GOP Invents a New Junk Science: 'Galaxy Warming'!

by Len Hart, the Existentialist Cowboy

The GOP is prepared to embrace all kinds of junk science if it will get them off the hook for supporting industries, technologies and politicians that support disastrous but profitable policies. These deniers of 'global warming' have more than money riding on their attempts to discredit science.

They will deny 'global warming' for the threat it poses to their investments and for the psychological threat it represents to their self-esteem, their ideologies, myths, lies and shibboleths. To this end, 'deniers of global warming', primarily the GOP, have invented an entirely new phenomenon: galaxy warming. Not content to blame the victim, they will blame the universe!

My article Sarah Palin Denies Global Warming, Says Polar Bears Not Endangered drew the following comment on another forum:

I find this global warming thing a bit humorus [sic] at times. The whole galaxy is warming up, it has very little to nothing to do with our use of gasoline or coal, it has to do with changes on the sun.

This is a perfect example of how self-styled debunkers of 'junk science have succumbed to 'junk science. Even if the galaxy were heating up, it would have little if no effect on earth. Global warming is here and now. This is not the first time the GOP has tried to invent an entirely new phenomenon. Our 'junk scientist' asserts that what we call 'global warming can be attributed to two causes: 1) the Galaxy; 2) the sun.

Let's consider the 'sun' first. Certainly, the sun warms the earth and, if the sun suddenly winked out, the earth would get very, very cold very quickly.

The sun is not getting warmer, rather, it is cooling as it runs out of hydrogen. Scientists expect that in about 5 billion years, our sun will have become a red giant. As a 'red giant, it may swallow up many planets now in orbit, unless their orbits expand to accommodate a much, much bigger sun.

When the Sun becomes a red giant it will steadily lose mass and affect the orbits of the planets, making it hard to predict what will happen to them. Scientists think it is likely that Mercury and Venus will evaporate as the Sun’s surface expands outwards, but the fate of Earth is less certain.

--PhysicsWord.com, Earth could survive a red-giant Sun

Let's take the sun out of the equation. The nearest star to earth is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light years from earth. On a very clear night, far, far from city lights you might seek out Proxima Centauri with a good pair of 10x50 binoculars and a very steady tripod. Serious amateur astronomers will have a reflecting telescope, a steady mount and a clock drive. It is highly doubtful that the amount of 'heat' from Proxima Centauri on earth is measurable and certainly not in our life times.

Radiation causing 'heat' will dissipate rapidly with distance in accordance with the inverse square law. In other words, heat felt on earth from outer space is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source of any radiation. Consider how infinitesimal the energy reaching earth from stars about 100,000 light years or farther from earth! Even if interstellar heat arrives in our lifetimes, it may be be immeasurable.

Nothing travels faster than light. If there are any changes whatsoever in the Galaxy, it's gonna be a long, long, long time before any changes are felt whatsoever. What we know of the center of our galaxy now is really all about what it looked like some 1,400 years ago. That applies to heat, or more properly, the radiation causing heat, indeed, the entire spectrum. Portions of the galaxy could be exploding right now, releasing enormous amounts of radiation of various sorts, and we would not know about it for another 1,400 years, the distance from the sun to the center of the galaxy.
Moreover, National Geographic reports that "...Sunspots alter the amount of energy Earth gets from the sun, but not enough to impact global climate change. See: National Geographic: Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming:

Sunspot-driven changes to the sun's power are simply too small to account for the climatic changes observed in historical data from the 17th century to the present, research suggests.

The difference in brightness between the high point of a sunspot cycle and its low point is less than 0.1 percent of the sun's total output.

"If you run that back in time to the 17th century using sunspot records, you'll find that this amplitude variance is negligible for climate," Foukal said.

--National Geographic, Don't Blame Sun for Global Warming, Study Says

I am of the opinion that the sun has become a convenient 'fall guy' for a political mindset that seeks out 'fall guys' to cover its own inadequacies.

I think some people have suggested that increasing solar intensity over millennia. But it seems to be the consensus that the current warming can’t be explained by observed changes in the sun. I’ll quote from something I wrote on another blog:

http://futuregeek.blogspot.com/2006/07/5-global-warming-myths-debunked.html

From a 2003 Science Daily article NASA Study Finds Increasing Solar Trend That Can Change Climate:

“Although the inferred increase of solar irradiance in 24 years, about 0.1 percent, is not enough to cause notable climate change, the trend would be important if maintained for a century or more. Satellite observations of total solar irradiance have obtained a long enough record (over 24 years) to begin looking for this effect.” (emphasis mine)

Note that we are only at the beginning stages, and there is not conclusive evidence of any significant solar effect. If the observed changes had been consistent over a century, they could have contributed a small amount to global warming. Indeed, the scientist who performed the study said: “Solar forcing would provide only about one-fourth as much warming [as GHG], if the solar trend persists over the same period. Solar forcing could be significant, but not dominant.” Quoted from here.
Another science daily article, dated 1999, mentions a study that concludes that the sun does indeed affect Earth’s climate.

But: According to Shindell, the new study also confirms that changing levels of energy from the sun are not a major cause of global warming…. The GISS model agrees that the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases, leading Shindell to conclude that greenhouse gasses are indeed playing the dominant role.”\

If you’re still not convinced, back to the NAS report on Surface Temperature Reconstructions I quoted above: “The rising temperatures observed since 1978 are particularly noteworthy because the rate of increase is so high and because, during the same period, the energy reaching the Earth from the Sun had been measured precisely enough to conclude that Earth’s warming was not due to changes in the Sun.”

          --William Wilson, posting on: Why Nature Matters

When the sun becomes a red giant and absorbs the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, the orbit of Earth --at 1.5 AU distant --will no longer be habitable. By that time, however, space travel may have become routine. Like an old sci-fi flick of the 50s, mankind may simply migrate to a a new frontier, an 'undiscovered country' estimated to stretch 'well into the Kuiper Belt'. A very, very ancient history will repeat itself as icy worlds melt like an older earth emerged from an ice age. The new residents will not find woolly mammoths as did their ancient ancestors on earth but they may very well find water beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Back to the question. will the Earth survive? According to Schroder and Smith, the answer is no. Even though the Earth could expand to an orbit 50% larger than today's orbit, it won't get the chance. The expanding Sun will engulf the Earth just before it reaches the tip of the red giant phase. And the Sun would still have another 0.25 AU and 500,000 years to grow.

Once inside the Sun's atmosphere, the Earth will collide with particles of gas. Its orbit will decay, and it will spiral inward.

If the Earth were just a little further from the Sun, at 1.15 AU, it would be able to survive the expansion phase. Although it's science fiction, the authors suggest that future technologies could be used to speed up the Earth's spiraling outward from the Sun.
I'm not sure why, but thinking about this far future of the Earth gives an insight into human psychology. People are genuinely worried about a future billions of years away. Even though the Earth will be scorched much sooner, its oceans boiled away, and turned into a molten ball of rock, it's this early destruction by the Sun that feels so sad. 

--Universe Today, Will Earth Survive When the Sun Becomes a Red Giant?

If we are genuinely concerned about a future billions of years distant, then why are we so myopically unconcerned about what we do to earth today? If we cannot accept responsibility for what we have done to earth today, what hope is there that we might effect a futuristic salvation some billions years distant? That seems to be the idea. If the GOP mindset can convince you to believe in 'galaxy warming', they are off the hook for several billion years. As a propaganda technique, that beats even 'supply side economics' and 'no child left behind'.

An after thought --this is not the first time the GOP has tried to rewrite physics.

Scientists can finally explain why the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, despite the temperature of the fires being well below the 1,500C melting point of the steel girders holding up the buildings.

The discovery that unusual magnetic forces within the girders made them weak at temperatures of about 500C explains away the conspiracy theories that have spread like wildfire since the disaster.

--Magnetic forces to blame for 9/11 tower collapse,independent.co.uk

Ummmmmm 'unusual magnetic forces' eh? Nah...methinks, it ware the li'l people who live in the woods! Aaaaaaaaaarrgh! It ware the li'l people who did it!

Additional resources:

• Jesse Ventura BODY SLAMS 'so called' 911 Conspiracy Debunkers [I disagree with the 'frame'. Anyone wishing to debunk 'theories' should start with the 'official theory'! That's not Jesse' fault. It's the fault of GOP types who like to play propaganda games with our language]
• Who was involved in 9/11? Documentary reveals shocking facts
• What Was John McCain Doing on a Yacht with a Conman, a K Street Lobbyist and a Hollywood Celebrity?

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

Sarah Palin Denies Global Warming, Says Polar Bears Not Endangered

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Alaska leads the US in global warming! As for Polar Bears --Alaska's entire population of Polar Bears will be killed off by the year 2050 unless Palin's policies are stopped now. These developments are concurrent with the increase of oil exploration and drilling in Alaska. Palin is lying about Alaska, about oil, about Polar Bears and about Global Warming. [See: Washington Post, Polar Bear Population Seen Declining; ]

As a result of these efforts, polar bears are more numerous now than they were 40 years ago. The polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska’s North Slope has been relatively stable for 20 years, according to a federal analysis.

...

In fact, there is insufficient evidence that polar bears are in danger of becoming extinct within the foreseeable future — the trigger for protection under the Endangered Species Act. And there is no evidence that polar bears are being mismanaged through existing international agreements and the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

--Sarah Palin, New York Times

In fact, the polar bear population in Alaska is declining.

Two-thirds of the world's polar bears will be killed off by 2050 _ and the entire population gone from Alaska _ because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday.

Only in the northern Canadian Arctic islands and the west coast of Greenland are any of the world's 16,000 polar bears expected to survive through the end of the century, said the US Geological Survey, which is the scientific arm of the Interior Department.

--The Associated Press, Washington Post, Polar Bear Population Seen Declining

Palin denies that human activity --including the drilling, production and refining of oil --has any effect on environments, a position that puts her to the right of even George W. Bush. In fact, Alaska is where it's 'at' in terms of global warming.

We have billions and billions of barrels of oil and trillions of feet of natural gas. We have so much potential from tapping our resources here in Alaska. And we can do this with minimum environmental impact. We have a very pro-development president in President Bush, and yet he failed to push for opening up parts of Alaska to drilling through Congress — and a Republican-controlled Congress, I might add.

I thought when we hit $100 a barrel for oil it would have been a psychological barrier that would have caused Congress to reconsider, but they didn't. Now we are approaching $200 a barrel. It's nonsense not to tap a safe domestic source of oil. I think Americans need to hold Congress accountable on this one.

Sarah Palin, Newsmax

Palin has put short term economic and monetary gains above the longer term concerns about quality of life, the environment, and renewable energy. It is not only her positions that are wrong, it is the attitude and mindset that places shallow and short-term values of this generation above those of the longer term concerns of future generations, indeed, life on earth.

Palin is either wrong or lying about Alaska and the harm that is done to the environment by an oil industry that she is in bed with. Palin should have talked with folk in Texas, an environment that has been raped and despoiled since Spindletop. Some parts of the world --like Iraq --are simply bombed and waged war upon for oil! But there is a word for those folk, like Palin, who just do it for the money.

Though warming is happening faster in Alaska than anywhere else in the US — average temperatures in the country's biggest state have risen 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years — Palin is on record doubting that human action is the main driver behind climate change.

...

More pertinent might be Palin's positions on oil drilling in Alaska, where rich petroleum reserves paid each citizen over $1,600 in dividends in 2007. Though the McCain campaign has made much of Palin's willingness to stand up to the powerful energy industry in Alaska — last year she adjusted the state Petroleum Profits Tax to close loopholes exploited by oil and gas companies — on the whole she's been a staunch supporter of fossil fuels. She opposes strengthening protections for beluga whales in Alaska's Cook Inlet, where oil and gas development has been proposed, and she spent $500 million in state money to encourage the development of a 1,700-mile pipeline that would transport natural gas from Alaska's rich North Shore. When the Department of the Interior in May listed the polar bear as a threatened species due to warming—an action that could interfere with drilling in Alaska's coastal waters, where the polar bears live —Palin sued the Federal Government in response. "Our main concern with Sarah Palin's positions are that they are based on doing what is best for the oil industry, and not what is best for Americans," says David Willett, national press secretary for the Sierra Club.

--Time, Palin Far Right on the Environment

Addendum: Facts About Global Warming

What we know:

Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas. It allows light to pass through but traps heat. Here’s how it works: CO2 absorbs certain wavelengths of energy. This means that radiation from the sun can enter the atmosphere as light. Once this radiation hits the ground, it turns into heat. This heat then radiates back into the atmosphere and out into space. CO2 traps some of the heat.

1. CO2 has gone from roughly 280 ppm (parts per million) in the atmosphere before the industrial revolution to about 380 ppm now. Each year humans pump out about 6 billion tons of CO2 with an annual growth rate of about 1.9% predicted between 2001 - 2025 (although actual emissions growth was 3.2% per year from 2000 to 2005).
   
2. CO2 remains in the air for about 100 years, so even if we stopped emitting it right now we would still feel the effects for decades.


3. CO2 and temperature have increased and decreased together over the history of the planet.
4. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere now than there has been in 650,000 years. The rate of increase is unprecedented over the same period.
5. Svante Arrhenius estimated 100 years ago that a doubling of CO2 would create a 4 degree C rise in temperature. In 1979 the Charney report predicted global warming of 3 degrees C if CO2 doubled in the atmosphere (we are a quarter of the way there). In 1988 James Hansen of NASA predicted to Congress that temperature would increase over the next decades.
6. Temperature has increased since those predictions were made. The top 5 hottest years according to NASA are, in order, 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003, and 2004.The World Meteorological Association claims 2005 as the second hottest year on record. The difference is because NASA includes data from the Arctic. The top ten warmest years have been since 1990.
7. Since 1850, we have seen temperatures increase at a rate of 1.1 F per century (about 1.5 - 1.8 F total). The rate increased to 3.2F per century since the mid 1970s (click here for more information).


8. Species around the world are reacting to climate change: Since 1950, species distribution has shifted to the north 4 miles per decade, shifted to higher altitudes by 20 feet per decade, and Spring has advanced by 2.3 days per decade. In America, butterflies have moved their ranges north. They are no longer found in the southern parts of their old range. Costa Rican birds have extended their range northward. Tropical fish have been seen for the first time off the British Coast, and animals such as the Pied Flycatcher and the Winter Moth are finding their food supply affected by earlier Springs.


9. Climate has changed rapidly in the past. The common example of rapid climate change is the Younger Dryas, when temperatures suddenly plunged, interrupting the warming trend at the end of the last ice age.
   

What we think we know:

1. Temperatures are most likely warmer now than they have been at any time in the past 400 years. They are probably (slightly less certain) warmer than in the past 1200 years, perhaps (less certain) warmer than in the past 12,000 years, and new evidence suggests that we are approaching the warmest temperatures this planet has seen in a million years.


2. Models predict that Earth’s average temperature will rise somewhere between 2 to 4.5 degrees C in the 21st century.

Sarah Palin --Lies and Idiocy

• Palin's Churches and the 'Holy Laughter anointing' [Really Weird Stuff]
• John McCain's Choice of Sarah Palin: What It Says About Him and What It Tells Moderates
• Is Warming Causing Alaska Meltdown?
• Polar Bear Population Seen Declining
• Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home
• Palin Backed 'Bridge to Nowhere' in 2006
• Massive Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Away
• Palin: God Tasked Us With Iraq War:
• Scientific Proof: Alaska's Polar Bears In Danger of Extinction!
• Center for Biological Diversity
• Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home
• Sarah Palin Sued Government To Delist Polar Bears
• Gov. Sarah Palin - Just Another Corrupt Politician
• McCain's VP Choice Is Under Ethics Investigation For Abuse Of Power In Alaska

---

It's Official: The Hottest Winter on Record

A recent television news report may have summed up the sense of malaise and disgust in America today. A video clip depicted a rural family watching George W. Bush on the family television set. When Bush got to the topic of Iraq, the man seized the remote, clicked it off, and declared loudly: "I am sick of this guy!" This is interesting because there is a very real possibility that the man may have voted for Bush.

Enough is written of his numerous war crimes and torture -all pulled off under the cover of war on Iraq. But what of the war he wages daily on Americans?

At home, Bush has waged war on the environment -a fact brought home by the news today that this past winter has been the hottest since record keeping began some 125 years ago. Is it a fluke- as the GOP would have you believe -or is it global warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions?

Until Al Gore took climate change on the road, Bush's abrogation of the Kyoto treaty had been all but forgotten. (see: An Inconvenient Truth) But a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change changed all that. Signed by some 2,500 scientists from 130 nations, it paints a stark picture. It's hard to sum up this vision of apocalypse, so here are just a few highlights.

Greenhouse gases - from industry, transportation and agriculture -are most certainly to blame for global warming. This so called Greenhouse effect is the label given the increase in such gases over time. Primary sources of greenhouse gases are clearly due to human activity and include:

• deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels leading to higher carbon dioxide concentrations;
• landfill emissions leading to higher methane atmospheric concentrations. Newer fully vented septic systems have become a major source of methane;
• the use of fertilizers in various agriculture lead to higher concentrations of nitrous oxide.

The best source for information on emission can be found in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios The following excerpt is related to the graphic that accompanies this article.

Figure 1-2: Energy-related and industrial global CO2 emissions for scenarios reviewed in the IPCC Report Climate Change 1994 (Alcamo et al., 1995). The shaded area indicates coverage of IS92 scenarios while the "spaghetti-like" curves indicate other energy-related emissions scenarios found by the IPCC review to be representative of the scenarios available in the open literature at that time. (Individual scenarios are listed in the Appendix of Alcamo et al., 1995.)

-Figure 1-2: Energy-related and industrial global CO₂ emissions for scenarios

It is easy to get lost in the many numbers, many of which are meaningless to non-scientists. But here's an easy one: an average coal fired plant pumps about ten mllion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

One of the most pernicious effects will be rising sea levels. That's easily visualized -having witnessed a tsunami and, later, Katrina. If nothing is done to correct the trend, if gas emission do not peak before 2030, it may be too late to do anything about it. But Bush's position on this issue has given cover to the world`s other great polluters --China and India. China is at least as dependent on coal as the US is addicted to oil and gas. What leverage will the US have on two nation's eager to out "US" the "US"? Aggravating the situation are the traditional tensions between China and India.

In the meantime, the numbers are in on what has turned out to have been the warmest winter since record keeping began in the US some 125 years ago. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says temperatures continue to rise by a fifth of a degree every decade. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995. And while NOAA does not blame "global warming", weather experts predict that 2007 might very well be the hottest year on record. The IPCC report must be taken into consideration before these numbers can be blamed on El Nino.

Would things have been different if Bush had not thumbed his nose at Kyoto? Consider the fact that United States is among the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases.

-The Existentialist Cowboy

Bush, Iraq