Over 50 predictions of "PROVEN DOOM"

Thursday, 6 December 2018

David Attenborough: 'The sky is falling'

David Attenborough has been widely lauded in headlines worldwide for his dramatic claim that is"civilisation" is to be saved then "we" have just thirty years in which to "take action" -- that action being in the main, as per his speech, government action to ban private actions. “The world’s people have spoken," claimed Attenborough. "Time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now." A strange claim indeed to make in a week in which many of France's people set fire to Paris to protest the decision-makers' new French carbon tax.

Stranger still to hear the great man sound so shrill. In the words of Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore,

It's a real shame, but Sir David has allowed himself to be used as a prophet of doom. Who knows what caused his mind to be sucked into this deviance from his once celebratory view of living creation? The demonisation of CO2 is an evil act against the most important food for life.

Even if the doom-mongers were correct about the science, of course, that would say nothing at all about the action to be taken. Bjorn Lomborg for example warns that "strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself.” And civilisation itself demands in any case that we take the doom-mongering cautiously.

Before any implication for action can be present, additional information is required.
    One essential piece of information is the comparative valuation attached to retaining industrial civilisation versus avoiding global warming. If one values the benefits provided by industrial civilisation above the avoidance of the losses alleged to result from global warming, it follows that nothing should be done to stop global warming that destroys or undermines industrial civilisation. That is, it follows that global warming should simply be accepted as a byproduct of economic progress and that life should go on as normal in the face of it.
    Modern, industrial civilisation and its further development are values that we dare not sacrifice if we value our material well-being, our health, and our very lives. It is what has enabled billions more people to survive and to live longer and better. Here in the United States it has enabled the average person to live at a level far surpassing that of kings and emperors of a few generations ago.
    The foundation of this civilisation has been, and for the foreseeable future will continue to be, the use of fossil fuels.

Nevertheless, there is a reason most people sleep far more easily than they should given all the doom-mongering going around -- and there is a very good reason for that: which is the many, many years of  fatuous, fat-headed environmental predictions made by a litany of worry-worts and misanthropic headline-hunting doomsayers.

Predictions like these:

• Britain's industrial growth will come to a halt because its coal reserves are running out “… it is useless to think of substituting any other kind of fuel for coal... some day our coal seams [may] be found emptied to the bottom, and swept clean like a coal-cellar. Our fires and furnaces ... suddenly extinguished, and cold and darkness ... left to reign over a depopulated country."
  --Economist William Stanley Jevons, writing in 1865
• Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions....By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.
  --Peter Gunter, a professor at North Texas State University. Spring 1970 issue of ‘The Living Wilderness.’
• Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” 
  --‘Life’ Magazine, January 1970
• Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.--George Wald, Harvard Biologist, Earth Day, 1970
• It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.
  --Denis Hayes, chief organiser for Earth Day, 1970
• …some scientists estimate that the world's known supplies of oil, tin, copper, and aluminium will be used up within your lifetime.
  --1990s school textbook The United States and Its People, quoted by Ronald Bailey in testimony to US House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, Feb 4, 2004

[So many more further predictions of doom, from very important prophets of knowledge, :-) made in the past 50 years.

Are they seeking control and power over people?
Social legislation can NOT repeal physical Laws.
 So socialism is the governmental embodiment of the common good.

Greta Thunberg: Inconvenient Truth of Capitalism's Green Greed.

THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – FOR CONSENT: THE MOST INCONVENIENT TRUTH: “CAPITALISM IS IN DANGER OF FALLING APART” [ACT III]

Wrong Kind of Green Jan 28, 2019 The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg - for Consent: The Most Inconvenient Truth: "Capitalism is in Danger of Falling Apart"

January 28, 2019

http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/28/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-most-inconvenient-truth-capitalism-is-in-danger-of-falling-apart/

By Cory Morningstar

This is ACT III of the six-part series: The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent: The Political Economy of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

In ACT I of this new body of research I opened the dialogue with the observations of artist Hiroyuki Hamada:

“What’s infuriating about manipulations by Non Profit Industrial Complex is that they harvest good will of the people, especially young people. They target those who were not given skills and knowledge to truly think for themselves by institutions which are designed to serve the ruling class. Capitalism operates systematically and structurally like a cage to raise domesticated animals. Those organizations and their projects which operate under false slogans of humanity in order to prop up the hierarchy of money and violence are fast becoming some of the most crucial elements of the invisible cage of corporatism, colonialism and militarism.”

The Manufacturing of Greta Thunberg – for Consent has been written in six acts. [ACT I • ACT II • ACT III • ACT IV • ACT V • ACT VI] [Addenda: I]

In ACT I, I disclosed that Greta Thunberg, the current child prodigy and face of the youth movement to combat climate change, served as special youth advisor and trustee to the burgeoning mainstream tech start-up, “We Don’t Have Time”. I then explored the ambitions behind the tech company We Don’t Have Time.

In ACT II, I illustrated how today’s youth are the sacrificial lambs for the ruling elite. Also in this act I introduced the board members and advisors to “We Don’t Have Time.” I explored the leadership in the nascent We Don’t Have Time and the partnerships between the well established corporate environmental entities: Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Avaaz, Global Utmaning (Global Challenge), the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum (WEF).

In ACT III, I deconstruct how Al Gore and the Planet’s most powerful capitalists are behind today’s manufactured youth movements and why. I explore the We Don’t Have Time/Thunberg connections to Our Revolution, the Sanders Institute, This Is Zero Hour, the Sunrise Movement and the Green New Deal. I also touch upon Thunberg’s famous family. In particular, Thunberg’s celebrity mother, Malena Ernman (WWF Environmental Hero of the Year 2017), and her August 2018 book launch. I then explore the generous media attention afforded to Thunberg in both May and April of 2018 by SvD, one of Sweden’s largest newspapers.

In ACT IV, I examine the current campaign, now unfolding, in “leading the public into emergency mode”. More importantly, I summarize who and what this mode is to serve.

In ACT V, I take a closer look at the Green New Deal. I explore Data for Progress and the targeting of female youth as a key “femographic”. I connect the primary architect and authors of the “Green New Deal” data to the World Resources Institute. From there, I walk you through the interlocking Business & Sustainable Development Commission and the New Climate Economy – a project of the World Resources Institute. I disclose the common thread between these groups and the assignment of money to nature, represented by the Natural Capital Coalition and the non-profit industrial complex as an entity. Finally, I reveal how this has culminated in the implementation of payments for ecosystem services (the financialization and privatization of nature, global in scale) which is “expected to be adopted during the fifteenth meeting in Beijing in 2020.”

In the final act, ACT VI [Crescendo], I wrap up the series by divulging that the very foundations which have financed the climate “movement” over the past decade are the same foundations now partnered with the Climate Finance Partnership looking to unlock 100 trillion dollars from pension funds. I reveal the identities of individuals and groups at the helm of this interlocking matrix, controlling both the medium and the message. I take a step back in time to briefly demonstrate the ten years of strategic social engineering that have brought us to this very precipice. I look at the relationship between WWF, Stockholm Institute and World Resources Institute as key instruments in the creation of the financialization of nature. I also take a look at what the first public campaigns for the financialization of nature (“natural capital”) that are slowly being brought into the public realm by WWF. I reflect upon how mainstream NGOs are attempting to safeguard their influence and further manipulate the populace by going underground through Extinction Rebellion groups being organized in the US and across the world.

With the smoke now cleared, the weak and essentially non-existent demands reminiscent of the 2009 TckTckTck “demands” can now be fully understood.

Some of these topics, in addition to others, will be released and discussed in further detail as addenda built on the large volume of research.

Germany's green targets.

German CO2 Reduction Targets “Completely Illusionary,” Comments German National Daily

By P Gosselin on 9. May 2018

Game over for green energies and CO2 reductions?

Journalist Daniel Wetzel of German national daily Die Welt here presents a devastating commentary on Paris Accord and Germany’s so far “illusionary” CO2 reductions targets. The German failure is a signal that could have significant global consequences.

Wetzel not only calls the targets illusionary, he also believes the existing Energiewende (transition to green energies) is “at an end”.

2030 target completely illusionary

According to Wetzel, “The Energiewende and climate change are not among the priorities of the government” and that Germany reaching its self-imposed targets is achievable only if “everyone were forced to switch off every boiler, oven, motor. Completely illusionary.”

Lots of talk, no action

While German political leaders like to continue pretending they are taking real action to combat climate change, the reality is that the German government has been rolling back subsidies for green energies such as wind and sun over the past years. And many localities have made the permitting of wind parks far more stringent.

The days of unfettered support for green energies are over.

Germany’s CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions in millions of tonnes (Source: UBA Federal Office of Environment)

The result: Germany has not reduced its CO2 equivalent emissions for close to a decade (see chart above). Wetzel writes that everyone agrees that it is unrealistic to think that Germany will somehow make the sudden downward trend turn.

German Energiewende “at the end”

The Die Welt journalist adds: “Practically all renowned environmental analysts and government experts have already determined that the German Energiewende structurally has reached the end and that a system change is needed.”

Humans burning fuel one million years

In his commentary Wetzel also reminds that humans have been using fire for some one million years, and that it cannot be expected that they will just stop doing so during the course of one single generation.

Wetzel compares the Energiewende to the Apollo space program, which put man on the moon after 12 years and 120 billion dollars of investment. He notes that compared to the great transformation which Energiewende would entail, this was peanuts.

He warns that implementing the Energiewendecould cost the country a back-breaking three trillion euros (without mentioning the impact on climate would be negligible) and doubts the public would ever accept such a large-scale, draconian transformation of society.

German credibility takes a blow

Wetzel also comments the Germany’s failure to make the 2020 targets has tarnished the country’s image as a leader in climate protection, and adds: “The coalition agreement and the German Federal Budget for 2018 robbed all remaining credibility.”

In short Germany’s is not serious about reducing CO2.

Environmental groups and the Potsdam Institute, for example, are fuming, yet keep insisting it’s still not too late and achieving the target is still possible. But Wetzel injects sobriety and realism: “In the meantime we know that Germany will not only fail resoundingly to meet its self-imposed 2020 targets, but also those of the EU itself.”

With Germany as Europe’s largest economy, and regarded as a role model for all things green, the country’s failure would send a devastating message to the rest of the continent and the world: The Green Revolution was mostly a dream and was in fact never attainable. If tech-savvy Germany can’t do it, who can?

“No reality basis”

Yet, German officials continue to insist they can meet the 2030 target! But Die Welt’s Wetzel notes that doing so would mean Germany cutting it’s CO2 equivalent emissions by some 40%, or 350 million tonnes, within the next 12 years. That would mean radical and painful transformations. Recall that Germany has not managed to emissions at over the past decade (see chart above). Wetzel asks: “How credible is this target?”

Die Welt’s Wetzel summarizes:

The feasibility rhetoric of policymakers as a rule has no reality basis.”

Finally, he reminds that Germany going it alone will never work, and that climate protection has to be “organized internationally – or not at all”...

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Just some comments

Georg Thomas 9. May 2018 at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Reply

I liked the below paragraph from the German article, as the author puts his finger on a remarkable feature of the Energiewende that the German population is surprisingly insensitive to:

“Obwohl sich die utopischen Annahmen zur Zielerreichung Jahr für Jahr in Luft auflösten, gab es keine Nachsteuerung, kein Controlling. Über eine ganze Dekade hinweg erfolgte keine Revision der Aufgabenstellung, keine Überprüfung der Prämissen …”

My rough translation:

“Even though the assumptions underlying the feasibility of the Energiewende evaporated year after year, no corrections were made, and there was no controlling. During the course of a decade no efforts were made to revise the definition of the project and reexamine the project’s premisses …”

Frightening this is: reason suspended, a religious mania, a paroxysm reminiscent in its bumbling way of Hitler’s erratic conduct of war.

What I find most worrisome is the absence (until recently) of open controversy and political opposition concerning the Energiewende. It is almost as if (many) Germans are glad to have found a higher cause that entitles them to sideline pesky democracy.

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P Gosselin 9. May 2018 at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Reply

That part reminded me of the Soviet Union, where they pretended everything was working just fine, and that little things could just be ignored. However, everyone knew nothing was working, but no one dared or was willing to admit it

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Georg Thomas 9. May 2018 at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Reply

I can see your point. Mind you, the average German doesn’t seem to have matured yet to the point where he understands that the system doesn’t work.

Also, what the above quote points to is that pluralism is critically diminished and democracy isn’t working as it should. It’s a dangerous indicator that irrationality, a religious mania, if you like, prevails.

In a functioning democracy such blatant contradictions and absurd errors as accompany the Energiewende are quickly picked out and fiercely challenged.

It is not a good sign that this isn’t happening in Germany.

Five Reasons Why Ridicule Is the Proper Response to Global Warming Alarmists

Five Reasons Why Ridicule Is the Proper Response to Global Warming Alarmists:

http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/five-reasons-why-ridicule-is-the-proper-response-to-global-warming-alarmists/

1. They’re wrong. The devastating heat they predicted simply hasn’t happened. Climate scientists Roy Spencer, John Christy and others have showed this numerous times.

2. They’ve hidden their true agenda. The zealots want to destroy capitalism and take over the world’s economy. Two years ago, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, said “this is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years.” [kk: wow!]

3. They’re hypocrites. Every year, delegates, many of them on private jets, fly to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, from where they hector the rest of us about our carbon footprints. The busybodies also regularly jet to the U.N.’s global warming conferences, held in such global hot spots as Paris, Cancun, Copenhagen and Milan. Wherever they go, their accommodations are always lavish, their travels well attended to, and their dining sumptuous. Of course their goal is to strip 21st-century comforts from everyone else in the name of “fighting” climate change.

4. They’re authoritarians. Merely disagreeing with them is much like disagreeing with the Castros. The clearly deranged Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said that some climate sceptics should be prosecuted as war criminals. Last March, then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there had been official discussions about prosecuting “deniers.”

5. Leonardo DiCaprio. Here’s a high school dropout who’s become fabulously rich doing what kindergartners do every day — pretending to be someone else and imagining that they are doing something they aren’t doing, and probably never will or would do. It’s called acting and it pays some of its practitioners well.

7th March, 2017
http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/five-reasons-why-ridicule-is-the-proper-response-to-global-warming-alarmists/

Colder or Hotter before?

The Most Comprehensive Assault On 'Global Warming' Ever
APObama Global Warming
http://www.dailywire.com/news/2071/most-comprehensive-assault-global-warming-ever-mike-van-biezen
BY: MIKE VAN BIEZEN DECEMBER 23, 2015
475 Comments 146441
It made sense.  Knowing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that our industrialized world is adding a large amount of it to the atmosphere on a yearly basis, I accepted the premise that this would cause global temperatures to rise.  But one day about 7 years ago, I looked at the ubiquitous graph showing the “global” temperature of the last 150 years and noticed something odd.  It was subtle, and as I found out later, disguised so that it would be overlooked.  There appeared to be a period of about 40 years between 1940 and 1980 where the global temperatures actually declined a bit.  As a data analysis expert, I could not ignore that subtle hint and began to look into it a little more.  Forty years is a long time, and while carbon dioxide concentrations were increasing exponentially over the same period, I could not overlook that this showed an unexpected shift in the correlation between global temperatures and CO2 concentrations. Thus I began to look into it a little further and here are some of the results 7 years later.

Before we begin, let’s establish what we know to be correct.  The global average temperature has increased since the 1980’s.  Since the 1980’s glaciers around the world are receding and the ice cap of the Arctic Ocean has lost ice since the 1980’s, especially during the summer months.  The average global temperature for the last 10 years is approximately 0.35 degrees centigrade higher than it was during the 1980’s. The global warming community has exploited these facts to “prove” that human activity (aka burning of fossil fuels) is the cause of these increasing temperatures.  But no direct scientific proof or data has been shown that link the current observations to human activity.  The link is assumed to be simply a fact, with no need to investigate or discuss any scientific data.

Here are 10 of the many scientific problems with the assumption human activity is causing “global warming” or “climate change”:

1. Temperature records from around the world do not support the assumption that today’s temperatures are unusual.

The all-time high temperature record for the world was set in 1913, while the all-time cold temperature record was set in 1983.  By continent, all but one set their all-time high temperature record more recently than their all-time cold temperature records.  In the United States, which has more weather stations than any other location in the world, more cold temperature records by state were set more recently than hot temperature records.  When the temperature records for each state were considered for each month of the year, a total of 600 data points (50 states x 12 months), again cold temperature records were set in far greater numbers more recently and hot temperature records were set longer ago.  This is directly contradictory to what would be expected if global warming were real.

2. Satellite temperature data does not support the assumption that temperatures are rising rapidly:

Starting at the end of 1978, satellites began to collect temperature data from around the globe.  For the next 20 years, until 1998, the global average temperature remained unchanged in direct contradiction to the earth-bound weather station data, which indicated “unprecedented” temperature increases.  In 1998 there was a strong El Nino year with high temperatures, which returned to pre-1998 levels until 2001.  In 2001 there was a sudden jump in the global temperature of about 0.3 degrees centigrade which then remained at about that level for the next 14 years, with a very slight overall decrease in the global temperatures during that time.

3. Current temperatures are always compared to the temperatures of the 1980’s, but for many parts of the world the 1980’s was the coldest decade of the last 100+ years:

If the current temperatures are compared to those of the 1930’s one would find nothing remarkable.  For many places around the world, the 1930’s were the warmest decade of the last 100 years, including those found in Greenland.  Comparing today’s temperatures to the 1980’s is like comparing our summer temperatures to those in April, rather than those of last summer.  It is obvious why the global warming community does this, and very misleading (or deceiving).

4. The world experienced a significant cooling trend between 1940 and 1980:

Many places around the world experienced a quite significant and persistent cooling trend to the point where scientists began to wonder if the world was beginning to slide into a new ice age period.  For example, Greenland experienced some of the coldest years in 120 years during the 1980’s, as was the case in many other places around the world.  During that same 40-year period, the CO2 levels around the world increased by 17%, which is a very significant increase.  If global temperatures decreased by such a significant amount over 40 years while atmospheric CO2 increased by such a large amount we can only reach two conclusions: 1. There must be a weak correlation, at best, between atmospheric CO2 and global temperatures, 2. There must be stronger factors driving climate and temperature than atmospheric CO2.


5. Urban heat island effect skews the temperature data of a significant number of weather stations:

It has been shown that nighttime temperatures recorded by many weather stations have been artificially raised by the expulsion of radiant heat collected and stored during the daytime by concrete and brick structures such as houses, buildings, roads, and also cars.  Since land area of cities and large towns containing these weather stations only make up a very small fraction of the total land area, this influence on global average temperature data is significant.  Since the daytime and nighttime temperatures are combined to form an average, these artificially-raised nighttime temperatures skew the average data.  When one only looks at daytime temperatures only from larger urban areas, the “drastic global warming” is no longer visible.  (This can also be seen when looking at nearby rural area weather station data, which is more indicative of the true climate of that area).

6. There is a natural inverse relationship between global temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels:

Contrary to what would be assumed when listening to global warming banter or while watching An Inconvenient Truth, higher temperatures increase atmospheric CO2 levels and lower temperatures decrease atmospheric CO2 levels, not the other way around.  Any college freshman chemistry student knows that the solubility of CO2 decreases with increasing temperatures and thus Earth’s oceans will release large amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere when the water is warmer and will absorb more CO2 when the water is colder.  That is why the CO2 level during the ice ages was so much lower than the levels today.  That doesn’t take away the fact that we are artificially raising the atmospheric CO2 levels, but just because we do, that doesn’t mean that this will cause temperatures to increase in any significant way.  The 40-year cooling period between 1940 and 1980 appear to support that premise.  What we can conclude is that the ice ages were not caused by changes in the atmospheric CO2 levels and that other stronger factors were involved with these very large climate changes.



7. The CO2 cannot, from a scientific perspective, be the cause of significant global temperature changes:

The CO2 molecule is a linear molecule and thus only has limited natural vibrational frequencies, which in turn give this molecule only limited capability of absorbing radiation that is radiated from the Earth’s surface.  The three main wavelengths that can be absorbed by CO2 are 4.26 micrometers, 7.2 micrometers, and 15.0 micrometers.  Of those 3, only the 15-micrometer is significant because it falls right in range of the infrared frequencies emitted by Earth.  However, the H2O molecule which is much more prevalent in the Earth’s atmosphere, and which is a bend molecule, thus having many more vibrational modes, absorbs many more frequencies emitted by the Earth, including to some extent the radiation absorbed by CO2.  It turns out that between water vapor and CO2, nearly all of the radiation that can be absorbed by CO2 is already being absorbed. Thus increasing the CO2 levels should have very minimal impact on the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat radiated from the Earth.  That explains why there appears to be a very weak correlation at best between CO2 levels and global temperatures and why after the CO2 levels have increased by 40% since the beginning of the industrial revolution the global average temperature has increased only 0.8 degrees centigrade, even if we want to contribute all of that increase to atmospheric CO2 increases and none of it to natural causes.

8. There have been many periods during our recent history that a warmer climate was prevalent long before the industrial revolution:

Even in the 1990 IPCC report a chart appeared that showed the medieval warm period as having had warmer temperatures than those currently being experienced.  But it is hard to convince people about global warming with that information, so five years later a new graph was presented, now known as the famous hockey stick graph, which did away with the medieval warm period.  Yet the evidence is overwhelming at so many levels that warmer periods existed on Earth during the medieval warm period as well as during Roman Times and other time periods during the last 10,000 years.  There is plenty of evidence found in the Dutch archives that shows that over the centuries, parts of the Netherlands disappeared beneath the water during these warm periods, only to appear again when the climate turned colder.  The famous Belgian city of Brugge, once known as “Venice of the North,” was a sea port during the warm period that set Europe free from the dark ages (when temperatures were much colder), but when temperatures began to drop with the onset of the little ice age, the ocean receded and now Brugge is ten miles away from the coastline.  Consequently, during the medieval warm period the Vikings settled in Iceland and Greenland and even along the coast of Canada, where they enjoyed the warmer temperatures, until the climate turned cold again, after which they perished from Greenland and Iceland became ice-locked again during the bitter cold winters.  The camps promoting global warming have been systematically erasing mention of these events in order to bolster the notion that today’s climate is unusual compared to our recent history.

9. Glaciers have been melting for more than 150 years

The notion of melting glaciers as prove positive that global warming is real has no real scientific basis.  Glaciers have been melting for over 150 years.  It is no secret that glaciers advanced to unprecedented levels in recent human history during the period known as the Little Ice Age.  Many villages in the French, Swiss, and Italian Alps

A simple summation agw

An interesting comment that parallels my thoughts and questions in parts

As an engineer I find when these issues arise it is best to get as much accurate data as possible and trust your instincts and training. Interestingly it is difficult and almost impossible to find hard proven scientific data supporting the global warming view.(its silly to call it Climate change as the climate is always changing). There is on the other hand a large body of work available by scientists ruling out global warming. I could reference all sorts of information including articles on how NASA has fudged data to detailed scientific explanations of the chemistry (CO2 is a gas remember). However in all of the research I did thsi summary is possibly the best and clearest I have come across.

“The fact is, there has been global warming, but the contribution of human-generated carbon dioxide is necessarily so minuscule as to be nearly undetectable. Here’s why:
Carbon dioxide, considered the main vector for human-caused global warming, averages (over a year) some 0.038% of the atmosphere[1]- a trace gas. Water vapor varies from 0% to 4%[2], and should easily average 1% or more[3] near the Earth’s surface, where the greenhouse effect would be most important, and is about three times more effective[4] a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So water vapor is at least 25 times more prevalent and three times more effective; that makes it at least 75 times more important to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide[5]. The TOTAL contribution of carbon dioxide to the greenhouse effect is therefore 0.013 or less. The total human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the industrial revolution has been estimated at about 25%[6]. So humans’ carbon dioxide greenhouse effect is a quarter of 0.013, works out to about 0.00325. Total warming of the Earth by the greenhouse effect is widely accepted as about 33 degrees Centigrade, raising average temperature to 59 degrees Fahrenheit. So the contribution of anthropogenic carbon dioxide is less than 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit, or under 0.1 degree Centigrade. Global warming over the last century is thought by many to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade.
But that’s only the beginning. We’ve had global warming for more than 10,000 years, since the end of the last Ice Age, and there is evidence temperatures were actually somewhat warmer 9,000 years ago and again 4,500 to 8,000 years ago than they are today[7]. Whatever caused that, it was not human activity. It was not all those power plants and factories and SUVs being operated by Stone Age cavemen while chipping arrowheads out of bits of flint. Whatever the cause was, it melted the glaciers that in North America once extended south to Long Island and parts of New York City[8] into virtually complete disappearance (except for a few mountain remnants). That’s one big greenhouse effect! If we are still having global warming – and I suppose we could presume we are, given this 10,000 year history – it seems highly likely that it is still the overwhelmingly primary cause of continued warming, rather than our piddling 0.00325 contribution to the greenhouse effect.
Yet even that trend-continuation today needs to be proved. Evidence is that the Medieval Warm Period centered on the 1200s was somewhat warmer than we are now[9], and the climate was clearly colder in the Little Ice Age in the 1600s than it is now[10]. So we are within the range of normal up-and-down fluctuations without human greenhouse contributions that could be significant, or even measurable.
The principal scientists arguing for human-caused global warming have been demonstrably disingenuous[11], and now you can see why. They have proved they should not be trusted.
The idea that we should be spending hundreds of billions of dollars and hamstringing the economy of the entire world to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is beyond ludicrous in light of the facts above; it is insane. Furthermore, it sucks attention and resources from seeking the other sources of warming and from coping with climate change and its effects in realistic ways. The true motivation underlying the global warming movement is almost certainly ideological and political in nature, and I predict that anthropogenic Global Warming, as currently presented, will go down as the greatest fraud of all time. It makes Ponzi and Madoff look like pikers by comparison.

ADDENDUM
What initially troubled me was the aberrant behavior of the climate research unit at East Anglia University, which had been the main data source for AGW arguments. They initially refused (!) to reveal their algorithms and data on the grounds that they were proprietary(!!). They responded to critics with ad hominem attacks and efforts to block their publication in scientific journals. Now, as I am sure you know, this is not how one does honest science, in which you PUBLISH your data and methodology and invite critical comment to ferret out error or oversights. It took the now-famous Wikileaks “Climategate” to pry loose the data and expose their machinations. Yet despite the devastating blow these revelations should have to their credibility, the AGW “cause” has taken on a life of its own.
Fundamentally, the argument seems to rest on a logical fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc – after this, therefore because of this. We see a rise in temperature and a rise in (principally) carbon dioxide, and therefore conclude one must have caused the other. It does not necessarily follow at all. There can be other causes entirely behind both phenomena, and as you see above, almost certainly there are. Beyond that, I have encountered numerous assertions of fact that cannot add up given the physical properties of water vapor and carbon dioxide that go unchallenged. One-sided arguments proliferate and people arguing the other side are frequently denounced as being employed by business interests rather than rebutted on the merits.
In sum, I have not come lightly to the conclusion that the AGW argument as it applies to carbon dioxide is largely untrue and certainly does not account for more than a very small, nearly negligible part of the phenomena we are seeing. The implications of widespread assertions of and belief in such an untruth are staggering, and potentially enormously destructive. It is unwise indeed to let oneself be stampeded in this matter, and stampede is clearly what many have been and are trying to induce.
I can understand politicians behaving this way; a carbon tax or carbon trading regime would allow enormous revenues to fall into their hands. I can understand “Progressive” ideologues; it logically leads to enormous expansion of government power over industry, the economy, and the daily life of individuals, which they regard as a good thing. I understand the environmentalists; they want to shrink the size and impact on the environment of modern civilization. But responsible citizens need to put aside such considerations.