So here we go. My long awaited thoughts on the global warming debate.
I must state at the outset that I think there is nothing more important than looking after our planet and it's inhabitants; human and otherwise. This includes things like reducing pollution, wise use of our resources, and the elimination of poverty, hunger, war . . . all the things that make this a better world for all to live in.
To help us in our quest, we can use our knowledge of the universe - our ever increasing knowledge of science, to guide our decisions.
On the subject of global warming, I think it is very important to get the science right and I want to enlist Mozart to help me with this discussion . . .
Suppose I write a song and then someone discovers that it's a rip off of something Mozart wrote.
Is there any possible way that I could convince you that I'm the original artist and that Mozart plagiarized me? (By the way, Mozart died 163 years before I was born.)
Of course the answer is no. Unless, of course, I could get in a time machine, travel back, and somehow put the tune in his head.
In fact, there's a general rule we can use for all such questions. When event A occurs before event B, there is no way event B can cause event A.
What does this have to do with global warming?
There is a field of study that you may have heard about. It's the analysis of ice core samples. They find a very old and deep deposit of ice; popular sites include the Antarctic and Greenland, and they drill out a core and analyse it. They can determine all kinds of things dating back hundred's of thousands of years. In particular, as it relates to this article, they can determine earth's temperature in relation to atmospheric concentrations of CO2.
Over the last several years I have tracked down as many scientific ice core studies as I can find. The abstracts are freely available on the Internet and, in some cases, so is the entire study. In other cases, to read the entire study, you have to pay a subscription to the scientific journal that published the study. Since these are scientific papers, they are quite technical and I don't claim to understand all the science being discussed but it's not hard to get the drift, especially from the abstract.
One of the more famous studies on the subject was conducted in 2003 by Caillon et al. It's only three pages long and, as scientific papers go, comparatively easy to understand. I encourage you to read it. Caillon et al concluded that changes in global temperatures occur 600 years before changes in CO2 concentrations (with a statistical accuracy of plus or minus 200 years).
All of the other studies I have found have come to the same general conclusion although the study periods vary as do the time between atmospheric changes and CO2 concentrations. The shortest time lag is 800 years plus or minus 200 years (the study mentioned above). Others list a longer time lag, some as much as 5000 years.
Simply stated, they all found that changes in temperature occur before changes in CO2!
Until someone proves that there has been a systematic mistake in all these studies, which could happen, the case for CO2 being the driving factor for changes in global temperatures is not possible.
It's not possible for the same reason that Mozart could not have ripped off a song that wasn't written till at least a century and a half after his death.
Obviously there's lots more to say about all of this. But I'm going to just let what I've raised sit with you for a while.
Check out the studies. See if you can find anyone who has successfully disputed them. As I said, I've been looking for a while now and haven't found anybody that's successfully challenged them.
There was one study, which I can't seem to lay my fingers on right now, that was actually initiated to disprove the notion that CO2 changes occur after temperature changes. But once the scientific team had done their own analysis of the data, they came to the same conclusion as everyone else. Their final report actually supported and endorsed the other studies. They ended up converts! I gotta see if I can find that study, it was quite interesting.
As always, please feel free to provide your comments or ask questions. I'll try to answer them.
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This is an interesting post. I sure hope you are wrong! Why do I say that? Well, it's definitly not because I'd like to see that you've been wrong for the first time - I saw that the other day. (I won't tell anyone though...do you think you can figure out what it is? I'll give you a hint - it has something to do with golfing...and me.)
ReplyDeleteHere's why I'd like you to be wrong: There are so many philathropists, societies, do-gooders, etc. in the world today trying to make the world a better place. And what is the common theme for all of these initiatives? "Stop global warming." Global warming that is directly caused by our irresponsible and selfish treatment of the world, in which the majority of this can be attributed to the release of greenhouse gases into the environment.
There are a lot of good things that are being done in the world today - a lot of which I would assume you would agree with. Even if you have a lot of evidence that does not support the commonly understood cause of global warming. The more important common theme that I believe should be addressed is "Stewardship to an earth that does not belong to us, and therefore should be treated with respect. Not because we, in our own selfishness need to maintain it's life supporting qualities, but because we are using it and should leave it in the same condition that we found it." In the world today, people usually do maintain things that they borrow. Why? Because they have accountability to the owner. In the case of the earth, we are provided this amazing place by a God that we do not have to account to. We do not have to apologize that we destroyed what we borrowed, we just have to say "sorry". And some would argue that we don't even have to do that. In addition to that, if we know ahead of time that we only have to say sorry, we don't feel that sense of accountability that can sometime guilt us into taking care of something we borrow...even when we don't want to or when it's not convenient.
Where am I going with this? Well, I'd like a little more information. I'd like you to explore the "chicken and the egg" argument a little more. I think you touched on it, but not as directly as you could have. Just as the saying implies - if you have a chicken, you'll get an egg. If you have an egg, you'll get a chicken. You have a lot of evidence that supports the notion that if you have global warming, you have higher concentrations of CO2. There are all types of textbooks that have explained the effect of greenhouse gases on global warming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect. Are you saying that this is completely void? Is it at ALL possible that we could be dealing with a chicken and an egg (or an egg and a chicken)?
Hey, Jody. As you can tell from my blog in general, I don't get a lot of comments so I'd like to first just say 'Thank You' for taking the time to comment.
ReplyDeleteAnd speaking of time, I'm actually going to take some time to digest your post properly before offering any specific comments.
But in general, as I mentioned in my OP, I think it's pretty important to get the science right.
Let me give you a simple example. Let's suppose we take my orginal post at face value. In other words, putting CO2 into the atmosphere is no problem whatsoever. If we were able to manufacture paper products in such a way that we could burn them cleanly, whereby the products of oxidation were simply heat, CO2, water, and, if necessary, a few other harmless byproducts, then the wind would simply take the CO2 away to be used by trees and other plants to provide us with more raw materials for paper, food, etc.
If I'm right, then we can take all that time, money, and effort that people are spending on recycling paper and tackle some actual problems. And we have lots of those. :)
CO2 isn't the only issue, but it is one of them, but whether you believe the data or not, I would suggest that anyone would have a hard time arguing that there is any harm in working to find new ways to power our planet. Products that we use on a daily basis that are derived from the production of oil dictate that we will likely never have zero necessity for taking it out of the ground.
ReplyDeleteall this to say, why not try and find a better way to do things? to get around, to heat our buildings, to feed the world? even if CO2 isn't the culprit, as you suggest, what harm are we doing in trying to minimize the amount we produce?
If the warming in the ice was caused by orbital changes, it does not mean that global warming is not caused by CO2 as well. Temperature can change due to a lot of factors such as volcanoes, meteorite impacts and CO2. So if we are seeing massive CO2 emissions in 200 years followed by a massive increase in temperature at a time when the orbit would suggest cooling should be occurring, leads me to agree with 97% of the world's climate scientists.
ReplyDelete