I never appreciated how much Hollywood buys into the fiction they produce – until the Global Warming issue surfaced. Not until now have I understood how ignorant Hollywood is about science, and yet so sure they’re failed High School grasp of a topic which takes a life time to appreciate is gospel. They actually believe their own made-up stories! The Global Warming crowd has a huge problem on their hands. The scientist who have been respectfully quiet as some have gone out and made exaggerated claims are now taking steps to regain control of the science. No longer will the GW crowd be out making wild claims without challenge. And the first salvo in this scientific response to the hype is a doozy:

Climate change will be considered a joke in five years time, meteorologist Augie Auer told the annual meeting of Mid Canterbury Federated Farmers in Ashburton this week.

Man’s contribution to the greenhouse gases was so small we couldn’t change the climate if we tried, he maintained.

“We’re all going to survive this. It’s all going to be a joke in five years,” he said.

…

Water vapour was responsible for 95 per cent of the greenhouse effect, an effect which was vital to keep the world warm, he explained.
“If we didn’t have the greenhouse effect the planet would be at minus 18 deg C but because we do have the greenhouse effect it is plus 15 deg C, all the time.”

The other greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen dioxide, and various others including CFCs, contributed only five per cent of the effect, carbon dioxide being by far the greatest contributor at 3.6 per cent.

However, carbon dioxide as a result of man’s activities was only 3.2 per cent of that, hence only 0.12 per cent of the greenhouse gases in total. Human-related methane, nitrogen dioxide and CFCs etc made similarly minuscule contributions to the effect: 0.066, 0.047 and 0.046 per cent respectively.

“That ought to be the end of the argument, there and then,” he said.

It ought to end it, but ignorance is a barrier that is tough to get around. And the truth is too many people cannot grasp the obvious nature of these numbers. Amazingly these HS diploma scientists mostly live in Hollywood:

Yes, a lot of the science is very hard to wrap your head around. But I was very clear in the movie. I want the public to be very scared by what they see. I want them to see a very bleak future. I want them to feel disillusioned halfway through and feel hopeless.

The only thing I feel hopeless about is our education system – it seems we produce too many Di Caprio’s and Gore’s who have egoes large enough to assume their paultry grasp of science and math gives them credentials to even join in on this debate. The media and pols and actors (well, they are all “actors” of one form or another) have injected themselves into matters they have no ability to understand. It is no different than if they tried to dictate a neurological disorder that was stumping a group of doctors. It would be a joke.

So let me try and put the number above into context poor Leanordo can wrap his head around. Let’s assume the earth’s atmosphere was a 6 ounce cup of tea. And let’s say we used a teaspoon of warmer water to measure in the last of the 6 ounces of tea and to heat it up. This teaspoon is the CO2 portion of the total green house effect.

Clearly the teaspoon’s worth of water would not change the temperature of the 6 ounces of tea much at all. That teaspoon is roughly 3.6% of 6 ounces, which is the C02 component (3.6%) of the greenhouse effect which is dominated by water vapor. But as the SCIENCE points out, humankind’s activities only account for 3.2 percent of the teaspoon. Since a teaspoon is equal to 5 ml, then mankind’s effect is like trying to put 0.16 ml into the 6 ounces of tea. If you have a medicine dropper in your house with tenths of a ml measurements you can visually compare man’s effect on climate with your 6 ounces of tea. That should help Caprio get his ‘mind around’ this siuation. Try it out. Try and cool of the tea or heat it up. I doubt you have a temperature measuring device that could detect the difference in temperature from .16 ml.

When Hollywood tries to insert itself it is usually for one thing – to get publicity. The scientists are not such publicity hounds, they want to have solid results that last the test of time and rigour. So they tend to be talking at a much lower volume than Hollywood. But volume doesn’t create solid fact. It is just louder noise.