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                       Carbon dioxide and global climate

It has been known for a long time that certain gases are transparent to
shortwave heat radiation from the sun, but strongly absorb longwave heat
radiation emitted from the Earth. When present in our atmosphere, these
'greenhouse gases' act like a one way valve, freely allowing heat in but
preventing it from easily escaping again. Earth's average surface temperature
is over 30 C higher because of the greenhouse gases already present in the
atmosphere - carbon dioxide, water vapour, methane and nitrous oxide. Since
the industrial age began, we have been adding increasing quantities of these
and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which has led many people to
believe that global warming and climate change will occur as a result.

Although the heat output of the sun has increased by a third since life on
Earth began, throughout that time global temperatures have remained in the
narrow range suitable for life. It appears that some form of climate
regulation is in operation. Both our neighbouring planets, Venus and Mars,
have atmospheres consisting mainly of CO2, so it is highly likely that the
early Earth was the same. Today almost all CO2 on Earth is locked up in
carbonate rocks, whereas carbonates are extremely rare in rocks over 3000
million years old. This supports the idea that the early Earth had a thick CO2
atmosphere which caused a strong greenhouse effect and kept temperatures above
freezing, in spite of the feeble heat output of the sun at that time.  Since
then the conversion of atmospheric CO2 into carbonate rocks (and to a lesser
extent, fossil fuels) has lowered CO2 levels, weakening the greenhouse effect
and thereby compensating for an ever hotter sun.

Currently accepted theory maintains that CO2 levels are regulated by purely
physical processes, namely volcanism and rock weathering. Volcanoes emit CO2,
whereas rock weathering (so the theory goes) absorbs it. Supposedly, rock
weathering must have got a bit out of hand over the last few million years,
lowering CO2 levels so much that the Earth has become unpleasantly cold. That
is why climatologists are not unduly concerned about global warming - if their
theories are right our greenhouse gas emissions are restoring an imbalance,
and thus having a positively beneficial effect.

However, there is an alternative expanation for climatic stability.

"Life first appeared on the Earth about 3,500,000,000 years ago. From that
time until now, the presence of fossils shows that the Earth's climate has
changed very little. Yet the output of heat from the sun, the surface
properties of the Earth, and the composition of the atmosphere have almost
certainly varied greatly over the same period.

The chemical composition of the atmosphere bears no relationship to the
expectations of steady-state chemical equilibrium. The presence of methane,
nitrous oxide and even nitrogen in our present oxidising atmosphere represents
violation of the rules of chemistry to be measured in tens of orders of
magnitude. Disequilibria on this scale suggest that the atmosphere is not
merely a biological product, but more probably a biological construction: not
living, but like a cat's fur, a bird's feathers or the paper of a wasp's nest,
an extension of a living system designed to maintain a chosen environment." -
"Gaia: A new look at life on Earth", J.E. Lovelock

Carbonate rocks such as chalk and limestone are the fossilised shells of
phytoplankton, microscopic organisms which thrive in the upper layers of the
ocean. Coal, oil and natural gas are also biological in origin, derived from
fossilised plant matter. Indeed, every form of sequestered CO2 appears to be
the result of biological activity, a difficult fact to explain if purely
inorganic processes are responsible for regulating CO2 levels.

Outside the field of climatology, many of Lovelock's ideas have become widely
accepted in the years since his Gaia theory was first proposed. Given this
fact, surely it is possible that climatologists are stubbornly holding on to
a set of theories which are completely wrong? If so, then their predictions
for future climate change (developed using those theories) must be suspect.
Certainly, Prof. Lovelock does not share their optimism about the effects of
CO2 emissions:

"Before we dismiss Gaia from our worries about carbon dioxide, we should bear
in mind that among the things that can happen in an instant is the impact of
a bullet in full flight. Small it may be, and short the time of contact, but
disastrous are its consequences. So it could be with Gaia and carbon dioxide.
Humans may have chosen a very inconvenient time to add carbon dioxide to the
air. I believe that the carbon dioxide regulation system is nearing the end
of its capacity. ... Maybe, if left to herself, Gaia could absorb the excess
carbon dioxide and the heat that it brings. But Gaia is not left to herself;
in addition to carbon dioxide increments, we are also busy removing that part
of the plant life, the forests, that by responsive extra growth might serve
to counteract the change.

Much more serious than the direct and predictable effects of adding carbon
dioxide to a stable system are the consequences of disturbing a system that
is precariously balanced at the limits of stability. ... The Earth's mean
temperature is well below the optimum temperature for plant life. There are
periodic climatic oscillations as we cycle between the glaciations and their
intermissions, and carbon dioxide is attenuated close to its lower possible
limit. All these are physical signs of a system on the verge of failure." -
 James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia, ch 7.

Since industrialisation began, carbon dioxide levels have increased by over
25 %, methane levels have doubled, and nitrous oxide levels have increased by
around 10 %. In addition, dozens of entirely manmade compounds have been added
to the atmosphere, many of which are extremely effective greenhouse gases.

Lovelock portrays Earth's climate as a system already pushed close to its
limits by an ever hotter sun even before humankind appeared. If this picture
is accurate, then the scale of greenhouse gas emissions in recent years must
surely have been enough to push it over the edge. Presumably a catastrophic
breakdown of global climate would follow, yet climatologists insist there is
no proof that climate is changing. In particular, they have found no clear
evidence of global warming yet, apparently disproving Lovelock's ideas.

Within the last decade a series of violent hurricanes, windstorms, bushfires
and floods has brought the global insurance industry close to ruin. Meanwhile,
a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica continues to grow larger and deeper
every year, and within the last few years ozone levels over much of the
Northern hemisphere have been falling as well. In this series of messages I
offer a theory which explains why no significant global warming has been
measured yet, and how these apparently unconnected events may have a single,
common cause. Read on if you dare!

                          Strange weather lately?

"In the past six years the insurance industry has been hit by a succession of
huge claims following devastating tropical hurricanes. In 1988, Hurricane
Gilbert devastated Jamaica. The following year Hurricane Hugo caused havoc in
the West Indies. In 1992 came Hurricane Andrew, followed a month later by
Cyclone Iniki, the most powerful storm to hit Hawaii this century. ... [In
1992] Insurance cover is withdrawn in the Samoa Islands in the wake of Cyclone
Val, the second cyclone to have hit the islands within two years." - Who will
underwrite the hurricane?, New Scientist, 7/8/93 p29

Extreme weather has in just seven years transformed insurance from a highly
profitable enterprise to an industry on the brink of financial ruin. Some
examples taken from the above article are:

     1987: a windstorm in Europe.
     1989: Hurricane Hugo (US).
     1990: Windstorm Daria (Europe), Windstorm Herta (Europe), Windstorm
           Vivian (Europe), Windstorm Wibke (Europe), Colorado storms (US).
     1991: Typhoon Mireille (Japan), Oakland bushfires (US).
     1992: Hurricane Andrew (US), Cyclone Iniki (US).
     1993: Winter storm (US).

Since that article was published, the catalogue of disaster has continued
unabated - severe flooding, not just along the Mississippi but in Australasia,
Asia, South America, the U.K. and Europe; further bushfires in California and
Sydney, Australia; and more winter storms and extremely low temperatures in
both the U.S. and Europe.

"Exceptional floods in the Andes, which killed nearly 100 people in Columbia
last week, have been caused by an unexpected reappearance of El Nino ... An
El Nino is normally spent within 18 months. But, says the US government's
Climate Analysis Centre in Maryland, the present episode began during 1990
"reached maturity during early 1992, weakened abruptly during mid-1992, but
beginning in November 1992, again increased."" - El Nino roars back against
the odds, New Scientist, 8 May 1993, p7.

"What links this month's flooding in southern England, bush fires in New South
Wales and famine in Brazil? The answer is a climate flip in the Pacific Ocean.
El Nino, the reversal of winds and ocean currents in the Pacific, is
implicated in all of them and is about to set new records. ... What has
confounded modellers is that every time the 1991 El Nino has appeared to have
run its course, it has revived. Late last year, sea temperatures in the
Pacific were still 1.5 C higher than normal, with 30 C recorded where the
International Date Line meets the equator, indicating that El Nino was still
 going strong." - Fire and flood greet El Nino's third year, New Scientist,
15/1/94 p9.

Major El Ninos occurred in 1925-6, 1939-41, 1957-8, 1972-3, 1982-3, 1987-8,
and since 1991. Prior to 1980, a major El Nino event occurred about once every
15 years. Last decade saw not one but two major El Nino events, the 1982-3
event the worst in living memory up to that time, the 1987-8 event accompanied
by extremely high tropical ocean surface temperatures. Towards the end of 1990
the first signs of yet another El Nino began to appear, the third in the space
of ten years. Unlike earlier ones, this El Nino did not fade away after 18
months, but has instead returned with renewed vigour every year since.

"In 1982 and 1983, after the atmospheric and oceanographic disturbance called
El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), corals in certain areas of the Florida
Keys whitened and died, and off the coast of Panama mortality reached 50
percent. But it was only between 1987 and 1988, also an ENSO year, that
reports of extensive bleaching became widespread. They have increased in
frequency ever since. ... the [coral bleaching] episodes of the last decade
have consistently been correlated with abnormally high seawater temperatures."
- Coral Bleaching, Scientific American, January 1993.

Corals are an extremely ancient form of life, and can be found in fossils over
500 million years old. In all that time they have never evolved resistance
to the temperatures now being reached in tropical oceans, surely an indication
that something out of the ordinary is taking place - something that is
impossible if climate models are accurate.

Climate models predict that most warming from greenhouse gas emissions will
occur during wintertime in polar and temperate regions, while the tropics will
be virtually unaffected. According to these models, the one place on Earth to
experience the most warming should be the Arctic ocean during winter. Yet a
detailed study using over 27,000 measurements taken between 1950 and 1990
found no evidence of warming - in fact the researchers found a statistically
significant temperature drop of 4.14 C in autumn and 2.44 C in winter (Nature
28/1/93 Vol 361 p 335). Likewise, temperate winters show little sign of
becoming warmer - consider the recent freeze-up along the eastern coast of the
U.S. (under normal circumstances the climate here is mild, because of warming
from the best known of the world's major ocean currents, the Gulf Stream).

Climate models run into difficulty in another area as well: explaining past
climate. Since the mid-80s, a record of both temperature and CO2 levels
covering the last 160,000 years has been available, taken from an ice core
drilled at Vostok base in East Antarctica. During the time these measurements
cover, global climate has undergone considerable change, alternating between
mild 'interglacial' periods such as the one we are in now, and ice ages.
Unfortunately, I do not have access to the original data, but I have found a
book which contains two graphs derived from this data (Annika Nilsson's
"Greenhouse Earth", Fig 3.2 : Carbon dioxide concentration and temperature
change during the past 160,000 years, as determined from the ice core from
Vostok, Antarctica).

Looking at the two graphs, it is immediately obvious that there is a
relationship between CO2 level and global climate - CO2 levels were always low
during the ice ages and high during interglacial periods (such as the one
Earth has been in for the last 14,000 years). In order to find out what that
relationship might be, I tried a little experiment.

First I took a ruler and recorded the "delta T" value from the graph of delta
T vs time, at intervals of 1mm along the time axis. This gave me 58
measurements in all, which are shown on the graph below.
       ]
     +2]                                               x
       ]                                              x x
      0]  xx                                        xx
       ]xx                                         x
     -2]                                          x      x
delta  ]    x
T    -4]                            xx     xx
K(deg.C)]     x                        x  xx  x
     -6]                   x            x        x
       ]            x x xxx x   xx x   x      xxx         x
     -8]           x x x          x
       ]         xx          xxx                            xxx xx
    -10]      xxx                                          x   x
       ]----------------------------------------------------------
                        Age (0 to 160,000 years BP)

Then I repeated the procedure with the graph of CO2 level vs time.


    300]                                                +
       ]
    280]++                                        ++++++
CO2    ]                                         +
    260]  +++                                            +
ppmv   ]                          +           +
    240]     +                   +       ++  + ++         +
       ]                    +      + ++ +  ++
    220]            +      +    +   +                      +
       ]          ++ ++  ++  +         +                     +
    200]      + ++      +     ++                            + ++++
                        +       +
    180]----------------------------------------------------------
                        Age (0 to 160,000 years BP)

Combining the two sets of measurements gave me 58 point values for delta T and
CO2 level, which I then plotted on a graph:

           Temperature vs CO2 level over the last 160,000 years.

Delta T
(deg. C)
 +7+                                     !
 +6+                                     !
 +5+                                     !
 +4+                                     !                              ??
 +3+                                     !                         ???????
 +1+                 o  oo  o            !     ???????????????????????????
  0+                 o  OX         ???????????????????????????
 -1+                     o               !
 -2+                oo   o               !        X = Preindustrial state.
 -3+           o                         !        o = Single data points.
 -4+         ooo                         !        O = Several data points
 -5+        o ooOo    o                  !            in one square.
 -6+      oO   o O o                     !    ????? = Predictions of climate
 -7+    o  Oooo ooo                      !            models (a 1.5 to 4.5 C
 -8+   ooo o                             !            temperature rise for
 -9+   oOOO  o                           !            doubled CO2 levels).
-10+    o                                !        ! = CO2 level now (360ppm)
   +-+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
    180 200 220 240 260 280 300 320 340 360 380 400 420 440 460 480 500 520
                             CO2 level (ppmv)

In spite of the many opportunities for inaccuracies to accumulate in this
crude analysis, a strong correlation nonetheless appears. This graph
highlights an insuperable problem with present day climate models - since the
industrial age began, CO2 levels have risen by around 80 ppm, an amount almost
as great as the difference between the most severe ice age conditions and the
warmest interglacial period. If CO2 is important in regulating climate as
 climatologists (and this graph!) say, then either climatologists have grossly
underestimated the warming effects of CO2 or palaeontologists have
overestimated how cold the ice ages were.

There is abundant fossil evidence showing that just 14,000 years ago, an ice
sheet up to 3 km thick in places extended over North America, Northern Europe
and the British Isles as far south as London and New York. So much water was
locked up as ice that the sea level worldwide was lowered by more than 100m.
To me this suggests temperatures considerably more than 1 C colder than today,
which is how much the climatologists would need to 'downplay' the ice ages
before their climate models made sense.

Just one fact supports the climate models - the apparent lack of global
warming so far. Climatologists expect global warming to show itself most
strongly in polar regions and during temperate winters, and there has
certainly been no indication of warming there. Summers have been consistently
hot over the last decade and an unexplained temperature rise has been taking
place in tropical oceans, but neither of these events can be related to global
warming, can they?

                   Ocean circulation and global climate.

"a redistribution of world heat energy must constantly occur, taking the form
of a continuous movement of energy from the tropics to the poles. ... If there
were no meridional exchange of heat, a radiation balance at each latitude
would only be achieved if the equator were 14 degrees C warmer and the North
Pole 25 degrees colder than now. ... The ocean transport may be 47 percent of
the total at 30 - 35 degrees North and as much as 74 percent at 20 degrees
North" - ch 1G, "Atmosphere, Weather & Climate" (5th Ed), R.G. Barry & R.J.
Chorley.

These figures suggest that polar regions would become much colder, and
tropical oceans much warmer, if oceanic circulation were to somehow stop. In
fact the amount of polar cooling would be about right to cancel out the
absurdly large amount of warming that my graph in the previous message
indicates should be taking place. Tropical oceans would grow warmer instead,
but there are two reasons why that warming would take some time to show
itself. Firstly, water has a very high thermal capacity, meaning that it can
absorb a great deal of heat while only undergoing a small temperature rise.
Secondly, water is a liquid. Any abnormal warming can in principle be
distributed throughout a thickness of hundreds of metres by a few years of
 mixing. Therefore, even if oceanic circulation were to stop altogether,
tropical oceans would only gradually become warmer.

Of course, all this is purely academic. There is no reason why oceanic
circulation should suddenly stop, is there?

"The world's seas are linked by a single circulation system that stirs waters
from the ocean depths to the surface and back roughly every thousand years.
Major ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream form parts of this larger system.
... The system is driven by strong local convection currents at just four
small areas of the world's oceans. One occurs where the waters of the
Mediterranean enter the Atlantic. The other three are in polar regions: in the
Greenland and Labrador Seas of the far North Atlantic and the Weddell Sea off
Antarctica.

In these three cases, water drops to the seabed because of the formation
of ice. When seawater turns to ice it rejects the salt, so that the remaining
water becomes more saline and hence denser. This triggers strong downward
convection currents. ... But this system has broken down in the Greenland Sea,
says Wadhams, "where the sea has become warmer and there has been a general
retreat of sea ice, as seen from satellites, over the past 15 years". ...

Wadhams is the coordinator of the European Sub-Polar Ocean Programme, which
has travelled to the Greenland Sea for the past two winters, measuring
temperatures and salinity in the ocean. Last week, scientists working on the
 programme "confirmed the finding that there has been no substantial
convection to the deep ocean of the Greenland Sea for 40 years, and especially
in the past 10 years", says Wadhams." - Is broken ocean pump a global
warning?, New Scientist, 19/3/94, p4

Oceanic circulation is powered by an unusual sort of pump: seawater freezing
to ice during the winter months in polar oceans. I am convinced that manmade
greenhouse gas emissions are interfering with that freezing process, producing
the retreat of sea ice and the shutdown of deep convection found by Wadhams
and his team. Furthermore, all the evidence indicates that this is not a local
problem confined to the Greenland Sea, but is something which has occurred
throughout the Arctic and Antarctic.

"We had expected milder weather than Barents experienced - in the "Little Ice
Age", which lasted from 1450 to 1850, mean temperatures were between 1 and 2
degrees colder than nowadays - but the difference in conditions was far
greater than we had anticipated. Barents' ship was surrounded and nearly
crushed by ice in late August 1596. But we were there in the second half of
August 1992, and saw only one lone iceberg drifting by at a great distance."
"Four days after we left, 90 tourists from the US, Japan, Britain and South
America came ashore to have a look. Apparently, an American company organises
cruises from Murmansk by ice-breaker, offering a barbecue at the geographic
North Pole, followed by a visit to Barents' wintering place." - God and the
Arctic survivors, New Scientist 3/4/93 p38.

A similar change appears to be taking place in the Antarctic. At least one
area of permanent ice has melted over the last 20 years - the Wordie ice
shelf. Far more significant for oceanic circulation is the gradual
disappearance of sea ice that seems to have taken place since Antarctic
exploration began.

Between 1786 and 1771, the great explorer Captain James Cook sailed right
round the Antarctic circle without sighting the continent itself, because he
could find no way through the wall of ice that surrounded it. Subsequent
attempts to break through this barrier were thwarted again and again:
Bellinghausen in 1819, Wilkes in 1838, d'Urville in 1840, Ross in 1842. Even
after the first explorers had set foot on Antarctica, and after Scott had led
his ill-fated expedition to the pole, ice proved to be the undoing of yet
another expedition. In 1914, Shackletons's ship the Endurance became trapped
and was slowly crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea.

After reading about the terrible dangers these early explorers faced, I find
it hard to believe that cruise ships packed full of tourists would ever be
able to safely visit Antarctica. Yet apparently they can now.

"The NSF [US National Science Foundation] estimates that 64 cruises will visit
Antarctica this year, dropping off at least 8460 American tourists. Last year
59 cruises ferried an estimated 6400 tourists to the continent." - New
Scientist, 17/7/93, p7.

As far as I know, not one of these recent Antarctic cruises has ended with the
ship trapped and crushed by ice or torn open by an iceberg as the Titanic
was, which to me suggests that Antarctic sea ice today is thinner and/or
covers a much smaller area than it did when the first explorers tried to reach
the continent.

Assuming that the loss of sea ice has reduced the downward convection of water
in polar seas, it is only reasonable to expect some effects elsewhere. Once
the dense, highly saline polar water reaches the ocean bed, it slowly flows
toward the equator. Eventually it returns to the surface in a few highly
localised places in tropical oceans, assisted by the 'trade winds', which tend
to shift water away from the western margins of the continents. Not only do
these winds help the cold, deep polar water return to the surface, they also
spread it out across the ocean, so this process is very important for cooling
tropical oceans. Occasionally, the trade winds falter, producing a phenomenon
known as El Nino. The cold water upwelling becomes weaker and much more
diffuse, usually for about 18 months. In the areas where the upwelling is
normally concentrated, sea surface temperatures can rise by several degrees
during this time, and far-reaching changes in the weather can result.

Although the trade winds strongly affect the pattern of this upwelling in the
short term, the total amount of water returning to the surface in tropical
oceans ultimately depends on the amount of water sinking elsewhere (this has
to be the case if the oceans are to remain level). If downward convection in
polar oceans has got much weaker recently, then upwelling in tropical oceans
must have got weaker as well. Has it?

As I mentioned earlier, before 1980 a major El Nino event occurred about once
every 15 years. Last decade saw not one but two major El Nino events separated
by only 3 years. Just 2 years after the 1987-88 event ended, another El Nino
began. This one has proved truly exceptional, because instead of dying away
after about 18 months it has kept coming back, and is about to set a record
as the longest running El Nino since measurements began. In addition, two
separate phenomena indicate that tropical oceans are growing warmer: coral
bleaching, mentioned earlier on, and the unusually severe hurricanes of the
last few years.

"Hurricanes form only above seas with surface temperatures above 27 C and, in
the kind of world the IPCC envisages for next century, there will certainly
be greater expanses of sea at a temperature suitable for spawning hurricanes.
On the other hand, all global warming models predict greater warming at higher
latitudes than at lower ones, which could mean that hurricanes are less
destructive. This is because the velocity at which wind flows from one
pressure system to another is determined by temperature difference - the
greater the contrast, the greater the increase in wind speed. If there is less
temperature difference in temperature between higher and lower latitudes then,
all other things being equal, windstorms should be less intense." - Who will
underwrite the hurricane?, New Scientist, 7/8/93 p29

Strangely, hurricanes and windstorms appear to have become more, rather than
less, intense recently. Is this because the temperature difference between
high and low latitudes has become greater rather than less?

So far, we have seen how ice freezing in polar oceans give rise to a downward
flow of water there, which has its counterpart in an upwelling of cold water
in tropical oceans. For the oceans to remain level, this water must eventually
be returned to polar regions, bringing us to the final leg of oceanic
circulation - the warm surface currents that flow from tropical oceans to
temperate and polar regions. The best known of these, the Gulf Stream, brings
warmth to the Eastern seaboard of North America before veering across the
Atlantic to form the North Atlantic Drift, which warms the U.K. and Europe.
In the North Pacific, the Kuro Shio and the North Pacific drift behave in much
the same way, warming Eastern Europe and Japan. Similar currents also operate
in the Southern Hemisphere. Although they provide heat all year round, the
warming effects of these currents are most noticeable in winter, when there
is comparatively little heat from the sun. Did the cold winter just passed
in Europe and the recent freeze-up along the East coast of the U.S. occur
because the Gulf Stream has stopped flowing?

                         The ultimate catastrophe?

"Conventional wisdom blames chlorine compounds and other chemicals that
destroy ozone. But Walter Komhyr and his colleagues at the NOAA in Boulder,
Colorado, say that sea surface temperatures in the eastern equatorial Pacific
ocean may affect levels of ozone over the Antarctic and elsewhere. The
researchers studied sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific for 25
years. They found that the eastern equatorial Pacific cooled between 1962 and
1975 and, during that time, global ozone increased. When these waters warmed,
between 1976 and 1988, global ozone decreased. Another factor was a sudden
drop in the region's sea surface temperature in June 1988. The following
October, after several years of decreasing ozone over Antarctica, ozone levels
stayed comparatively high. In fact, Komhyr has observed the correlation of
cold sea surface temperatures from June through August followed by high levels
of ozone in the Antarctic spring in 21 of the 27 years between 1962 and 1989."
-"Ozone hole linked to sea temperatures", New Scientist, 13 July 1991, p22.

In other words there is a strong statistical link between high tropical ocean
surface temperatures and ozone depletion. Why?

"Observations made during the 1987 El Nino show that in the upper range of sea
surface temperatures, the greenhouse effect increases with surface temperature
at a rate which exceeds the rate at which radiation is being emitted from the
surface. In response to this 'super greenhouse effect', highly reflective
cirrus clouds are produced which act like a thermostat, shielding the ocean
from solar radiation." - Nature 2/5/91, vol 351 p27.

Cirrus clouds form high in the atmosphere - near the tropopause, the boundary
between the troposphere (the lower atmosphere) and the stratosphere (where the
ozone layer resides). Apparently high tropical ocean temperatures increase the
water vapour content of air rising off the ocean surface, giving it more
potential energy and allowing it to rise much higher in the atmosphere than
normal. One visible effect is the large increase in cirrus cloud production
found over abnormally warm areas of tropical ocean. I think that at least two
invisible effects are occurring at the same time: erosion of the bottommost
layers of the stratosphere, and a large increase in the amount of air from the
troposphere entering the stratosphere.

Together, these two effects can account for the worsening ozone losses of
recent years. Most of the world's ozone is produced in the tropical
stratosphere, then transported towards mid and high latitudes. Erosion of the
lower tropical stratosphere could simply reduce the amount of ozone available
for transport to mid latitudes, particularly at lower altitudes (where the
highest levels of Northern Hemisphere ozone depletion have been observed).
Ozone-destroying pollutants such as CFCs arrive at the Antarctic ozone hole
by a circuitous route - they enter the ozone layer in the tropics, and are
then carried towards the poles by the general movement of stratospheric air.
A more leaky tropical stratosphere would therefore allow much higher levels
of these pollutants to reach the ozone hole, even if their overall level in
the atmosphere remained constant.

"five months after the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991, the amount of ozone
in the lower stratosphere over the tropics had been reduced by up to 30 per
cent. ... When the lower stratosphere warms, convection lifts parcels of air
from the region near the tropopause (the boundary between the troposphere and
the stratosphere). Air in this part of the atmosphere normally rises about 17
metres a day. But the increase in temperature caused by the Pinatubo aerosol
may have increased this to 40 metres a day." - Hot dust threatens ozone above
tropics, New Scientist 2/1/93.

These appear not to be actual measurements, but predictions made using a
computer model which "match up well with observations made by instruments
launched on balloons from Brazzaville in the Congo republic (4 deg. South, 15
deg. East) between April and September last year [1992].". Clearly the
researchers found a problem of some kind, which they immediately attributed
to the Mt Pinatubo eruption.

Unfortunately I have been able to find no other published information on the
state of the tropical stratosphere and ozone layer, perhaps because scientists
have seen no reason to study ozone depletion in the tropics. Or perhaps there
is another explanation.

If the mystery factor destroying ozone (be it the destruction of the tropical
stratosphere or something else) continues to grow at the rate it has since
1990, within the next 3 to 5 years ozone levels over much if not all of the
world will have fallen sufficiently to allow lethal amounts of ultraviolet
through - enough to wither crops and other plant life, and blind or fatally
burn anyone foolish or desperate enough to venture out into daylight. Within
such a short timescale, even if CO2 emissions were cut to zero (assuming it
were possible) CO2 levels would fall by only a few percent at best, not enough
to make any real difference to the outcome. What would the reaction of
scientists be on finding this out? Would they immediately announce it to the
world?

"Whoops, we made a bit of a boo-boo. It turns out that CO2 emissions aren't
quite as harmless as we have been saying all this time. Because of our mistake
you, your family, friends and indeed the entire human race are going to die
horribly sometime in the next few years. Unfortunately we know of no way to
prevent this from happening. Have a nice day."

Put yourself in their position. Would you make that announcement? Or would
you conceal what you knew from fellow scientists and the public, and let the
human race live out its last few years in ignorance of the catastrophe about
to obliterate it?

By this stage you are probably wondering why I have released this series of
messages. My involvement began nearly two years ago, when I was researching
the feasibility of developing an idea I had into a patentable invention. This
research involved reading about the structure and circulation of the oceans,
as well as the greenhouse effect and the effect of CO2 emissions in
particular.

One particularly puzzling fact was the very modest official estimates for the
warming effects of CO2 emissions - since industrialisation began, CO2 levels
have risen by almost as much again as they did at the end of the last ice age,
and yet the IPCC were saying that this would raise global temperatures by less
than 1 C. I had read James Lovelock's Gaia books a couple of years earlier,
and at the time his ideas seemed quite plausible. I had also read about the
computer models of the ozone layer which predicted only a gradual,
insignificant loss of ozone from CFC emissions. After the ozone hole was
discovered it turned out that the processes destroying ozone were completely
different from the ones used in the computer models, and ozone was actually
being destroyed at a rate hundreds of times faster than the models predicted.

So I must confess to being highly sceptical towards official estimates of
global warming right from the start.

At this time I was also reading about the oceans, including the role of
oceanic circulation in transporting heat around the globe, and how seawater
freezing into ice in polar oceans was an important driving force for this
circulation. It immediately struck me how vulnerable the whole process would
be to greenhouse gas emissions, that the amount of water freezing would be
severely reduced, probably even before any temperature rise showed itself.
From the figures given in the books I was reading, it was obvious that a
severe weakening of oceanic circulation would produce enough cooling in
temperate and polar regions to offset even the very high level of warming
suggested by the ice age CO2 levels. A few rough calculations showed that
tropical oceans had an enormous capacity to absorb heat - even if oceanic
circulation was stopped altogether, they would probably warm up by under 1 C
per year. I also knew that these oceans were literally the last place in the
world that climatologists would look for evidence of global warming.

Shortly after I reached these conclusions, Scientific American published the
"Coral Bleaching" articlme. That was the point at which I became certain that
the climatologists had indeed made a terrible mistake. Over the following
months, I read more books and searched through my back issues of New Scientist
and Nature for any more relevant information. That's when I found the research
linking tropical ocean warming with ozone depletion, and that there were flaws
in the official explanations for ozone loss just as glaring as the ones about
climate change. From that point onward I have been trying to alert the world
to this terrible danger, firstly by writing to newspapers, magazines, and
"green" organisations (perhaps unsurprisingly, the only replies I got were of
the "f*** off you loony bastard" variety). More recently I have aired some of
these ideas on computer networks - first on Fidonet, then a couple of months
ago in sci.geo.meteorology and talk.environment, and now this.

One final thing. Supposing I am right, can anything be done about it? As we
have already seen, the timescale is so short that even halting greenhouse gas
emissions altogether would by itself not be enough.

Hugh Easton

Hugh@Daflight.demon.co.uk
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