Mar 05 2009
The IPCC Continues to be a CO2 Cult
The Public Works Congressional Committee heard from Dr. Christopher Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science earlier this week. He is also a co-chair of the IPCC, and he continued the tirade against CO2, and greenhouse gases. First off, we have to remember the IPCC is a political arm of the UN, not a scientific community like they’d have you believe.
I’ve pasted a few excerpts below…the whole testimony can be found here.
At continental, regional and ocean basin scales, numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed. These include changes in arctic temperatures and ice, widespread changes in precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather including droughts, heavy precipitation, heat waves and the intensity of tropical cyclones.
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” Discernible human influences now extend to other aspects of climate, including ocean warming, continental-average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns.
Drought-affected areas will likely increase in extent. Heavy precipitation events, which are very likely to increase in frequency, will augment flood risk.
The last one is priceless….more drought, and more rain. As if the world has never seen this happen before. Advanced civilizations have disappeared off the face of the earth for no known reason (possibly climate related) LONG before greenhouse gas became a household word.
My argument is this:
I find it hard to believe that limiting CO2 will have any noticeable effect on temperature around the globe. I find it much more likely that the actual engine heat, not it’s CO2 emission, is warming the earth. I’ve not seen anyone discuss this angle, but maybe I’ve just missed it.
According to wiki, there were 806 million cars around the world in 2007. 806,000,000 heaters turned on every day. This doesn’t count for all of the blacktop on which they drive, or all the parking lots created to store them, or all of the black shingles on our garages and houses - every bit of that absorbs, stores, and radiates heat. I find that a much more likely culprit of human caused warming. Not our 3% addition of a gas that only makes up .038% of the atmosphere. The Alarmist crowd talks about the complexities of the climate, but CO2 is their only smoking gun? It doesn’t add up for me.
In addition, most of our electricity is created by generating heat…HEAT with something to boil water into steam and spin a turbine. It’s either created by burning coal, natural gas, cow farts, landfill methane, plutonium / uranium. We’re BURNING these elements to create steam. That heat has to go somewhere. Methane is considered a greenhouse gas, and that it traps heat…so what do we do? BURN IT!!?!? and CREATE HEAT!!?! Again, the CO2 argument seems weak to me in the face of our widespread heat creation.
Here are some of the ways we create heat: Engine heat from cars or construction equipment, Electricity generation (through creating steam), light bulbs, computers, televisions, snow blowers, lawn mowers, all gas powered lawn equipment, ovens, stoves, microwave ovens, kitchen mixers (and anything else with an electric motor), ammunition for guns, bombs, nuke testing, bonfires, fireplaces, wood burning stoves, Gas and oil furnaces, radiators, geothermal heat systems that bring heat from inside the earth and dump it into the atmosphere. OH, and EVERY human on the planet radiates 300 Btu/hr..every day.
Even if we limit CO2 from coal, cars etc, the heat we generate is still here.

This AGW debate recalls the Nacirema hoax of the 1950’s and exposes the herd instinct of too many scientists.
Nacirema were supposedly a tribe of people living in North America, as described by Horace Miner in his anthropological paper, published in 1956.
The tribe Miner described had many odd rituals including “scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument” and another ritual that “consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.”
It was actually a satire of everyday American life. “Nacirema” is “American” spelled backward. The hoax shows the gullibility of science to leap on a bandwagon and not be left on the beach and especially to ride it to the grant trough.
Its lesson can be applied to the AGW debate that rages now.
“Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe,” — Albert Einstein
I have a question that someone may be able to answer…….I’d like to know what the # .038% represents in words or fractions……it is 380 parts per million right? I just can’t figure out what that means as a percentage……..is it .038 of One percent or .038/1 OR is it 38 one thousandths of one percent? Any help appreciated.
Hi Sharon, you are right, it’s 380 parts per million…. or 380/1,000,000 or .038%
It’s a minute part of our air, and humans only account for 3% of the annual CO2 emissions…the other 97% is from natural sources.
as exapmles: (Gt = Gigaton)
Plant respiration stands for 220 Gt.
Oceans release 330 Gt.
Anthropogenic emissions are at 26.4 Gt.
See what an absolutely infinitesimal amount that is? The CO2 scheme, is only a scheme….
Jason Blanchards last blog post..Who wants a dose of socialized medicine?
The CATO INSTITUTES full-page newspaper ad (I posted it on Hypocrisy.com) list 120 top scientists who respectfully told OBAMA he is wrong about climate change.
If you plow into that list you find some really interesting writings that contradict the IPCC grantees largely paid to agree on CO2. That pay-to-play science is dangerous but too typical.