Global Warming Takes Another Hit

If I were to dream of a way to prove that global warming is not happening, I would imagine this perfect scenario where an expert in charge of the data and modeling of the global warming equation came out and admit that everything they’ve been doing is a complete fallacy.  While it did not happen to that extent, I was stunned to find out that a leading climatologist cast some doubt on some of the warming trends.

Phil Jones, the former head of the Climate Research Unit who is known as the top U.K. expert of global warming and essentially in charge of keeping track of the global temperature, admitted that there has not been significant global warming for the past 15 years in an interview with BBC News.  The interview was interesting because finally one of the head scientists admitted that they still have a lot to learn about global warming.

For those of you who have read my blog, you know that I am not anti-environment, but I am an anti-“spend trillions of dollars to stop something we do not fully understand with a solution (carbon capping) that will not ultimately reduce the global temperature anytime in the next 100 years” kind of guy.

This is big news because it proves that we need to understand what we are solving for before we crush our economy with carbon capping legislation and look for other means.  If protecting our environment is really what we want to do, then lets begin building nuclear energy plants or develop other solutions that will pay for themselves.

What is the Primary Goal of Global Warming Solutions?

I had a comment on a previous posting that stated, “Unfortunately, it did not come to much of an agreement in Copenhagen – but if you do not try, nothing will ever happen.” I decided that I would try to personally solve global warming, it cannot be that hard!

The first step I like to do in solving a problem or trying to accomplish a goal is decide what the end product will be. For example, if my goal is to mow the lawn, I know that I will be successful once the entire lawn is mowed. If my goal is to reduce my weight by 10 pounds, it will be quite evident when I have accomplished it (besides being at my goal weight on the scale, I’ll be able to walk up the stairs without getting winded).

Being that global warming is about global temperature, I would imagine that there is an ideal temperature that we should go for or we maybe we’d be successful if the global temperature does not continue to warm. Being that 2009 was cooler than the past few years (while still one of the warmest in the past 150 years) and we are still talking about global warming, the goal must be an ideal temperature that we have not yet achieved.

How do we determine what is the ideal temperature? The average global temperature over the past hundred years has risen 1.3 degree Fahrenheit. I initially try to make our goal to decrease the global temperature by 1.3 degrees F, but I run into some issues. From 1945 to 1968, the temperature in the Northern Hemisphere fell by 0.5 degrees F. As a result, the cooling shortened the growing season by a few weeks, which caused massive fear by scientists that the cooling would produce a world-wide famine. The scientists in the 1970’s called this “global cooling.”

In short, we cannot make the goal to continually cooling the earth, because there are negative consequences if we cool the earth too much. We’ll temporarily make the goal to decrease the global temperature by .75-1 degree F. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted as a huge volcano, blasting sulfuric ash into the stratosphere, causing the earth to cool by nearly 1 degree F. With the power of natural disasters having the ability to put us out of our goal range, we would want to put them in our forecast modeling; however, none of the current scientific modeling accounts for how natural elements affect global warming nor can they account for water vapor, which many scientists say is the major greenhouse gas.

Because of the complexity of global warming and cooling, if we are going to try to stay within an ideal temperature range that is quite small, the optimized solution would give us the ability to cool and warm the atmosphere. There are two solutions that come to mind, both are simple and cheap.

The first is called, “the garden hose to the sky.” Scientists take the lessons from Mount Pinatubo, that sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere decreases the temperature. The scientists would essentially hook up a hose and pump sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere; their idea would cost about $20 million to set up and about $10 million annually. The solution is simple and if the earth started cooling too rapidly, then they could turn off the hose. This type of solution is called geoengineering, which more scientists are beginning to believe in.

The second solution is based on producing more oceanic clouds, that reflect heat. The solution would use air and seawater, both of which are free. Some scientists say that a 10-12% increase in cloud cover could keep the temperature the same, despite a doubling of greenhouse gases. It would cost approximately $50 million-$1 billion, depending on how complicated you make the cloud machine and how many machines you make. You could turn it off and on easily to help control the temperature. And don’t worry, they’d do it in the middle of the ocean, so as not to hurt agriculture or you sun tan.

As you can see, defining success in the global warming debate is next to impossible, so no matter what happens, politicians will try to convince us that we need to give more money to them for climate change. In general, I am not a big believer of global warming, but if we are going to go after it, I do not feel we should try solutions that kill our economy and cost us $trillions (such as carbon capping and subsidies for wind farms). Both of the proposed solutions will buy us time to produce cleaner, more efficient energy.

Global Warming: Only One Solution?

When you look at the different ideas/opinions/solutions we have for taxation, healthcare, and education, there are an endless number of options.  I feel that the more complicated the issue, the more potential opinions/solutions you should get.  I don’t think it can get much more complicated than the environment/global warming and yet there is pretty much one solution: carbon dioxide reduction.  Two policy ideas are carbon capping in manufacturing, and hybrid cars or mandates on fuel efficiency.

Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas; methane is about 25 times more potent than the carbon dioxide that is emitted from cars and humans.  The methane that comes out (from both mouth and rear) of cows, deer, antelopes and other hoofed mammals in the world emit about 50% more greenhouse gas than the world’s transportation emissions.  Two scientists from New Zealand even stated that one medium sized dog emits more greenhouse gases than a SUV.

Ken Caldeira, a scientist that did some of the research for Al Gore’s Nobel Prize Winning movie who runs the ecology lab at Stanford had this to say about carbon dioxide: “A doubling of carbon dioxide traps less than 2% of the outgoing radiation emitted by the earth.”

With the half-life of atmospheric carbon dioxide being roughly 100 years, even if we stopped all carbon dioxide emissions today, it would most likely be too late.  I mention all of these things not to say that we need to focus on cows instead of cars, but to give light to facts that show that carbon dioxide is not the only place people should focus.

If it is truly global warming (i.e. not allowing the temperature of the world to increase) that we are worried about, simple carbon dioxide reduction will not give us the biggest bang for the buck.  However, Al Gore just launched a $300 million campaign to encourage people to ‘go green’ in their daily lives to do just that.

Before we go spending $trillions on capping carbon emissions, lets take some time to develop other solutions that are less costly and actually address global warming.  In the next few articles, I’ll mention some other potential solutions that scientists are proposing that you probably haven’t heard of that are much cheaper that will actually make a difference!  I also wish to look further into the science around global warming in general.

The environment is extremely complicated and I cannot pretend to know everything.  However, when I only hear one solution and there is factual evidence that our one solution may not work and will cost us $trillions, it is my job to ensure that you at least hear the other side!

Global Warming Debate is Heating Up

Over the past 13 years, global warming acceptance has been growing steadily; a lot of  influence has been based on evidence from leading scientists in the field.  One of the most influential groups of scientists has been the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, East England.  This group has more recently been known for being the hub of the “Climategate” controversy.

The “Climategate” controversy was started by a computer hacker that went into the University’s email system and gave visibility to emails that insenuated that the scienctists were fixing the data to make their case for global warming.  More damning evidence of corruption over climate change data surfaced from Russia’s Institute of Economic Analysis.  They reported that Russia’s Hadley Center only used data from 25% of their stations for their reports, covering just 40% of Russia.  Studies of the areas that were not used in their analysis show no significant warming across Russia.  FURTHER, the stations’ data that they did use had a lot of incomplete portions in it compared to the areas they did not use.  With Russia containing roughly 12% of the world’s land, this is extremely significant as those numbers are used for other scientists.

Amidst the corruption, world leaders are holding a global warming summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.  This summit’s goal is to come up with a agreement much like the Kyoto Protocol that was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and expires in 2012.  The Kyoto Protocol  sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The United States did not sign onto the Kyoto Protocol and with President Obama in office, this seems to be as good a time as ever for the United States to sign an international agreement on reducing carbon emissions, raising the stakes for climate change enthusiasts.  To accomplish a new protocol, there are some struggles they are facing.

First, the United States will not sign anything unless China (and possibly India) sign it as well.  If the U.S. cuts their green house gases, but China and India continue to polute at the same rate, the climate, according to scientists, will still be in danger.  China is very protective of their sovereignty and does not wish to share how they will reduce carbon emissions.

Second, the developing countries feel the developed countries should pay them to become clean as they cannot afford it.  Sec. of State Hillary Clinton promised $100 Billion annually to other countries to help fund developing countries.   The developing countries asked for $400 Billion, so they may not accept the U.S.’s offer.

Third, with the world economy struggling right now, some countries wish to spend their money on their economy first.  Many Americans (including me) believe the United States doesn’t have $100 Billion to be giving away, especially because we’d have to borrow it from China before we gave it away!  In a poll on FoxNews.com (which I know is conservative), there was a poll that asked if they thought America should spend $100 Billion on this intiative, 98% said no (there were roughly 100,000 votes when I checked – I checked CNN and MSNBC to see if they had a similar poll, but they did not).  While Fox News is quite conservative, that is still an overwhelming majority against spending money in that fashion.

It is hard for me to argue whether global warming exists because I do not have the data in front of me nor do I know the accuracy in which it was collected.  I do think any money being spent on global warming should be spent on development of cleaner, CHEAPER energy.

In 1974, Dr. Sherwood Rowland discovered that aerosol containing CFC’s (chloroflorocarbons) were bad for the environment’s ozone layer.  Following the discovery, environmentalists pleaded for people to stop using hair spray.  However, people had to look good, so they kept spraying away.  Soon thereafter, companies developed suitable alternatives and the issue went away practically overnight.

Our scientists should be spending time developing cleaner, cheaper, renewable energy.  Their current path equates to the government spending billions, that cost handed down to citizens and corporations, citizens and corporations pay additional energy costs, reducing overall profits and productivity.  This model is not sustainable and should be stopped!  I do not believe they will accomplish what they hoped in Copenhagen because it is hard to get nearly 200 countries to agree on anything.  They will walk away with a few things, but it won’t be as agressive as many hoped.

Brazil Builds Revenue

On August 20th, I wrote an article called “Energy Restrictions Do Not Apply Abroad.”  In addition to the article’s catchy name, it mentioned that Brazil was doing some off-shore oil exploration, while we were not.  Brazil announced today that they have discovered a huge offshore oil reserve; reports have been all over the place for their predictions of the discovery, ranging from 700 million to 80 Billion barrels of oil.  Either way, it is a lot!

There is now new technology that allows oil companies to dig deeper than ever before.  Brazil’s discovery was 4.48 miles below the surface of the ocean.  Some in Brazil are calling today “Independence Day” because they will now be self reliant on oil and may even be able to export oil.

The United States has plenty of oil reserves that could produce millions or even billions of barrels of oil, but our government will not allow us to even look.  Brazil invested money to search for addition revenue because it was the right thing to do for their struggling economy.

Our government’s focus has been on spending, not on building revenue.  The only idea I have heard to build revenue has been to raising taxes on rich people (watch out – our politicians are getting innovative again).  We currently cannot drill for oil in many places or build nuclear energy plants.  However, it is legal to build wind energy farms (1 acre of nuclear energy is equivalent to about 245 acres of a wind farm at its highest point and not  accounting for the inconsistencies).

Bottom line, our laws in energy simply do not make sense and do not put America’s interest first.  Especially during a recession, we need to be more aggressive about developing revenue and vote for candidates that are not scared by the green movement, but do what is right.

Energy Restrictions Do Not Apply Abroad

The ‘Green Movement’ in the United States have killed any prospects to release our dependency on foreign oil.  Democrats have blocked:

• Drilling in ANWR (Alaska)
• Drilling off the Alaskan coast
• Drilling off the coast of Florida
• Drilling off the east coast
• Drilling off the west coast
• Building oil refineries
• Nuclear energy production
• Clean coal production

All of this blocking is rooted in environmentalism.  However, the Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is going to be lending $billions to Brazil to finance oil exploration off their coast.  In May, Obama approved a nuclear energy program for UAE (United Arab Emirates).

Why is okay for them but not okay for us?  It is very disappointing that we could revolutionize our energy system through domestic exploration, but we refuse to do so because of old laws that were an emotional response to oil spills.

Our economy needs the boost of local energy sources.  Our government does not need to invest any money, there are plenty of private companies willing to extract our natural resources.  Instead, our government spends money that it does not have to help another government explore their natural resources.