On Friday, 10thn June, 2011, our dearly beloved Secretary of State for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Mrs. Caroline Spelman laid the blame for the recent lack of rainfall in eastern England on the “….big challenge of climate change….”
Mrs. Spelman who is the Member for Meriden was educated at the Hertfordshire and Essex Grammar School for Girls and then went up to Queen Mary College, University of London where she read European Studies, achieving a First Class BA.
The British Gazette will observe the customary chivalry and will not mention Mrs Spelman’s age but suffice it to say she was educated at a good school before the education standards were “dummed down.” The British Gazette must therefore muse as to whether the young Caroline Cormack was sent to the remove so far as Maths and the sciences were concerned or was this bright girl bright across the board?
It is a relevant question for if answered, will shed light on whether Mrs Spelman’s advisers are either fools or fraudsters.
A serious charge you say Dear Reader? Yes it is. But let us “cut to the chase.” If ever there was a subject that was subject to more waffle and nonsense it is the topic of climate change.
People such as Mrs Spelman make much of CO2.
One of the best and most straightforward explanations of the greenhouse effect of CO2 can be found in the excellent booklet, Cool Thinking on Climate Change (ISBN 978-0-9547087-8-8) by Roger Helmer, MEP for the East Midlands.
Herewith an extract that can be found on pages 38 and 39 of this publication:
“….Yes, CO2 is a green house gas. It blocks out-going infra-red radiation from passing through the atmosphere and out into space, and so it tends to keep the world warm. But it only blocks a small percentage of the infra red spectrum. And the key insight is that this section of the spectrum is almost totally blocked by the current level of atmosphereic CO2. Further increases in CO2 will have minimal effect.
The “climate forcing effect” (“forcing” is the term used to describe the green house gas warming effect) of CO2 is governed by a logarithmic equation that represents a law of diminishing returns. Imagine a world with no CO2 in the atmosphere. If we introduced say 20 parts per million of CO2 into the atmosphere, it would have a marked warming effect. Introduce a second 20 parts per million tranche, taking the total to 40 part per million, and the second tranche will have a much smaller effect. The third will be smaller again. From the current level of 385 parts per million, a further 20 parts per million will have a trivial effect.
Arrhenius in the 19th century was well aware of this relationship, arguing that the warming effect of CO2 was proportional to the square route of its concentration – which amounts to the same thing.
Bob Carter is a research professor in the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. He is a geologist specialising in palaeoclimatology, stratigraphy, marine geology, and environmental science, and a former Director of Australia’s Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program. For a more detailed and technical treatment of the “diminishing returns” point, with the equation set out and the outcome in graphical form, see Carter’s excellent paper, “Knock, knock: where is the evidence for dangerous human-caused global warming?
But let me offer you a more homely analogy. Suppose on a sunny day, you decide to go out into your garden, and to whitewash the outside of your kitchen window. You will perhaps halve the light coming into your kitchen. Apply a second coat, and the light will diminish again, halving with each coat of whitewash. But by the time you get to, say, the tenth coat, there will be virtually no light getting into the room, and further coats will make little difference. That is where we are with the greenhouse effect of atmospheric CO2….”
British Gazette Comment: As science goes, this is simple science. The nature of CO2 is fully known amongst the global scientific community. Why then, are people like Mrs Spelman urging the country to adopt ruinous policies to tackle a problem that does not exist?
There are only two logical explanations: Mrs Spelman’s advisers are either fools or fraudsters.
Speaking the Truth unto the Nation
In the very same interview, Ms Spelman claimed that this year’s very cold winter followed by this year’s warm and dry spring were ‘examples of the extreme weather that is now accompanying climate change’. Maybe she is unaware of the seriously cold winters of 1946/7 and 1962/3 and the series of dry years we had in the 1980s that led to parts of Essex being offiicially redesignated ‘semi-desert’
Quick point: Arrhenius made two big errors in his ‘warming’ calculations, such in his first paper he claimed doubling CO2 would raise temperatures by 6deg C, but in 1908 he changed that to just 2deg C. But second error was deeper than that: he chose to ignore ALL the heat absorbed *into* the earth’s crust when heated by the sun. This returns to the surface at night warming the air by conduction and CONVECTION (radiation plays only a small part). This explains the so-called ‘greenhouse’ temperature elevations observed on Mars, the Earth, Venus and the Moon (yes you read that correctly!). How odd that the Moon has no atmosphere at all!
There are, primarily, two contributing factors in Mrs. Spelman’s futuristic vision of a world made uncomfortable if not uninhabitable by what she sees as an overly generous world wide carbon production.
One is the inability of politicians who are not trained in science to properly understand and who as a logical consequence of such, surround themselves with people who have been so trained but who are ideologically of a similar political persuasion. Thus the scene is set for delusion.
The second strand to Mrs. Spelman’s flirtation with global temperature fluctuation is public ignorance and apathy. As I know to my cost, a majority of people, especially those of thirty five years age and younger, are barely literate and numerate if they are, as most are, the product of the State education system – to invent a new oxymoron. They know nothing, yet believe anything imparted to them through an ‘official’ e.g Government source. All of us will pay, one way or another for the disgraceful attempt to increase the burden of taxation arising from action to restrict carbon production while controlling a supine population unable to exercise reasoning and judgment.
Will the people ultimately take to the streets – I think not.