The following commentary is submitted for your consideration in response to today’s guest commentary in the SDN by Dave Yost.
It is tragic that what should have been a respectful and objective evaluation of the available data on weather and climate by qualified, independent scientists, has instead degenerated into a partisan diatribe among journalists, environmentalists, historians and politicians: none of whom is qualified in either meteorology or climatology. Weather and climate are controlled by natural laws on a scale that is enormous compared to the scale of human activity. Those natural laws engender forces and motions in the Earth’s atmosphere, its oceans, and its surface that are beyond human control. Weather and climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth, and they will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone, either individually or collectively as the human race.
Those forces and motions are driven by the following phenomena. First, there is the motion of the Earth relative to the Sun: the periodic changes in its elliptical orbit, the rotation of the Earth about its axis, the periodic changes in the tilt of that axis, and the periodic precession of that axis. Second, there is the variation in solar activity, which causes changes in the amount of radiant energy that reaches the Earth and also causes variations in the cosmic ray input into its atmosphere, which affects the Earth’s cloudiness. Third, there is the distribution of land and water on the Earth’s surface, which controls the temperature distribution of the atmosphere, the availability of moisture, monsoon effects and the paths and intensities of hurricanes, typhoons and other storms. Fourth, there is the topography of the Earth’s land mass, which causes copious precipitation on the windward side of mountains and aridity on the leeward side. Fifth, there are the motions within the Earth’s oceans that determine moisture availability and its surface temperature distribution (El Nino and La Nina cycles).
The determinant of weather is mainly water in all of its forms: as vapor in the atmosphere; in its heat transport by evaporation and condensation, as the enormous circulating mass of liquid ocean whose heat capacity and mass/energy transport dominate the motions of our atmosphere and the precipitation from it, and finally as cloud, snow, and ice cover which influence the radiative balance between the Sun, the Earth, and free space. In comparison, the human emission of CO2 is totally insignificant for the Earth’s weather and climate and there is not one iota of reliable evidence that proves otherwise.
A voice of sanity in a wilderness of ignorance!
Not to mention global plate tectonics, volcanism, mid-Atlantic Ridge, geomagnetism, magnetic reversals, subduction zones ….
Yeah, keep lying to yourselves. Even if it’s all bullshit, would it really be that bad if humanity cleaned up its act and DRAMATICALLY reduced pollution and waste? “Junk” science or not, we need to take better care of this planet. PERIOD.
Reducing waste is simply good business practice. And the path to reducing “pollution” is… development. Good business and development mean doing more with less – isn’t that what you seek?
But your path is to… not develop, simply do less. Check out underdeveloped nations to see what a winning strategy that isn’t.
Thanks for dropping by with your inanities and dogma, it’s really so constructive.
Never said to do less. Development is key, humans are just looking at it the wrong way. We’re still choosing sides and fighting over who is right and who is wrong.
If I sound preachy, it’s because I simply have no clue how to get humans to unite and work together for the benefit of the planet, and for each other. The whole idea of complete unity is lofty at best, so forgive my ambiguity.
Lastly, stop trying to sound like you are incredibly important and vastly intelligent, and a thousand other adverbs.
Your usage of “…” and the urge to use your righteous keyboard sword to smite down the opposing side to this laughable argument blinded you from what I was trying to say.
Humans need to work together to save and improve our planet. And yeah, I don’t have any idea how to do it. So forgive me for sounding idealistic.
Your goals may be laudable, but undermiining your goals through the promotion of a lie is going to backfire.
Helping the planet should be the focus here. Both sides of the climate change argument lie, and it’s sad that while they fight, the planet suffers.
“Would it really be that bad if humanity cleaned up its act and DRAMATICALLY reduced pollution and waste?”
We did. Didn’t matter. We still get assertions like yours as if nothing has been
done in the last 40 years.
We did, huh? That’s depressing then.
Hmm… had a quick look at the artwork on your blog – “TheDisfigured” is truly apt. If you view the world through the same lens then much is explained.
Since you dived in on Hertzberg’s piece regarding CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, lest you be unfamiliar with the acronym) it seems safe to assume from your comment that you view atmospheric CO2 as “pollution”.
Here we have a basic dichotomy of views: essential trace gas versus “pollution”. Fortunately this is relatively easily tested in growth chambers and the simple answer is that at reduced levels — less than 200 ppm, green plants begin to die due to failed photosynthesis, while at enhanced levels — (2,000 ppm) plants thrive (nothing startling there since green plants evolved when levels were centered around 7,000 ppm).
It appears your gloomy worldview is premised on the flawed assumption that returning essential nutrients long ago “lost” to the biosphere through sequestration pollutes the biosphere when the reality is that restoring carbon to the atmsophere is the best thing humans have done for life on earth, however accidentally.
EDITED to correct lost text:When posting this appears to have lost a segment between angle brackets, which I am now replacing demarcated by “–” Ed
TL;DR
You have an overblown perception of what the human race is doing… or is capable of doing. Ever wonder why all those ocean canyons receiving the rubble washed down into them by the worlds rivers never fill up? The earth recycles on it’s own!