 1990 annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, the academy's president, warned the membership against lending their credibility to issues about which they had no special knowledge. Special reference was made to the published petition. (27)

At the same time, political pressures on dissidents from the "popular vision'' increased. Sen. Gore publicly admonished "skeptics'' in a lengthy New York Times op-ed piece. In a perverse example of double-speak he associated the "true believers'' in warming with Galileo. He also referred, in another article, to the summer of 1988 as the Kristallnacht before the warming holocaust. (27)

In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report they were involved with. (27)

Perhaps more important are the pressures being brought to bear on scientists to get the "right" results. Such pressures are inevitable, given how far out on a limb much of the scientific community has gone. (27)

I should add that as ever greater numbers of individuals attach themselves to the warming problem, the pressures against solving the problem grow proportionally; an inordinate number of individuals and groups depend on the problem's remaining. (27)

Read the whole report about the environmental 'one sided' reporting

If it is not true, how does the story keep going?

Public perceptions, under the influence of extensive, deceptive, and one-sided publicity, can become disconnected from reality. For example, Alabama has had a pronounced cooling trend since 1935. Nevertheless, a poll among professionals in Alabama found that about 95 percent of the participants believed that the climate had been warming over the past fifty years and that the warming was due to the greenhouse effect. Public misconceptions coupled with a sincere desire to "save the planet'' can force political action even when politicians are aware of the reality. (27)

What the above amounts to is a societal instability. At a particular point in history, a relatively minor suggestion or event serves to mobilize massive interests. . (27)

In the past, the same destructive scenario occurred in Nazi Germany under Hitler's reign. Hitler announced that the cause of Germany's problems was the Jews. He repeated it enough that people believed it to be true. Without any factual basis, the repetition made it truth. The common people then became party to the senseless slaughter of millions of Jews because, as a nation, they believed statements that had no factual basis!

What can I do about it?

For our young people - give them a balanced view and some skills to handle this hysteria.

On a personal level - people often tend to grab onto causes in a subconscious way to cancel the background anxiety and inherent fear of the future and of the unknown. The lack of factual basis doesn't matter, since, to the individual the focused action to a cause feels like a positive counter attack toward the fears we all tend to have about the future.

The only way to effectively deal with the fear of the future and our own mortality is to give your life over to Jesus Christ. He has a plan for every life! He is the only one who gives hope now and beyond the grave! He is the only way to effectively face your mortality (your death).

More information about how to "Get it right with God"