Anthropogenic Global Warming

If you follow my posts, you will know that I consider the current hype over CO2 and its tenuous link to global warming to be junk science. Sub-prime science if you will. The geological record supports times of warming and cooling and times when the CO2 was at 6,000PPM instead of our paltry 350PPM -- and yes, the temperature averaged in the balmy 70's during that high time. Anthony Watts of Watts Up with That has an interesting post tonight:

A brick through Australia�s AGW window
This article from the Sydney Morning herald came with the message from Bruce saying: �a brick through the AGW window in Australia�. After reading it, and seeing that it is based on a book Heaven and Earth soon to be released by prominent Australian geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, I�ll have to agree. But as usually happens, he�ll probably be labeled a �denier� or an �advocate� as Gavin calls them, and ignored. Still, it is worth reading, since the journalist that has written it seems to question his own past writings. - Anthony

Beware the climate of conformity

Paul Sheehan Sydney Morning Herald
April 13, 2009

What I am about to write questions much of what I have written in this space, in numerous columns, over the past five years. Perhaps what I have written can withstand this questioning. Perhaps not. The greater question is, am I - and you - capable of questioning our own orthodoxies and intellectual habits? Let�s see.

The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia�s foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions.

The book�s 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years� research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: �An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history.�

And a bit more:

If we look at the last 6 million years, the Earth was warmer than it is now for 3 million years. The ice caps of the Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland are geologically unusual. Polar ice has only been present for less than 20 per cent of geological time. What follows is an intense compression of the book�s 500 pages and all their provocative arguments and conclusions:

Is dangerous warming occurring? No.

Is the temperature range observed in the 20th century outside the range of normal variability? No.

The Earth�s climate is driven by the receipt and redistribution of solar energy. Despite this crucial relationship, the sun tends to be brushed aside as the most important driver of climate. Calculations on supercomputers are primitive compared with the complex dynamism of the Earth�s climate and ignore the crucial relationship between climate and solar energy.

�To reduce modern climate change to one variable, CO2, or a small proportion of one variable - human-induced CO2 - is not science. To try to predict the future based on just one variable (CO2) in extraordinarily complex natural systems is folly. Yet when astronomers have the temerity to show that climate is driven by solar activities rather than CO2 emissions, they are dismissed as dinosaurs undertaking the methods of old-fashioned science.�

Over time, the history of CO2 content in the atmosphere has been far higher than at present for most of time. Atmospheric CO2 follows temperature rise. It does not create a temperature rise. CO2 is not a pollutant. Global warming and a high CO2 content bring prosperity and longer life.

If you still believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming, you have either not done the science or you are under the spell of a Seminary School dropout who on leaving the White House as Vice President had a net worth of $2 Million but now is worth almost $100 Million. Global Warming certainly has been good to Mr. Gore but is the hype for real? No.