Video broadcast of this presentation on Google Video

GLOBAL WARMING

This page will present some of the most pertinent information about the much publicized issue of Global Warming.

I highly recommend the following videos:

British documentary
Canadian documentary

I am a tree hugger. This is me in California on a project to build a section of the Pacific Crest Trail. I volunteer my time to help build and maintain hiking trails in the Central Texas area and all over the country. I have always enjoyed the great outdoors and my playground as a kid was the woods.

Nobody wants dirty air and dirty water. We all appreciate beautiful land and scenery. We are all environmentalists. We all care about preserving a livable environment.

We should also care about children like these. Smoke in the home is one of the world's leading child killers, claiming nearly one million lives each year. These children inhale this smoke and develop respiratory diseases. That is because one third of the people in the world, primarily in developing countries such as those in Africa and Asia, do not have modern energy and use solid fuels like wood to cook and heat. These children are dying today.

source: Household Energy Network: "Protecting children from indoor air pollution exposure through outdoor cooking"

This mother and child also represent those who are in peril due the lack of availability of modern energy sources. According to the author Michael Crichton, 30,000 people a day die of poverty, a third of planet doesn't have electricity, a billion are without clean drinking water, and half a billion going to bed hungry every night. He says it seems we would rather look 100 years in the future at what might happen than what is happening now.

source: World Health Organization
source: Environmental Health
source: Michael Crichton, NPR Intelligence Squared debate

Why is our standard of living so much higher? Because we have modern energy sources to light and heat our homes, power factories to produce goods, and transport us. The vast majority of our energy comes from combustion of fossils fuels. It is expected in the future that technology will provide alternative sources of energy as fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive. Currently we have 67 years known reserves of oil, 158 years known reserves of natural gas, and 210 years known reserves of coal. These are the resources available today to modernize and develop the nations of Africa and Asia to save the lives of women and children.

source: "Sustainable Fossil Fuels", Prof Mark Jaccard

So what is the problem?

Combustion of fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 is as natural a molecule as we have on earth. We and all other animals exhale CO2. Plants inhale CO2. So what is the matter with CO2?

The Global Warming/Climate Crisis advocates say that CO2 is a pollutant.

How did a natural substance that is needed to sustain life become a pollutant?

Former Vice President Al Gore won an Academy Award for his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" and won a Nobel Prize for his work on the issue of Global Warming. Here he is showing us the history of CO2 levels and global temperatures over the last hundreds of thousands of years. Based on this data, he tells us these two are related and presumes that CO2 in the atmosphere causes temperatures to rise.

Is he right?

source: "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore

Let's take a closer look at the data. From this graph you can see that the earth's global temperature and the CO2 level in the atmosphere clearly are correlated. So it seems that one of them is the cause and the other is the effect. How can you tell which is which?

Imagine you measured the temperature outside your house and recorded how green your grass was. In the summer it is hot and the grass is green. As it gets colder in the fall the grass is still green, and when it gets cold in the winter the grass eventually turned brown. The process reverses in the spring as your grass is still brown as it warms up, and then in summer the grass eventually goes back to green.

Can you make it warmer in the winter by throwing green paint on your lawn? Of course not! The temperature changes first and the effect on the grass lags behind. What leads (happens first) is the cause, what lags (happens last) is the effect.

So what happens first in the data shown above?

Temperature changes first. CO2 lags. Temperature is causing CO2 to change, not the other way around. The entirety of Al Gore's argument is crippled.

So how does rising temperature cause more CO2 in the atmosphere? Where does this CO2 come from?

source: "New Antarctic Core Data" 5/30/2000

If you open a can of soda, CO2 escapes. When it is cold, the sugary water inside the can can absorb CO2. If you warm up the sugary water, the CO2 will effervesce and the soda goes flat.

The oceans are like a salty soda. When the water is cool is can absorb CO2. When it warms up it gives off CO2 gas to the air.

How much? A heck of a lot more than the amount of CO2 produced by combustion of fossil fuels. And that is nothing compared to the amount of CO2 caused by respiration from all animals and microbes on the planet plus decomposing plant material. The effects of the oceans, animal respiration, plant decay, and other natural phenomena dwarf the CO2 contribution from burning fossil fuels.

Considering the CO2 accounts for only 0.038% of the Earth's atmospheric composition, the effect of CO2 production from fossil fuel combustion is extremely small.

source: New Scientist - Environment

Well, aren't the polar ice caps melting away?

There is melting of the polar ice caps - on Mars. There is warming on Jupiter. On Pluto. Study of Neptune's moon Triton shows warming. So, multiple bodies in our solar system are experiencing warming at the same time. Are there Martians driving SUVs around, putting CO2 into the Martian atmosphere? Are the Plutonians burning coal in their power plants? Are the Juperterians and Tritonians putting CO2 in their atmosphere?

Could it be that there is a single common energy source for our solar system that gets warmer and cooler over time? How about that big yellow thing in the sky that is on fire all day long?

The intensity of the Sun does change. Periods of intense and less intense solar activity have been observed and correlated with temperatures on earth.

source: National Geographic

So will it keep getting hotter and hotter forever?

There is evidence that the Earth is starting to cool. One of the ways to measure the Earth's temperature is from satelite measurements of temperature in a section of the Earth's atmosphere called the troposphere. The measurements show that temperatures in the troposphere are not increasing and seem to have levelled off. It it understood that warming of the earth due to the greenhouse effect would be indicated by warming of the troposphere. This data suggests that the greenhouse effect is not warming the earth currently.

source: Still Waiting for Greenhouse

So what about the troposphere! Isn't it getting hotter on the surface of the planet where we live?

That is not clear. What you see above is one of many temperature reporting stations that are used to derive the graphs of temperature changes. Do you see anything wrong with the method of measurement here? Would you expect an accurate measurement of temperature from a sensor placed on concrete next to an exhaust fan, a refrigeration unit, and an air conditioning unit? The sensor shown here (the MMTS) is clearly not located in a suitable place for a useful measurement, but this is the data that is being used in these reports. This is not an isolated case. Former meteorologist Anthony Watts has documented multitudes of cases just like this. It calls into question the accuracy of the reports being given on rising temperatures.

source: Anthony Watts
source: Surface Stations, surveys of weather reporting stations

What makes Pat Dixon think he is qualified to say anything about this subject?

Like you I study issues like this because they affect us. People like Al Gore and Austin Mayor Will Wynn want to impose polcies that will damage our economy and impair the development needed in Africa and Asia to raise their standard of living. We rely on those with appropriate credentials to do the science and give us the results. And more of them every day are rejecting the claims of Al Gore and Will Wynn.

source: US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Workss source: Petition Project

So what is the motive of the Global Warming/Climate Crisis advocates?

This is Dr Patrick Moore, the founder of GreenPeace. He left GreenPeace when he found that the environmental movement was being taken over by leftist anti-Americans. Dr Moore says that after the fall of Communism and the Berlin Wall, the leftists needed to find another way to promote their agenda. He says they used the environmental movement to attack Western-American free market principles and promote an agenda that would stunt development. He says that the Global Warming issue is one promoted by the left exactly for that purpose.

I only ask you to use your own intellect and determine for yourself what the science says. Do not believe Al Gore and Will Wynn when they say the debate is over. There is too much uncertainty and there are too many contradictions to allow policies that would do harm to us and those in developing countries to go forward unchecked. Are we going to make these women and children perish today based on weather predictions for the next 100 years?

Please consider this carefully

Links to additional resources:

General resources on Global Warming

"An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore
British documentary, video
British documentary, "The Great Global Warming Swindle" page
Canadian documentary
NPR Intelligence Squared debate
RealClimate blog
Ludwig von Mises Institute
Meridian Magazine
What Really Happened

Underdeveloped world suffering

Amy Smith, TED presentation
Indoor air pollution in developing countries
Indoor smoke in Kenya
Indoor smoke effect on children

Solar affect on global temperature

"Bright sun, warm earth. Coincidence?"
Solar Causes - Read the Sunspots
British study refuting solar link to warming temperatures
National Geographic - Mars warming

Scientific data

Free Republic, Temperature and CO2 history
Correlation of Temperature and CO2
Data from Antarctic Ice Cores

Temperature measurement

Surface Stations
Anthony Watts

Scientific consensus

US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Workss
Petition Project
Earth Times