Rodger L Gamblin
02/14/10
ABSTRACT
Man caused global warming, or climate change as some call it now, has become a controversial issue. Normally a little controversy is a good thing and leads to an increase in knowledge by all concerned. Climate change is not that way, however, because it is given as a reason to change the way energy is produced and used. Energy is the most fundamental product of an industrial society. Some time ago, a study was done that correlated the cost of most everything to the cost of the energy needed to produce it. What this means is that as the cost of energy rises, the real cost of everything does too. To preserve our standard of living the cost of energy must not rise. The only alternative would be to increase the efficiency of the use of energy and recently much has been done in this regard. Presently, further progress with increasing efficiency will be slower. What we will discuss today is the case for whether man-made global warming is, on fact, real. As you will see, we cannot say, no, never, and cannot even say there is nothing to it. We will show that most likely there is nothing to worry about for our or our children’s lifetimes.
BACKGROUND
Everyone has heard of the greenhouse effect and many know how it works. For those who fell asleep regularly in science class let me review it briefly. Glass readily transmits visible and high frequency infrared light. Again, for the science sleepers, light consists of certain waves in the ether and comes in different frequencies. The sun, being very hot, produces much high frequency radiation that we see as light. Its rays are readily transmitted through the glass of a greenhouse and are absorbed by, and heat, the soil contained therein. The soil never gets very hot. Even so, it re-radiates low frequency radiation, but this low frequency radiation is not transmitted by glass so the heat stays in the greenhouse. Without this effect, the soil would reach an equilibrium based upon the relative levels of heat radiated by the sun and soil. With the greenhouse effect, the greenhouse gets hotter than it would, say, on the moon.
Physicists know all about this stuff and at least once in their academic path had to compute the greenhouse effect for some ideal model. In addition, it also is known that the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide has been going up due to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels. Even the slowest of my fellow physicists can connect these dots, and I pity the poor students today who have to compute the expected temperature of the earth if it had a carbon dioxide atmosphere and other simplifying assumptions so that the problem could be finished in less than eight years.
With this as background, you might conclude that the story is over, and that all that has to be done is to compute when we are going to die and forget it. As we discuss in more detail below, most things are not as simple as they first appear, and, in reality, man-made global warming is most likely not much of a problem. The above facts may show, however, why so many physicists in the beginning bought into the theory so easily. After all physicists are like everybody else. They have real work to do and accept what they read in the paper as fact without getting into great detail unless the matter is of importance to them at the time. The initial argument was in accord with their state if knowledge, and so the matter passed by without much analysis. More recently, things have changed as many in the scientific community began to see the danger from those espousing policy to prevent global warming. Presently, over 31,000 scientists, including almost 10,000 Ph.D.s have signed a petition opposing man-made global warming. The Heartland Institute of Chicago has published a collection of papers that point to the limitations of previous work in the field, including that done by the UN IPCC Report. Science has not, and, by its nature, never will be, settled by consensus. Like Galileo, one correct scientist overrules not only all others, but the Pope too.
GLOBAL WARMING COMPUTER MODELS
The earth and its atmosphere are a complex system. Many factors influence the temperature of the earth including the components of the atmosphere, the amount of radiation received from the sun and how much is retained as energy, how much radiation is given up by the earth, and how the energy is distributed and spread. Water vapor is a major factor in the earth’s climate system as are trace materials such as methane, nitrogen oxides, and ozone. Clouds and haze also are major influences. To try to account for these effects, complex models have been programmed on computers in an attempt to simulate the climate system. Much attention has been given the results of these studies.
Those of us who have done such modeling tend to be skeptics. The problem is that one tries as best he can to include the effects in as realistic a way as possible, but ultimately the computer has to run through the program. What it does then tends to be quite opaque. Literally thousands of hours can be spent programming and debugging, and when that all gets done, and the model misbehaves, one has to continue the trouble shooting until the results begin to make sense. The problem is that what makes sense may just be the prejudice of the model builder. There are limited ways to test the results.
Predictions of current computer models tend to be unreliable. For example, it has been reported that none of the most favored models have predicted the cooling trend experienced over the past ten years or so. It has also been reported that our nearby neighboring planets have experienced the historical temperature rise experienced on earth over the past years.
OTHER STUDIES
In 2007 an organization called the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), in a major study concluded it is likely that man had caused any climate change. In 2009 a non-governmental agency from the Heartland Institute published another compendium (NGPCC) on the subject and concluded that it is highly likely that any climate change experienced by the earth is from natural causes. The second study does not preclude any effect from man’s activities, but believes it to be small. It is tedious to study these documents in detail, both being long and technical, however, the second has the advantage of being able to use of the work in the first in their studies. Presently, the NGPCC is the definitive study. Work continues.
THE POLITICAL PROBLEM
When large amounts of money are involved, titanic political forces tend to come into play. In the case of energy, not only is just money involved, but also the well being of major political bodies. For example, General Electric has made a major commitment to wind power. It has very large amounts of money invested in the technology of building and running very large wind mills for the generation of electricity. Such mills are more costly than alternatives, but produce no carbon dioxide. It is in GE’s interest to attempt to block the use of the alternatives. The coal industry in the United States has long suffered from the fact there is no dominant, well funded player in the coal business. Though coal is the least expensive, and most effective means to meet a large portion of the energy needs of the United States, it is not being properly exploited because its use would entail the release of more carbon dioxide than natural gas or nuclear power.
If carbon dioxide is not a problem, the US should be building coal plants as fast as possible for the generation of electricity and heat.
The US has large reserves of oil and gas that are not being exploited. Oil especially is highly useful because of its easy conversion into propellants for transportation. Nuclear power, freed from government supervision, is also a low-cost, highly effective source for the generation of electricity. It is opposed for reasons that are, for the most part, hysterical or driven by its rival energy sources.
A discussion of the political problem would not be complete without taking into account the current struggle to the death between the government bureaucracies and the private sector. Should the government be in charge of energy production or should government have a highly limited role?
CONCLUSIONS
So what does all this mean. To me it means we should put the grown-ups back in charge. Not only will no good come out of limiting our energy production, but surely great harm will. The United States needs to return to basics; the basics understood by the founding fathers of this country. Let no more myths and fads espoused by those of questionable knowledge and intelligence or motives dominate our discussions.
Bureaucratic control gives neither safety nor efficiency. The academics and career bureaucrats currently selected to oversee energy policy and implementation have neither the will nor knowledge to act as rational arbiters. Allow various government interests to have a limited and advisory role only.
Limit the power of elements hostile to developers to use the courts to obstruct development of energy sources; perhaps by requiring suers to post bonds to cover the cost of trial and delay in the event they lose. Prohibit foreign interests from funding advertising or other propaganda campaigns regarding energy development.
Let us act soon. Time is wasting. Our current financial problems are, in part, caused by imbalances in the economic system caused because we tolerated it when we allowed a lot of silly and ill advised policies and fears to slip into our economic system. We need to reset these now in order to regain the vigor of our inherited governmental system. From the first founding of this United States, we have been the most prosperous and inventive nation on earth. We can be again, but must first ourselves of the European-like sclerotic growths on our economic system.
Thanks for your time and interest!
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