Part I ended with leftist environmentalists about to institute a POLITICAL/religious movement to promote a specific hypothesis that came about after the 30 year period of global COOLING that ended at about 1970--short circuiting the skeptical scienfic method in favor of making scieintific conclusions fit into the POLLITICAL model.
Dinosaurs once walked the Earth. It was REALLY HOT. Woolly mammoths once walked the Earth. It was REALLY cold. This all happened without man (discounting my exclusive excerpts from the Ice Age Times, and the campaign of Al Gorice against the promiscuous use of FIRE--Al Gorice obviously having been proven right by the melting of the frozen English Channel and the glaciers covering North America down to Florida).
There is obviously a problem blaming man for the climate changes of the Earth. The Earth has done much more significant things before--all by itself.
But leftist environmentalists began to get the idea, in the 1960's as the Earth appeared to be COOLING, that they could try to advance their agenda by talking about how man was going to ruin the climate of the Earth. There was a problem, however, with "global cooling". It was not obvious how man was causing the COOLING of the Earth. Sure, you could claim that pollutant particles were COOLING the Earth, but the evidence was lacking. That did not really stop leftists. They tried to make a big deal about NUCLEAR WINTER--how a nuclear exchange would result in a WINTER that would end all life of Earth (or at least all human life). The idea was that we HAD to have unilateral abandonment of nuclear weapons, or whatever "disamament" deal we could get (no matter how stupid). Ronald Reagan would expose this leftist ploy for the stupidity it was, as he DEFEATED the Soviet Union. But the leftists IDEA of using "climate change" SCARE as a POLTICAL weapon was sown.
There were scientists already suggesting, even as the climate appeared to COOL (1940-1970--see the charts in Michael Crichton's "State of Fear"), that we were "spilling" greenhouse gases into the air at a rate that should eventually have a warming effect on the Earth.
Now physics suggests that man has a warming effect on the Earth. This takes us to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the lack of a perpetual motion machine. The Second Law of Thermodynamics suggeststhat entropy (which can be thought as "heat", or even "chaos") always increases. This is the idea that any macroscopic system spreads out "waster" heat--once known as the concept of an eventual "heat death" of the universe as entopy becomes evenly distributed througout the universe. Now the Big Band theory, and the possibility of an osciallating universe, has tended to put this concept of an eventual "heat death" of the universe a little on hold. I digress.
Abve absolute zero, production of ALL energy puts out heat. This does not just include heating our homes in the winter, or our cars (although that DOES put out heat--DOES "warm the Earth") In other words, there is NO perpetual motion machine that runs forever without adding additonal energy. There is NO 100% efficient production of energy. Our own bodies put out HEAT (as we also exhale the greenhouase gas, CO2). When electricity runs along a wire, it always puts out HEAT. Every electrical appliance puts out HEAT. The laws of physics gruarantee it. There is just no doubt that man's activities on Earth, as well as man's very existence on Earth, have a HEATING effect on the Earth.
Starting in about 1970, after about 30 years of COOLING, the Earth began to warm. Now the concept of a single "temperature" of the Earth is probably erroneous, but average temperatires on the Earth clearly entered a warming trend (strangely enough, as Michael Crichton points out in "State of Fear", there never has been a CONSISTENT warming trend in the United States, even since 1970, as 1936 remains the warmest year in the U.S. since about 1880). Temperature measurement has not remained consistent, and one study has shown that maybe HALF of the alleged "global warming" in the last century is because of the methods, and locations, of world temperature measurements. Still, there was pretty convincing evidence that the Earth entered up a WARMING trend from about 1970 to about 1998--or about another 30 year period (about the same period of time as that covered by the previous COOLING trend.
Leftist envrionmentalists had already started focusing on man's effect on the climate of teh Earth, as they tried to figure out how to USE global cooling politically. Wasn't this easy? I just told you that physics tells us that man's activities (at least some of them) have a warming effect on the Earth's atmosphere, asheat is produced. Heat is an absolutely necessary byproduct of the production of energy. In fact, we even exploded hydrogen bombs in open air tests (which everyone would have to agree was environmentally irresponsible--excusable at all only by a plea of necessity, which might be challenged). That definitely prodcued HEAT (although in a time when the Earth was "cooling".
That last shows the problem with saying that man's direct production of heat is causing the Earth to warm at an alarming rate. Physics tell us that such warming IS happening--without any doubt at all. However, physics also tells us that such production of heat, as a byproduct on energy production (conversion from one form to another), is INSIGNIFICANT, in comparison with the SUN. The FUSION, thermonuclear reactions occurring in the sun cause the SUN to transmit energy to the Earth that can be measured and/or calculated fairly closely (even though we CANNOT accurately predict the changes in the sun's output, as sunspots, solar flares and the like occur). ALL of the energy produced by man is minuscule, in comparison.
Leftists wanting to come up with a PLAUSIBLE way to blame man for the warming of the Earth just were not going to be able to sell the idea that the minor (in comparison with the sun) amount of heat directly produced by man could have a significant effect on the Earth's temperature. Oh, there is no doubt that such production of heat "warms" the Earth. It jusst does so in an intintesimal degree.
What to do; what to do!. Well, leftists had an answer. Oh, there was that embarrassing 30 year COOLING period from 1940 to 1970. And you still have the problme of changes in energy from the SUN dwaring all of the activities of man. But atmospheric physics is not nearly as far advanced as energy physics. In fact, it is still pretty much in its infancy. Just like we KNOW that heat is produced by the production of energy, we KNOW that certain gases have a greenouse like effect (sun's rays are trapped as heat by these gases, more than the other gases of the atmosphere).
What we don't know is whether this has any more real quantitative effect than the minuscule HEAT produced directly by man. This still might be a very minor effect, in compariston with the SUN (or thinngs like vulcanoes throwing particles into the upper atmosphere). WHY was there that cooling period before 1970, anyway?
Did not matter to leftist environmentalists. They were not interested in the SLOW process of the scientific method. They saw a POTLICAL/RELIGIOUS opportunity to advance their agenda. Atmospheric phsysics is not advanced enouch to say exactly how much effect greenhouse gases have on the "temperature" of the whole atmosphere. It cannot be really DISPROVED (other than inferentially) that such greenhouse gases COULD warm the atmosphere significantly. This was a Heaven sent opportunity for leftists trying to USE "science" (as Stalin tried to use Lysenkoism).
End of part II. Part III will follow as to what happened then, although you should know.
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