Global fire storm warming Dear Sunrise at 7 team. You asked for comment. We really need to get this ‘debate’ onto a more rational footing. 1. Lining up celebrities, and I include Al Gore and UN luminaries in that category, has no bearing on this issue. Celebrities commonly get used when rational, scientific evidence and argument don’t support our views. Climate alarmists do this on a regular basis. It’s also appropriate to note that the UN has a celebrated history of incompetence and non accountability in delivering the goals it was formed to deliver. 2. The fact that fire fighters perceive the fire to be the worst (without defining what that means) they have seen, has no bearing on the issue. Global warming means fires need to show an ‘elevation’ in some way, globally. At the risk of sounding boring, both warming and the elevation need to be defined. 3. Short time frames like 3 decades have little credibility in terms of changes to our planet’s climate (not the same as weather). Let’s get some evidence of bush fire characteristics over the last 10,000 years so we see what happened when humans had minimal impact and then what the record looks like as we move through the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Then let’s see the evidence of bush fires in this case. I believe Australian bush fires in the 1850’s to 1930’s were worse in terms of area burnt. But what of bush fire frequency / area damaged / intensity / damage costs etc occurring in Africa, North America, South America, Asia and Europe? If we’re talking about climate and not grubby politics, we need data on all fires – not just fires we see or get inconvenienced by. As human population increases, the impact of fire upon us obviously increases. Population is another issue when it comes to CO2 production, but one which our media are much less keen on exploring! 4. The fact that high air temperatures, dry soil and dry vegetation make fires hotter is not an issue. Gore putting up straw men so he can simply pull them down, is the scientific version of quoting a celebrity. It’s not the question we are facing. So, what is the question? I believe the question is, is the CO2 that humans produce, pushing our planetary temperature up? We therefore need to separate out temperature increases caused by solar activity, seismic (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes) activity, asteroid strikes, moisture (rain and cloud) levels, wind and ocean currents etc all of which have massive impacts upon global temperature. 5. Measuring the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (just a part of the total CO2 budget for our planet), is a complex matter. However the measures we now have set the current atmospheric level of CO2 at 385 ppmv. Evidence of atmospheric CO2 indicates that this level has varied from around 4000 ppmv to as low as 270 ppmv. Over around 420 million years, the CO2 level has varied up and down. There has been no progressive increase in atmospheric CO2 levels through that period nor even a progressive increase since around 1780 which is generally regarded as the ‘takeoff’ point for the industrial revolution. Note that it still hasn’t occurred in many highly polluting parts of the world. Finally, if the media want to contribute to clarifying the human impact upon global temperature, you need to stop going over the same garbage we have been hearing for years now, resist the temptation of smart arse quips that contribute nothing, and help deliver some evidence to our screens. But then, you’ve got ratings to consider. AFH 26.10.13
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 03:37:15 +0000
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