Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

In my September Car and Driver, there is an interesting article by Patrick Bedard in response to the movie, "An Inconvenient Truth". I can't find the article on the web to link in, but I'd like to provide enough of the article here to see what you think. Interesting perspective - would like to hear from those who have researched it more what they think.

I didn't want to transcribe the whole article, but selected the parts that contained the data and conclusions. Everything in quotes is by Patric Bedard. Italics are my "summary"

He begins by point out that North America was covered with glaciers 18,000 years ago and then began to recede. As of 5000 years ago, they were as far as Ohio. 4000 years ago, the US was largely ice free.

“The long absence of farm-belt glaciers confirms an inconvenient truth that Gore chooses to ignore. The warming of our planet started thousands of years before SUVs began adding their spew to the greenhouse. Indeed, the whole greenhouse theory of global warming goes wobbly if you just change one small assumption.

Logic and chemistry say all CO2 is the same, whether it blows out a Porsche tailpipe or is exhaled form Al Gore’s lungs or wafts off my compost pile or the rotting of dead plants in the Atchafalaya swamp.”

Article says greenhouse theorists would disagree, and he sets the stage by defining what composes the atmosphere. He continues,

“The atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen (78 percent), oxygen (21 percent), argon (0.93 percent), and CO2 (0.04 percent)…The lower atmosphere also contains varying amounts of water vapor, up to four percent by volume.”

Article describes the warming potency of the greenhouse gases, according to the Kyoto Protocol. Between CO2, Methane and Nitrous oxide, CO2 has low potency but high concentration, making it responsible for 72 percent of Kyoto warming. He continues,

“Now for an inconvenient truth about CO2 sources – nature generates about 30 times as much of it as does man. Yet the warming worriers are unconcerned about nature’s outpouring. They – and Al Gore – are alarmed only about anthropogenic CO2, that 3.2 percent caused by humans.

They like to point fingers at the U.S., which generated about 23 percent of the world’s anthropogenic CO2 in 2003, the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration. But this finger-pointing ignores yet another inconvenient truth about CO2. In fact, it’s a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect when water vapor is taken into consideration. All the greenhouse gases together, including CO2 and methane, produce less than two percent of the greenhouse effect, according to Richard S. Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lindzen, by the way, is described by one source as “the most renowned climatologist in all the world.”

When water vapor is put in that perspective, then anthropogenic CO2 produces less that 0.1 of one percent of the greenhouse effect.

If everyone knows that water vapor is the dominant greenhouse gas, why do Al Gore and so many others focus on CO2? Call it the politics of the possible. Water vapor is almost entirely natural. It’s beyond the reach of man’s screwdriver. But when the delegates of 189 countries met at Kyoto in December 1997 to discuss global climate change, they could hardly vote to do nothing. So instead, they agreed that the developed countries of the world would reduce emissions of six man-made greenhouse gases. At the top of the list is CO2, a trivial influence on global warming compared with water vapor, but unquestionably man’s larges contribution.

In deciding that it couldn’t reduce water vapor, Kyoto really decided that it could reduce global warming. But that’s an inconvenient truth that wouldn’t make much of a movie."


Thoughts?

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

Sure water evaporates from lakes and stuff, but like the guy said, humans aren't the only thing producing CO2. Likewise with water, we emmit water vapor... someone here mentioned it's part of what comes out of our tailpipes now, not to mention if hydrogen powered cars were around. I would think there would be ways to reduce water emissions... have that diaper gel stuff they use to fight fires with integrated in exhaust systems or something...

I don't know what I'm talking about.

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

In the first place there are two questions here. One, are we experiencing global warming or are we experiencing global cooling, and two, is mankind's activities contributing to global warming or are our activities contributing to global cooling. All the discussions I read seem to mix these two fundamental questions together and reach one conclusion that are then applied to both when in fact they are two separate issues.

I'm not a climate expert and I am not going to list all of the articles I have read, but I will give a layman's opinion (Why? Because it's my God given right to have an opinion, that's why!).

The study I have read that had the best reasonable examination (in my opinion) as to whether we are experiencing global warming or not explained that the Earth has three short term (short as in geological time) climate cycles, dependent on the orbital conditions (~41,000 year long axis wobble, a ~23,000 year long tilt cycle, and a ~100,000 year long cycle related to how much the orbit the Earth follows is elliptical verses a circle. There is a strong correlation to the average temperature the Earth has experienced in the last million years or so related to the various combinations of these three variables. And, we are definitely on the upswing side of average temperate right now based on these cycles. I don't think this is in question in most climate studies.

What is in question is just how much does mankind's addition of greenhouse gasses boost the degree of warming we are experiencing? The truth is, NO ONE can say for sure how much. But I don't think that anyone can honestly believe that we're DECREASING the effect. This is my belief: While it is unclear whether our addition of CO2 is making a measurable impact on the net temperate increase, it's not reducing the increase. So in my mind, anything we can do to reduce the CO2 we put into the air is a good thing.

On the other hand, I also think that we will find out we are going to have to do more than simply be carbon neutral in order to attain the ideal average temperature across the globe. That's of course assuming we really can impact the whole Earth. That still remains to be proven.

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

With the human population expanding at an alarming pace, and along with it consumer culture, how long can we sustain this kind of growth, burning fossil fuels, stealing from the land and not putting back, before it all collapses under it's own weight? How can we not be effecting the global environment when more and more of it's surface is paved over, forests cleared, CO2 stored as carbon based fuels being released at never before seen rates, and on and on and on? We can either wake up and do something about it or we can sit back and watch as the Dakotas become desert, the Rocky Mountain snow-melt dry up leaving millions living in the American West without water. As humans, we have a huge problem to face and it's time to figure out what we are going to do about it.

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

What does AlGore want us to do - stop driving cars? What's his replacement?

The record high temp for Phoenix yesterday was 112 degrees. Set in 1905. The higest temp ever in May was 114, set in 1910. Highest August temp is 116, set in 1975, and the record of 116 in September was set in 1950.

The Earf might be getting slightly warmer, but has it not been doing that since the last Ice Age started melting away, like C&D pointed out?

More forests will contribute to a WARMER earth. see this page:

http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1205-caldeira.html

We do need to approach the issue with climate science, but to blame humans entirely, and the USA specifically? That's just silly.

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

Heh. Actually, the current state of the ICE based automobile is horribly inefficient. For all of the gas we burn, AT MOST 15% of the energy pushes the car down the road. That means we currently throw away at least 85% of the energy as waste heat. Not to say that it's possible to engineer a 100% efficient system but surely we can do better than this. Even if we stayed with burning fossil fuels, there are types of IC engines that are a darn sight more efficient than what we currently use.

The single biggest problem with a future of "status quo" is that all of those third world countries (most of whom are doing their best to get to a standard of living enjoyed by the developed countries, despite the covert oppression they experience from Western business -- let's not get that argument started :)) are increasing the number of polluting automobiles on the road much faster than the population is growing. In ten year's time, there will be double the number of cars operating in the world. Even if they all buy cars that are twice as fuel efficient, we are only maintaining the status quo (and that's assuming we have enough oil, which we don't).

Cars have to get significantly more efficient fast or we're in real trouble. And in the bigger picture, we also have to learn to be a lot more efficient in all energy production or we're going to see prices, pollution, and carbon emissions all skyrocket.

The good news is that despite big oil's active work to eliminate competition (and don't think for a moment they are not actively working to stamp out any new technology that has a chance to unseat them from control) the train has left the station and we are about to enter the golden age of energy production (a bit of an optimist here but hey, we have so many new tech things on the hoizon one or more has to work out, right?).

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

...could not resist... :D

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

Earf?

Urf...

Arf...

Sorry, couldn't resist. :D

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? It was pretty clear Al Gore doesn't expect people to do anything so radical, and people who suggest that that's the only way to get results, will scare people away from doing anything at all. More practical, widely excepted solutions (buying hybrids or other more efficient vehicles, and offsetting your emissions), are going to have better results because people will actually do them. Don't make living green sound miserable. The same goes for businesses, instead of saying, "well what about the poor oil companies," think of all the new jobs that will be created, all the money there is to be made, in search of green solutions.

Re: Car and Driver Editorial on Inconvenient Truth
 

Hey, I'm all for a greener, cleaner Earf. I recycle like a madman (my recycle bin goes out about twice a month and my garbage bin goes out about once every two months) and I own a Segway which I ride 7.2 miles every day to shorten my commute (Segway gets 620 miles per gallon equivalent.) I'm driving my second hybrid.

I keep up with the global warming news.

What I don't like about AlGore's stuff is that he blames the USA and companies in the USA for most of the problem. Sure, we have a lot of cars, but as a society of people, we must live in the manner in which society has developed. We cannot all ride bikes to work. We need cars for long distance trips to see displaced family. We need trucks and trains to deliver our goods to us.

Anyone with a brain knows the icecaps are melting, but we REALLY don't have any PROOF that man-made GHG is the cause. We just don't.

Does that mean I want to do nothing at all? Of course not. But let's not get radical and start trying to disrupt society with unworkable ideas. Work the changes in as they fit.

Do you know that car companies could make all cars PZEV rated for $200-$500 per car? They don't think consumers would go for the extra cost just to have a clean-emitting car. The problem is that in the case of TOO MANY PEOPLE, they are correct.