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 ime
magazine has outdone itself in its latest cover story on global
warming. The predictions found within make the
calamities
prophesied in the Book of Revelations look like a welcome reprieve
from the ultimate doom of catastrophic global warming. The cover
photo shows an egg sizzling in a frying pan with the Earth as the
yolk. The shot is reminiscent, perhaps not accidentally, of the
"This-is-your-brain-on-drugs" ads that ran in the 1980s.
The following, says Time, are the consequences of global
warming: glaciers disappearing, coral reefs dying, destructive El-Niņo
events becoming more frequent, storms becoming more frequent and
intense, droughts more pronounced, coastal erosion increasing, less
rainfall, agriculture in turmoil, eco-systems thrown out of balance,
rising seas, dramatically shifting climate zones, mass human migrations,
contaminated water supplies, more respiratory illness due to ozone
pollution, more heat waves and heat-related deaths, increases in
rodent- and insect-borne disease, such as dengue fever, malaria,
encephalitis, and Lyme disease, and so on.
To cap off this litany of horrors, Time makes the outrageous
(and false) claim: "Worst of all, this increase in temperatures
is happening at a pace that outstrips anything the earth has seen
in the past 100 million years."
There is just one problem with these assertions. Most of them are
untrue, and the one or two that are true have nothing to do with
increases in carbon-dioxide levels. Take sea levels. They are rising,
but the rate has not changed in the last 100 years even though carbon-dioxide
levels have increased.
Glaciers are disappearing in parts of the world, but the glaciers
on Kilimanjaro mentioned in the Time story aren't retreating
due to higher temperatures, since local temperatures haven't changed
in that area. Are we supposed to believe that these glaciers respond
to global-mean rather than local temperatures? Moreover, temperature
is one of the lesser factors that affect glacier dynamics.
Even sillier is Time's claim that ozone pollution will increase,
thereby leading to more respiratory illnesses. Ozone is formed by
solar radiation and has nothing to do with the temperature. Global
warming will not lead to more intense sunshine.
Time justifies itself by an appeal to the report of the United
Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the bible of
global-warming religion. The problem, however, is that they only
read the politically doctored Summary for Policymakers and not the
report itself. The IPCC report makes the same point about sea-level
rise that I make above. It also points out, pace Time,
that there has been no increase in storm frequency or intensity.
The IPCC report is full of statements that directly refute the claims
found in the Time article.
In an effort to appear balanced, Time does mention the work
of Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology
at MIT, and Dr. John Christy, director of Earth System Science Center
at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, both of whom served
as lead authors of the IPCC report, but are skeptical nonetheless.
The article only devotes a single paragraph to their criticisms,
however, without explaining the devastating implications for global-warming
theory.
Dr. Lindzen, for example, has tested a key assumption found in all
global climate models — upon which catastrophic global-warming
scenarios are based — and found that it is wrong. According
to greenhouse theory, a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
would lead to a trivial amount of warming over the next 100 years,
about 1 degree centigrade. This warming, however, increases evaporation,
leading to higher levels of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water
vapor is the most prevalent greenhouse gas, making up approximately
95 percent of the total. This "positive water vapor feedback effect"
is what would cause the lion's share of the predicted warming. Lindzen
has found that the feedback effect is actually negative in
at least one area of the tropics. If this finding holds throughout
the tropics, it would mean that temperatures would only increase
by about 0.4 to 1.2 degrees centigrade over the next 100 years.
That's miniscule considering how much the Earth's temperature fluctuates
naturally. Indeed, in about the time it takes for a traffic light
to change, a person waiting to cross the street will experience
a temperature change of about 0.5 degrees centigrade. This is the
turbulent-fluctuation value. It's doubtful if anybody even notices
it.
Time redeems itself somewhat when discussing the Kyoto Protocol.
It points out that the carbon-dioxide reductions required under
Kyoto would be fairly steep, at least 30 percent. It also gives
President Bush some credit for his political savvy. "If Bush gauged
the heat he'd take from the rest of the world wrong, he read the
American people more or less right," it said. Although a Time/CNN
poll found that 75 percent of Americans think global warming is
a serious problem, only 48 percent said they'd be willing to pay
an additional 25 cents for a gallon of gasoline.
"But," says Time, "an effective program to fight climate
change need not involve huge increases in energy prices or draconian
rules that choke industries at the smokestacks." This can be accomplished
"by introducing new technologies that would make conservation not
only easier but also economical."
This is real pie-in-the-sky stuff. The American Society of Mechanical
Engineers published a study a couple of years ago which said that
the technologies needed to meet the Kyoto targets are simply not
available at this time. Consider also that the Department of Energy's
Energy Information Administration estimates that electricity demand
in this country will rise by 45 percent over the next 20 years and
56 percent worldwide.
There is simply no way to turn back the clock to pre-1990 emission
levels in the face of these facts. To meet the Kyoto targets would
have required nothing short of massive reductions in energy use
and serious harm to the economy. Perhaps the Time writers
need to re-watch the old "This-is your-brain-on-drugs" commercials,
because they've clearly been smoking something.
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