Health Effects of Global Warming

Global warming is all about adverse climate change caused by the trapping of green house gases (like carbon dioxide) in the earth’s atmosphere that affects biodiversity and poses a serious health hazard. Counter measures to facilitate living in hotter temperatures like air-conditioning and refrigeration will unfortunately consume more electricity from power plants that burn coal, releasing carbon dioxide. This will further spike global warming and have a seriously damaging influence on human health.

Causes of Global Warming

Naturally occurring greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, ozone and nitrous oxide hold heat in the atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect and keep the earth warm enough to sustain life. Enhanced greenhouse effect or the abnormal increase of ‘greenhouse gases’ due to human activities like burning of solid waste, wood, fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal, deforestation and the release of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) from industrial processes cause more than normal heat to be trapped in the atmosphere and cause global warming.

Consequences of Global Warming

Climatic changes triggered by global warming can bring in their wake extreme conditions like abnormal storms, drought and floods and can be of immediate threat to life.

Recent outbreaks of malaria, dengue fever (“breakbone” fever), Hanta virus and similar diseases in the West due to climate change are the consequences of global warming, according to some Harvard Medical School doctors. The incidence of kidney stones is likely to go up and so are many other conditions. The long term serious consequence to human health is likely to threaten our very existence on this planet. Read some of the alarming facts related to it.

Global Warming Facts and Figures:-

• Extreme temperatures caused by climate change can directly cause death as in heat strokes-especially in the old and the young. Studies based on earlier heat wave events predict a 145% increase in deaths in New York

• Adverse impact of climate stress on agriculture worldwide may add 300 million victims of malnutrition to the existing number

• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists project that warmer climates will increase malaria-carrying mosquitoes and put 65% of the world’s population at risk of malarial infection-an increase of 20% from the 1990s.

• Warm temperatures will aggravate air and water pollution and pose health hazards

• Some researchers predict algal blooms could occur more often-especially in polluted sea waters-and cause infectious diseases like cholera

In brief - global warming can soon become a risk factor for heat strokes, cardiovascular and respiratory problems. People with an ailing heart are especially vulnerable because the cardiovascular system has to work harder to cool the body in very hot weather. A heat wave in July 1995 killed more than 700 people in Chicago area alone.

High air temperatures increase the ozone concentration at ground level. Natural ozone layer in the upper atmosphere protects the earth from the sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation; but at ground level ozone becomes a harmful pollutant that damages lung tissue and aggravates asthma and other breathing diseases. Even in healthy individuals exposure to modest levels of ozone can cause nausea, chest pain and pulmonary congestion.

One school of scientists warn that if the globe continues to sizzle unchecked extreme weather conditions will cause infectious diseases and death worldwide. However there is another school of health experts who believe that global warming is a convenient scapegoat for putting the blame on increasing incidence of infectious diseases. They list other factors that are contributing to this increase that include:-

• Increasing disregard for public health practices (even simple things like washing hands),
• Overcrowding of cities,
• Rise in population of vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks - due to inadequate control measures
• Increased international travel by people that can take virus across the hemisphere
• Genetic mutation in bacteria and viruses

Developed nations have the ability and infrastructure to quickly identify and take adequate measures to curb the problems that can result from global warming. Examples include emergency measures such as moving people suffering from heat-stroke to air-conditioned rooms and stringent action to reduce the emission of photochemical compounds that cause ground-level ozone. Developing and under-developed countries are seriously handicapped in these areas of infrastructure and failure to draft and implement stringent laws against factories for adding to pollution and global warming

What Cause Global Warming

By Richard J Brady
For several decades, scientists have wondered what causes global warming. They looked at a number of things such as the natural cycles and events that influence the climate. Some things they learned that causes global warming include:

- Methane gas release in the areas of the wetlands and arctic tundra. Methane is known as a greenhouse gas that results in heat bring trapped inside the atmosphere.
- Climate change cycle, which tends to occur every 40,000 years.
- Lots of volcano activity causes an increase of greenhouse gases.
- Sunspots

And, while they've looked at the above events and cycles, they noted that the pattern and amount of global warming cannot be explained by them alone. Scientists could only explain that the pattern included human's effect on the greenhouse gases. After all, the human population is growing rapidly, which means they're raising more animals for food and have regular growth in technology.

Now, scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC), meet every several years to check on recent scientific findings and put together a report that summarizes everything they've learned about global warming.

Greenhouse Gases Causes Global Warming
Now, one thing scientists have learned on what causes global warming is that there are several kinds of greenhouse gases responsible for the problem. And, humans are largely responsible for these greenhouse gases, emitting them off in a number of ways. Most greenhouse gases come in the form of fossil fuel combustion such as electricity production, cars and factories. The primary cause of global warming, however, is carbon dioxide, which is also known as CO2.

So what causes global warming? Some other causes include methane from agriculture and landfills, fertilizers' nitrous oxide, gases used in industrial processed and refrigeration and deforestation, which leads to CO2.
When people drive their cars, heat homes with either natural gas or oil or use electricity from plants that use coal, they release more heat-trapping gases like CO2 into the environment. Deforestation means there are fewer trees and when there are fewer trees planted, it means less carbon dioxide being changed over into usable oxygen.

The heat-trapping abilities of the different greenhouse gases vary. Some tend to trap more heat than carbon dioxide does. One molecule of methane generates over 20 times the warming of a CO2 molecule. Nitrous oxide is nearly 300 times stronger than carbon dioxide. Chlorofluorocarbons, which are banned in most of the world due to causing the degradation of the ozone layer, can trap heat more than a thousand times more than carbon dioxide. However, since their concentration is lower than CO2, they don't add a lot of warmth to the environment.

When scientists get together, they tend to converse about the different greenhouse gases and how their equivalent amount to carbon dioxide. Since the early 1990s, annual emissions of CO2 has risen to around six billion metric tons or a 20 percent increase.

Bear in mind that in the industrial age, carbon dioxide emissions increased by approximately 31 percent. And, during the same time, there was a 151 percent increase in environmental methane, which came from agricultural activities like growing rice or raising cattle.

What causes global warming is the increase of greenhouse gases because more heat becomes trapped in the atmosphere and is not able to escape into space. This rise in the amount of trapped heat will lead to changes in the environment, altering weather patterns, speeding up species extension, influencing the seasons, causes coastal flooding and resulting in more severe storms.

No doubt greenhouse gases have a direct impact on what causes global warming. So, it's up the humans all around the world to ban together and reduce the release of greenhouse gases to save the environment... and the world!

If you are not quite sure exactly what Global Warming is, read this What is Global Warming page and you may also want to check out the answers to other common questions at our General Knowledge site!
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Causes of Global Warming On Earth

What is Global Warming (Global Warming ?

Maybe you never imagine being in a car that was sealed during the day. Sunlight can freely enter the room through the windshield, causing the air in the car to over heat. The air in the car warms up, the heat incoming sunlight can not freely exit. So the heat is trapped in the car.

So it is with global warming. The sun emits radiation to penetrate the Earth's upper atmosphere of the earth. Radiation will be reflected back into space, but some of the wave is absorbed by greenhouse gases, ie CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, and SF4 which is in the atmosphere. As a result, the trapped waves in the Earth's atmosphere. This event occurs repeatedly, causing the average temperature at the earth's surface increases. The event is often referred to as global warming.

What Are the Causes of Global Warming?
Global warming is a global phenomenon that is caused by human activities around the world, population increase, and the growth of technology and industry. Therefore, the global impact events. Some human activities that cause global warming consists of:

Consumption of fossil fuel energy. The industrial sector is the largest contributor to carbon emissions, while transportation second. According to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (2003), the consumption of fossil fuel energy consuming as much as 70% of total energy consumption, while electricity takes second place with 10% of total energy consumption. From this sector, Indonesia emit greenhouse gases at 24.84% of the total greenhouse gas emissions.

Indonesia is the largest energy consuming country in Asia after China, Japan, India and South Korea. Large energy consumption is obtained due to the large population using fossil fuels as an energy source, although in the calculation of energy use per person in the developing world, is not as energy use per person in the developed world. According to Prof. Emil Salim, USA CO2/orang emit 20 tons per year with a population of 1.1 billion people, China CO2/orang emits 3 tons per year by the number of 1.3 billion people, while India emits 1.2 tonnes CO2/orang by the number 1 billion people.


Thus, the amount of greenhouse gases discharged into the atmosphere from this sector is related to lifestyle and population. USA is a country with a population that has a very extravagant lifestyle, the consumption of energy derived from fossil fuels, in contrast to a number of developing countries that emit greenhouse gases, due to the accumulation of large population.

Trash. Waste methane gas (CH4). An estimated 1 ton of solid waste produces 50 kg of methane gas. Garbage is a major problem faced by cities in Indonesia. According to the Ministry of Environment in 1995 the average person in urban areas in Indonesia produce waste as much as 0.8 kg / day in 2000 and continued to increase to 1 kg / day. On the other hand the population continues to increase, it is estimated, by 2020 the waste produced 500 million kg / day or 190 thousand tons / year. With this amount the waste will emit methane gas by 9500 tons / year. Thus, urban waste is a potential sector, accelerate the process of global warming.

Deforestation. One of the functions of plants that absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the greenhouse gases, and turn it into oxygen (O2). Currently in Indonesia has been known to severe deforestation. The rate of forest destruction in Indonesia, according to data from Forest Watch Indonesia (2001), about 2.2 million / year. Damage caused by forest fires, land-use change, among others, changes in forest into plantations with a single crop on a large scale, such as palm oil, as well as damage caused by forest concession holders (HPH) and Industrial Forest Plantation (HTI). With damage as mentioned above, of course, the process of absorption of carbon dioxide can not be optimal. This will speed up global warming.

According to data from the Rainbow Foundation, in 1990, CO2 emissions released by the forestry sector, including changes in land use, reaching 64% of total CO2 emissions of Indonesia reached 748.61 kilotons. In 1994 there was an increase to 74% of carbon emissions.

Agriculture and animal husbandry. This sector contributed to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions through flooded rice fields that produce methane gas, fertilizer use and agricultural practices, the burning of crop residues, and decaying remnants of agriculture, and livestock manure decomposition. This sector generated greenhouse gases are methane (CH4) gas and dinitro oxide (N20). In Indonesia, agriculture and livestock sector accounts for emissions of greenhouse gases by 8:05% of the total greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere.

Impact of Global Warming
As a global phenomenon, the impact of global warming is felt by all people in the world, including Indonesia. The position of Indonesia as an archipelago, Indonesia put in a state vulnerable to global warming. As a result of global warming, Indonesia will face events:
First, the rise in global temperatures, causing the melting of ice at the north pole and south, resulting in the expansion of ocean water masses, and rising sea levels. This will decrease the production of fish and shrimp ponds, and the bleaching of coral reefs (coral bleaching), and the extinction of various species of fish. In addition, rising sea levels will lead to small islands in Indonesia and the ramps will be lost. Another threat facing society is the deterioration of groundwater quality, as a result of the entry or leakage of sea water, as well as urban infrastructure damaged as a result flooded by seawater.

Second, the shift of the season as a result of changes in rainfall patterns. Climate change resulting in a high rainfall intensity in a short period and a long dry season. In some places there is an increase in rainfall thus increasing the chances of flooding and landslides, while in other places there is a decrease in rainfall of potential drought. Most of the watershed (DAS) will be differences in the level of high tide and low tide are more sharply. This resulted in an increased frequency of flooding or drought. This condition will get worse if the capacity of a river or reservoir agency is not maintained due to erosion.

Both of these events will have an impact on some sectors, namely:

Forestry. The change of several species of flora and fauna. The temperature rise will be a factor selectors nature, where species that can adapt will survive and, in fact likely to proliferate rapidly. While the species that are not able to adapt, will become extinct. The existence of fires as a result of rising temperatures around the forest, causing the grass and twigs that dries flammable. In addition, forest fires cause the extinction of various biodiversity.

Fisheries. Increased ocean temperatures cause coral bleaching and subsequent death of coral reefs, as a habitat for many species of fish. Rising ocean temperatures also trigger the migration of fish are sensitive to temperature changes on a large scale leading to cooler areas. Events demise of coral reefs and fish migration, economically, because it lowers harmful fishermen their catch.

Agriculture. In general, all forms of agricultural systems are sensitive to climate change. Climate change results in a shift in seasons and rainfall patterns change. It will impact on farming, for example, delay planting or harvesting, planting failure, or harvest due to floods, landslides and drought. Resulting in a drop in food production in Indonesia. In short, climate change will affect food security.

Health. The impact of global warming in this sector is increasing the frequency of tropical diseases, such as mosquito-borne diseases (malaria and dengue), outbreaks of diarrhea, sickness or leptospirasis rat urine and skin diseases. The increase in temperature will cause the shorter the incubation period so that mosquitoes mosquitoes to multiply faster. Catastrophic floods would cause contamination of water supplies, causing outbreaks of diarrhea and leptospirosis disease in the post-flood. Meanwhile, the drought will cause water crisis affecting the onset of diarrhea and skin diseases. Acute Respiratory Disease (ARD) is also a threat as forest fires.

In addition to the impact of the above, there were some extraordinary events that indicate global warming, namely:

    The year 2005 was the warmest. NASA reported that the global average temperature has increased by 0.060 C.
    Disbursement greatest Arctic in 2005. The results of one of the satellite photos show permanently ice-covered area is the narrowest area in the late summer of 2005.
    The year 2005 was the warmest water in the Caribbean, longer than ever and lead to coral bleaching (coral bleaching) along the major areas of the Caribbean to Florida Keys, USA.
    2005 was recorded as the year with the highest storm names. There are 26 names storms that exceed the official roster. This year there are also about 14 storms, called the storm (hurricane), because it has wind speeds exceeding 119 km / h. Previous year's record of only 12 storms a year. 2005 was also a year with the most category 5 hurricane with winds of 249 km / h. The year 2005 was the most expensive losses due to the storm.
    2005 was the driest year ever since a few decades ago in the Amazon, South America. And the western United States suffer from drought.

Global Warming and Food Shortages with Violence: Clock Continues to Tick

For those not thoroughly worn out with talk of global warming (or worn out by the intense, unrelenting heat and drought in some parts of the globe--or the flip side of that pattern, the cool, damp weather in other areas), three articles that catch my eye today:

At The Nation, Mark Hertsgaard thinks it's possible to "make the 2012 heat wave a landmark event," if citizens use the newfound and increasingly widespread awareness that we are well into global warming as a rallying point for mobilization.  He also notes, as I've been noting, that food shortages with attendant violence can well be the outcome of these now recurrent cycles of heat and drought in many major food-producing parts of the planet:

Meanwhile, the United States is suffering the worst drought in fifty years, leading the Department of Agriculture to declare more than 1,000 counties—about one of every three in the nation—natural disaster zones. The reverberations will be global and may include violence. 

At Common Dreams (and The Guardian), Lester Brown also maintains that the world may be closer to food crisis than many of us dream.  Brown notes that initial optimism about a bumper crop of corn in America's breadbasket following this spring's warm weather has turned to dismay as relentless heat and drought are decimating the corn crop. 

He concludes:

The world is in serious trouble on the food front. But there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that. 

Time is running out. The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage – replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability– than most people realise.

And at Common Dreams, Alexander Reed Kelly links to a Reuters report published in The Guardian which finds more than 53% of the U.S. suffering drought conditions, and about a third of the Midwest--the grain-producing heartland--in the most extreme drought the region has seen in five decades.

The clock is ticking.  And to many of us, it appears to be ticking down.

And as it does so, the U.S. Catholic bishops are doing everything short of standing on their heads to assure that Catholics vote for the party of "life" in the coming elections.  A party that appears not only to have absolutely no policy recommendations at all to address global warming, but which wants to give as many protections as possible to the industries producing the pollution that results in planetary climate change (and, it appears, which will produce food shortages and violence if the pattern persists).

Effects of Global Warming

The planet is warming, from North Pole to South Pole, and everywhere in between. Globally, the mercury is already up more than 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.8 degree Celsius), and even more in sensitive polar regions. And the effects of rising temperatures aren’t waiting for some far-flung future. They’re happening right now. Signs are appearing all over, and some of them are surprising. The heat is not only melting glaciers and sea ice, it’s also shifting precipitation patterns and setting animals on the move.

Some impacts from increasing temperatures are already happening.

    Ice is melting worldwide, especially at the Earth’s poles. This includes mountain glaciers, ice sheets covering West Antarctica and Greenland, and Arctic sea ice.
    Researcher Bill Fraser has tracked the decline of the Adélie penguins on Antarctica, where their numbers have fallen from 32,000 breeding pairs to 11,000 in 30 years.
    Sea level rise became faster over the last century.
    Some butterflies, foxes, and alpine plants have moved farther north or to higher, cooler areas.
    Precipitation (rain and snowfall) has increased across the globe, on average.
    Spruce bark beetles have boomed in Alaska thanks to 20 years of warm summers. The insects have chewed up 4 million acres of spruce trees.

Other effects could happen later this century, if warming continues.

    Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).
    Hurricanes and other storms are likely to become stronger.
    Species that depend on one another may become out of sync. For example, plants could bloom earlier than their pollinating insects become active.
    Floods and droughts will become more common. Rainfall in Ethiopia, where droughts are already common, could decline by 10 percent over the next 50 years.
    Less fresh water will be available. If the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru continues to melt at its current rate, it will be gone by 2100, leaving thousands of people who rely on it for drinking water and electricity without a source of either.
    Some diseases will spread, such as malaria carried by mosquitoes.
    Ecosystems will change—some species will move farther north or become more successful; others won’t be able to move and could become extinct. Wildlife research scientist Martyn Obbard has found that since the mid-1980s, with less ice on which to live and fish for food, polar bears have gotten considerably skinnier.  Polar bear biologist Ian Stirling has found a similar pattern in Hudson Bay.  He fears that if sea ice disappears, the polar bears will as well.

Global warming might lead to tsunami hit Britain soon

LONDON - Some of the world’s top geologists have warned that if global temperatures continue to rise, Britain might see deadly tsunamis like those that have hit Asia, head towards it in the future.

According to a report by Sky News, geologists have warned of tsunamis in Britain to huge avalanches in the Alps and volcanic eruptions in Germany, if global warming continues to rise.

They say that evidence from the past reveals that times of dramatic climatic change are characterized by heightened geological activity.

For example, 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, melting ice and rising sea levels triggered a significant rise in volcanic activity.

Professor Bill McGuire, Director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at UCL, warned earth’s future could be explosive.

“Climate change is very doom and gloom I’m afraid and it’s one of those problems that the closer we look at it the worst it seems to get,” he told Sky News Online.

“If you want some faint glint of good news from this I suppose that if we see a big volcanic response, the gases pumped into the atmosphere will cool things down at least temporarily, but that’s not recommended,” he said.

Other experts warn that disintegrating glaciers could cause earthquakes, triggering tsunamis off Chile, New Zealand and Canada, perhaps even sending one across the Atlantic capable of reaching British shores.

“If the temperatures warm and the oceans warm then the hydrates at the sea bed will melt,” said Professor David Tappin of the British Geological Survey.

“They will melt catastrophically and in doing so, they’ll be forced into the atmosphere but also, they will create submarine landslides which could trigger a tsunami,” he added.

Dead plants encourage belief in global warming

In 2006, the Conservative party in the UK unveiled its new logo - a scribbled sketch of a healthy-looking oak tree. The image was intended in part to communicate the party's renewed dedication to environmental causes. A new study by French psychologist Nicolas Guéguen suggests that if the Conservatives want to help change people's attitudes towards the environment, they should consider adapting their logo to one of a dying tree. Why? Guéguen has shown that the presence of dead plants strengthens people's beliefs in global warming.

In the first of two studies, Guéguen had 60 participants fill out a questionnaire about current affairs, including four questions about global warming, such as: "It seems to me that the temperature is warmer now than in previous years." Crucially, half the participants filled out the questionnaire in a room in the presence of a 150cm tall ficus tree with luscious green leaves; the other participants in a room in the company of a dead ficus tree. The finding: participants in the dead tree condition expressed far stronger beliefs in global warming than the participants in the other group, whilst their answers to the remaining questions were no different.

In a follow-up study, Guéguen introduced a no-tree condition, to make sure that it's not the case that the presence of a healthy plant weakens beliefs about global warming. He also featured a condition with three dead or healthy plants - a ficus, a bonsai and a dracaena. The presence of healthy plants made no difference to global warming beliefs versus the no-plant control condition. Once again, however, the presence of a dead plant strengthened beliefs in global warming, and more dead plants meant even stronger such beliefs. No students in either study guessed the aims of the research.

Guéguen speculated that the sight of dead plants probably triggered in participants' minds concepts associated with global warming, such as heat and drought, without them being consciously aware of this effect. The new findings chime with earlier research showing how incidental circumstances influence people's belief in climate change - for example, people are more likely to say they believe in climate change on warmer days. A weakness of the study is that there's no mention of whether the female experimenter who dealt with the participants was blind to the aims of the research - might she have affected their results through her own behaviour?

Notwithstanding that issue, the study has obvious practical implications. Guéguen suggested that in public toilets, for example, the presence of plants without foliage could encourage less water consumption when washing one's hands (though that might harm hygiene initiatives!). More generally, Guéguen advised, "people who want to heighten public awareness on the topic [of global warming] could profitably use photographs or videos of dead plants, or plants without foliage, thus increasing the effectiveness of public awareness campaigns."

Want to Help Stop Global Warming

The first step is understanding what's causing the problem. Global warming results, in large part, from the accumulation of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. These include carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, and aerosols. One reason they're accumulating is the increased burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. The other is increased deforestation. (You may remember from high school biology class that trees suck up carbon dioxide and turn it into wood.)

The US is the largest producer of GHGs. In fact, we produce 23 percent of the globe's GHG emissions, even though we make up only 5 percent of the world population. And, we produce twice as many GHGs per capita as Europeans do, despite having a similar standard of living.

A responsible national policy on global warming would include regulation of greenhouse gas production. But the Bush administration has refused to sign on to international global warming protocols and has refused, even, to acknowledge that global warming is an important problem. To counter this, California Congressman Henry Waxman has put together the Safe Climate Act, which would regulate greenhouse gas levels. Please urge your elected officials to support this very important bill. And while you're at it, ask them to support the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, sponsored jointly by Senators Barbara Boxer and Bernie Sanders.

Even without acts of Congress, and a new President , there are things you can do to help stop global warming. They break down into two categories. The first involves reducing your GHG emissions. The second involves offsetting them by investing in things, such as renewable energy, that reduce the total amount of GHGs in the atmosphere.

REDUCE

Most greenhouse gases come from two sources: the internal combustion engine and the power plant.

In the area of transportation, there are lots of ways you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hoof it! Whenever possible, walk, bike or take public transportation. (In fact, choosing to live in a city, such as New York, where you can take advantage of these low-impact forms of transportation is one of the most important environmental decisions you can make.)

Behind the Wheel: To produce the fewest GHGs and get the best mileage, drive at 45-60 miles an hour, make sure your car is tuned up and your tires are properly inflated.

Idling: When you idle, you create a lot of greenhouse gases while going nowhere. By contrast, shutting off your engine and restarting it uses only 10 seconds worth of gas. (In other words, if you're going to stand still for longer than it takes to read this sentence, shut off your engine.)

Likewise, experts say "warming up" your car on cold days is unnecessary. The best way to warm up your car, they say, is to drive it.

Buying a New or Used Car? Get the most fuel-efficient model possible. One type of vehicle to consider is a gas-electric hybrid. At slow speeds and while standing still, these cars and SUVs run on battery power that your vehicle generates in the process of driving.

As a result, many (but not all) hybrids get great mileage. High-mileage hybrids produce only one-half to two-thirds the GHGs of regular cars and SUVs. There are even tax breaks available to people who purchase new hybrids.

There are also regular (non-hybrid) cars that are easier on the environment than their peers.

Want to know which cars are greenest? Visit www.greenercars.com, the website of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Also check out the California Air Resources Board's Drive Clean website (www.driveclean.ca.gov), or the US Environmental Protection Agency's Green Vehicle Guide, www.epa.gov/greenvehicles. (Caution: The EPA site is very clunky.)

Roadside Assistance: It turns out that the American Automobile Association, better known as Triple A, is an environmentalist's nightmare. The group lobbies consistently against emissions and mileage standards and against increased funding for public transportation.

Who knew there was an environmentally friendly alternative? The Better World Club (www.betterworldclub.com; 866-238-1137) has a roadside assistance program that's as reliable as Triple A's, covers domestic partners, offers roadside assistance for bikes (!), and sponsors a greenhouse gas offset program. (More on offsets below.) They also provide links for renting hybrids and other green vehicles, have an eco-tourism business and sell car insurance.

The Friendly Skies: Unfortunately, air travel is terrible for the environment. Not only do aircraft engines produce lots of GHGs, but they do it high up in the atmosphere, where those gases cause more trouble.

So take the train instead of the shuttle. And try to schedule vacations and business meetings closer to home.

If you do fly, make it a habit to offset the GHGs your travel creates. One way of doing that is to send a tax-deductible donation to the GHG offset program of the Better World Club's Better World Foundation. They recommend $11 for a roundtrip, domestic flight and $22 for an international one. (Make the check out to The Tides Foundation and send it to The Better World Club, Attn: Donations, 20 NW 5th Avenue Suite #100, Portland, OR 97209.)

Or, better yet, book your ticket through Better World's travel division, and they'll pay the price of offsetting your travel themselves.

ELECTRICITY:

Power plants are one of the nation's largest generators of greenhouse gases. In New York and in many other parts of the country, you can choose to receive your electricity from a supplier that generates energy from non-polluting sources. (The juice still comes through the same power lines and is billed the same way.)

Big Apple-area residential, commercial, institutional and government electric customers, including those in New York City, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, can switch to Con Ed Solutions' Green Power (www.conedsolutions.com; 888-320-8991).

Con Ed's Green Power is 35 percent wind, 65 percent low-impact hydroelectric. The electricity costs only 4 percent more than the usual power supplied by Con Ed, plus there's a $25 rebate for new customers and a discount on the 4 percent sales tax, so you can get green power, or their new 100 percent wind power option, for not much more than you're paying now.

And, on Long Island, the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) has its own version of Green Power. LIPA doesn't generate the Green Power directly but helps customers buy it from green power suppliers. LIPA also offers a "Solar Pioneers” program that offers and explains rebates and tax credits to homeowners who install solar energy generating equipment in their homes. You can find out more about LIPA's clean-energy options by checking out its website, www.lipower.org/residential/green.html, or by calling its energy conservation hotline, toll-free, at 800-692-2626.

Want to know more about New York State's other green power options? Call, toll-free, 866-GRN-POWER (866-476-7697), or visit the state's Public Service Commission's website, www.askpsc.com. (This is, unfortunately, a clunky, poorly designed website.)

Outside of New York, green power options are also available. As in the New York City area, some of those options involve switching to the green power option offered by the local utility company. To find out whether green power is available in your area, check out the website of the Center for Resource Solutions, www.green-e.org, (888-63-GREEN) and click on "Renewable Energy For Your Home." There, you can search by state to find suppliers who can provide you with renewable energy.

In areas where there are no direct green power suppliers (and, actually, even in areas where there are), you can purchase a kind of virtual green power, through a mechanism known as green tags.

The subject of green tags is a little hard to explain. But, essentially, when you buy green tags, you help bring more renewable energy into the national energy mix, and remove some fossil-fuel-powered energy, by underwriting the slightly higher cost of producing renewable power. In essence, the money you pay for green tags—often less that $10 a month—provides funding to build more green-power-generating facilities. Buying green tags ensures that your electricity purchases don't pollute and don't contribute to global warming.

You can buy green tags directly from a green energy generator or from a third-party group that sells green tags. The www.green-e.org website will instruct you how to purchase green tags and offers a number of green tags suppliers who service both residential and commercial customers. And, some of these groups are non-profits or donate their green tags to non-profits that work against global warming, so the money you spend is tax deductible. (For tax-deductible options, check out the Bonneville Environmental Foundation [www.greentagsusa.org; 866-233-8247] and Native Energy's Windbuilders and Remooable Energy projects [www.nativeenergy.com; 800-924-6826].)

Yet another way to switch to a green power supplier is to visit www.newwindenergy.com, the website of New Wind Energy, a clean energy supplier. (You can also call them toll-free at 866-WIND-123.) On New Wind Energy's website, click on "Buy Wind Today" in the upper left hand corner of the home page and you'll be walked through some of the options available in your area. The site even allows you to switch to clean power via the web.

And, if none of that works for you, check with your local electric company or public service commission for green power options.

At Home: There are lots of ways to reduce your home electricity consumption. One is to check out the fridge. Refrigerators eat up approximately 30 percent of all household electricity. Newer models are significantly more energy efficient than older ones. So, a new refrigerator may pay for itself in energy savings alone. That goes double for air conditioners. (Refrigerators and air conditioners contain the ozone-layer-shredding coolant known as Freon. So do freezers, dehumidifiers, water coolers and other appliances. In New York City, if you want to dispose if any appliance that contains Freon, you're required by law to schedule a Freon-recovery appointment with the Department of Sanitation. You can contact them by phone at 311. Outside NYC, check with your local department of sanitation or environmental protection.)

You can make sure you're getting the most energy-efficient appliances, TVs, stereos, computers, washer-dryers and other household items by looking for the Energy Star label, which the US Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy award to the most energy-efficient models in each appliance category.

Also, next time you need light bulbs, try compact fluorescents. Available at many hardware stores, they're more expensive than regular lightbulbs initially, but save you a ton of money in the long run because they use significantly less energy and last a lot longer than regular light bulbs.

And, one more word about air conditioning. It's a big energy drain. In fact, fans use only one-tenth the energy that air conditioners use. So, whenever possible, open up the windows and turn on your fan.

OFFSET

Offsetting is basically taking action to compensate for the greenhouse gases we create. For instance, the Better World Foundation uses the money it gets in donations to replace antiquated, oil-burning boilers in the Portland, Oregon public schools. The newer, cleaner heating systems reduce the school system's GHG emissions.

Want to offset your GHGs? The best way to do that is to invest in projects, such as wind farms and solar power arrays, that generate renewable energy and thereby decrease the amount of fossil-fuel-powered electricity we use.

There are a number of great groups that do this. The two most highly ranked in a recent survey are Native Energy, which uses tax-deductible donations to help build clean-energy-generating wind farms and other green energy projects, and The Climate Trust, which is involved in similar endeavors. On the websites of both groups, you can use online calculators to figure out how many tons of GHGs you produce each year, and then calculate how much it will cost you in tax-deductible donations to offset them.

You can also offset your GHG emissions by investing in tree-planting. Experts consider this a less reliable method of offsetting because the trees you plant may not survive for any number of reasons—they may not grow and develop into mature trees or they may get cut down.

Still, if planting trees appeals to you, a bunch of groups can help you do that. (In fact, trees do great things: they produce oxygen, filter pollutants from air and water, reduce flooding, prevent drought, cool their surroundings, and provide habitat for wildlife, to name just a few.)

At www.americanforests.org, the online calculator helps you figure out the number of trees necessary to gooble up all the carbon dioxide you produce. (The trees cost a dollar each; the average American household can offset its annual GHG production for about 48 bucks.)

American Forests' webpage iconography is slightly confusing, so be sure to scroll down to the bottom of the webpage to find out how many trees you need to plant. Then, you can purchase those trees from the same website.

Or, take that number and visit the websites of other tree-planting organizations such as Sustainable Harvest, International (www.sustainableharvest.org), which plants trees to fight deforestation and poverty in Central America, or Kenya's Green Belt Movement (www.greenbeltmovement.org), which does similar work in Kenya. (Their founder, Wangari Maathai, won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for this important work.)

And, if you own your own home, consider planting trees around or on top of it. Scientists estimate that each tree planted in a residential setting offsets 14 times the amount of carbon dioxide it consumes by naturally cooling the area around it in summer and keeping it protected against the elements in winter.

Maybe the Global Warming Cultists Have Been Eating Bath Salts

One of the reported symptoms of ingesting bath salts is that your body feels incredibly warm. Which perhaps explains the reluctance of the global warming cult to show you graphs like this.

Call it "The Climate Chart You're Not Allowed to See."

What’s wrong with this image? Well if you are part of The Team (RealClimate and friends), it goes against everything you’ve been publishing. You want the Medieval Warm Period to disappear, and you want a hockey stick at the end showing “unprcedented” warming. The shape below just doesn’t cut it when that’s what you are
researchingselling.

On the left is temperature in °C, on the X axis, years, with labels from 0AD to the year 2000.



Images like the above don’t sell. With a clear MWP and no hockey stick, there’s no alarm, and no $$ coming in for “further studies”. In the Wake of the Gergis et al retraction, Steve McIntyre notes that one of the “screened out” datasets just happens to be the one with the best resolution and the greatest duration – the Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set (from Antarctica). He writes:

An annual version for two millennia was provided to Gergis (who screened it out.) delD and O18 are closely related and presumably the unarchived del D series will look somewhat similar.

For those that don’t know what this data represents, here’s a quick primer...

In short, this (Law Dome) data series is one of the best historical models possible, as it represents a consistent temperature record over the timespan of thousands of years. And it highlights the United Nations' cover-up of the inconvenient truth, motivated by greed in the form of grant money, carbon-trading land grabs, and coverage by a subservient left-wing media.

A Climategate email shows that Phil Jones asked about the omission of the Law Dome series from the IPCC illustration in the AR4 First Draft. I asked the same question about the AR4 Second Draft. They realized that the Law Dome graphic had an elevated medieval period and thus, including it in the graphic would – to borrow a phrase from the preparation of AR3 – would “dilute the message” and perhaps provide “fodder to skeptics”.

But don't worry, folks: "President Obama plans to make climate change his top second term priority."

No, that's not from The Onion, a humor publication, but the left-leaning New Yorker. What planet does this president live on?

'Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda," wrote Ryan Lizza in this week's New Yorker. "The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change," supposedly to "improve the world."

So forget about the abysmal jobless numbers above 8% for over three years, or the $15 trillion deficit that threatens to turn the U.S. into Greece. No, amid those very real calamities, climate change is more important...

Already no president has ever spent money on "climate change" as he has. The Congressional Budget Office reports that since 1998, $99 billion has been spent among 14 agencies on "climate change." Of that, $35 billion was earmarked from the 2009 stimulus.

The top agency charged with enacting the Obama green agenda — the Department of Energy — has seen its budget soar from $24 billion in 2009 to $38 billion in 2012, the Office of Management and Budget estimates.

...The one thing that can be concluded from this policy priority is that on the environment, Obama is planning more of the same — and the voters be damned.

Enjoying these gas and electricity prices? Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

And for those unfamiliar with the genesis of the global warming scam, I created a comic book version of the entire, United Nations-sponsored grift entitled, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow."

The Effects of Global Warming in South Africa

It should be rather obvious by now that the whole world has been terribly deceived by the United Nations Intergovernmental Climate Change Panel that continues to drive the global warming (or is it climate change?) hoax. It should be obvious that the whole business is all a huge money-making scam and that the scientists and politicians involved in this rip-off are all liars-for-hire. It should also be obvious by now that, despite the number of jobs and huge salaries they've invented, the global hoax is also an attempt by the ‘Masters of Darkness’ to bring western nations to their knees.

The warning signs that we are being terribly mislead are everywhere. During the past year the international mainstream media have graduated from the term “global warming” to “climate change”, because not one of their highly paid experts really knows what the hell is really going on, and whether we’re perhaps heading for another ice age, or not.

It’s only in South Africa, it seems, where the mainstream media has not caught on to the new term now known as “climate change”. If you watch and listen carefully you’ll notice how these idiots still endlessly blabber on about the effects of “global warming”, and how guilty we should all feel about this. Although they’ve quietened down somewhat because its winter here in SA, you can be sure that when summer arrives the propaganda (their Master’s orders) will again go ahead in full swing.

And as for the vast number of sheeple out there who refuse to see the obvious, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all because they’re too lazy to read…

The effects of global warming, in pictures…

(Louis Claassen, News24 user )

Travelers trapped in the snow. Photo shared on Google+ by News24 user Rietee Roos.

Traffic from Joburg along N6 highway to Queenstown was taking a detour through Doedrech after Jamestown as the road between Queenstown and Jamestown was rendered inaccessible by heavy snow. (Hama Mtowodza, News24 User)

Has Global Warming taken a break

Last week the English paper Mail on Sunday had a story claiming that a Met Office report shows global warming had stopped 16 years ago. The article, written by David Rose, caused a storm and was contested in a piece Dana Nuccitelli had written for Skeptical Science and published by the Guardian. It is certainly no accident that these two papers aligned themselves in predictable ways. And it is no accident that corresponding blogs reacted in predictable ways.

What is the fuss about? The Mail article shows temperature data from 1997 to 2012 with no warming trend.

The lack of warming had been acknowledged by leading climate scientists for a while, as reported for example by Greenwire here:

"The question itself, while simple sounding, is loaded. By any measure, the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest in modern history. However, 1998 remains the single warmest year on record, though by some accounts last year tied its heat. Temperatures following 1998 stayed relatively flat for 10 years, with the heat in 2008 about equaling temperatures at the decade's start. The warming, as scientists say, went on "hiatus."

The hiatus was not unexpected. Variability in the climate can suppress rising temperatures temporarily, though before this decade scientists were uncertain how long such pauses could last. In any case, one decade is not long enough to say anything about human effects on climate; as one forthcoming paper lays out, 17 years is required.

Greenwire quotes Hansen, Santer, Trenberth, Solomon and others. The story appeared last October. Now another year has passed and we are coming close to the magic number 17. While the eminent climate scientists accepted the hiatus as a fact, there is no consensus on explanations. The Guardian story quoted above tries to make the stronger case, saying that there is a "most likely" positive trend.

The trend in the HadCRUT4 global surface temperature dataset since 1997 is 0.084 ± 0.152°C per decade (although we have not yet updated the HadCRUT4 data, the GISS and NCDC datasts show a similar warming trend since 1997). While the trend is not statistically significant, the central value is positive, meaning the average surface temperature has most likely warmed over this period.

I am not sure what "most likely" means in this context. But it surely demonstrates that some in the global warming debate think a non-positive trend could be a problem (for what: for AGW theory? For climate policies? For both?). Yesterday Michael E. Mann tweeted that Rose and Judith Curry  "double down w/ their denial of #globalwarming (http://bit.ly/Rfh6Vx ). Debunked by @Guardian". So for him this story is part of the denial machine, and something big is at stake.

Judith Curry is quoted in the Mail Online, saying: "Nothing in the Met Office’s statement .  .  . effectively refutes Mr Rose’s argument that there has been no increase in the global average surface temperature for the past 16 years." And addressing climate scientists uncomfortable with the hiatus, she wisely advises:

Use this as an opportunity to communicate honestly with the public about what we know and what we don’t know about climate change. Take a lesson from other scientists who acknowledge the “pause”.

I case you have not seen it, there is a relevant discussion on the thread Interview with Eduardo Zorita about the production of stable facts in (climate) science. I conclude from the "hiatus story" that there is no evidence either way: at present, it neither confirms nor refutes anthropogenic global warming.

Voters Abandon Global Warming Fears

Former President Jimmy Carter will address the Democratic Party convention via a televised address, but former Vice President Al Gore and candidate for President will be no where in sight.

The leading advocate for global warning will be conspicuous in his absence, but that doesn’t mean that the greatest hoax of modern times will not be mentioned. It has been a consistent theme of the Obama administration, particularly to justify the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to attack the energy and business sectors of the nation’s economy.

As this is being written, the morning of the start of the Democratic Party convention, one wonders if the tired, thoroughly debunked claims that carbon dioxide (CO2) is causing a warming that does not exist and that humans are also causing it will be mentioned.

On the night that Obama had won his primary victory over Hillary Clinton’s bid to be the party’s presidential candidate, among his promises and claims, he said, “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” You cannot get more absurd than that. It would translate into the administration’s push for cap-and-trade legislation (regarding CO2 emissions) that was rejected by a Democrat-controlled Senate.

Obama’s claim did not go unnoticed by Mitt Romney who, during his acceptance speech, said, “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.” The global warming hustlers were apoplectic in their denunciations of Romney, but his promise received a standing ovation.

The administration has become famous for the billions wasted on so-called green jobs, green energy, and controlling greenhouse gases. It is essential to understand that CO2 has never caused any of the warming cycles the Earth has been through over 4.5 billion years. It shows up after climate cycle change occurs. Moreover, the oceans that cover 71% of the Earth surface both stores and releases CO2.

Prior to Earth Day in 2011, a Gallup poll revealed just how Americans felt about various environmental issues. Asked about a variety of concerns, the respondents rated global warming dead last with 48% saying they were either not much or not at all concerned about it.

June 11, 1986 - Milwaukee Sentinal

The decades of apocalyptic claims and warnings have given way to reality. There have been no massive famines, no complete melting of the north or south poles, no increase in natural phenomenon such as hurricanes, no mass extinctions of various species. By 1998, the planet began a new cooling cycle, one that panicked the perpetrators of the global warming myth.

In 2009, the leak of emails between the researchers whose deliberately false “data” was the basis for global warming claims revealed that the cabal behind the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports were plotting to suppress the truth. The leak would become known as “Climategate.”

Just prior to the Democratic Party convention, President Obama issued yet another Executive Order, this one calling for “investment”, i.e., more spending, on cogeneration plants in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by deploying “cleaner and more efficient energy production in the country by working around political resistance to climate change and ‘green’ energy legislation on Capitol Hill.”

In reality, you cannot “save” energy. You can only use less of it and the Obama administration has done everything in its power to ensure that there will be less by deterring the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada—estimated to generate 20,000 new jobs—and by waging a war on coal. Coal mines and coal-fired plants are being closed. Oil continues to be discovered in the U.S. but not on federally controlled lands, nor can it be explored and extracted offshore where billions of barrels exist.

In effect, the Obama administration has been the most anti-energy administration in recent times while, at the same time, wasting billions on solar energy companies that have gone bankrupt and on wind power which, combined, represent less than 3% of the electricity generated nationwide and which would not exist were they were not, like ethanol, completely dependent on government mandates and subsidies.

It will be interesting to see how many of the convention speakers make any reference to global warming, carbon dioxide, or the real sources of energy, coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power..

Throwing a bone to the environmentalists, it is likely that President Obama will make a passing reference to global warming and energy, but it is not likely that the “planet will begin to heal” as it grows colder in a completely natural cooling cycle that threatens to tip over into a new ice age.

There are real problems to be addressed, high unemployment, a lagging “recovery”, a fiscal crisis that will occur on January 1st unless Congress acts to extend tax cuts and puts off a massive sequestration of funding to defense and other sectors. In the end, it is likely we will be told that the last four years were all George W. Bush’s fault.

The Utter Desperation of Global Warming Liars

The more the public grows skeptical of the global warming hoax, the more desperate the charlatans behind it become.

There is no global warming if by that one means a sudden, dramatic increase in the overall temperature of the Earth. It is not, nor ever was, caused by an increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere; currently a miniscule 0.038 percent. Climate science has demonstrated that CO2 increases show up centuries after a major change in the Earth’s temperature, not before.

In recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Dr. John Christy, Alabama’s state climatologist, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, said, “It is popular again to claim that extreme events, such as the current central U.S. drought are evidence of human-caused climate change. Actually, the Earth is very large, the weather is very dynamic, and extreme events will continue to occur somewhere, every year, naturally. The recent ‘extremes’ were exceeded in previous decades.”

Recent examples of the Warmists to convince the public that the Earth is in peril include an opinion by the president of the radical Environmental Defense Fund, Fred Krupp, in The Wall Street Journal, and a PBS television report featuring NASA’s Dr. James Hansen, offering a statistical analysis as bogus as his 1988 testimony that global warming was man-made and going to kill us all if we didn’t destroy the economy by outlawing CO2 emissions.

Noted meteorologist, Anthony Watts, whose website, WattsUpWithThat, is a treasure trove of real climate science, dismissed Hansen’s PBS presentation of bell curve charts claiming the current drought conditions as proof of global warming. “This bell curve proves nothing,” said Watts. “This is nothing but a political ploy from a man who has abandoned any pretext of professionally done science in favor of activism.” Watts’ research has demonstrated how corrupt many of the temperature findings have been due to the sites where thermometers have been placed as well as the many places on Earth where there are none.

In The Wall Street Journal Krupp penned a plea for “A New Climate-Change Consensus.” Bear in mind that the nexus of the global warming hoax has been the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it has claimed for years that a “consensus” of scientists worldwide agrees that global warming is real. The data on which the IPCC claim was made was exposed in 2009 when emails between the scientists providing it revealed their panic over the signs of a global cooling cycle that had begun in 1998. The Earth has been cooling ever since.

Science does not work by consensus. It works by the rigorous testing of hypotheses and theories.

Even Krupp noted that “One scorching summer doesn’t confirm that climate change is real any more than a white Christmas proves it’s a hoax.” True. However, year after year of thoroughly debunked “data” by our own government agencies like NASA doesn’t make it real either. Did I mention that Dr. Hansen is the Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies?

About the only truth Krupp stated was that “Some proposed climate solutions, if not well designed or thoughtfully implemented, could damage the economy and stifle short-term growth.” Or any growth for that matter.

As this is written, the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to apply draconian limits on CO2 emissions for every single entity of the U.S. economy from large companies to small businesses. Despite centuries of U.S. coal reserves, the EPA has been hard at work putting coal mining operations and coal-burning plant that generates electricity out of business.

Steven Goddard, writing in the August 6th edition of Real Science, was quick to point out that “There were twice as many daily all-time high temperature records set or tied during the 1930s as in the 2000s, for USHCN stations which were operational during both decades. That is why he (Hansen) doesn’t start his baseline (for the charts he showed in the PBS program) until the 1950s.”

Neither Krupp’s sweet words of inducement to global warming skeptics, nor Dr. Hansen’s lies add up to the fact that there is no global warming and never was except in the minds of those who sought to profit from selling “carbon credits” to industries and individuals who wanted permission to cause emissions of CO2 for any reason.

There ought to be a chart concerning how global warming lies rise and fall with each climate event like a drought or each new revelation of scientific fact that disputes and debunks the hoax.

Evaluating the Catastrophic Man-Made Global Warming Hypothesis

The continued barrage of claims that man's use of fossil fuels should be curtailed because it generates CO2 emissions has caused me to revise and add to an earlier posting on the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.  The EPA has declared CO2 a pollutant even though it is essential for plant growth and the present levels are less than optimal for plants.  It also has no known toxicological effects upon man unless it were to be at least 20 times more concentrated than it presently is.  Obama and many in Congress want to find ways to further reduce fossil fuel use in order to decrease CO2 emissions, or so they say.  The United Nations remains determined to bring about a reduction in the use of fossil fuels.  Meanwhile, the United States has tremendous reserves of coal and has recently found ways to extract huge amounts of natural gas from shale, yet we are to be stopped from making effective use of these resources and saddled with huge energy costs in the name of catastrophic man-made global warming based on the hypothesis we are about to discuss.

Man clearly makes a contribution to global warming because there is a strong local warming effect in urban areas.  However, the contributions of man to warming on the global scale are small and difficult to even measure.  The anthropogenic global warming catastrophe hypothesis makes the following claims:

• Man's use of fossil fuels results in CO2 emissions in amounts significant compared to the natural sources.
• The CO2 added by man to the atmosphere lingers there a long time, often said to be 100 years.
• The greenhouse gas warming caused by these additions of CO2 is itself significant.
• The warming caused by man's CO2 additions to the atmosphere causes a much stronger warming due to increased water vapor at altitude and its greenhouse effect.
• The great increase in water vapor at 8 to 12 km altitude over the equator and the lower latitudes results in a warming hot zone in the atmosphere, which warms the entire globe by back infra-red radiation.
• The resulting warming causes catastrophic effects, such as droughts, heavy rains, low snowfall, heavy snowfall, increased numbers and severity of hurricanes and typhoons, increased malaria, increased parasites, a greater mortality of older people, the extinction of species, and a great rise in sea level.

One of the most popularly cited versions of the greenhouse gas global warming hypothesis is based on the following thermal power diagram by Kiehl and Trenberth (several similar versions exist):

This is all so much hogwash and bunkum.  Let us consider some of the reasons why CO2 emitted by man is not causing such large and significant global warming effects:

1) The rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1850 to the level of 2008 made almost no difference in the infra-red radiation absorbed since almost all of the infra-red radiation was already being absorbed that CO2 can absorb in 1850.  The temperature increase due to the CO2 increase since 1850 is about 0.12C.  This is based upon the usual atmospheric CO2 concentration plot, but like the temperature hockey stick plot, this plot is now known to have been manipulated to make the rise of CO2 since the end of the Little Ice Age and the start of the Industrial Revolution look more dramatic than it really has been.  It has not been proven that the general rise in CO2 is not simply due to the oceans warming as their temperature increases slowly due to the end of the Little Ice Age just as often happened before the Industrial Age.

2)  The greenhouse gas models treat the Earth's surface as a black body thermal radiator.  Black body radiators are a very special idealization which the surface of the Earth does not much resemble.  Real objects are characterized by an emissivity constant of less than 1.  The black body radiator has an emissivity of 1.  The Earth's surface has an emissivity of about 0.7.  The diagram above says surface radiation is 396 W/m^2, which is the power emission for a black body with a temperature of 289.1K, close to the Earth's average surface temperature.  The real Earth's surface with an emissivity of 0.7 only emits about 277.2 W/m^2 at a temperature of 289.1K.  The Kiehl - Trenberth diagram over-estimates the outgoing surface radiation by a factor of 1.43.

3)  The models underestimate the solar radiation incident on the Earth's surface.  They claim it to be about 47% ( Kiehl and Trenberth), when measurements have commonly shown it to be between 65 and 75% of the total solar radiation incident upon the outer atmosphere (see the diagram below).  This underestimate of incident radiation, together with the much higher surface radiation claimed by treating the Earth's surface as a black body radiator, allows them to greatly increase a claimed large amount of back radiation due to infra-red absorbing gases in the atmosphere re-emitting long wavelength infra-red radiation absorbed from the ground.  This radiation is said to be half emitted into space and half emitted toward the ground.  This happens over and over, they say, creating a geometric power series of 0.5 + 0.25 + 0.125 + 0.0625 + ..... or terms of one-half raised to the nth power.  This infinite series equals one, though the greenhouse warming advocates say it equals two!  The half of the radiation emitted into space is 169 W/m^2 in the Kiehl - Trenberth diagram, but the half returned to the Earth's surface is twice (1.97 times to be precise) that amount.  This huge exaggeration of the back radiation is a complete violation of physics.  This exaggeration then causes the effects of greenhouse gases to be greatly exaggerated.  In reality, a cooler atmosphere cannot emit sufficient IR toward a warmer surface to raise the temperature of the warmer surface.  The power incident upon the surface minus the cooling claimed for thermals (air convection) and by evaporation of water is only 64 W/m^2, which creates a surface with a black body temperature of 183.3K or -89.8C if the surface were a black body radiator as claimed.  In reality, the surface temperature with an emissivity of 0.7 is 200.4K or -72.7C.  The claim is that a surface that should be at this cold temperature somehow raises its temperature to 289.1K or 16.0C by radiating much more energy than it should and most of that energy is returned to the surface thanks to a multiplier effect in the atmosphere.  This violates cause and effect, not to mention basic thermodynamics in which heat energy always flows from a higher temperature body to a lower temperature body. 

Note also that the Kiehl - Trenberth diagram claims that only 40/396 = 0.101 of the surface radiation passes through the atmosphere without absorption.  The data on the right side of the upper part of this figure makes it clear that much more than 10% of the radiation is emitted into space from the surface despite the infra-red gases called greenhouse gases.  The estimate is that it is 15 to 30% transmission.

4)  The CO2 warming models believe that increased CO2 and water vapor do little to decrease the incoming solar radiation of ultraviolet, visible, and short wavelength infra-red radiations.  This offsetting effect, important during the day, is underestimated, however.  The greenhouse gas models do not predict the observed small decrease in the range of high day to low night temperatures as a result.  The radiation absorption of CO2 and water are shown in the figure above.  The three strongest absorptions of CO2 all occur where there is complete saturation of the effect due to the combination of the effects of water and already existing CO2 already.  The fourth strongest absorption line lies in the longer wavelength tail of the incoming solar radiation however and the absorption frequency at which it lies is not already saturated.  So although this line is weak, it actually has a significant effect as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is further increased, at least as compared to the outgoing radiation effect.  The effect of increased CO2 on incoming radiation is to cool the surface because CO2-absorbed incident solar energy does not reach the surface to heat it.

5) The residence time of man's CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is about 5 years when introduced high in the atmosphere (as in nuclear blasts or some volcanic eruptions [not caused by man despite the claims of certain Iranian clerics, but useful for studies of CO2 atmospheric dwell times]), not the 50 to 200 years claimed in one part of the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007, but in agreement with another part of the same report.  Other studies of the low altitude introduction of CO2, where man's use of fossil fuels introduces the vast majority of it, show the half life in the atmosphere to be about 1 year.

6) The portion of the CO2 in the atmosphere due to man is estimated to be about 1.2% to maybe a couple of % based on other reasonable assumptions.  The seas and plants are the dominant factors determining the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  Warming seas increase the atmospheric concentration of CO2.  Increased CO2 causes more plant growth which uses more CO2.  Ocean animals with shells also use large amounts of CO2.  Higher atmospheric concentrations of CO2 also cause land minerals to react with more CO2 and bind it up.  Thus, plants and land minerals provide some negative feedback to increased atmospheric CO2.  When man adds CO2 to the atmosphere, the increased partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere pushes the equilibrium concentration in the oceans at a given temperature upward, acting as a further negative feedback mechanism.

7)  The hot spot in the warming pattern from about 8 to 12 km altitude near the equator that should be found if CO2 is acting as strongly as a greenhouse gas and enhancing the greenhouse gas effect of water vapor as is claimed by the UN IPCC AR4 report has been searched for. The hot spot in the atmosphere is not present.  This is definitive proof that the UN IPCC computer models are wrong about the role of CO2.  This reason alone is not only an adequate reason to reject the man-made CO2 contribution to global warming being as large as that claimed by the UN IPCC report, but it requires a scientist to reject this hypothesis.  A theory cannot make so necessary a prediction and fail, and nonetheless still be claimed to be true.  This would violate the fundamental scientific method.

8)  The temperatures on other planets and moons in our solar system are also rising, which is consistent with measurements of the solar cycle.  These other atmospheres are all warmer than predicted by the intercepted solar radiation energy.  Many have hotter surfaces and atmospheres than Earth though they have little or no greenhouse gases.

9)  Much of the claimed rise in land surface temperatures is due to the urban heat island effect, which has increased the reported temperatures in recent decades due to the closing down of more accurate rural weather stations around the world.  Few station sites follow the rules for good siting.  Urban stations should be entirely excluded when recording temperatures for global warming or cooling effects or assessing the effects of greenhouse gases such as CO2.  Instead, low altitude and urban stations have been given fallaciously high weight in the ground temperature records by extrapolating data taken from such warmer stations onto areas far from them but at higher altitude or more remote locations.  Stations at higher latitudes in Canada, Russia, and China have been preferentially shut down and temperatures for those critical areas have been assigned based on readings far to the south.  The temperatures officially used for high altitudes in the Andes of Boliva are based on data from cities on the Pacific Ocean and hot jungles of the Amazon basin.  The cool Andes Mountains lie between these areas and are much cooler.  This trick has been used over and over around the world.  Cooler temperatures actually measured decades ago have been replaced by interpolated values biased to higher temperatures in recent times.  This exaggerates the apparent temperature increase.

10)  Much raw temperature data has recently been pried loose from national temperature archives, often thanks to dogged requests under Freedom of Information Acts.  The rural stations in the U.S., Russia, Northern Europe, northern Australia, New Zealand, China, and some areas of Canada, Latin America, and Africa whose data has been examined carefully show little to no late 20th Century temperature increase.  The data used in the UN IPCC AR4 report of 2007 was heavily manipulated, in ways that make no scientific sense, to enhance a rapid rise of temperatures in the late 20th Century.

11)  There is much evidence that the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warming, the Minoan Warming, and the Halocene Warmings b and a and other warmings longer ago were warmer than the present time, yet humans, animals, and plants thrived.

12) The rate of the temperature increase at the start of the Medieval Warm Period was similar to that we had in the late 20th Century using even the inflated and manipulated ground temperature data.  There was also a warming period around 1700 in which the temperature rose 2.2C in just 36 years, compared to the 0.7C temperature increase claimed for the 20th Century.  The claims of an unprecedented rise in temperatures in the late 20th Century are without justification.

13) The sea surface temperature data, the balloon data, and the satellite temperature data for the late 20th Century show much smaller temperature increases than does the manipulated land surface data used by the alarmists.  The oceans and water cover 71% of the Earth and the satellites read temperatures over the entire Earth.  The oceans store about 22 times the heat stored in the atmosphere.  The ocean temperatures of the last 6 years are unchanged or decreasing.  A better way to search for warming is to examine the heat content of the oceans using the results of the reliable Argo buoy arrays which can measure the heat content to a depth of 700 meters in the oceans. These measurements show no increase from 2003 through 2008.  The entire heat capacity of the atmosphere is the equivalent of only the top 3.2 m depth of the oceans.

14)  The atmospheric concentrations of CO2 follow temperature increases rather than preceding them, consistent with dissolved CO2 being emitted upon the warming of the oceans or dissolved when the oceans cool.  The solubility of CO2 increases greatly with lower temperature and higher pressure.  Due to high pressure and cold temperatures, the deep ocean waters hold huge amounts of CO2, but it takes a long time to warm those waters in response to solar irradiance changes due to the huge amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of water, the low amount of heat energy in the gaseous atmosphere, the huge volume of water, and the depth of most of the oceans.  Consequently, the rise in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will lag general warming events by long times, though there is observable response to warming El Nino events and cooling La Nina events.

15)  Despite a continued CO2 concentration increase in the atmosphere since 1998, the temperatures have not risen, which was noted as an embarrassment in the dumped CRU e-mails by Trenberth.  The much-touted computer models are baffled by this.

16)  Solar wind and solar electromagnetic fields are believed to have major effects upon the cosmic ray flux on the Earth and other planets in the solar system.  When solar sunspot activity increases, solar irradiance increases, but so also does the solar wind and the range and strength of the solar electromagnetic field.  This shields the Earth from cosmic rays and the reduced flux of cosmic rays causes less lower atmosphere (below 3.2 km) nucleation and growth of clouds.  The Earth's temperature decreases sensitively to the amount of cloud cover in the lower atmosphere, so when the sun is less active, there are more cosmic rays and they generate more lower atmosphere clouds, which has a strong cooling effect.  Contrary to the frequent claims of the global warming alarmists, solar activity has stronger effects upon the Earth's temperature than just that caused by the changes in solar irradiance.  Both the solar and Earth electromagnetic fields are presently weaker than they have been in many decades, so cosmic radiation is not being as well shielded as has long been usual.  With both fields weakened, the flow of molten material in the center of the Earth is decreased, which also should decrease the heat flow from the center of the Earth to its surface.

17)  The predicted catastrophic changes due to warming do not seem to have materialized.  The failure here is widespread and should not be a surprise given that these calamities did not happen during the earlier warm periods such as the Medieval Warm Period given in 11) above.  The historical record indicates that man generally benefited from these warmer periods.  We also know that mortality rates generally are higher due to cold weather than due to warm weather, so moderately rising temperatures are less harmful than an equivalent drop in temperatures.

So, what is the essential physics of our climate?

1)  About 70% of the incoming solar radiation is incident and absorbed by the Earth's surface.  Thus, (0.7)(341 W/m^2) = 238.7 W/m^2 warms the surface.  With an emissivity of 0.7, the temperature of the Earth's surface is 278.5K, or only about 9.5K cooler than the average temperature we observe.

2)  Most of the remaining energy is due to the action of gravity on our atmosphere and the movement of convection currents to keep the atmosphere in equilibrium.  The gravity effect operates due to the energy of the ideal gas molecule being the sum of its kinetic energy and its potential energy.  The higher altitude gas molecules have more potential energy and less kinetic energy and the decrease in kinetic energy is almost linear with increasing altitude.  The temperature of the ideal gas in equilibrium is proportional to its kinetic energy.  At sea level, the nitrogen, oxygen, and argon molecules that make up about 99.967% of the atmosphere and the remaining gas molecules are colliding about 6.9 billion times per second, so they rapidly absorb their share of energy even from the infra-red absorbing gases commonly called greenhouse gases.

3)  At lower altitudes, the transfer of energy by water molecules is strong cooling effect due to the phase transitions from liquid or solid state to gas. At somewhat higher altitudes where it is cooler, the water phase transition from the gas phase back to the liquid or solid state is a warming effect.  Water provides a great balancing effect to the climate and very effectively counteracts either great temperature increases or decreases.

4)  The average daily surface temperature is raised by the storage of large amounts of energy in water and the subsurface ground during the bright sunlight hours of the day and the return of that heat to the surface by conduction during the night.  Such an effect is observed for the moon as shown below, despite the fact that the moon stores much less energy than our Earth with water covering 71% of its surface and our vegetation holding heat better into the night.  The image below shows that effect NASA long ago calculated for the moon.  The outer surface of the blue areas is the temperature due to the solar radiation incident with no subsurface to store heat or to be warmed by conduction.  The outer surface of the orange is the observed temperature due to the subsurface heat holding effects.  Note that the daily high temperature shifts to later in the day, just as on Earth, from the noontime.  Note also the cooling effect during the day and the bigger warming effect at night.  These effects would be more subtle on Earth due to the smaller temperature extremes, but they will still exist.  In fact for a much more realistic understanding of the Earth's climate, one needs to develop the complete day to night cycle in this fashion for the more complicated Earth with its atmosphere, oceans, and plant coverage.

5)  At about 4000 meters, as much energy is transferred in the atmosphere by radiation as by air molecule collisions and convection currents.  The temperature of the Earth as viewed from space is about 255K, which is the temperature of the U.S. Standard Atmosphere at an altitude of 5000 meters.  The atmosphere at about 5000 meters is in effective thermal equilibrium with space.

6)  As one moves to lower altitudes from 5000 meters, the increasing kinetic energy of the gases as the potential energy decreases causes the temperature of the atmosphere to increase approximately linearly.

7)  Energy input from the solar wind, the interaction of the solar magnetic field with that of the Earth, the conduction of heat from the Earth's hot interior including large numbers of thermal vents in the deep oceans, and debris and particles collected from space provide additional energy inputs to the Earth.  It is not difficult to account for the 9.5K higher temperature of the Earth's surface compared to that expected for the average incidence of solar radiation upon its surface.  What is far more interesting are the explanations as to why the Earth's surface does not rise to a temperature of 393.8K or 120.7C at noon on the average day and then fall to 3K at night with no incident sunlight.

The case for the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is so poor, that it is clear that the real reason so many support this false hypothesis does not lie in the science.  There are ulterior political and unethical business motives for the constant claims that man's use of fossil fuels is going to be responsible for a global climate catastrophe.  Those who want reasons to increase the control of our use of energy, flock to this false theory.  Those who want to add further high taxes love the idea of something like cap and trade taxes.  Those who wish to subject the United States to more international control, say the United Nations, love this false theory.  Those who stand to make money from the trade of carbon credits love it.  Those who are pushing federal investment and mandates to create the smart grid love it.  Those who are working on electric cars, wind generation of electricity, solar power generation of electricity, nuclear power, thermal insulation, higher efficiency light sources, light materials for transportation, products made from recycled materials, and many others who stand to make money from throttling fossil fuel use very often support this false alarmist idea.

Disclaimer:  My laboratory works on projects for oil companies, solar power companies, wind generator companies, nuclear power plants, suppliers to the coal industry, low-weight materials for transportation companies, efficient light sources, improved thermal insulation materials, materials made from recycled materials, and energy from recycled materials.  My laboratory will prosper better with a strong private sector, a strongly growing economy, a limited government, and with widespread respect for science and what it can do for us to make our lives better.  Bad science and the disrespect for science that it will generate is bad for the future of my laboratory.