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Professor of Atmospheric Science Says Global Warming a Myth

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Augie Auer, Professor of Atmospheric Science for 22 years at the University of Wyoming, says global warming is a myth and it will be joke material in 5 years.

Global warming debunked
By ANDREW SWALLOW – The Timaru Herald | Saturday, 19 May 2007

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man’s contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn’t change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

“We’re all going to survive this. It’s all going to be a joke in five years,” he said.

A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin had created the current hysteria and it was time to put a stop to it.

“It is time to attack the myth of global warming,” he said.

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.

“If we didn’t have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time.”

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man’s activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

“That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then,” he said.

“We couldn’t do it (change the climate) even if we wanted to because water vapour dominates.”

Yet the Greens continued to use phrases such as “The planet is groaning under the weight of CO2” and Government policies were about to hit industries such as farming, he warned.

“The Greens are really going to go after you because you put out 49 per cent of the countries emissions. Does anybody ask 49 per cent of what? Does anybody know how small that number is?

“It’s become a witch-hunt; a Salem witch-hunt,” he said.

Comments
Open Question: Since CO2 is considered evil, the idea of burning hydrogen (which "only" emits water vapour and not any evil CO2) is considered environmentally friendly. So I'm just curious whether anyone has bothered to compare the theoretical greenhouse contribution of the emitted water vapour with that of the equivalent CO2 emitted from other fuels to do the same work. Is the highly sensitive branding of CO2 as evil leading to an inconsistent examination of or even blindness to the potential effects of alternatives (again, supposing for the sake of the question that we could affect global warming)? This is a question I've wondered about the internal consistency of the practical global warming position.ericB
May 27, 2007
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magnan, re the percentage of manmade CO2, yes, the percentage of manmade CO2 emissions compared to natural emissions which is much larger. Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 Gt. The ocean releases about 330 Gt. In contrast, human CO2 emissions are only around 26.4 Gt per year. Pretty tiny in comparison, huh? The point is human CO2 emissions upsets the natural balance. CO2 levels have remained fairly steady until recently as natural emissions are balanced by natural absorptions. CO2 levels have hovered between 180 and 300 parts per million of the past 500,000 years. Land plants absorb about 440 Gt of carbon per year and the ocean absorbs about 330 Gt. As for human CO2 emissions, about 40% is being absorbed, mostly by the oceans. The rest remains in the atmosphere which is why atmospheric CO2 has risen to record high levels over 380 ppm.John Cook
May 24, 2007
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I'm not asking anyone to take my word for it. LOOK at the temperature data yourself. We've had a network of satellites monitoring the temperature of the atmosphere from the surface to the stratosphere at every point on the face of the earth for 25 years. There is no more reliable data than this. The satellites are cross-checked by the old fashioned method - launching a weather balloon that returns temperatures aloft. It used to be that weather balloons were the only way of measuring the all important temperatures aloft and the coverage was awfully spotty. Surface readings by people looking at a thermometer are unreliable because (suprise) people don't want to go outside and read thermometers when it's cold and wet so the readings get biased by nicer weather. Also the great majority of surface thermometers are close to cities which create "heat islands". The following link is the only truly reliable, accurate, global temperature data we have: http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/ Look closely at the graph below the world map. That's the average temperature of the entire earth. Before we had satellites this was not possible. Note the average temperature dips into the cooler than normal region (below the centerline) as often as it rises above it. For the real shocker look how the warming and cooling is distributed on the world map. Move through the series back through time. The lower latitudes north and south of the equator are mostly cooler than normal. The hotspots are predominantly in the high northern latitudes close to manmade sources of soot. Anyone that has ever lived where there's much soot from diesel, coal, and wood burning has seen how it darkens light colored objects and in the spring when the snow melts it concentrates on the top and makes the surface get darker and darker as it melts. Need I remind anyone of the difference in temperature between light and dark colored things sitting out in the sun? This is why the northern snowfields are melting more and earlier and you can see it plain as day on the global temperature map. NASA has a number of studies showing that soot is a huge factor in global warming but the IPCC reduced NASA's soot impact findings BY A FACTOR TEN! Otherwise it would have been as large as their claim for CO2 impact. You have been lied to by the IPCC. They pick and choose what they want to include so as to make it look like CO2 is the big bogeyman which makes the U.S. enemy #1 instead of the real culprits - Europe and Asia. By the way, did you know that very soon China will overtake the United States as the largest emitter of manmade CO2? If you count the number of trees we plant that suck CO2 back out of the air CHINA is already numero uno in CO2 emission. But we aren't allowed to count planting trees for carbon offset credits. The original Kyoto protocol said we could then it was taken away. That's when Bush said "Go fly a kite". Anyhow, that isn't the worst of it. China was, is, and continues to be EXEMPT from Kyoto. That's because making China responsible for its emissions would be too much of a hardship. Isn't that just precious. We pay the price so China can build its economic and military strength faster. Screw that. The U.S. has vastly reduced soot emissions beginning with the Clean Air Act of 1960's. That's because we rightly believe soot is a pollutant and CO2 is plant food. That brings up another little factoid you don't hear about. It's estimated that crop yields are 15% greater now due to manmade CO2 making plants grow faster. I wonder how many more people in the third world will starve if crop yields start declining? Just friggin' lovely. There aren't enough people starving already I guess.DaveScot
May 21, 2007
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I am so glad there are places like Uncommon Descent to present opposing points of view on the whole fabricated global warming issue. Why just last night on Coast to Coast AM Art Bell, who wrote a book about how global warming is a natural cycle caused by the position of Central America ("The Coming Global Superstorm"), said that every scientist on earth agrees that we humans are to blame for global warming and should feel guilty for it. I felt betrayed that someone who is known for dealing with alternative points of view (and a whole lot of kooks, don't get me wrong) on his show would stoop as low as to recant his previous opinion that global warming is a natural cycle and blame it on human emissions. Thanks again for all you've done and keep up the good work.UrbanMysticDee
May 21, 2007
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And if you missed this from Drudge's site: "High school student shown 'INCONVENIENT TRUTH' in 4 different classes: 'I really don't understand why they keep showing it'..." http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=f7806f79-bf1f-4bd1-8d33-c904feb71047 I wonder if they've shown the Great Global Warming Hoax to the kids?mike1962
May 21, 2007
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[...] HT to Uncommon Descent [...]NixGuy.com » Global warming Will Be a Joke in Five Years
May 21, 2007
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I don’t know enough about the science to decide whether this claim about the insignificance of carbon dioxide percentage is valid. He isn’t arguing that it hasn’t gone way up since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but that it actually contributes little to global temperature rise. Magnan You may find this link useful in helping you decide. http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/05/you_too_can_be_a_leading_clima.php As one of the climate scientists explains - Auer's confusion is similar to confusing an increase of 3.2% pa in your salary with a 30% increase in your bank balance.markf
May 21, 2007
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magnan The ice in the northern hemisphere is melting because it's getting covered with black soot from Asian and European sources. The warming is greater or equal at the surface than aloft which points to a cause at the surface rather than aloft. It's far more fashionable these days to blame the U.S. which emits a lot of CO2 but very little black carbon. The southern hemisphere isn't warming at all compared to the northern. The vast majority of the antarctic is getting colder, not warmer. The only part that is getting warmer is the penninsula and that's because it sticks out into the circumpolar trade winds which were undergoing a normal cyclical warming trend driven by ocean currents much like El Nino and La Nina cycle the weather in the northern hemisphere. CO2 warming should be uniform, not concentrated in high northern latitudes. CO2 disperses evenly through the atmosphere. Black carbon (soot) on the other hand can only travel a few thousand kilometers from the source. Guess where most of sources are? If you guess in the temperate northern hemisphere withing a few thousand kilometers of the artic circle then give yourself a cigar. Go here and look in the article and commentary for links to all the data supporting black carbon as the true cause of what is happening.DaveScot
May 21, 2007
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idnet.com.au If Global Warming can be debunked, why is it only a lowly New Zealand paper that prints this story? If Darwinian Evolution can be debunked, why is it only an almost invisible Italian biology journal (Rivista) will print the debunkings? When you understand one you understand the other. On a relative basis I'd say there are far more credentialed experts in meteorology, climatology, and atmospheric sciences who think manmade global warming is bunk than there are credentialed experts in evolutionary biology who think Darwinian evolution is bunk. The big difference is in the unwashed masses. Most of those accept manmade global warming and reject chance & necessity evolution. Given the rejection of chance & necessity is largely driven by belief in religious mythology I think global warming is on far shakier ground since there more real experts reject it and it's been a matter of debate for barely 20 years while the Darwin controversy has been going on for 150 years. Global warming will fall long before Darwin. Mark my words. The good news is that common enemies make for strange bedfellows. The common enemy is ideologically and politically driven consensus science. That enemy is behind both man-made global warming and nature-made evolution. The real evidence on close examination supports neither. I actually found the article on the Drudge Report which is more widely read than the New York and Los Angeles Times combined. Give it a couple days to see who else picks it up but I wouldn't count on liberal mouth organs like NYT and LAT to pick it up. I'd venture to guess it first appeared in a New Zealand paper because that's where Augie lives now and it was his comments at some obscure farm assocation meeting that only a local paper would be covering. Regardless of who printed it the salient point is that Augie was indeed a professor of atmospheric science at UofWyoming for 22 years. He isn't some ditzy California movie starlet holding a fashionable opinion or a failed presidential candidate with no background in science. DaveScot
May 21, 2007
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I don't know enough about the science to decide whether this claim about the insignificance of carbon dioxide percentage is valid. He isn't arguing that it hasn't gone way up since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, but that it actually contributes little to global temperature rise. This sort of story seems to be more trying to take the public's eye off the ball, which is the actual warming process. What I think is undeniable is that major global warming is actually in progress, whether it is human-caused or natural. Consider the melting of the Arctic and Greenland ice packs, ice shelfs in Antarctica, and shrinkage of glaciers worldwide. Is this and all related news really "A combination of misinterpreted and misguided science, media hype, and political spin"? It seems hard to believe, especially for cases shown in video camera footage that would have to be totally faked. For instance the disappearance of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica between 2002 and 2004, shown in satellite photography on the Discover channel Planet Earth series recently. Maybe this and all related news is really lying propaganda through the media by the "Greens", but if not this is still a major and growing problem whether we have created it ourselves or not. I am all too aware of the evils of "consensus science" so well described by Michael Crichton. But I don't think global warming is likely to entirely be a myth. Anyway, if we should be suspicious of new "fads" in consensus science, we should also be suspicious of attempts to dismiss apparently good scientific data.magnan
May 21, 2007
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The greenhouse skeptics astound me. If there is any doubt about the possible impacts we should be easing up on our release of greenhouse gases for the sake of our grandchildren. Blind Harry can see that we have had a devastating impact on our environment within our lifetimes. Blind Harry can also see that the amount of available oil is rapidly decreasing and we must think of alternative solutions www.itiseasytobegreen.comJean cannon
May 20, 2007
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If Global Warming can be debunked, why is it only a lowly New Zealand paper that prints this story?idnet.com.au
May 20, 2007
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