Climate Change - A Quick Check
Twenty years ago most of us were skeptical about climate change and even more so about it being caused by carbon dioxide in the air. The climate appears to be changing and many now believe carbon dioxide is the cause. Twenty years ago, there was no on-line shopping and no social media. That’s come a long way in a short time. Climate science has come a long way too. It’s time for a fresh look at climate change.
We assume earth’s climate has been stable for a long time, probably since the last great ice age began to melt 20,000 years ago – It wasn’t. This is what really happened.
11,500 years ago earth’s temperature shot upward 12 degrees C (22 F) after the final cold period during the 8,500 year transition from the last great ice age. Carbon dioxide followed temperature from rising from 240 to 260 parts per million (ppm).
10,000 years ago the world was 2 to 4 degrees C (3.8 - 7.2 F) hotter than it is today and stayed hotter for the next 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide barely changed from 260 parts per million (ppm) of air.
6,000 years ago the temperature dropped to what we have today and again stayed that way for the next 4,000 years. Carbon dioxide slowly rose to 280 ppm.
2,000 years ago the temperature began a slow decline to the start of the Little Ice Age 550 years ago. Carbon dioxide levels didn’t change.
230 years ago carbon dioxide began to rise quickly. The Little Ice Age persisted for another 30 years. 200 years ago temperature began to rise slowly.
Earth’s climate is always changing, usually creeping invisibly in our perspective of time, but always on the move in geological time. Accurate climate history now goes back 500 million years as shown in this graph. For most of the last 150 million years global temperatures were much hotter than today. The Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica were ice free most of the time. Temperature and carbon dioxide moved independently strongly suggesting carbon dioxide does not cause temperature change.
During the Jurassic Period when dinosaurs roamed the earth, carbon dioxide levels were four to seven times higher than today. The fossil records show that dinosaurs thrived. Plants thrived. Coral, clams and shell fish also thrived. The oceans did not become acidic because of higher temperatures and the much higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
How did we come to believe carbon dioxide is causing climate change? The idea was proposed in 1895 but gained little traction until the late 1980s when graphs of the Greenland and Antarctic ice core data became available showing carbon dioxide and temperature usually changed together. Up to that time climate scientists couldn’t figure out what was causing climate change. The data looked like the answer. Yet no one was concerned that Ice Ages are a unique time of highly unusual climate with half of the northern hemisphere completely frozen. And there’s an even bigger problem.
When two lines move together on a graph it’s called a correlation which is only a suggestion that there may be a relationship. Mistaking a correlation as proof of anything is called the Correlation Fallacy, a fundamental mistake. Unfortunately many in the scientific community made that fundamental mistake. Former United States Vice President Al Gore compounded the mistake by presenting the data as a graph in his speaking tour and his book, An Inconvenient Truth (2006), advocating carbon dioxide as the cause of climate change. Wide spread skepticism swung to public acceptance.
(An internet search of Correlation Fallacy will provide in depth explanations.)
Many climate scientists no longer believe carbon dioxide causes climate change. Dr. Lovelock, a highly respected scientist and early carbon dioxide advocate, did something in 2014 scientists rarely do. He reversed his position and said it was a mistake to say carbon dioxide controls temperature.
“We're no longer in a position to say that just because carbon dioxide rises … the temperature will rise likewise.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/no-longer-the-darling-of-the-green-movement-lovelock-explains-himself/article19571394 (Nelles interview)
Other climate scientists who have published statistical research about the Antarctic ice cores agree.
“Temperature rises first, followed by an increase in atmospheric CO2.”
Global Warming and Carbon Dioxide Through Sciences, Florides et al.
“CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 +/- 200 years”.
Caillon: Science 2003;299(5613):1728–31
How could Dr. Lovelock and so many climate scientists have gotten it wrong? As Dr. Lovelock went on to say in that article:
“We were carried away by the (correlation) between the ice cores of Antarctica.”
The Take Away
Graphs can only suggest a relationship. Graphs cannot prove a relationship.
Graphs of ice core temperatures and carbon dioxide do not prove carbon dioxide controls temperature and climate change.
Expert analysis of the ice core data found that carbon dioxide followed temperature by 800 years.
Earth has been as hot or hotter than today for 8,000 of the last 10,000 years.
Carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are only half of the heating equation. They are what gets warmed. How they get warmed is by a process called radiative forcing. The short explanation is that some of the sun’s energy is reflected from the earth’s surface heating carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases. Beyond this point, the process is immensely complex and therefore subject to a wide margin of error. It is interesting to note that there are three types of greenhouse gases: those that cool the air, those that heat the air and water which does both. Water as cloud block solar energy while water as humidity absorbs solar energy. There is 20 to 80 times more humidity in the air than all of the other greenhouses put together. More about radiative forcing is available in the Reality Check version of this article.
Graph by Frank van Mierlo, Public Domain : PW is a petawatt, one billion million watts of energy.
Radiative forcing heats the world every day wherever the sun shines. Without that daily input we’d become an ice ball. But what matters to climate change is not the daily input, it’s how much of the radiative forcing heat from this year carries over to next year. Since the sun is constant, radiative forcing should have raised the world’s temperature incrementally until it reached a plateau and hold it there. It hasn’t. Temperature graphs going back hundreds of years to hundreds of millions of years show that whether by year, century or millennia temperature does not carry over to the next year consistently. Without consistency, radiative forcing cannot be a major component of climate change.
Planet earth has feedback loops, some we know about and there are likely more loops we don’t know about. A rise in ocean temperature causes more evaporation which leads to more cloud cover and which lessens radiative forcing. That in turn lowers ocean temperatures causing less evaporation and less cloud cover. The El Nino/ La Nina phenomena is part of another major feedback loop.
Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Basin: Springer. This graph of the Baltic Region shows the average temperature by century between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago. Seven centuries exceeded 4 degrees C (7.2 F). Two centuries hit the top of the graph averaging 5 degrees C (9 F) hotter than the world today. And that’s only the average for those centuries. The annual temperatures would have been years even hotter about half of the time. Egypt was on the rise. The Sahara desert was green.
Is runaway, catastrophic global heating really in our future? Graphs by climate scientists at Berkeley Earth show that while atmospheric temperatures have risen 2 degrees C since 1830 CE, the upper level ocean temperature has only risen 1 degree C. The vast, deeper ocean has remained a constant 4 degrees C (39 F). The United Nations (un.org) says: “The ocean … captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by (greenhouse gas) emissions.” Dr. Lovelock said: “The ocean’s heat capacity is about 1,000 times greater than that of the land and atmosphere”. The melting sea ice of the Arctic Ocean and Antarctic ice shelves will not raise sea level. Ice floating in the ocean is simply water in a different form. As lower mountain glaciers melt, sea level could rise about an inch (2.5 cm) per decade. Scientists say we are a long way from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melting.
The world has been as warmer or warmer than today for the last 10,000 years except for the 350 year long Little Ice Age which ended 200 years ago. With today’s temperatures still below earth’s 10,000 year average, it questions why anyone is concerned about the temperature rise from the end of the Little Ice Age 200 years ago. Further gradual global warming may happen and is even likely but the evidence shows that catastrophic global warming is highly unlikely. More evidence is available in the Reality Check version of this article.
Dr. B. Vinther, University of Denmark : 12,000 years of data from 6 Greenland ice cores.
This graph also demonstrates the ups and down of global temperature. The low point at the right side shows the Little Ice Age followed by the climb to today’s temperatures.
The Take Aways
Radiative forcing heats the world every day.
Most of that heat radiates into the heavens over night.
Humidity is a far greater component of radiative forcing than all of the other GHGs combined.
Radiative forcing heat does not carry over year to year.
The oceans’ upper level (200 m, 660 ft.) has only increased 1 degree C in the last 200 years.
Nature has been changing the climate since the world began without any help from mankind’s greenhouse gases. How does it do that? One way is a theory developed a century ago by ground breaking structural engineer turned astrophysicist Milutin Milankovitch.
Dr. Milankovitch formulated three theories:
Orbital Eccentricity: Earth’s orbit around the sun changes from round (warmer) to oval (cooler) in 100,000 year cycles. Earth is in the warming phase.
Axial Obliquity: How far the earth tilts toward and away from the sun between summer and winter varies in 41,000 year cycles. Earth is in the warming phase.
Axial Precession: The earth also leans like a wobbling top as it tilts toward and away from the sun in a 26,000 year circle. It’s currently warming the southern hemisphere more in its summer than the northern hemisphere in its summer. It’s about to reverse and give more summer warmth to the northern hemisphere. Images courtesy of NASA in collaboration with Florida Atlantic University.
Highly accurate technology and computing power have confirmed Dr. Milankovic’s theories. Climate scientists have noticed a loose correlation between cooling alignments and the ice ages of the last two and a half million years. Research is investigating how much these three factors can heat and cool earth’s climate. Yet the Milankovic Cycles have been in motion for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years. Why has earth’s climate been so much cooler for the last two and a half million years?
Recent astrophysics research found that a star of the Cassiopeia Constellation passed close enough to our solar system 2.8 million years ago to disturb the orbits of our giant outer planets. Their orbital wobbles in turn disturbed earth’s orbit and occurred shortly before the start of the current progression of ice ages and interglacial warm periods (including the one we live in). Did earth’s orbit return to its pre-Cassiopea fly-pass pattern or has its orbit been permanently affected?
Another interesting relationship is the correlation between climate change and the movement of earth’s magnetic north pole. In 200 AD (red dot upper left) earth’s magnetic north pole was located on the coast of Siberia. The middle east was referred to as The Fertile Crescent, then a green and temperate region. By 750 AD the magnetic north pole had moved to the northern tip of Canada’s Baffin Island. The middle east had become hotter and dryer. In 1,000 AD the magnetic north pole was at the geographic north pole. Europe and some other parts of the world were experiencing the Medieval Warm. By 1,500 the magnetic north pole was in the Arctic Ocean slowly migrating to Canada’s northern coast. The Little Ice Age had begun. The magnetic north pole stayed near Canada’s north shore until fifty years ago when it began to move rapidly north and west toward Siberia. Now it’s closer to Siberia than Canada again and the world is warming.
Researchgate.net, Public Domain Each dot represents a 50 yr. progression.
Is this correlation between climate change and pole movement just a coincidence or is it suggesting a real possibility? “Analysis of the movement of the Earth's magnetic poles over the last 105 years demonstrates strong correlations between the position of the north magnetic, and geomagnetic poles …. Although these correlations are surprising, a statistical analysis shows there is a less than one percent chance they are random …” (A. K. Kerton, 2009)
While it is highly likely that the movement of earth’s magnetic poles are contributing to climate change, how is that possible since air is not attracted to magnetism? Recent research found that the movement of earth’s magnetic poles is causing gravity waves which affect earth’s very high altitude magnetic radiation shield. That in turn affects air currents in the earth’s upper atmosphere. Other researchers found that changes to the magnetic radiation shield affected lower levels of the atmosphere which is where most of our weather happens.
Could the movement of earth’s magnetic poles be affecting air and ocean currents another way? Curiously, while water is attracted to static electricity, water is repelled by magnetism. Could the higher density of water in atmospheric rivers and hurricanes be enough for them to be affected, even slightly, by the movement of earth’s magnetic poles? Could the differences in density due to temperature layers and salinity concentrations be enough to affect ocean currents?
Yet if everything currently known about climate change conspired to reach its maximum cold phase at the same time, it still wouldn’t be cold enough to explain the abrupt 1,200 year long plunge back to the near ice age temperatures during the Younger Dryas (12,700 to 11,500 years ago). What caused that abrupt plunge and equally fast recovery? Could it happen again? The simplest explanation is the sun. We’ve always been told the sun’s strength doesn’t change. It might be time to rethink that.
It’s been known for centuries that the sun’s north and south poles reverse like clockwork every eleven years. When they reverse there is a sharp rise in sun spot (solar storm) activity as shown in the even march of the blue spikes. The black line shows the moving average number of sun spots. During the Maunder Minimum it flat-lined which coincided with the coldest part of the Little Ice Age. The Dalton Minimum also had significantly fewer sun spots and was the last cold phase of the Little Ice Age. Is the drop in temperature and sun spots a coincidence ?
“The correlation between the sun’s strength and temperature for 660 years indicates a 98% probability that the Little Ice Age was caused by variations in the sun’s strength. If the period is limited to 1650 to 1890, the probability increases to 99.99%.” (Dr. W.K. Schmutz)
Carbon dioxide advocates would have us believe we are approaching catastrophic levels of carbon dioxide in the air yet carbon dioxide is for plants what oxygen is for us. When carbon dioxide levels during the ice ages plunged to 180 parts per million (ppm) it was starvation level for plants. The carbon dioxide Death Zone for plants is 150 ppm. Plants thrive in higher levels of carbon dioxide. Their ideal level is four times higher than today’s so-called catastrophic level of 420 ppm. Many greenhouses operate at levels carbon dioxide two to three times higher than 420 ppm. Workers do not require special breathing apparatus to work those enriched carbon dioxide environments.
(OSHA’s Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) is 5,000 ppm CO2 over an 8-hour work day.)
Rising levels of carbon dioxide make plants more productive which is helping feed our ever increasing global population. We also benefit by more productive plants producing more oxygen. “From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands have shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.”
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/
How likely is it that global CO2 levels will be reduced? Earth’s roughly 1,700 active volcanoes give off about 50% of the world’s annual carbon dioxide input. Of the contributions by major nations, India has said it will not be able to achieve its carbon emission targets until 2070. India needs a lot more electrical power for its billion plus people. Clean power is expensive, more coal plants and their emissions are India’s reality. Until recently, the U.S. had spoken volumes by its silence on decommissioning coal power plants. The U.S. may not build more coal plants but neither are they hurrying to decommission any either. The recently announced G7 treaty commitment to install emission scrubbers by 2034 may or may not happen in the United States.
According to the International Energy Agency, China burns over half of the world’s coal. A New York Times International article April 7th, 2024 raised that level to 66% of the coal burned in the world. China is building coal fired power plants in Afghanistan. And while China talks about going green, the reality is quite different as detailed in an article by respected journalist Eric Reguly.
The Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition), 12 Aug 2023, Eric Reguly
“China approved 10 gigawatts of new coal plants in the first quarter of this year, after approving 100 gigawatts in 2022 – the equivalent of 100 large plants. The capacity of the plants under construction last year was six times that of the rest of the world. China, building coal burners with alacrity, has yet to state credibly how it will achieve net zero 37 years from now even as its emissions keep rising. At some point, the West will ask: Why are we punishing our economies to achieve net zero when China, the biggest emitter, is not ?”
Coal burning is the leading hydro carbon contributor to air pollution. Per unit of energy, coal gives off twice the amount of carbon dioxide as oil plus a horde of other toxic gases. Coal gives off four times the amount of carbon dioxide as natural gas which gives off even fewer pollutants. The United Nations says coal’s air pollution is a major contributor to the death millions of people every year and causes respiratory distress to many millions more.
We have had 450 years of very slow climate change causing generation after generation to believe the climate doesn’t change. Now we see it changing. Research since 2006 has led many climate scientists to no longer believe carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases are the sole cause of climate change - if they are even involved at all. They recognize that the forces of nature are calling the shots as they always have and that the forces of nature are now in a warming phase. Yet politicians and the green industry are deeply committed to the status quo. Will we continue with the 1990s belief that the greenhouse gases are the of cause climate change or will we look at the evidence and turn the trillions of dollars intended to reduce the greenhouse gases into readying the peoples of the low lying islands and every sea port in the world for eventual rise of ocean waters?
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