7 Billion Machines
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There are presently 7 Billion bipeds walking about on this Earth and they are expected to number 10 Billion by 2050. These 7 Billion machines are you and I. We are factories. We burn Carbon with the help of Oxygen and we produce Carbon Dioxide, night and day.
We bipeds are on the increase. We produce heat. We humans are combustion machines. Without Oxygen we could not burn the Carbon we ingest in the form of food, nor could we produce Carbon Dioxide either.
All heat has to be generated. The Sun generates enormous heat at some 6000K on its surface. A fire generates heat. A central heating system generates heat. Friction – rubbing two sticks together generates heat. An electrical current in contact with a coiled wire resistance produces heat. All animals produce heat, and incidentally produce Carbon Dioxide.
Carbon Dioxide in no way produces heat. It is the result of heat production. Both Carbon Dioxide and Water Vapour are coolants, as is well known. They are both used to extinguish fire and restrain combustion.
It is very easy for Sceptics, who talk to each other, to believe that the battle is won, because the arguments against Carbon Dioxide causing Global Warming are so overwhelming. Anyone who reads Climate Depot will see one scientist after another coming to the Sceptic side. ‘James Lovelock fallout – Warmists into their last days’. The news from Benny Peiser on ‘fracking’ is encouraging on the availability of fresh sources of natural gas. The arguments employed by Johnny Ball against Wind Turbines are overwhelming. It would seem that the battle is almost over, and victory for common sense is in sight.
That is partly because, for most Sceptics, reading The Guardian is nauseous. Alas we have to read such things as the Guardian and the Met Office website to know the arguments of the Alarmists. They make dispiriting reading. Here is a headline from today’s Guardian.
We can have safe, sustainable energy
With renewables we can contain consumption – and climate warming at 2C – if the big users act now
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Maria van der Hoevenguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 April 2012 22.50 BST
In spite of all the evidence from the Climatic Research Unit itself that no warming has occurred for a decade, the warmists stick to the idea that they must contain warming at 2C. How can we deal with people who live in cloud cuckoo land? And just who is this Maria van der Hoeven?
The arrogance of human machines imagining that they could contain the temperature of the Earth has to be seen to be believed. In the first place there is no World temperature. There is no huge thermometer which one could stick under the tongue of Mother Earth, no armpit to take a reading. Oh! I hear, but scientists are taking readings from thermometers all over the place and they are working out averages.
If the average temperature at the North Pole is minus 30C and at Accra it is plus 30C, what is the average? The average is meaningless. There are thousands and thousands of micro-climates. Everywhere we live on this Planet the temperatures of our given locations are varying minute by minute, second by second, according to sunrise and sunset, according to the seasons, according to the angle to the Sun and its distance from our Planet.
We live on a huge sphere. At any one time half the sphere is in darkness, while the other half is in light. But that again is only half true, because the sphere is revolving. Nothing is static. So it is warming and cooling. Futhermore only one part at any one time is directly perpendicular to the Sun’s radiation. The tropics receive much direct radiation and the Poles hardly any at all.
So some say, but look at the glaciers. Yes? Some glaciers have retreated over the past 30 years, but equally some have advanced, so I understand. But so what? If some warming has occurred in some regions, what is the cause? The Alarmist leap on Carbon Dioxide, or they lump together Greenhouse Gases. But, with what justification? It is not a scientific response, it is simply hysteria.
While we are about to enter the coldest May for many years according to the astrophysicist Piers Corbyn, the Alarmists point to the North Pole and the Arctic ice. But the latest reports show that Arctic Ice cover is at maximum extent. It ebbs and flows with the seasons. Nothing in Nature is constant.
The assumption that any supposed warming is caused by Carbon Dioxide is simply fraudulent. While it is true that Carbon Dioxide absorbs infrared, it is also true that it cools as it rises with the adiabatic lapse rate. So it cools by conduction and convection. So much is evident and well known to any layman. For that reason the Alarmists have to invent another totally spurious idea called ‘back radiation’. In fact it is on this back radiation that the whole theory of man-made global warming rests. But when this idea is examined critically it simply collapses. As hot air rises it cools as the molecules grow farther and farther apart. So the extra warming, which is supposed to be caused by greenhouse gases and which is in fact not happening, is purported to arise from back radiation, – back convection and back conduction being naturally ruled out.
This back radiation presupposes that a body can heat itself. Tell that to a pensioner dying of the cold. Heat, so they say is trapped. That is supremely false. Nowhere, no way, at any time anywhere is heat trapped. It only needs a little thought and a little common sense and common observation to realise that this scenario is completely false.
Tell me one single place that heat is trapped. Heat has to be generated. Heat is always flowing from hot to cold. Heat is only maintained while heat is being constantly generated. Watch a bonfire. As the smoke rises up, so does the carbon dioxide. Within barely 100 feet it has lost its heat. Are these cold and rapidly cooling molecules supposed to re-radiate a heat that they have not even got? Heaven preserve us from such chicanery!
In every case it is clear that it is the activity of the Sun or its lack of activity that has the most profound effect upon the climates (note plural) and the weather systems of the world. It is clear that a quiescent Sun produced the Little Ice Age that lasted some 450 years until approximately 1850. A more active Sun has produced the present warming, such as it is, and the campaign against Carbon Dioxide as a cause is simply spurious and non-scientific. Only something of the magnitude of the Sun could possibly cause Global Warming.
The Met Office argues that the Greenhouse Gases trap heat. Effectively they are saying that the Greenhouse Gases act as insulators, meaning that they delay the exit of heat. That may well be, but heat is not trapped. If an insulator delays the exit of heat, far more important is the observable fact that they obstruct the entrance of heat from the Sun. We can see that this is an observable fact by watching the effect of double-glazing. Double-glazing on a conservatory reduces incoming heat far more that delaying the exit of heat. It is the same principle for the atmosphere. The atmosphere reduces the effect of the Sun’s radiation far more than it impedes the exit of heat from the Earth. The argument that Greenhouse Gases cool the atmosphere is proven by simple observation. And the huge swings in the temperatures of the Moon prove that the Earth’s atmosphere does more to keep us cool than it does to keep us warm.
The Warmists, the Alarmists, in spite of everything, have still won the public debate, by the simple repetition of lies, reinforced by Government funding. The Skeptics have won the scientific argument against anyone who is prepared to enter the lists. But the Alarmists will not argue the case for fear that they will certainly lose.
The man-in-the street will never be convinced by scientific arguments, which are above their heads. What does ‘radiative forcing’ mean to the average man? Or the argument about whether the atmosphere is a ‘black body’ or not? How many people have even heard of the ‘adiabatic lapse rate’? In the face of such terminology the common man rolls over and leaves it all to the ‘scientists’.
Unfortunately the scientists who have had the best propaganda machine are the Alarmists. The idea that we must save the Planet, which will be doomed if we were do nothing, was a mantra that was easy to sell, especially as there was a Government remit to establish by hook or by crook Anthropogenic Global Warming. When this was supported by the BBC, the Met Office, the Climatic Research Unit and a howling mob of Gore-sprung activists, the odds were stacked against the Sceptics.
Since everyone feared for their jobs that did not toe the Party Line, it is small wonder that the 31,000 Skeptic scientists are largely made up of retired Professors. As Tim Ball says in his ‘Analysis of Climate Alarm’ in the opening Chapter to “Slaying the Sky Dragon”: “The challenge facing anyone trying to counter the exploiters is to bring logic, clarity and understanding in a way that the majority of people can understand.”
It is for that reason that I attempt to bring in homely references, which are easily understood. If a house is insulated with loft insulation and the cavity walls are filled, will the house be warmer or cooler? A well-insulated house will actually be colder vis-à-vis the sun’s radiation, but it will be warmer inside if and only if some heating is generated.
This is a homely illustration, which in fact mirrors what the atmosphere does. But it must be remembered that the radiation from the Sun is infinitely greater than the infrared radiation coming from Earth. In this way it is clear that the atmosphere, in which Water Vapour and Carbon Dioxide play a part is to preserve us from the extremes of heat and likewise to delay the exit of heat from the Earth. In this way we can see that the Greenhouse Gases, far from having a warming effect, in truth have a net cooling effect.
Everything by itself is cooling; all heat is flowing from hot to cold. This is a fact that everyman can observe, whether because the radiators in his house cool once the boiler switches off, or because red hot lava cools to black basalt. There is nothing whatsoever in Nature that grows hotter and hotter, unless heat is being generated to make it hotter.
Since I declare to all and sundry that I am a Climate Sceptic, I engage in all sorts of disputes. Two things stand out. But, Tony, what about the Arctic? But, Tony, I have seen glaciers, as they were thirty years ago and how they are today.
Sure, there has been warming, which we can see in hindsight. From about 1650, which was the depth of the Little Ice Age, the Earth has been gradually warming. That much nobody will dispute. It is clear that the freezing conditions of the Little Ice Age and the subsequent warming had nothing whatsoever to do with man, but with the forces of Great Nature. It is abundantly clear that the cooling and the warming were directly related to the activity of the Sun.
As to the Arctic Ice this varies from season to season. This variation has much more to do with the flow of warm ocean currents than with Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere. As to glaciers, this is a study in itself. There may well be some glaciers that have retreated, but the dramatic pictures of glaciers calving, with huge chunks falling into the seas, is evidence of advancing glaciers, not retreating.
All these phenomena of Great Nature can in each and every case be assigned to natural causes, and the biggest cause is the Sun, supplemented by geothermal heat and the warmth from the oceans.
This is something that is agreed by all independent scientists. Ah, you might say that that is a colossal sweeping statement. Yes, it is true, because I distinguish between propagandists and scientists.
All those whose remit is to find a human fingerprint are propagandists.
They are not scientists in the true sense. When people say to me, ‘Scientists say …’ and you can see these words on the website of the Met office, what is really meant is that ‘Propagandists say…’
Propagandists in the form of scientific advisers have the ear of many Heads of State throughout the world, with the result that there is creeping mange over the Earth of useless wind turbines and solar panels. Where it is sensible to look for the cheapest and most available forms of energy creation, governments have been persuaded to look for so-called sustainable solutions. And the only thing that is sustained is mendacity.
Anthony Bright-Paul
April 29th 2012
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