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Lesson 3 Graphs |
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It is often reported that the temperature
of the earth is higher the past 20 years than it has ever been in history.
This is simply not true, nor has it ever been. Hundreds of research studies
using ice cores, pollen sedimentation, tree rings, etc. have shown that
there were dozens of periods in the past 11,000 years (generally called the Holocene period)
that earth's temperature was significantly warmer than it is today. Earth's temperature
was very much warmer at least four times during the current interglacial
period. The polar bears did just fine during those warmer periods. |
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Although Al Gore's video, The
Inconvenient Truth has been show in almost every middle and high school
in America, it is very biased and error ridden. The former Science Advisor
to Prime Minister Thatcher was so alarmed at the errors, biases and
exaggerations that he sued the British government to keep it from being
shown in England. After the British High Court reviewed all the evidence,
they ruled against Gore outlining 9 serious errors (there are over 30 errors
totally). The Inconvenient Truth cannot be shown in public schools
today without a disclaimer that is a political film with numerous scientific
errors. To read the court's decision in these articles click
here,
here and
here. |
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One of the most exaggerated claims made
in The Inconvenient Truth is that if half of Antarctica's and half of
Greenland's icecaps were to melt, sea levels would rise twenty feet or more,
flooding coastal cities and islands. The images used in the video are very
graphic and alarming. While Gore's claim is technically more or less
correct, the message he gives that it could happen in the next few
decades is completely false. First, as noted above, earth has experience
much warmer temperatures in the past and neither icecap melted. It would
take thousands of years at these temperatures for that to happen. Second,
even the highly political and biased reports from the IPCC say that at the
very most, ocean levels might rise 23 inches in the next 100 years, and only
then if warming continued to increase at the rates experienced in the last
quarter of the twentieth century. Third, we are likely entering a cooling
period, so the issue is no longer relevant. In fact,
Greenland's icecap is not losing ice mass, and the
rise in ocean levels has slowed significantly. |
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Although global warming models show that
both polar regions should warming with CO2-caused global warming, the
various stations maintained in Antarctica show Antarctica to be cooling over
the past two decades. One research paper in 2008 allegedly showing
Antarctica to be warming is being
accepted with skepticism by the scientific community, even by those who
still maintain that global warming is caused by human activity. The main
criticism centers on the use of highly questionable equations to fill in
temperature data between the widely scattered weather stations in
Antarctica. It appears to many to be a repeat of the infamous
hockey stick curve fiasco
of the early 2000s.
The only place Antarctica has shown true warming is
along Western Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. This is where pictures
of massive ice chucks breaking off of Antarctica come from that are shown on
the news every couple of years. Research published in 2007-2008 found that
this warming is NOT do to global warming, but to volcanic activity under the
ocean and ice flows. |
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While the correlation between atmospheric
increases in CO2 and earth's temperatures is poor (r2=0.44), it
is much better for solar irradiance and solar activity (r2=>70 --
The higher the rs value the greater the
correlation). It has long been known that solar irradiance by itself
does not provide enough energy to cause the warming on earth experienced in
the twentieth century. However, when combined with the type of solar
irradiance that is emitted during high periods of solar activity every 11
and 22 years (the solar cycle), there is a poorly understood, but good
correlation. Solar flares, coronal mass ejections and other
solar activity
reach a maximum during the peak of each solar cycle and
somehow influence ocean temperatures and therefore climate. One of the
leading theories on this interaction is the interaction between solar
activity and incoming cosmic radiation on cloud formation, explained below. |
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Research done primarily at the
Danish National Space
Center has show there is a very high correlation between incoming solar
radiation and cloud formation. Cosmic radiation originates from exploding
super novae. When the cosmic radiation enter the earth's atmosphere, they
excite water vapor molecules, causing them to clump together (condense) into
tiny water droplets which form low elevation clouds. These clouds then
reflect the solar radiation back into space instead of warming the earth.
This causes the earth to cool. When the
sun becomes more active more solar flares,
coronal mass ejections and other solar activity dramatically increase
the solar winds which push back cosmic radiation thereby preventing the
cosmic radiation from reaching the earth's atmosphere and creating more
clouds. Since there is less cloud formation, more solar radiation reaches
the earth's surface and the earth warms. It is estimated that this
phenomenon can account for 85 percent of the warming that occurred in the
twentieth century. |
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