I've gotten to the point where I think many of those teaching our children about climate change have become child abusers. They're largely telling the children there's no hope for the future and we're all going to die in the next ten to twelve years unless we blow up everything we're now doing and change the world. The kids are essentially powerless to do anything, so telling them they're all going to die and there's nothing they can do about it is arguably child abuse.
Climate change has become a religious belief among many people with them dismissing all who dare deny their truth. They know they're right and everyone else is wrong. There is no room for debate or questioning. "Heretics must be destroyed! The science is on our side! Everyone who knows anything agrees!" Yeah, not so much.
NASA's site on climate change states the following. "The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increase in carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere."
How does carbon dioxide account for this increase? The experts say it forms a reflective heat blanket that traps in heat and reflects it back to Earth. The more carbon dioxide, the more heat it traps and reflects back to the Earth. This effect is what's typically called the greenhouse effect. Scientists believe the carbon dioxide level is the highest it's been in 800,000 years.
Which brings to mind the interesting question of who was measuring the carbon dioxide levels 800,000 years ago? Well, it turns out no one, but scientists believe they can determine those levels by measuring trapped air bubbles in the Arctic and Antarctic ice. That kind of makes sense doesn't it? That air's been trapped there all this time with nothing around it but ice. There's the slight little problem that there has been something else around it. Sea ice algae. Sea ice algae is a single cell organism that literally moves through sea ice looking for food to eat (nitrates, phosphates and the like) and carbon dioxide to harvest the carbon to make more sea ice algae. In order to trust those readings from the trapped air bubbles, one must assume no sea ice algae ever found those bubbles and altered their composition. Don't forget sea ice algae breathes in CO2 and exhales oxygen. Even a slight exposure to sea ice algae would change the composition of the air trapped in the sea ice. As someone who's kept aquariums for most of his life, let me assure you that algae likely found its way to those air bubbles. Algae is insanely prevalent and resourceful. And sea ice isn't as solid as it appears. Look at it under a microscope and you'll find it riddled with little passageways that algae could move through.
"Well, we know carbon dioxide levels have risen in modern times!" Of course. There are more people, more cars, more heated homes than ever before. I don't deny humans play a role in global warming and climate change. Just one silly old human would make an impact, however slight, by simply breathing and having a different body temperature than the atmospheric air temp. Any and all warm blooded mammals have some impact on the environment. I just question the role that carbon dioxide plays in all of this.
"What else could possibly account for the increase in temperature?" Lots of things. There are more people and each person is a 98.6 degree (or so) radiator radiating heat each and every second they're alive. You can feel that if you've ever been in a smallish crowded space with lots of other people and limited air circulation. There are more homes, offices, and heated structures than there ever were before. There are more paved surfaces than there ever were before absorbing heat. There's more air conditioned spaces than there ever were before. Remember, air conditioning works by removing heat from inside structures and moving it outdoors. Think about that. We're moving heat outdoors and keeping homes, offices and businesses cooler inside. Those modern glass skyscrapers are essentially giant greenhouses collecting heat energy all day while their air conditioning moves that heat outside. Gee, I wonder why the air outside is hotter? There are more cars than ever before. Car engines and car exhaust are very hot. We're adding so much extra heat to the environment that of course the temperatures are increasing. We'd be in more trouble if temps weren't rising.
According to one government website, we're consuming three times the BTU's we did in the 1950's. For those who don't know, a BTU is a British Thermal Unit or the energy required to heat one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Let's put this to use in a "real world" scenario. Let's say we have an isolated single room home and we went into it in the 1950's and saw that there was a smallish ten thousand BTU heater running flat out 24/7/365. We took the temperature of the room and left. We came back today and took a fresh look. Now instead of a single ten thousand BTU furnace running 24/7/365, there are three. (Three times the BTU consumption.) We take the temperature and amazingly, it's gone up! Who could have foreseen that? Well, nearly everyone actually. Now, to most of us we'd say the tripling of the number of heaters is what caused the increase in the temperature. The greenhouse gas believers though would look to the ceiling though and wonder what change had occurred to the ceiling that was trapping in and reflecting back the heat. You don't need to look for mysterious reasons why the temperature has gone up when the obvious answer is right in front of you. We're generating more heat than ever before, so the temperature should go up. That's how the world works. Add more heat and the temperature goes up.
"But the world will end in ten to twelve years!" No, it won't. Humans are insanely adaptable. We live everywhere from the equator to the Arctic circle. We find a way to survive no matter what. A few degrees change in temperature won't bring about the end of the world. The worst case scenario has the average temp increasing by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. Here in NJ our average temp is 52.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If it goes up 7.2 degrees it'll be 59.9 degrees Fahrenheit. "We're doomed! Why that would make our average temperature almost that of Arkansas and no one can survive in that kind of a climate! Wait, what? People are living in Arkansas at an average temp of 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit? That's odd. And the average temp in Hawaii is over seventy degrees? How do they survive?" Quite well actually.
"Well, the polar ice caps will melt and drown us all!" They may melt, but the drown us all part is a bit over the top. The Earth isn't a solid surface where any new water added just sits on the surface. Much of the Earth is a lot more sponge-like than the alarmists would like you to believe. When water hits dry land, it doesn't sit atop the land forever. It soaks into the soil and it doesn't stop moving downward until it hits something impenetrable, like a layer of clay, or the Earth's crust, if then. Even the Earth's crust isn't absolutely solid. It has cracks and voids in it where water can continue to be pulled downward by gravity. That danged gravity is kind of relentless and pulls the water down, down, down until there's no place left for it to go. There it forms aquifers, vast underground lakes/ponds/oceans of water. What do you suppose happens to the land atop those aquifers when all of that water displaces it? Surprise! It rises. So, as the sea level rises and hits dry land, the water gets drawn downward, causing the surface of the planet to rise up as the water displaces the soil. Imagine that! It's almost like Mother Nature/God knows what they're doing and keeps things in equilibrium. (By the way, NJ is sinking due to the amount of water we've drained from the Kirkwod/Cohansey aquifer if anyone doubts that the land will float atop an aquifer.)
If the Earth wasn't sponge-like we'd already all be knee deep in water and not because of climate change but from pumping trillions of gallons of water from underground aquifers that then works it's way through our water treatment plants and back to rivers, bays, and ultimately the oceans. If you look at how much water we've pumped from the aquifers in the last century, it makes the melting of the glaciers look a lot less scary. The USGS (United States Geological Survey) states that from 2000-2008 we pumped 25 cubic kilometers of water from underground each year. For those of us used to dealing with water in the more common US gallon measurement, that's about 6.6 trillion (that's trillion with a 't') gallons of water per year and we've been doing it for decades. (Assuming the online cubic kilometers to US gallons calculator I used is correct.)
It's now 2019 and I suspect that number is even higher. and don't forget, that's just from the United States, not the whole world. We're a tiny little fraction of the world's population, all of whom drink water that's typically pumped up to the surface from deep underground. We're just 330 million of the world's 7.7 billion people, so we're only about 4.29% of the world's population. If just 4.29% of the people are using 6.6 trillion gallons of water and you extrapolate that number to the world's population you'll find that we're using about 163 trillion gallons of water each and every year that gets ripped out from underground and plopped on top of it in some manner. Are we all knee deep in water from this massive volume of water that's been pumped up from underground? No. why not? Because the Earth is a lot more sponge-like than the panic creators want you to believe.
"But the melting glaciers will be different! It'll all come roaring out at once and overwhelm the Earth's ability to absorb it all!" Not really. One of the things the "sky is falling" crowd likes to forget is that seawater freezes at 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Fresh water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. As the glaciers melt, they'll dilute the seawater, lowering the salinity and making it less salty and thus raising the freezing point of the seawater, making it more likely to refreeze. This will slow the melting rate appreciably and spread out the time over which the glaciers melt, giving the land more time to absorb the melt off.
The Earth likes things kept in balance. It's danged efficient at achieving that balance despite our interference. Rising water levels create new aquifers under the soil forcing the land upwards. More atmospheric carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures means a longer growing season and more lush plant growth consuming the CO2. Some greenhouse growers actually pipe in commercially produced carbon dioxide to enhance the growth of their plants. And speaking of commercially produced carbon dioxide, every can of soda you open is releasing carbon dioxide. That's where the carbonation in carbonated sodas comes from. Every loaf of bread is made by yeast converting sugars to starch and the gas released in that process is carbon dioxide. Alcoholic drinks are made through the same fermentation process with CO2 being released. Much has been made of cow farts lately also. Do we ban soda, bread, cows, and alcoholic drinks? No. Do we ban the commercial production of carbon dioxide which is one of the most widely used commercially produced gasses? No. Another example of things staying in balance is the simple logic that the warmer the outside air is, the less energy we need to heat our homes. If we reduce heating days by ten percent due to climate change, we reduce CO2 emissions created by heating homes by ten percent. There's a balance and symmetry that people are largely ignoring.
"But, but, but..." But nothing. Let's take a fresh look at how the greenhouse effect is supposed to work. Heat energy from the sun arrives at Earth and around 26% (according to NASA) of it is currently reflected away by our atmosphere and clouds. Wouldn't more CO2 reflect more heat out into space and away from Earth? The rest of the heat energy meanders it's way through the atmosphere, warming the colder air it passes through, giving up energy the whole time, until it hits the surface of the Earth. There, still more of its energy is absorbed by the surfaces it hits and the rest is reflected back upwards and out towards space. Along this trek back up and away from the Earth it's passing through colder air once again and giving up still more energy until it hits the upper atmosphere where the CO2 layer is strongest and then some passes through that layer back into space, while the rest is reflected back down towards Earth again, once more giving up heat energy the whole time to the colder air that it passes through on the way down. And bear in mind, the air it passes through is really cold, as anyone who's taken a commercial flight with a talkative pilot will be only too happy to confirm. They love to tell you the outside air temperature and it's very, very cold, typically somewhere around -38 degrees Celsius or -36.4 degrees Fahrenheit. So, three trips through this really cold air and a bounce off the Earth and it still has the energy left to melt a glacier? Call me a science-denying troglodyte if you want, but I have my doubts about the "science" behind a lot of this. That's some seriously energetic heat energy to be able to do all of that.
Heat rises because it heats the air and hot air is less dense than colder air, so the hot air rises taking the heat with it. Much like a helium filled balloon rises because helium is less dense than air. If I hold a helium filled balloon on the floor and let it go, it'll rise up to my ceiling and do what? Bounce all the way back to the floor since my ceiling doesn't absorb the balloon and can be said to be reflective of helium filled balloons? No. It'll maybe take a small bounce or two then stay at the ceiling. It's less dense than the air it's displacing so it stays there. Why would heat behave differently? Why doesn't the warm air rising upwards carrying the heat up just stay there? Is it truly that insanely energetic that it can go all the way through the really cold air, stop, change direction and come all the way back down to Earth to melt a glacier?
How fast is heat traveling if it has that kind of energy? At the speed of light as science says? I don't know but I know if I light a fire in my fireplace and I'm sitting across the room from it, it takes a while for the heat to reach me. It sure as heck isn't traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Is that darn old air slowing down the heat? If so, why doesn't it slow down the heat from the sun, stealing much of its energy and slowing its speed and limiting its ability to go bouncing around here, there and everywhere? God knows the air the heat is passing through on its way to and from Earth is colder than my room air.
Should we blow up the entire economy to fix something that, in truth, may not even be broken? In my opinion, no. The Earth will survive just fine. Humans will survive just fine. The end of the world isn't coming in ten to twelve years. We need to show kids a bright and shining future ahead of them. We need them to be optimists looking toward their future, not terrified of dying in ten to twelve years. The reality is that none of the earlier dire predictions of the end of the world have ever come true. If they had, we wouldn't be here now to worry about the next one.
And there's always a new end of the world scenario out there that the fear mongers insist is true, but the kids of the kids now being terrorized with the threat of the world ending in ten to twelve years from climate change will all face whatever future new end of the world scenario is dreamed up by the fear mongers of their time. In my sixty years the end of the world has been coming from pandemic, swine flu, bird flu, (insert name of animal here) flu, herpes, a mutated HIV virus that becomes airborne and easily spread, a new ice age (very popular in the seventies,) MRSA, Ebola, a comet crashing into Earth and killing us all like it did the dinosaurs, nuclear obliteration, the hole in the ozone layer, recently bedbugs were the cause of panic, and much, much more. Now it's climate change. Seriously? People live everywhere on this planet. Their worst case scenario of a 7.2 degree Fahrenheit rise in average temps over a century is kind of a minor hiccup for most of us. It's truly not the end of the world. So, New Jersey's weather becomes more like the weather in Arkansas. I can adjust. It won't kill me. Everyone just needs to calm down and apply some common sense.
Stop trying to scare kids into believing the world will end before they get to become adults and let them see a bright, prosperous future ahead of them. The science behind climate change isn't nearly as unquestionable as many would like you to believe. We've now faced something like twenty "tipping points" and gone past them with the only real result being a new future tipping point that this time they really believe in. (Or so they say.) In ten to twelve years the next tipping point will be ten to twelve years away. Is the planet getting warmer? Yes. No doubt. It better be. We're certainly trying to heat it up more. We're adding three times the heat to it that we were in the fifties, so it should be getting warmer. If it was getting colder we'd be in real trouble. Is CO2 the big baddie? Probably not. We're doing enough without it to account for the change in temps we're seeing. Will we all die in ten to twelve years? No. It's a lie. A flat out, bald-faced lie designed to scare people. So, over the course of the next century NJ becomes more like Arkansas, in the worst case scenario, is that really so bad? No.
