GLOWARMERS NEED TO REDUCE THEIR WATER FOOTPRINT

The latest fear to gain a grip on the throats of America's unhinged Left is global warming.  Most of those expressing global warming fears are not scientists, and some who call themselves scientists hold degrees in so-called soft sciences. 

What I have just said is a logical fallacy called the "ad hominem fallacy."  The term ad hominem is a Latin phrase meaning "to the man."  It is a fallacy because it seeks to discredit an argument by casting doubt on the character of the person asserting the argument, rather than finding an error in the argument. 

I make this point because ad hominem argument is about 96% of the "science" presented to prove the case of the global warming alarmists.

I begin by admitting I am not a scientist.  However, I am a patent lawyer and the patent office requires a rigorous education in hard science before they will allow an attorney to take the patent bar examination.  A patent lawyer's job is to understand technical descriptions and to explain these in terms that others can understand.  I will attempt to do this with global warming.

Solar activity is the primary factor in creating the cycles of warming and cooling.  Studies have been done using ice cores from the Antarctic ice pack.  Examination of ice content tells the dates and climatic conditions that prevailed at  given times.  The ice reveals that there have been several warming and cooling cycles over the last  450,000 years.  

Each warming period was accompanied by an increase in carbon dioxide (CO₂).  In most warming periods the increase in CO₂  lagged behind the increase in temperatures.  This is to be expected. 

Most of the CO₂ on earth is trapped in the oceans.  As temperatures increased, the seas became warmer.  As water becomes warmer its ability to hold a gas in solution is decreased, so more CO₂ was released into the atmosphere.  The CO₂  increase did not cause the warming periods.   The warming caused the  CO₂  increase. 

The earth has entered a warming cycle since the end of the "Little Ice Age" around 1850.   However, most of the observed increase in average temperature seen in the last century came about in the first fifty years.  That is, it came before the increase in human-caused CO₂ emissions.

Even if there were global warming and "greenhouse gases" were contributing to it, the focus on CO₂ is misplaced.  There are four main "greenhouse gases: water (H₂O), carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄), and ozone (O₃).  These gases absorb heat radiated during the day from the sun-warmed earth.  This heat excites the molecules of the gases and at a certain rate for each gas this heat is released and radiated in all directions, including back down to earth. 

CO₂ is not the most important of these gases.  Water has somewhere between five and seven times as much heating effect as CO_2.   In fact, if the Kyoto Treaty were to be adhered to, by the year 2050, according to the alarmists' own models, the net effect would be to slow the increase in average temperature by less than seven one hundredths of a degree Celsius, a number too small to measure. 

If water is five times more important than CO₂  in warming, why has there not been a Kyoto type conference to convince nations to reduce their water footprint?  Shouldn't liberals pay five times as much for water credits as they do for carbon credits?  

If San Francisco bans bottled water because carbon is released when bottled water is transported, why not just ban water because water is released when water is used?   Maybe Mayor Gavin Newsome is a paid mouthpiece for "Big Water," i.e., the San Francisco municipal water supply.   After all, those who question CO₂ fears are hinted to be "paid mouthpieces for Big Oil."  Isn't Big Water five times more scary?

The reality is, there is nothing which humans can do to reduce the main greenhouse gas, water.  If we risk destroying our economies to meet Kyoto expectations, the best we can do to limit a minor greenhouse gas, CO_2,  would have an undetectable result. 

In fact, as the sun warms in the current cycle, the warming seas would release more CO₂  than we can take away by our feeble efforts.  Further, it does not appear that any of the models on which Kyoto is based take into account an increase in water vapor which would accompany an increase in solar activity.

Maybe the best thing we can do is to invent some new, scary, yet harmless menace with which to frighten liberals.  Then we can sit back, relax, use carbon (by lighting cigars), drink water (mixed with bourbon), and let nature take its course.  It always has.      
 

Jim Warner is a retired attorney.  He served as a domestic policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan from 1985 until 1989.  Serving as a Marine aviator in Vietnam, his aircraft was shot down over North Vietnam.  His Communist captors held him in the "Hanoi Hilton" and other prisoner-of-war torture camps for 5½ years.