It's All Muddy From Here

So most of us, at least those in my circle of friends, have seen and loved An Inconvenient Truth - if not for the staccato presentation of the facts we've been hearing piecemeal for years, then simply because there was a hole in the way these facts were being communicated to the masses and we were watching this movie fill it, with a talented guide and easy language.

But as always in life, there are certainly two sides to every story. In the past couple of years no doubt that you've heard the sentiment that "global warming is a myth" or "it's just part of the earth's natural cycle". These statements don't often make in into the mainstream press because they speak about the non-existence of a problem...and who pays money for news that tells them what doesn't exist?

Yesterday I went to a lecture by Curt Rose, Professor Emeritus of Bishops, on Problems Found in the Recent Literature on Global Warming. In this talk he concentrated on two main points (although he briefly hi-lighted some others during the discussion afterwards): first, all of the current forecasts put the mean earth temperature at +1.78 degrees at 2100AD (some suggest 3.5 degrees but they've been widely discredited), but the problem is that we have reliable paleontological data that shows historical temperature variance of greater than this over a 100 year period long before humans were contributing additional CO2 to the atmosphere. In fact this has happened many times. Worse yet, the models...all of the models that show that we will be up ~2 degrees by 2100AD are based on 2X the amount of CO2 we have in the atmosphere now (something like 750 ppm) and with a growth rate of 1%. We're nowhere near these values.

Second, the contribution to the idea of global warming that comes from the heat-holding capacity of CO2 is actually relatively minor on the global scale. It is responsible for some 16% of our total heat energy holding. Water vapour on the other hand...simple water vapour is responsible for 75%. To simplify what this means, if we had just 4% more clouds over the earth each year, we'd have no problem getting to +6 degrees at 2100AD, when we could continue to increase our CO2 output at similar rates to what we have now, and never come close.

Let me just say that I believe in global warming...I sit on that side of the fence. But it's a muddy issue. A lot of people think we might not be seeing the true problem because of the issue of global dimming. Right now, given a clear day in Africa and identical relative humidities, it takes longer for a pan full of water to evaporate than it did 40 years ago. Less solar energy is getting through to the earth...is this masking the true global warming issue? No one knows for sure.

Also, while I'm glad that Al Gore put together that wonderful movie, because sometimes we need to exaggerate to make our point, it should be noted that a lot of international organizations, including the IPCC are distancing themselves from the claims made in the movie...they are largely a stretching of the truth. It's not sensational to say that the earth's temperature will rise by 1.73 degrees and that there will be *some* noticeable change on the planet -- instead we say "+4.5 degrees by 2050 and most of the current earth coastlines will be under water!".

Oh, and what about Kyoto...we scorn the countries that have decided not to hop on board the Kyoto wagon...but the majority of the real science being done today (check the IPCC and Nasa climatology) indicates that Kyoto isn't going to do anything. Adopt it, don't adopt it, we end up at the same place 50 years from now. So yes, Kyoto is good, simply because it encourages the mindset that we're looking for in the future...not for any actual effect that people hope will come from it.
See what I mean? Muddy.