On September 28, 2006, after being introduced by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Al Gore told hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff that cigarette smoking is a “significant contributor to global warming”(!) This is truly laughable. It is mind-boggling that someone who claims to be knowledgeable on this issue is so abysmally ignorant not merely of atmospheric science but of the truly insignificant magnitude of cigarette smoke compared to combustion from factories and automobiles—to say nothing of carbon dioxide production from natural sources. It is hard to believe he would say something so stupid.
Gore subscribes to the dubious theory that increases in carbon dioxide are causing global warming. But in the last 1.6 million years there have been 63 alternations between warm and cold climates and no evidence that any of them were caused by changes in carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas or even the most important one. Water vapor is a FAR more important greenhouse gas, accounting for at least 98 percent—and perhaps more than 99 percent—of any greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide accounts for only about 1 percent, with other gases being the remainder.
Furthermore, of that one percent of greenhouse effect due to carbon dioxide, 97 percent of that is due to nature, not mankind. Scientists have calculated that termites alone produce ten times as much carbon dioxide as all the fossil fuels burned in the whole world in a year. Combining the factors of water vapor and nature's production of carbon dioxide, we see that nature is responsible for 99.9 percent of any greenhouse effect, while mankind contributes only 0.04 percent. So how much effect could regulating that 0.04 percent possibly have on world climate? And how significant can cigarette smoke possibly be in this insignificant human-caused total?
And that's not all. As I point out in my booklet on global warming, clouds have a hundred times stronger effect on climate than does carbon dioxide. Even if carbon dioxide doubled, its effect would be canceled out if cloud cover expanded by a mere 1 percent. Yet in just three and one-half years, from 1998 to 1990, cloud cover (measured by satellites) changed by more than 3 percent.
So what causes global warming? It's the sun, through variations in cosmic rays and solar wind. The sun also sets the carbon dioxide level in the earth's atmosphere by the same process. In my booklet I quote British scientist Nigel Calder: “The sun sets the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere by the cumulative effect of variations in the galactic cosmic rays reaching the earth, as modulated by the solar wind....My results leave no room for any effect on CO2 levels due to man-made CO2...nothing to do with emissions from factories or cars.” Much less cigarette smoke.
Moreover, the global warming alarmists claim that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide will increase global climate in direct proportion. But the renowned atmospheric physicist Dr. S. Fred Singer writes: “If one assigns all of the observed 0.6 degC temperature increase of the 20th century to an anthropogenic increase in GH [greenhouse] gases (which together have gone about 50% towards a doubling), then the additional forcing from the next 50% will only add a little additional warming. This is so because the calculated temperature increases only as the logarithm of CO2 concentration.”
The global warming alarmists claim that the global temperature increase of 0.6 degree C. (about 1 degree Fahrenheit) of the past century was due to human activity. This assumes the climate would have been perfectly flat without human intervention. But Australian John McClean, who has spent more than 25 years studying global climate, says “No century has ever had such a stable climate, but for the [computer models to show anthropogenic forcing], this assumption must be made. The probability of a flat background natural climate is less than one in a million; hence, the statistical significance of these apparently successful models is also less than 1 in a million.”
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