Community Perspective
Global warming and Fairbanks’ power solution
Published Sunday, March 30, 2008
In the future, nuclear energy might become more attractive for many regions worldwide, even for Interior Alaska. However, I am not sure whether the public will accept a renaissance of nuclear energy.
In Germany (Kalkar) and Austria (Zwentendorf) nuclear power plants were built consuming billions of German marks and Austrian shillings, but they never did produce energy because of political decisions. The German re-conversion plant Wackersdorf, also very expensive, never reconverted nuclear waste. Environmental groups celebrated these political decisions as their “greatest victories.”
In his Community Perspective (March 9) Mr. Swift suggested that nuclear energy might help to reduce the impact of global warming. This is sole wishful thinking because his conclusion is based on inaccurate statements like “the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has been almost constant over the past 100,000 years — until the beginning of the industrial age,” “climate models all show a direct causal relationship between the rise in CO2 levels and global warming”, and “the evidence that mankind is drastically altering our climate is overwhelming.”
First, the emission by Alaska’s electricity production in 2005, based on Alaska Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Reference Case Projections, corresponds to 0.01 percent of the global CO2 emission observed in the same year.
Second, the Vostok (East Antarctica) ice core results indicate that the CO2 concentration was varying between 200 and 280 parts per million during the last 420,000 years (Petit et al., 1999, Nature, 399, 429-436). However, there are also indications that the CO2 concentration variations lag behind the atmospheric temperature in the southern hemisphere (Mudelsee, 2001, Quaternary Science Reviews 20, 583-589).
Third, climate models are still in a state of infancy. They produce scenarios, but are not able to simulate any real climate change of the past.
Fourth, the “overwhelming evidence” is based on so-called cherry picking, i.e., any indication that does not fit the agenda of global warming activists is ignored. It is one of the merits of Professor Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu to document that the rise of the annual mean global near-surface temperature by less than 1.8 degress during the last 160 years may be related to a recovery of the Earth from the Little Ice Age.
Last year Science published a paper written by eight authors of the fourth report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in which recent climate observations were compared with climate projections. This paper documents a fundamental scientific misconduct because the first 12 years of the Mauna Loa CO2 observations were neglected because the projections disagree with the observations. In my comment to this paper I showed that in 1988 when the IPCC was established and thirty years of Mauna Loa CO2 data were available no correlation between a rise of the CO2 concentration and an increase of the mean near-surface temperature in the northern hemisphere did exist. Meanwhile, I wonder why the IPCC was established.
In 1977, a book titled “The Weather Conspiracy — The Coming of the New Ice Age” was published. An excerpt of this book reads: “Many hot-earth men believe that global temperature will rise by at least 3.8 (degrees) by 2020, given that the volume of carbon dioxide is doubled in the next 50 years. If this happened, ships could well sail the entire Arctic Circle, and the melting of the polar ice caps could cause the sea level to rise by 200 to 400 feet. London and New York would vanish. So would Rome, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Marseille and hundreds of other cities. Trees would grow in Alaska and Siberia; cattle would be raised on what was once tundra.” This excerpt is accompanied by a map of Europe showing large areas with cities of more than 1 million inhabitants that are affected by flooding if the polar ice caps would melt. The cited author is Bert Bolin, the first chairman of the IPCC.
Let me quote Maurice F. Strong, one of the world’s leading environmentalists and senior advisor to various U.N. Secretaries-General: “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring about?”
This means that the western civilization is threatened, rather than our climate.
Gerhard Kramm, Ph.D. is an atmospheric scientist with the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Community Discussion
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While I am a layman, I always thought that the models used to prove global warming were flawed by their lack of all input.
Dr. Kramm, thank you sincerely for the excellent article. It's a keeper.
Maybe you can figure out how to use the Hipas facility for probing the atmosphere with RamanShift Near-Infrared Spectroscopy analysis to get real-time data about the methane, CO2, etc.
...or, maybe somebody has already done that??
Excellent article, nice to see real scientists getting into the media. For more on the IPCC deceptions, check out this article from 1997 by Dr Robert Stevenson, Oceanographer, now deceased.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Ar...
A great article although I am still in favor of more nuclear power and a carbon tax, as long as it replaced the corporate income tax. While the evidence of global warming is not over whelming I do think there is a preponderance of evidence that there is some reason for concern. Why not replace the inefficient corporate income tax with a tax that may actually correct a market pricing failure?
It would be interesting to get some idea on if a warmer planet would actually support a greater amount of life. Slow global warming could very well be healthy for the planet.
MEL1776---
I believe that the corporate income tax is a fantasy. It will always be paid by the consumer. So, in that light, I like your version of a carbon tax.
But more than that, I also agree with you, and wonder if global warming might not support life positively. It's happened before in history. Why do you think they call it Greenland?
I feel like a heretic in the Brave New World?
PS---
After watching High Priest Al Gore last night on 60 Minutes, I'm not only a heretic, but a flat earth believer, and we never went to the moon (it was fake).
Glacieries - But do you believe in ManBearPig?
thank you dr. kramm, and thank you newsminer.
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