Inconvenient Facts – a book to counter climate extremist.
On various trips to Singapore, I enjoy browsing the Kinokuniya bookshop. The geology section continues to be a few shelves of mostly collection of mineral & fossil identification books, though occasionally there is something of further interest. The adjoining earth science section has grown to about a dozen shelves, with most on the demise of the climate, and water. However, the number of books on a more rational approach to the climate question is growing.
The book, “Inconvenient Facts – the science that Al Gore doesn’t want you to know” by Gregory Wrightstone (2017) is clearly taking up the science to debunk much to the climate extremist’s views. This book briefly cites some fundamentals to the Earth's climate that appear in other popular science books and would seem to underly the basic scientific nature of Earth’s climate – regardless of your position on climate change.
Milankovich Cycles- The glacial-interglacial cycles are controlled by changes in the Earth’s tilt and the shape of its orbit that occur in predictable cycles. The eccentricity of the Earths orbit (i.e., how far the shape of the orbit differs from a perfect circle) varies in 100,000-year cycles. The tilt, or obliquity of the Earth’s axis varies in 41,000-year cycles. The Earth also wobbles on a 26,000-year cycle that causes a phenomenon known as the “precession of the equinoxes”. Collectively, these three cycles are known as the Milankovich cycles. [pp 43]
Greenhouse Effect; - About 30% of the Sun’s radiation is reflected by the clouds, most of it passes through the Earth's atmosphere and strikes the surface. There it is adsorbed, and its energy emitted in the near infra-red spectrum. Some of that re-admitted energy is adsorbed by greenhouse gas molecules. As they adsorb the radiation, they in turn emit energy in the form of heat. This is the Greenhouse effect. Greenhouse gases and the warming they cause keep the Earth at a comfortable average temperature of about 15 dec Celsius. Without them, the Earth would be un-livable at minus 18 deg Celsius.
Greenhouse gasses: - The absolute humidity can vary considerably, being up to around 4% in the tropics. Water vapor contributes 60 – 95% of the greenhouse effect. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 0.04%. and contributes about 6% towards the greenhouse effect. Apparently, the warming effect of each molecule of CO2 decreases significantly (logarithmically) as its concentration increases.
The role of mankind; --It would seem that all parties agree that additional greenhouse gasses from man's industrial activity contributes towards the greenhouse effect. However, there is an extremely wide difference between scientists as to the amount and nature of such a man-made effect. Many scientists point out that increasing CO2 has more-short- & long-term beneficial effects, rather than the model predicted disastrous effects on our future.
This is an easy read book with lots of graphs. The book lists, and talks about, 60 inconvenient facts, from number 1 that carbon dioxide is not the primary greenhouse gas, to number 60 that most of Antarctica is cooling and gaining ice mass.
This book is essential reading for people establishing or implementing climate related policy in their home, company or government.