The Greenhouse Effect
A greenhouse is a hot and sticky place. Light from the sun is absorbed by the dark plants and partially re-radiated as infrared radiation. Not much escapes because glass blocks radiation at the infrared end of the spectrum. This is the Greenhouse Effect and the Earth is a greenhouse…for dark green plants read the planet's surface and for the glass read the earth's atmosphere. There are two problems with this analogy. The earth's atmosphere does not behave like glass and although the Amazon Rain Forest may be dark green the polar ice caps are not, much of the planet's land surface is desert and semi-savannah and almost three quarters of the earth's surface is ocean. We are told that 99% of the earth's atmosphere has no insulating properties, that oxygen and nitrogen have no role and that carbon dioxide alone keeps the earth warm enough for life. Why do we allow ourselves to believe this nonsense?...weblog ws162 on 16/06-2006
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Global Baloney Sea levels are not rising but they do move around. There was a disaster in Queensland over the weekend with sea levels changing by up to twelve feet for instance. And have you heard of tides? My sea level goes up and down like a yo-yo twice a day and the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean swirl around like water in a cooking basin. And do you remember in the days before the invention of global warming all the concern about the increasing run-off all over the world as hills were stripped of their trees and intensive agriculture decimated the natural vegetation cover. Increased run-off? Of course. But caused by plants getting fitter and sweating less in their extra fraction of an inch of carbon dioxide. Pull the other one. What complete and utter baloney...weblog ws 77 on 18/03-2006 |
Phoney Consensus The British Government is a signatory to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to restrict carbon emissions. The scientific work underpinning this came from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who claimed there was a scientific consensus that (a) global warming is a major threat to the planet; (b) it is primarily man-made; (c) the cause is carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels and (d) these greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat and warm the planet. But there has never been such a scientific consensus. Indeed a recent Anglo-German analysis of scientific papers on climate change concluded that dissenters are in a healthy majority. In July 2005 a report from the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affair…The Economics of Climate Change remarked that 'Consensus is the stuff of politics, not science'...weblog ws 137 on 17/05-2006 |
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Carbonism Imagine the composition of the earth's atmosphere as a 100 yard football field. Most of the atmosphere is nitrogen so starting from the goal line this will get you to the seventy-eight yard line. Nearly all of what is left is oxygen which takes you to the ninety-nine yard line. Most of what remains after that is the inert gas argon which brings you to within three and a half inches of the goal line. That's pretty much the thickness of the chalk stripe. How much of the remaining three inches is carbon dioxide? One inch. That's how much CO2 we have in our atmosphere. One inch in a hundred yard football field. And in the last 50 years it has increased by three eighths of an inch…less than the thickness of a pencil... weblog ws 77 on18/03-2006 |
Otto PetterssonTwenty years ago I wrote an essay entitled Green Houses or Blue Moon Waves in which I discussed the work of the marine scientist Otto Pettersson. My sole source was a book first published in 1950 entitled The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. My manuscript remains unpublished and Otto Pettersson's work remains unknown buried with the object of his research at the bottom of the Skaggerak. A year ago I did a Google search which confirmed his obscurity and prompted me to write away to Oslo University for more information about the gentleman and his work. Today's search came back with 415 references to this great scientist. And my comments were right up there on the top page in fifth position [by mid-year 2006 it had passed the1000 mark...but my remarks had slipped to page 7]... weblog ws 23 on 23/01-2006 |
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Computers Can Damage Your Health When people talk about the world being run by computers they are right in general but wrong in the details. Computers run the world by modelling the future. Academics in their ivory towers invent fears to impose upon an increasingly gullible public by producing computer models that forecast disasters from their self-fulfilling theories. There should be a warning on all academic research. CAUTION: This research is based on computer modelling... weblog ws 53 on 22/02-2006 |
Our Nuclear Reactor in the Sky In just half an hour our own nuclear reactor ninety three million miles away showers our back gardens with enough power to keep us for a whole year. As long as the 60-year old technology formerly known as cheap atomic power is kept in business by massive public subsidies, the whole energy cost and price structure will be so distorted that it will be well-nigh impossible for a sane, humane, ecological (SHE) energy infrastructure to emerge to replace the world's present piped energy systems...weblog ws 5 on 5/1-2006 |
