Product Description

Much of the world is poised to take very drastic steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the hope that doing so will keep the world from becoming overheated. Indeed, some alarmists call for an 80% reduction in burning of fossil fuels (from which the world gets 85% of its energy) by 2050. But does CO2 really control climate? Perhaps we should look at the facts before committing to CO2 reduction policies that would surely be devastating.

Hayden's Primer is based on the notion that the first step in understanding the relationship between CO2 and climate is to gather the facts. Outputs from computer programs are not data.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70683 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• 87 pages

About the Author
Howard Hayden is a Professor Emeritus of Physics from the University of Connecticut. A Colorado native, he entered the University of Denver as an engineering major, but soon discovered that he wasn t temperamentally suited to all that reality. He switched to physics and went on to earn his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at DU.

On receiving his Ph.D., he went to the University of Connecticut where he spent 32 years clasting icons and corrupting young minds. He did accelerator-based atomic physics, including measurements of cross-sections for various processes, measurements of energy loss in atomic collisions and of lifetimes of excited states, beam-foil spectroscopy, and ion implantation.

Hayden has a long-standing interest in energy, stemming from before the OPEC oil embargoes of the 70s. Presently, he publishes a monthly newsletter, The Energy Advocate, which in August 2007 began its 12th year of publication. He wrote The Solar Fraud: Why Solar Energy Won t Run the World. Reviews of the book have varied from praise to venomous hatred.

Hayden is not employed by any petroleum, coal, natural gas, nuclear-fuel, or any other energy company, or any utility, nor does he receive any compensation from any such facility, either as direct payment or as research support or any other kind of grant. His association with such scurrilous outfits is that he has to pay them for fuels and electricity, quite as if he were a normal human being.

In the interest of full disclosure, he reveals that his closest friends exhale CO2. Nary a one has paid for carbon credits for doing so.

Customer Reviews

Remarkable non-technical account of the role of CO2 in the climate
Dr. Hayden (Professor Emeritus of Physics from the University of Connecticut) has written a wonderful little book giving a non-technical description of the role of CO2 in the atmosphere. In 53 pages he lays out a large number of facts about CO2 and it's possible contribution to a warming earth.

He covers the general questions:
"<< Is the earth warming?
<< If the earth is warming, is mankind responsible?
<< If the earth is warming is that a bad situation?
<< If the earth is warming, and if mankind's use of fossil fuels is
responsible, and if the situation is bad, is there anything we
can do to remedy the situation?"

Dr. Hayden uses 36 figures and 8 tables to clearly illustrate his points.

His summary is succinct and he reaches each point very quickly. He starts with the greenhouse gas phenomenon and contrasts the role of the CO2 absorption spectrum with the role of the spectrum of H2O, it's dimer and trimer.

He discusses the increase in CO2 in recent years and then goes back to discuss the CO2 and temperature graph covering the last 400,000 years publicized recently by Al Gore. He also covers the 1812 - 1964 period, and then discusses CO2 over about 500 million years (the CO2 was many times higher in almost all earlier geologic periods).

Dr. Hayden points out many of the difficulties in making reasonable temperature measurements and argues (successfully in my opinion) that by far the best global temperatures are those from satellites. These currently show (Dec. 78 - Jun. 07) an increase below 0.13 degrees / decade. The short time satellites have been in orbit covers less than 30 years. Many think this period records the most rapid global temperature increase in the last 150 years, so I believe this small temperature increase cannot be reasonably counted as part of a long term trend. The shorter trends often reverse several times in a 100 year period so the record does not yet permit reasonable extrapolation.

He also discusses how the discredited 1,000 year "hockey stick" graph of temperatures (Mann, et. al.) has been corrected and shows higher temperatures in the 1400's than at present. The hockey stick appearance was a statistical error that is common among non-statistically trained economists and financiers. Physical evidence in the form of 1,000 and 5,000 year old tree stumps above the present tree line, confirm a warmer period in earlier human history.

He provides a brief discussion of O-18 measurements as a proxy for long term temperature trends as well as C-14 and Be-10 and their use in measuring past solar activity.

Dr. Hayden has an excellent discussion backed up by several illustrations of carbon flows into an out of the various sinks. The biggest flows of carbon into the atmosphere are the it's release by warm ocean water and soil respiration. The biggest flows out of the atmosphere are photosynthesis on land and CO2 uptake by cold ocean water. These are about 30 times and 40 times respectively the flow of carbon into the atmosphere from fossil fuel burning. He also provides a brief explanation for the decreasing greenhouse effect for each addition of CO2 to the atmosphere. There is also a comment on the retroactive causality implied by suggesting that increases in CO2 cause increases in temperature.

His discussion of computer models is dear to my own heart as I spent several years modeling infinitely simpler flows using the best research at the time (early 1980's). We found that our 2 phase, crude, water, gas flows with pressure, temperature and orifice variations were only going to be able to predict a short distance from measured conditions. Those predictions required "training" on a longer past measured history and even then were subject to occasional contradiction by the real world. The only justification was they were better (fewer million dollar mistakes) than an experienced engineer's top-of-the-head guess. I believe the global climate models suffer from so many omissions and even some assumptions that seem to violate physical laws that any reliance on their predictive ability is religion not science.

This summary work has discussions of the special temperature situation in the Antarctic, the claims of more violent storms, the effects of aerosols, correlations, solar activity, glacial retreat, polar ice caps on Mars, sea levels, mosquitoes, and the supposed scientific consensus.

When discussing anthropogenic global warming in his summary, Dr. Hayden concludes that "yes, the earth has been warming up." Are humans responsible "to some minor extent, probably; to a large extent, no." He argues that, based on past history, warming may be good for some areas and bad for others.

Assuming the foregoing summary is incorrect and humans are causing our planet to warn, Dr. Hayden discusses the political solution and what he calls "Engineering Dreams by non-Engineers." He discusses the problems with 6 of these "Dreams" including: greater efficiency, sequestration, renewables, fission, fusion, and hydrogen. While some can be useful, none offer a replacement for fossil fuels to the level the global warmers deem necessary.

I have read a number of interesting papers covering many of the topics he includes, but Dr. Hayden has produced a remarkable summary of the global warming issue in a very small book.

Classical Gas!
Well done, Howard Haden. A succinct and understandable tome on CO2 and its relationships to the earth's environment. I read this short book this evening as "desert" after the main course of "Climate Confusion" by Roy Spencer. Combine Hayden's information about the science and graphic representation (and misrepresentation) of measurements of temperature variations and CO2 levels (not to mention Milankovitch Cycles and ice ages) with Spencer's insights on weather, climate, and the economy and in the time span of a few hours, of enjoyable and understandable reading, I have learned more useful information on these topics than ever before. It would seem that Al Gore has some inconvenient explaining to do. . . and Hayden deserves (not carbon) credit for his excellent contribution in debunking the CO2 = global warming myth.

This is an EXCELLENT primer for climate change/global warming.
This is an excellent book for those who have only basic science skills, yet have an interest in learning what a qualified scientist can teach them about fundamental science relating to climate change and global warming and their relationship to atmospheric CO2. You will learn that the theory espoused by Mr. Gore and the IPCC is baseless for the simple reason that the atmosphere does not work like a typical "greenhouse" and that, in any event, atmospheric CO2 is severely limited in its potential impact on climate and climate change. Highly recommended for both novices and those who are experienced with this topic.