Could there be another cause of Global Warming ?

The issue is of course, whether carbon emissions are solely to blame or merely a symptom of a greater problem? It is here I am having major doubts and I welcome all and everyone to counter this blog with facts, not facts that repeat the same old same old arguments, but ones that demonstrably disprove my hypothesis. The points I have made in this blog are not by any means scientific, however they pose enough anomalies for me to ask the question.

I also have absolutely no doubt in my mind that sociologically, geo-politically and morally we have a collective responsibility to not only find an alternative to our reliance on fossil fuels, but to also clean up our planet from the ravages of pollution. Hypoxias (dead zones in the sea) for example, are becoming more and more frequent as a result of man`s irresponsible environmental policies. Herein lies my dilemma. Whilst I appreciate the positive effect this current discussion regarding carbon emissions is having on our world as a whole, my concern is that at some point this "theory" will be proved wrong, and knowing people as I know people, the backlash against the "green movement" for promoting this questionable theory of man-made global warming, will have long ranging effects that may take many years to undo.

Furthermore, when you consider that the "global warming" theory was initially promoted by the Thatcher government in the UK in the early 90s, because Margaret Thatcher wanted to make a cohesive and persuasive argument for Nuclear Power, it tends to confirm an alternative agenda. More and more of late we hear hardcore environmentalists seriously arguing for nuclear power, so one has to ask the secondary question, is the whole global warming hype merely a way to scare the world into accepting the nuclear option? Isn`t this a pattern that is becoming all too apparent, the Problem-Reaction-Solution paradigm, where the solution is always known before the problem is manufactured, however we the people have to be manipulated into accepting the unacceptable? Manufacture a problem (Global Warming), that scares the living daylights out of everyone (reaction) and government steps in with a solution (Nuclear Power). The only thing green about nuclear power is the colour it makes you glow.

Looking at the temperature record for the last 100 years, something immediately struck me as odd. Circa 1945, in the great post-war economic boom, one can see from the widely available charts, that although carbon emissions rose quite dramatically as is to be expected, temperatures fell. I`m not a scientist by any means, but that struck me as very illogical if we are to believe the claims of the pro-Global Warming lobby. In the temperature record/solar activity chart for the last 400 years, temperatures on the planet effectively mirrored solar activity, however circa 1985, temperatures rose despite a leveling off of solar activity. If temperatures are rising despite a leveling off of solar activity, the claim is it must be carbon emissions. Well must it? As I have previously stated, carbon emissions rose dramatically between 1945 and 1985, however temperatures dropped. Many of you reading this blog will remember the "ice-age is coming" hysteria of the early 1970s, this was because temperatures had dropped annually for 30 years. So one has to ask the question, what if it isn`t carbon emissions?

I posed the question to friends of mine, some firm believers in the carbon emissions theory, what did happen between 1945 and 1993 that may have had an effect on surface temperatures that hasn`t been brought into the debate from what I can gather? The answer of course is Nuclear Testing. Could it be that what we are experiencing now is merely the blowback from a nuclear testing policy carried out by the USA, Soviet Union, UK, Australia, China, France and Germany and others between 1945-and 1993?

The facts are staggering...Between 16 July 1945 and the 23rd September 1993, there were 2,044 tests worldwide, the equivalent of one test occurring somewhere in the world every nine days for the last fifty years. Nuclear weapon test explosions have been carried out in all environments: above ground, underground, and underwater. Of the 2,044 nuclear weapons tests worldwide, there have been 711 in the atmosphere or underwater. They have occurred on top of towers, on board barges, suspended from balloons, on the earth's surface, underwater to depths of 2,000 feet, underground to depths of more than 8,000 feet, and in horizontal tunnels. Test bombs also have been dropped by aircraft and fired by rockets up to 200 miles into the atmosphere. It is estimated that the total yield of all the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted is 438 megatons. That's equivalent to 29,200 Hiroshima size bombs. In the 36 years between 1945 and 1980 when atmospheric testing was being conducted this would have been equivalent to exploding a Hiroshima size bomb in the atmosphere every 11 hours. Approximately 3,830 kilograms of plutonium has been left in the ground as a result of all underground nuclear testing and some 4,200 kilograms of plutonium has been discharged into the atmosphere as a result of atmospheric nuclear testing - (Greenpeace) Furthermore, carbon-14 in atmospheric carbon dioxide shot up to nearly double what it was and has been slowly dropping toward pre-testing levels.

Yet we are expected to believe that none of this has in any way contributed to the warming of the planet, meanwhile, the minimal increase as a result of human activity in CO2, (which is one of the smallest greenhouse gases accounting for 3.618% of the entire greenhouse make up), also adding that of the total amount of CO2, only 0.117% of the greenhouse effect is due to atmospheric CO2 from human activity, but according to the experts, this miniscule percentage caused by human activity and nothing else, is solely responsible for global warming .

Take a look at the following two pictures, the first is a map of all the land nuclear test sites, the second, a map of the sea test sites. Notice anything? The correlation between the hottest places on the planet and nuclear testing seems to be pretty well demonstrated.

Land Tests compared to Earth Surface Temperatures



Sea Tests Compared to Sea Surface Temperatures



Now to get a bit scientific courtesy of John Daly , but the potential conclusion is so significant that this needs to be discussed. According to a model formulated by Hochstein and O'Sullivan (1985), an underground nuclear explosion in rock saturated with seawater can set up an artificial geothermal system. The heat stored in the explosion chamber is on the order of 10E12 calories per kiloton of yield. In addition, heat generation due to radioactive decay goes on after the explosion of fission bombs, at a rate of about 595 calories per second per kiloton of yield. After the explosion, seawater enters the chamber and is heated by about 25o - 50o C by both stored and newly generated heat. The heated seawater dissolves the glassy materials, liberating the nuclear waste. At the same time, the heated seawater sets up an artificial geothermal system, which transfers the dissolved nuclear waste slowly upwards through the extended chimney. While the concentration of the radionuclides decreases by diffusion and absorption, the heated cell transferring the radionuclides moves upwards with a speed of about 10 meters per year, according to the computer simulation of Hochstein and O'Sullivan. Under the assumptions of this model, radionuclides from a depth of around 500 meters would reach the cracks of the lagoon in less than 50 years instead of the 500 to 1,000 years assumed by the French authorities (now when does that hockey stick start to go through the roof? ). A first hint that the model of Hochstein and O'Sullivan might be correct was the discovery of cesium-134 by the Cousteau Mission in 1987.( In December 1990, too, Greenpeace found cesium-134 in plankton collected outside the 12-mile exclusion zone around Moruroa. While the measured concentrations of cesium-137 are consistent with the consequences of local and global atmospheric tests, the concentrations of cesium134 are less explicable. Global atmospheric fallout does not contain cesium134, which is produced by the addition of one neutron to the nucleus of stable cesium-133.)

So taking the above, what if every country who carried out nuclear testing is wrong? Its not like "governmental science" is infallible, claims to the safety of flouride and aspartame are just two of many examples of gross misjudgements made by government scientists in the last 50 years. What if it only takes between 40 and 50 years and not the 500 - 1000 years that we`ve all been told, for the effects of nuclear testing to become devastating? What did happen to all that water vapour expelled into the atmosphere (water vapour being the largest greenhouse gas accounting for 95% of all greenhouse gases)? If you watch the test of the Tsar explosion , the largest nuclear weapon ever tested at some 60 megatons, the debris and water vapour reached 40 miles into the atmosphere. Where has all this debris gone? The blast wave was still felt on its third time round the planet, and certainly, whilst not at this level, we have had one of these bombs go off to the equivalent of every 9 days for 50 years. Toxic contamination from nuclear testing can be found for example, in every state in America.

Lets examine some more environmental effects and this is a very short list

- The production of nuclear weapons has polluted vast amounts of soil and water at hundreds of nuclear weapons facilities all over the world. Many of the substances released, including plutonium, uranium, strontium, cesium, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), mercury and cyanide, are carcinogenic and/or mutagenic and remain hazardous for thousands, some for hundreds of thousands, of years.
- Contaminants from nuclear weapons production and testing have often traveled far down wind and down stream. Radioactivity released from atmospheric nuclear testing — including plutonium, strontium, cesium, carbon-14, and radioactive iodine — has been widely dispersed throughout the world. Underground tests have contaminated soil and groundwater. A 1991 US government report called the soil contamination from underground testing at the Nevada Test Site "a threat to human health and the environment".
- Radioactive wastes created in the manufacture of a single nuclear bomb containing 4 kg of plutonium-239 and 20 kg of uranium-235 include: 2,000 metric tons of uranium mining waste, 4 metric tons of depleted uranium, 12,000 curies of strontium-90, 12,000 curies of cesium-137, 50 cubic meters of ‘low-level’ waste and 7 cubic meters of transuranic waste. For an approximate picture of radioactive waste production to date, multiply the above by the estimated 70,000 nuclear warheads that have been manufactured on an international scale.

As I have stated, I am not a scientist, I have neither the knowledge nor the expertise to explore this hypothesis further, however I have shown this theory to a number of experts in the field of global warming, and every single one has urged me to publish this blog because they believe that not only has this link never been explored with any scientific degree, as one said, "this actually makes a lot of sense". You ask yourself the question, what is more likely to effect the atmosphere and SST`s on the planet, 50 years of this kind of irresponsible testing or grandma`s mini cooper getting 30 miles to a gallon of gas?

Ocean temperatures are rising in all major ocean basins, with variations from ocean to ocean. This trend is consistent with the observed increase in air temperature. Over the past 100 years, an initial warming phase (1910-1945) was followed by a period of cooling. A second warming phase began during the 1970s and is still continuing. Whilst undeniably there are "hotspots" around the globe, not all sea temperatures are rising, the waters around Europe are relatively stable. However, there have never been any nuclear tests in Europe, so one would expect this if my theory is to hold any water whatsoever. I did notice in my much searching, that in 2006 sea surface temperatures around Japan have risen as much as three times the world average over the past century , the cause they attribute it to was of course Global Warming . Far be it from me to disagree with this esteemed claim, but do I seem to remember a couple of incidents circa 1945 called Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Coincidence?.

Peace

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