Keeping it real... just sayin'...

The Climate change debate – where government, business and NGO’s lock horns on who inherits the Earth (and how).

It’s not about – “those who know there is a problem” and “the deniers”.

It’s about… – us learning to adapt to environmental change, polluting less and deciding who gets to do what. Simple?

Climate Change: will it be too hot or too cold?

Climatic change is an important field of study in science. However (as Simon Gear would admit), it is not an exact science – like all sciences, mutable. If our understanding of science did not change, we would still think that the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around our little planet.

COP17 etc: There is an enormous political, social and economic interest in a scientific consensus, because it determines our understanding of our environment and all that is in it, including humanity itself.

And challenging a consensus is an amazing tool for people to remain free and independent thinkers.

This is why: We hear consistently that climate change is caused by increased Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and that humans are the greatest sinner: by causing this toxic greenhouse gas, causing climate change catastrophically…

Climate history 101:

      The Ice Age was a long-term period of reduction in global temperatures. Greenland and Antarctica were created in this period. The ice age left us with valleys, fjords and rock formations to climb. As they receded, the landscape was free for plant growth and life to flourish. The Canada and United States Great Lakes were carved out by ice.

      Following the Ice Age, the Halocene period began roughly 12,000 B.C. All human civilization occurred within this period, when there was both global warming and cooling periods, which have lasted until today. During the period of 10,000 to 8500 BC, there was a slight cooling period known as the Younger-Dryas.

      However, that passed, and between 5000 and 3000 B.C., temperatures increased to a level higher than today! This period is referred to  as the Climatic Optimum. It was during this warming period in history that Earth’s first great human civilizations began to flourish, such as ancient African civilizations around the Nile.

      Between 3000 and 2000 B.C., a cooling period resulted in a drop in sea levels, creating islands such as the Bahamas! The Roman Empire (150 B.C. – 300 A.D.) occurred during a cooling period, which went until roughly 900 A.D. During the period of 900 A.D. until 1200 A.D., a warming period occurred known as the Medieval Warming Period, or Little Climatic Optimum, which was warmer than today, and people moving in their droves to Greenland and Iceland.

      Then a cooling period followed and between 1550 and 1850, temperatures were colder than at any other time since the end of the previous Ice Age, leading to what has been called the Little Ice Age. Since 1850, there has been a general warming period – like what’s happening now…

Tales from the Farr Side…

This latest warming period has also coincided with the Industrial Revolution, which saw the greatest output of human induced CO2. Al Gore popularized the CO2/temperature connection in his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, in which he showed the correlation between CO2 and well, us. However, paleoclimatologist Lowell Stott in 2007 suggested the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming – not the cause.

  

Weather and Carbon

The air we breathe consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen a 1% mix of gases. Weather happens in the lowest level of the atmosphere: the troposphere, and is determined by:

      air temperature,

      air pressure and

      humidity.

The most important factors in determining temperature in the atmosphere are:

      radiation arriving from the Sun via

o   visible light,

o   infrared heat rays and

o   ultraviolet rays

      and radiation flowing from the Earth.

A.      Roughly 30% of solar radiation coming into the Earth’s atmosphere is reflected back out to space by clouds, while 70% is absorbed into the atmosphere, increasing the temperature. This is what is known as the greenhouse effect.

B.      Air pressure decreases the higher you get, because there is less air above you.

C.      Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air, varying with temperatures.

We often hear of “greenhouse gases” as being bad things. Yet, water vapor is the largest greenhouse gas of all, making up a much greater percentage than the gases that follow it!!

CO2 / Carbon Dioxide, is produced by all plants, animals, fungi and microorganisms, and it is then absorbed by plants.

As people breathe in oxygen, we then breathe out carbon dioxide, plants take it in through photosynthesis, and thusly emit oxygen for us to breathe in.

Carbon dioxide cannot be so simply classified as a toxin. In fact, it is a life accelerant! Research shows that shifts in rainfall patterns, cloud cover, and warming temperatures triggered a 6% increase in the amount of carbon stored in trees, grass, shrubs, and flowers, particularly the Amazon rain forests, which saw the greatest growth rates in the world.

A study conducted in 2006 revealed that diversity increases as the planet warms and decreases as it cools, yet deforestation can reverse this effect, simulating the effects of a global cooling trend.

In 2007, a study revealed that as icebergs break off from Antarctica (some a dozen miles across), the ocean around them serves as ‘hotspots’ for ocean life, with thriving communities of seabirds above and a web of phytoplankton, krill, and fish below.

In 2002, it was reported that the southern Saharan desert is in retreat, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. Vegetation is ousting sand across a swathe of land stretching from Mauritania on the shores of the Atlantic to Eritrea 6000 kilometres away on the Red Sea coast – largely attributed to increases in rainfall.

So.. what then Causes Climate Change?

If CO2 increases lag behind temperature increases, it does not make sense that CO2 can be the cause of temperature increases. It would be the equivalent of saying that growing older is caused by the graying of hair!

The Number One climatic change agent is radiation emitted from the Sun. Sunspot cycles are the irregular rises and drops of temperature on the Sun’s surface. The cycles tend to last 11 years.

Earth is not the only planet that experiences climate change! The sun is getting hotter…

In 2002, Pluto was undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere.

In 2006, Jupiter was in the midst of a global change that could modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees F. In 1998, it was found Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, was undergoing a period of global warming since 1989.

In 2007, National Geographic News reported that simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause…. Mph, why all the fuss?

Venus is the “solar system’s most inhospitable planet.” Funny that J A planetary scientist at Oxford University stated, “It's very disturbing that we do not understand the climate on a planet that is so much like the Earth,” and that, “It is telling us that we really don't understand the Earth.”

CO2 is roughly 95% of Venus’ atmosphere, compared to Earth’s atmosphere, which is 0.038% CO2. Venus may have so much CO2 because it lost its water.

Perhaps we should put more focus into preserving and protecting our oceans.

Get Your Parka, Here Comes Global… “Cooling”?

There is a little problem with the whole “global warming” consensus, in that recent scientific research shows traditional climate cycles cancel out the heating effect of greenhouse gases from pollution.

In other words, the natural climate cycles that Earth goes through, and always has gone through, have changed again, just as a political consensus was reached. Proof points:

      In 2008, snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966 and China went through its most brutal winter in a century.

      When we are told the Artic Sea ice is melting to its “lowest levels on record,” the records date back to 1972. Yet there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past. As it turns out, the ice itself has not only recovered from melting, but has grown thicker in many places. Climate models have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation.

 Even the BBC reported that temperatures will decrease because of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, which is a natural phenomenon, and has a large effect on increasing cyclonic activity in the Atlantic. It’s interesting how La Niña and El Niño have disappeared from discussion on climate and hurricanes. Today, whenever there is a hurricane or natural disaster, it is instantly blamed on global warming and having been accelerated by human activity.

In July of 2008, Physics and Society reported that CO2 will add little more than 1°F (O.6°C) to global mean surface temperature by 2100; that global warming stopped ten years ago; etc…

But what now of the Consensus?

Some 4,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize winners petitioned against the UN-organized 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which concluded that global warming and other environmental insults were threatening the planet with catastrophe. In 2000, to counter the Kyoto Protocol, a petition was made up of 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics and policy experts concerned about the harm that Kyoto could inflict on the world’s poor.

The former editor of New Scientist magazine, Nigel Calder, wrote that roughly 20 years ago, climate research became politicized in favour of one particular hypothesis and the media often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Who cares what causes it! How do we deal with it?

While many scientists hold strong that it’s the Sun, cosmic rays, ocean currents and other natural phenomena that are causing climate change – and not us mere mortals – what will set us apart (and test us to the hilt) is the ability of different peoples to change and adapt, which determined the survival of our earliest civilizations too!

History will not look kindly upon our scientific ignorance and politically fear-driven society.

How have we viewed the people of the past who thought the Earth was flat, or the Sun revolved around Earth?

Getting this debate out of the way paves the way for the real issues to come to the fore:

      Fighting poverty AND diseases, old and newly borne

      Creating a viable financial system from the ashes of a smouldering market system

Now the fight

Much of the people in the world have been riled up with predictions of a catastrophic end to mankind and the world unless we don’t do something about so-called “man-made” climate change. Ironically enough, our refusal to adapt to a changing world, and instead a determination to fight it with our efforts to “go green” and “carbon neutral” may, in fact, cause the catastrophic end of our civilization. And sadly, in this instance, it would undeniably be a man-made disaster.