GUEST COLUMN: Study all Global Warning Scientific Research
The Hershey Montessori Students did an exemplary job of global warming research and presentation recently at the Kent State University Geauga Campus. They did a…
The Hershey Montessori Students did an exemplary job of global warming research and presentation recently at the Kent State University Geauga Campus. They did a terrific job.
There was, however, a weakness in the presentation which was beyond the control of the students, for which they deserve no blame whatever. The research they performed was largely based on published literature and commentaries, regarding global warming.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) was presented as the deadly greenhouse gas, whose “elevated” concentration in the atmosphere is a major cause of global warming. CO2 is a gas that absorbs and reflects heat. But heat has to come from somewhere else first, chiefly the sun and volcanoes.
The students said the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.038 percent; true. But only 3 percent of atmospheric CO2 is generated by mankind (a.k.a. “anthropogenic”) and that accounts for only 0.116 percent of the overall greenhouse effect.
Many atmospheric warming models tend to understate or flatly ignore the greenhouse effect of the far more common greenhouse gas, water vapor, which constitutes 95 percent of greenhouse gases.
The students did a very nice job of showing that each greenhouse gas has its own characteristic global warming potential (GWP), but the numbers don’t quite add up properly without including water vapor into all the calculations describing the warming effect. Again, the students are not to blame for this oversight, as they based the presentation on their research, including information from Greenpeace.
Unfortunately, the information available to most researchers is woefully incomplete. Scientific data which oppose the “consensus opinion” that man-made CO2 is the cause of global warming, may have been suppressed from publication in scientific journals/literature.
This surprising revelation was discovered through emails hacked from Dr. Michael Mann, the guru of global warming. He advocated in September 2009 the “boycott or hostile takeover” of the journal “Climate Research” because the journal
published some work by Stephen McIntyre, one of the researchers who discredited some of Mann’s most significant work work touted by the United Nations IPCC and Al Gore as the Gospel. A most embarrassing situation indeed! Mann and many “man-made” global warming advocates have repeatedly conspired to suppress publication of data which refutes their pre-conclusion that man is the cause of global warming. They also provided suggestions to other researchers on how to “massage the data” to better support their pre-conclusion.
It appears that research counter to the “consensus” is not reported, dismissed and is otherwise absent from what is taught to our children. It is becoming suspiciously apparent that man-made CO2 global warming is the conclusion that must be supported by the published “research.” Are we seeing indoctrination rather than education?
Joann Simpson, the first female Ph.D. in meterology has said of global warming ” as a scientist, I remain skeptical.” Dr. Ivan Giaver, nobel prize winning physicist has said ” I am a skeptic. Global warming has become a new religion.” Former Greenpeace member Jarl R. Ahlbeck, chemical engineer at Abo University in Finland, has said “So far real measurements give no ground for concern about catastrophic future warming.”
Our planet has limited resources with which to combat problems. We must be very selective and very certain that we have a real problem and the correct cause of that problem before we rush to global judgement and commit precious resources. Global warming via man-made CO2 generation has not been proven to be real, dangerous or unnatural. Historically peaks and valleys of CO2 concentrations have been virtually entirely natural and cyclical. Did man, burning fossil fuels, end the ice age and melt the glaciers? Of course not!
Students should be enabled and encouraged to form a conclusion by studying all of the global warming scientific research, both pro and con, and not just the research that gets published in support of the pre-formed conclusion. Such is the scientific method.
James R. MacNeal
Troy Township
