I Told You So

Climate scientists are beginning to behave like scientists … and are now looking at other factors that contribute to global warming and global cooling (aka, climate change).  Now, volcano emissions are suspected in the contribution to the 15-year hiatus in global warming … see: Wattsupwiththat Blog.  This is not just progress; it is the scales falling from the eyes of climate researchers. This should have happened years ago as we were being led by the nose into believing Al Gore’s global-warming manifesto.  Here are two important quotes in this article from real climate researchers:

“This is the most comprehensive observational evaluation of the role of volcanic activity on climate in the early part of the 21st century,” says co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT. “We assess the contributions of volcanoes on temperatures in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere — and find they’ve certainly played some role in keeping the Earth cooler. There are many components of the Earth’s climate system that can increase or decrease the temperature of the globe. For example, while greenhouse gases cause warming, some types of small particles, known as aerosols, cause cooling. When volcanoes erupt explosively enough, they enhance these aerosols — a phenomenon referred to as “volcanic forcing.”

and:

Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers University and a leading expert on the impacts of volcanic eruptions on climate, says these findings are an important part of the larger climate picture. “This paper reminds us that there are multiple causes of climate change, both natural and anthropogenic, and that we need to consider all of them when interpreting past climate and predicting future climate.”

Both emphases I have added ... as this is the point I have been making for many years.  (Apparently as often stated, there is not really a scientific consensus on carbon dioxide being the bete noire of global warming ) Way back in 2006 I said the following in one of my blogs:

[T]he world has gone through many natural warming and cooling cycles. These cycles have apparently been caused by one or more of the following events (roughly in order of potential effect): 

1) Changes (wiggles) in the amount of the orthogonal offset in the Earth’s rotational axis relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun. (This offset is what causes our world’s seasons.)
2) The periodic cycle of sunspot activity (and other solar dynamics) causing a change in the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth.
3) Enormous emissions of Earth’s gasses and particulates naturally and during cataclysmic geological events like earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
4) The Earth’s on-going global chemistry which creates and destroys massive amounts of inorganic compounds.
5) The periodic small perturbations of the Earth in its orbit … closer to and further from the sun
6) The evolving structure of the Earth’s upper atmosphere (magnetic, chemical, and electrical) which filter out or permit in the ethers of space.
7) Shifts in the Earth’s ocean currents caused by intercontinental plate tectonic movements and other poorly-understood factors.
8) The effect of the Earth’s biomass and mankind on the composition and proportions of our atmospheric gasses (carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, etc. -- e.g., early plants converted enormous amount of naturally occurring carbon dioxide into oxygen … which then enabled the evolution of animals … who then reciprocated by converting oxygen back into carbon dioxide). By the by, methane has 20 times the atmospheric warming effect as carbon dioxide … and is mainly produced by nature, not by man.

The notion of a change (caused by the burning of fossil fuels) in the relatively small proportion of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere (from 310 to 370 parts per million during the last 40 years) is responsible for our current warming cycle seems to me to be the essence of human species egocentricity. If one truly comprehends the scope of the above-outlined possible reasons for global warming, then one has to conclude that politics must the driving force behind our current environmental hysteria. I think that any “scientist’ who lays global warming totally at the feet of the increase in carbon dioxide must first quantify the effects (positive and/or negative) of all the above possible causes. 

To see this quote in its original situ, please go to: Junkier Science.

I hate to gloat, but in this one case I will … I told you so.

Afterward: Global-warming zealots are trying to gag Charles Krauthammer. They want the Washington Post to stop publishing his columns because of his open-minded attitude toward global-warming "science" ... see: Fox News Story. Since I am also exhibiting an equivalent skepticism with apparent impunity, should I be insulted?