There is an old claim that everyone believes in Heaven but no one wants to go there. There is an article making a similar claim that while 89% of Americans believe in climate change only 15% take action. There are two critical weaknesses with this claim. First, of course 89% of Americans believe in climate change. It has, unfortunately, become a cliche that the climate is always changing. So this is like saying that 89% of Americans believe in seasons (although Southern Californians may argue there are only two — spring and fall).
So the fact that the climate changes, and that we are aware of that fact, is incidental. The issue proceeds from the following conditions or beliefs:
- that the Earth is in a period of warming-
- that this warming — unlike other trending periods of the past — is not cyclical in nature, that it will proceed unabated for a prolonged period of time-
- that most or all of the impacts of this warming to the Earth, and life in general, is negative-
- that the primary cause of this warming is human activity (generally, anything that releases CO2)-
- that the effects are reversible.
One must accept as true all five conditions or there is no problem. Let’s examine each one.
The Earth is Warming
Most people — about 89% or so, I am told — accept condition #1. Of course the Earth is warming. It would seem we are still climbing out of the last ice age which peaked about 12 thousand years ago. So we can expect, based on the approximately 110 thousand year period of past ice ages, to be warming for about another 40 thousand years.
It is the other four conditions where things start to get muddy.
This trend is non-cyclical
There are estimates of the Earth’s temperature, ocean rise and other climate-related phenomenon showing a warming trend that extends to 2050 and even 2100. The unspoken assumption is that warming will continue unabated for many decades to come. Yes, there are some long-term climate trends (Milonkovich cycles) but no one has claimed (so far) that the human-caused warming (AGW) is impacting the tilt of the planet.
The fastest cycles are, of course, the once-per-day day/night cycles, warming during the day, cooling at night. Then there are the seasons, warming during the summer, cooling during the winter. Then there are the 25–30 year cycles that occur 3 or 4 times a century. These have given us great warming trends that peaked in the mid-1930s and late 1980s-early 1990s. Newspapers of the time were full of serious forecasts of ice-free Arctic within a handful of years.
Each of these warming trends were separated by cooling trends that triggered dire warnings of the Coming Ice Age.
The common flaw in all these forecasts was projecting each of these warming or cooling trends unbroken into the future. But these were merely the upswings and downswings of cycles. There were no ice-free Arctics, no encroaching glaciers.
Is the current warming trend different? If so, why?
Warming is Bad
Here is a page I came across a while ago. The story itself is meh, and the leading chart is questionable (how can the green line ever be below the red line? Doesn’t this indicate the sun has a cooling effect on the world?) but what I found interesting is the list of articles cataloged on the right of the page:
- “Could Kennedy Space Center launch pads be at risk as climate changes? Experts say yes”
- “Report: Flooded Future: Global vulnerability to sea level rise worse than previously understood”
- “Extreme Heat: When Outdoor Sports Become Risky”
- “Climate Change is Threatening Air Quality across the Country”
- “Ocean at the Door: New Homes and the Rising Sea”
- “In Hot Water: Warming Waters are Stressing Fish and the Fishing Industry”
I realize there is a “doom and gloom” bias with all journalism — bad news sells news — but this stretches credulity. This list contains something to scare everyone from science nerds to sports jocks.
Hardly mentioned anywhere is the fact that “global warming” doesn’t mean hotter summers or hotter tropics. It means milder winters and milder polar regions. It means longer growing seasons — more food. There are a myriad ways a warmer planet is so much better for life than a cooler planet. Add to that the additional benefits of increased CO2 (larger, healthier, more drought-resistant plants), we should be praying for global warming not shaking in fear of it.
Global Warming is Our Fault
A storm has settled over the area dumping lots of rain, rain, rain. A reporter leaves for work, driving through several neighborhoods on his way. Through the downpour he notices, with wry amusement, that some water sprinklers are running, their automatic controllers turning them on even though a terrible storm is raging. During that day, the area suffers wide-ranging flooding. The reporter writes it up and the article appears in the next morning’s edition with the headline: “Torrential rains and automatic lawn sprinklers cause massive flooding.”
Well, sure. Technically speaking, I guess, the statement is true. A few lawn sprinklers going off in the middle of a rain storm certainly didn’t help, but can one really make the claim that the unneeded sprinkling was a contributing factor in the flooding?
I saw a TV documentary on global warming a few years ago. In it, a physicist made the statement, “Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it gets warmer. It’s simple math.”
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas — a minor one. It’s total impact is so small that a fairly accurate global greenhouse impact can be drawn by ignoring CO2 altogether. A more accurate account can be produced by accounting for the CO2, of course, but it is not as simple as just adding a small percentage to the temperature. CO2 is more than just a greenhouse gas. As “plant food,” it has other effects which I have mentioned. As a GHG, carbon dioxide has a warming effect. As plant food, it has a cooling effect. This creates a feedback effect that is difficult to track. This is on top of the feedback loops common to all warming (or cooling) effects, such as any warming causes more water evaporation which increases cloud formation which has a cooling effect. It is a whole lot more than “simple math.”
Then there are other facts, such as shown in this graphic:
This shows that the spectrum most absorbed by carbon dioxide is pretty much already pegged. That is, adding more CO2 has little effect.
We can fix this
And the method we can use to fix this Global Warming is: reduce our carbon footprint. (By “carbon,” we mean “carbon dioxide.”
But can we?
By examining the chart above (and sneaking in other data not shown), if we reduce the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere to absolutely none, we can make two fairly accurate assumptions:
- All life on Earth would die. First the plants, because they need CO2 to live. Then the animals that live by eating the plants. Then the animals that live by eating the animals that eat the plants.
- The temperature of the Earth would get warmer, if it changed at all. With no life, there would be no biosphere to absorb sunlight. Nothing but lifeless oceans and dirt — all of which would quickly saturate with heat then radiate continuously into the air. I don’t know how high the temperature would get, but it’s pretty safe to say that, even without CO2, it would not get cooler.
Here’s another chart:
Notice that Atmospheric CO2 starts out at a very high level and then spends most of the Earth’s history creeping downward. However, the greatest time of life formation is the Cambrian era, which is where CO2 was near its highest level.
On the other hand, temperature seems to want to linger along the line across the middle of the graph. It dips now and then, suddenly and severely to an apparent “floor,” but relatively quickly shoots back up to “normal.” Then, about 22 million years ago, for whatever reason, the temperature starts a gradual decrease down to the “floor” that seemed to be a kind of minimum operating temperature of the Earth. Carbon dioxide was also dropping, but this was just a continuation of a gradual drop that had started billions of years before.
Notice that the current temperature of the Earth, even with recent warming, is right down close to this “floor.” Looking at this graph, if one were to try to guess where the “normal” temperature is, it is surely much, much higher than it is now. And if we want to have the Earth’s plant life operating at CO2 levels close to “normal,” then we should be working to drastically increase those levels to a least a couple of thousand PPM.
In any event, if someone talks about getting temperature and CO2 levels to “historic norms,” then they are actually talking about increasing both to levels much higher than they are today.
