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Recently, the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) held a three-day, 300-person conference at Regent University, in my hometown of Virginia Beach, VA. An objective of the conference was to create carbon offsets to mitigate the carbon footprint created by the conference attendees. To meet this objective, attendees planted 115 trees and shrubs on the campus. According to Al Todd, the conference committee’s chairman and a watershed program leader for the US Forest Service, the “carbon cost” of the conference, excluding air travel, was 15 to 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide. When confronted with the fact that one acre of forest can sequester between 0.5 and 2.5 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, Todd admitted it would take 20 more years to offset the conference’s energy consumption. In his words, “We’ve got a lot of work to do, don’t we?”
This report makes you wonder if the AWRA accomplished anything in its three day conference other than planting trees. At a minimum it does suggest that before America commits all of its resources, energy, and economic prosperity to saving the planet and what some believe to be settled science, it would be prudent to ask ourselves some important questions. Principal among these are: “Is global warming real?” and “Does man’s activity contribute to global warming?” My conclusions are:
1. Yes, the planet is warming.
2. No, man’s activity has no appreciable impact on global warming.
My conclusions are supported by a scientific study, Increased Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, by Robinson, A.B., et al, reviewed and endorsed by more than 9,000 Ph.D.s (http://www.petitionproject.org/) , and the testimony of David Evans, the scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto protocol (http://mises.org/story/2571# and http://mises.org/story/2795 ).
The conclusion of the Robinson research is that the earth is warming at a rate of 0.5 degrees Centigrade per 100 years, and that this trend is naturally occurring, as the earth recovers from what is referred to as the Little Ice Age. The current warming trend can be traced to about 1800. The researchers conclude that over the last 3,000 years, the earth’s temperature has varied within a 3 degree Celsius range. Arctic temperature variation correlates strongly with solar activity and not with world hydrocarbon use.
In fact, the study concludes that overall the climate has improved. The number of tornados has decreased, the number of hurricanes has remained constant, and rainfall has increased. During the past 50 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased 22%, much of that due to human activity, but no correlation exists between temperature increase and carbon dioxide production. In fact the major effect has been to increase plant growth and biological diversity (that is, a positive effect).
The results of this study are confirmed by David Evans, one of the principals behind the global warming theory. His conclusions:
“After further research, new high-resolution ice core results (data points only a few hundred years apart) in 2000–2003 allowed us to distinguish which came first, the temperature rises or the CO2 rises. We found that temperature changes preceded CO2 changes by an average of 800 years. So temperature caused the CO2 levels, and not the other way around as previously assumed. The world should have started backpedaling away from blaming carbon emissions in 2003."
"There are several possible causes of global warming, and they each warm the atmosphere at different latitudes and altitudes — that is, each cause will produce a distinct pattern of hot spots in the atmosphere, or ‘signature.’ The greenhouse signature is very distinct from the others … There is no hotspot in the tropics at 10 km up, so now we know that greenhouse warming is not the (main) cause of global warming — so we know that carbon emissions are not the (main) cause of global warming.”
So what are the potential effects of global warming? I am not sure we know yet, except that the effects will not be principally due to man-made carbon dioxide production. In fact, by committing our resources, energy, and economic future to eliminating carbon production, we will deliberately make the situation worse. The well being of our society, the well being of the world, and the solution to the real effects of global warming depend upon low cost, abundant energy sources, of which carbon-based fuels is the backbone and will be the backbone for the next twenty years.
My solution is to develop ALL energy sources, including alternative energy sources and conservation. In the near term, we need to drill in America. We need to further develop natural gas and nuclear to build an energy bridge to the future. As I have documented in prior blogs, alternative energies, today, will not provide our energy need – they only satisfy a psychological need. Unfortunately, that psychological need is not based on science.
