A Primer on CO2 and Climate
Howard C. Hayden
• Paperback: 65 pages (including 3 pages of references & a 9 page
appendix)
• Publisher: Vale
Lakes Publishing LLC (2007)
• Language: English
Available
temporarily from:
Howard Hayden, corkhayden@comcast.net
The Energy Advocate
www.energyadvocate.com
Vales Lake
Publishing, LLC.
www.valeslake.com
PO Box 7609 * NEW P.O. NUMBER *
Pueblo West CO 81007
(fax)
(719) 547-7819
Dr. Hayden says:
“I am just now getting it registered on Amazon.com. In the meantime, you can tell your friends
that they can order it from me at $10 instead of $13.95 from Amazon. A friend of a friend...”
Review on 12 September 2007 by Donald N.
Anderson.
Dr.
Hayden (Professor Emeritus of Physics from the University of Connecticut) has written
a wonderful little book giving a non-technical description of the role of CO2
in the atmosphere. In 53 pages he lays
out a large number of facts about CO2 and it’s
possible contribution to a warming earth.
He
covers the general questions:
Dr.
Hayden uses 36 figures and 8 tables to clearly illustrate his points.
His
summary is succinct and he reaches each point very quickly. He starts with the greenhouse gas phenomenon
and contrasts the role of the CO2 absorption spectrum with the role of the
spectrum of H2O, it’s dimmer
and trimmer.
He
discusses the increase in CO2 in recent years and then goes back to discuss the
CO2 and temperature graph covering the last 400,000 years publicized recently
by Al Gore. He also covers the 1812 –
1964 period, and then discusses CO2 over about 500
million years (the CO2 was many times higher in almost all earlier geologic
periods).
Dr.
Hayden points out many of the difficulties in making reasonable temperature measurements
and argues (successfully in my opinion) that by far the best global
temperatures are those from satellites.
These currently show (Dec. 78 – Jun. 07) an increase below 0.13 degrees
/ decade. The short time satellites have
been in orbit covers less than 30 years.
Many think this period records the most rapid global temperature
increase in the last 150 years, so I believe this small temperature increase
cannot be reasonably counted as part of a long term trend. The shorter trends often reverse several
times in a 100 year period so the record does not yet permit reasonable
extrapolation.
He
also discusses how the discredited 1,000 year “hockey stick” graph of
temperatures (Mann, et. al.) has been corrected and shows higher temperatures
in the 1400’s than at present. The
hockey stick appearance was a statistical error that is common among
non-statistically trained economists and financiers. Physical evidence in the form of 1,000 and
5,000 year old tree stumps above the present tree line, confirm a warmer period
in earlier human history.
He
provides a brief discussion of O-18 measurements as a proxy for long term
temperature trends as well as C-14 and Be-10 and their use in measuring past
solar activity.
Dr.
Hayden has an excellent discussion backed up by several illustrations of carbon
flows into an out of the various sinks.
The biggest flows of carbon into the atmosphere are the
it’s release by warm ocean water and soil respiration. The biggest flows out of the atmosphere are
photosynthesis on land and CO2 uptake by cold ocean water. These are about 30
times and 40 times respectively the flow of carbon into the atmosphere from
fossil fuel burning. He also provides a
brief explanation for the decreasing greenhouse effect for each addition of CO2
to the atmosphere. There is also a
comment on the retroactive causality implied by suggesting that increases in
CO2 cause increases in temperature.
His
discussion of computer models is dear to my own heart as I spent several years
modeling infinitely simpler flows using the best research at the time (early
1980’s). We found that our 2 phase,
crude, water, gas flows with pressure, temperature and orifice variations were
only going to be able to predict a short distance from measured
conditions. Those predictions required
“training” on a longer past measured history and even then were subject to
occasional contradiction by the real world.
The only justification was they were better (fewer million dollar
mistakes) than an experienced engineer’s top-of-the-head guess. I believe the global climate models suffer
from so many omissions and even some assumptions that seem to violate physical
laws that any reliance on their predictive ability is religion not science.
This summary work has discussions of the special
temperature situation in the Antarctic, the claims of more violent storms, the
effects of aerosols, correlations, solar activity, glacial retreat, polar ice
caps on Mars, sea levels, mosquitoes, and the supposed scientific consensus.
When
discussing anthropogenic global warming in his summary, Dr. Hayden concludes
that “yes, the earth has been warming up.”
Are humans responsible “to some minor extent, probably; to a large
extent, no.” He argues that, based on
past history, warming may be good for some areas and bad for others.
Assuming
the foregoing summary is incorrect and humans are causing our planet to warn,
Dr. Hayden discusses the political solution and what he calls “Engineering
Dreams by non-Engineers.” He discusses
the problems with 6 of these “Dreams” including: greater efficiency,
sequestration, renewables, fission, fusion, and hydrogen. While some can be useful, none offer a
replacement for fossil fuels to the level the global warmers deem necessary.
I
have read a number of interesting papers covering many of the topics he
includes, but Dr. Hayden has produced a remarkable summary of the global
warming issue in a very small book.