I'm not a scientist. I don't really think Alex Jones is a good authority on global warming, but i was a little puzzled by a recent interview with Alex Jones and David Mayer de Rothschild. I think Alex's show is pretty wacky and have read a bit about the piece of debunking Alex on this site. So could someone clarify for me whether man-made global warming is real or a hoax as Alex claims.
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Appearing on The Alex Jones Show this past Friday, Rothschild reacted to a point about massive climate change at every point of the solar system and its relation to natural sun cycles by claiming Mars, Saturn and Jupiter were closer to the sun than Earth!
Here's a brief transcript of the exchange.
ALEX JONES: "The polar icecaps of Mars are receding at several miles a year, much faster than ours and that the moons of Saturn and Jupiter are melting, in fact several of their moons were ice and are now liquid seas - how are SUV's causing that David Rothschild?
ROTHSCHILD: "Because those planets are closer to the sun, my friend."
ALEX JONES: "No, Jupiter and Saturn are not closer to the sun and neither is Mars."
Rothschild then quickly changes the subject and when the point is raised again later in the show, he makes no effort to correct himself.
Now, I don't know why David didn't correct himself or whether it was just a tactic of disinformation. I'd really like to hear what some of what people here think about all this.
Mon Jul 09, 2007 5:46 pm
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madthumbs
Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8185 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
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ROTHSCHILD: "Because those planets are closer to the sun, my friend."
Closer to the sun than what? Does Alex assume earth?
Mon Jul 09, 2007 8:33 pm
madthumbs
Joined: 22 Feb 2006 Posts: 8185 Location: Fingerlakes - NY usa
There is no mechanism for carbon dioxide adding heat to the atmosphere.
Global Warming always does what it is doing now when an ice age begins. Heated oceans cause precipitation to increase and ice to melt. This is why ice over oceans is melting faster than predicted. Eventually, increased snowfall will trigger a cool-down by reflecting away solar energy.
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Water vapor is a greenhouse gas which is far more significant than carbon dioxide. There is about forty times as much of it in the air, depending upon humidity, and it has a broader absorption spectrum, about three times as wide. So it swamps the significance of carbon dioxide. Water vapor is highly variable for natural reasons, such as an El Nino, which humans do not cause.
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Notice that humans only add 1% as much CO2 to the atmosphere per year as already in it. If such a miniscule amount were as critical as propagandists claim, all life would have been destroyed long ago. Nature hasn't been sitting on a 1% knife edge for millions of years.
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The amount of CO2 presently in the air absorbs radiation to extinction in 10 meters; so more CO2 cannot absorb more radiation; it only shortens the distance.
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The oceans have a heat capacity 1,000 times that of the atmosphere. This means the air cannot easily heat the oceans, but oceans can easily heat the air. The atmosphere would have to heat a lot, before it could heat the oceans a little; yet the opposite is occurring. The atmosphere is only said to have warmed 0.6°C in recent times.
The ice which is suspended over the oceans is 90% submerged. To melt it, the water has to provide the heat, not the air. Not only is the water surrounding 90% of the ice, but water has the heat capacity needed to transfer a large amount of heat, while air has little heat capacity.
Ice is obviously melting rapidly at both north and south poles, but primarily over oceans. In localized areas, there is warming over land which is melting showpiece glaciers and northern tundra. But where it really matters, over the Antarctica land mass, ice is thickening. Over Greenland, both thickening and thinning of ice is occurring, but Greenland is small, and it's climate is influenced by an ocean current called the Gulf Stream.
The ultimate test of whether the oceans or atmosphere is heating more is precipitation, and it is increasing. If the atmosphere were heating more than the oceans, there would be less precipitation, because warmer air holds more moisture. If the oceans are heating more than the air, more precipitation occurs, because evaporation increases, while there is less change in the amount of moisture the air will hold.
Because of the increase in precipitation, ice is thickening over land at Antarctica and Greenland, as shown by satellites which use radar to measure thickness of ice.
Many times before these interviews they talk about what they want to cover. It may be in order to be interviewed he may not have wanted to talk about that topic.
Since Jones is a publicity hound he might have agreed.
