Global Heating Table of Content
A07O01 Events and
Limits
A07O02 If This Global Warming Why arn't We Warm?
A07O03 It is more than Carbon Dioxide
A07O04 It is more than Global Warming
A07O05 What Should We Do
A07O06 Tsunami
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Table of Content
During a Earth Day program on
global heating someone asked the presenter if he could prove global
heating. The presenter answered correctly, he said, 'No, but there
are sign posts that indicate that it is happening.'
I was not satisfied with the answer
because I thought the question should have been expanded to: can any
event be proved to have taken place. Again the answer is 'no'.
Let me use an example. If you are
married can you prove it. Most people would answer, I have a marriage
license and a certificate signed by some authority.
But does that prove the wedding
took place, no, because even before modern technology such documents
were easily forged. So how do we know the wedding took place? Most
marriage certificates have a requirement that legally must be
fulfilled and most authorities preforming a wedding also make a
public announcement. The requirement is that the document must be
signed by two witnesses and the public announcement goes something
like this, 'Before God and these witnesses'.
So while we cannot prove that an
event took place, we can be very certain an event took place if the
witnesses are reliable. The more reliable the more certain we can be
that the event took place.
Now, the witness does not have to
be a person, it can be a detail, a fact, a clue, etc. For example if
the police found a body with a bullet in it, they can be certain that
a crime has been committed. Other clues will determine what type of a
crime.
The people who study global heating
look for witnesses that can tell us what has happened and what is
happening. Obviously, when looking at the historical record seldom
will the people present at the time of the event will still be alive.
So the witnesses will be things like the chemicals in ice cores,
fossils, pollen, chemicals and their isotopes in rocks or dirt, etc.
It is the reliability of these
witnesses that determines the certainty. Many of these witnesses are
very reliable, they only occur under certain conditions, such as,
temperature, humidity, light, length of day, proper nutrients, etc.
Many plants and animals have very specific requirements and if their
fossils can be found and dated, they are very reliable witnesses that
those specific requirements were present at the time they lived.
Many such witnesses have been
found, we are very certain that global heating has happened and is
happening.
Frequently an event will occur
because a limit has been reached. Since the beginning of human
history our numbers have been much smaller than the quantity of
resources we used. Today our population and our consumption is large
enough to deplete some of our resources, namely, oil, water, arable
land, etc. What most people do not understand is that the resource
does not have to disappear to have a major impact on us. Oil for
example, there is still a lot of oil, we just can't extract it at a
reasonable price. Another thing that most people don't understand is
that for many of the resources that we consume there is no
alternative, water for example.
The Pollyannas keep thinking that
technology will save us, they don't understand for some resources
there is no technology or if there is, the technology requires more
resources than we can afford.
For me the one thing that makes
humans different than any other creature is our ability to predict.
If we use our brains we can at least estimate when critical resources
will reach a cost limit. If we do not change our behavior to avoid
reaching such limits we are inviting disaster.
Return to Global Heating Table of Content
O02 If This Is Global Heating Why Aren't We Warm
In order to answer the question, an
understanding of how energy is transferred to, within, and from our
biosphere is necessary. I will comment on many things but I hope you
will remember density, specific heat, latent heat of fusion, and
latent heat of vaporization. This may sound complicated, but it is
simple as you will see. I will be using the words global heating
because the heating is already happening, we have passed warming.
About 300 years ago chemists began
to isolated and purified all of the 92 natural chemical elements
found in our biosphere. It did not matter where in the world the
elements were found, the same pure element had the same properties.
During this process atoms and molecules were discovered.
After the proton, neutron, and
electron were discovered, they learned that no two pure elements had
the same number of protons. It was obvious that a number, the atomic
number, which was equal to the number of protons could be assigned to
each element. Each element with the same atomic number had the same
chemical properties.
As methods and equipment improved,
density, specific heat, etc. varied by a very small amount depending
upon where the element was found. Because some elements with the same
atomic number had a different number of neutrons, their physical
properties were not exactly the same. An isotope number, which was
the sum of the number of protons and neutrons was assigned to these
differing elements, then each element with the same atomic number and
the same isotope number had the same chemical and physical
properties.
Today the isotope number is well
known because Uranium 235 can be used to make an atomic bomb, but
Uranium 238 can not. Three more neutrons made the difference.
Density
From experience most people know
that a sack of feathers weighs less than the same sack filled with
flour and the flour weighs less than the same sack filled with sand.
And that is the definition of density, the weight of a given
substance in a given volume. The usual units of density are grams per
cubic centimeter, grams per milliliter, grams per liter, or pounds
per cubic foot.
What I say about atoms applies to
molecules unless otherwise stated. The size of the atoms making up
the substance has the largest effect on density followed by how
closely the atoms can pack together followed by the temperature of
the substance. Most people realize that most things expand when
heated and expansion increase the volume which decreases the
density.
This leads to, what is temperature
and how does it cause expansion? All atoms are in constant motion as
long as their temperature is above absolute zero. When one or more
atoms absorb energy, some or all of the energy absorbed is translated
into an increase in the speed of motion. Because of the number of
atoms in any given space is very large, the atoms are constantly
colliding with one another. The atoms seldom collide head on, most
collisions are glancing which means the faster moving atoms lose
speed and the slower atoms gain speed. If we measured the temperature
before and after the atoms absorbed energy we would find an increase
in temperature which means temperature is a measure of the average
energy of the atoms at a given location and time.
An increase in speed causes the
atoms to collide with more force which causes the atoms to move
farther apart and that is what causes expansion.
Specific Heat
Generally larger atoms require more
energy than smaller atoms to reach the same speed, this difference
leads to the definition of specific heat. Specific heat is the amount
of energy required to increase the temperature of a substance. Since
we live in a water world, water was one of the first to be studied.
Water is a very unique molecule.
The amount of energy to raise the temperature of water is almost
constant from freezing to boiling. Most other atoms require a
different amount of energy as the temperature increases. Water is
also unique in that it has one of the highest specific heats. More
about this unique molecule later.
I bake my own bread, cookies, and
biscuits. I can remove biscuits from an oven at 425 degrees F without
any discomfort as long as I don't leave my hand in the oven to long
and do not touch any of the metal. But if I touch metal I will burn
my hand almost immediately. Why? Because of density and specific
heat. Air has a very low density and a very low specific heat, when
combined the air transfers very little energy to my hand. But the
metal has a very high density and a high specific heat so if I touch
the metal the amount of energy transferred to my hand is very large
and my body can not transport the energy away from my hand before the
energy destroys some of my skin cells resulting in a burn.
The Latent Heat of Fusion and Latent
Heat of Vaporization
Again, water is unique, when water
is frozen it requires more heat to melt than specific heat would lead
us to think.
This requires some comments on the
phases of matter, solid, liquid, and gas. What causes the different
phases? Electronic forces of attraction are so strong in a solid that
the fast moving atoms are confined to a very limited range of motion,
they collide with their neighbors and basically return to their
starting position. In a liquid the speed of the atoms is fast enough
to over come part of the electronic forces and can move over larger
distances, they are not restricted to one position. In a gas the
speed of the atoms is fast enough so the electronic forces do not
restrict their motion.
Because of the electronic forces
more energy is required to increase the speed of the atoms to break
free than to simply raise their temperature. For water the energy
required to make the different phase changes is very high. The amount
of energy to cause atoms to change from solid to liquid is called the
latent heat of fusion (think melting and freezing) and the amount of
energy to cause atoms to change from liquid to a gas is called the
latent heat of vaporization ( think boiling and condensing).
If I held my hand over a pan of
boiling water it would begin to sting almost immediately and yet the
temperature of the air above the water cannot be more than 212
degrees F. I could hold my hand in the oven at 425 degrees F without
discomfort, what is the difference? The difference is the latent heat
of vaporization. The stove supplied enough energy to the water to
over come the electronic forces and allowed some of it to turn in to
a gas and when the gas made contact with my hand it transferred that
same amount of energy to my hand as the gas condensed to liquid
water.
If you have ever made home made ice
cream using salt and ice you witnessed the heat of fusion. The salt
lowered the freezing point of the water on the surface of the ice
forming salt water which told the ice to melt, but in order to do so
the ice had to take the latent heat of fusion from the salt water and
that lowered the temperature of the salt water enough so that the ice
cream could form.
Transfer Energy
Conduction, convection, and
radiation are three ways to transfer energy. Conduction is nothing
more than the transfer of energy by the collision of atoms and this
form of energy transfer can occur in all of the different phases of
matter. Convection really does not transfer energy, it transports
energetic atoms to a different location because of a difference in
density and the transported atoms can transfer energy to other atoms
at the new location by conduction. Convection can only take place in
a gas or liquid. Radiation is the most important form of energy
transfer because that is how energy is transferred from the sun to
earth and without this energy transfer our earth would be a frozen
ice ball.
For many people radiation has a bad
connotation because of the atom bomb. We are constantly exposed to
radiation and the vast majority does not harm us. Atoms can absorb
and emit radiation at any time and in any direction. So when a large
number of atoms emit radiation it will appear to be traveling in all
directions, our sun for example.
We can see a very small portion of
the radiation spectrum and we only see three wave lengths of that
spectrum, blue, green, and red. The radiation from our sun spans wave
lengths as small as a hydrogen atom to as long as several miles. The
energy decreases with the increase in wave length. Our sun's peak
energy output occurs at the green wave length which happens to be one
of the most common colors we see on earth. The color we see is the
wave length that is reflected all other visible wave lengths are
absorbed. If we see black all visible wave lengths have been
absorbed, if we see white all visible wave lengths have been
reflected. But what we can see is very deceptive because of all of
the wave lengths that atoms can absorb.
Each atom can absorb only very
distinct wave lengths and can only emit very distinct wave lengths.
We can identify different pure atoms by the radiation that they can
absorb and emit. If many different atoms are emitting or absorbing
radiation the different wave lengths will over lap making it
difficult if not impossible to identify each individual atom.
Atoms can absorb a wave length of
radiation and emit the same wave length. They can also absorb a wave
length of radiation and emit two or more longer wave lengths so long
as the energy of the longer wave lengths add up equal or less than
the energy of the wave length absorbed. They can also absorb a wave
length of radiation and emit a longer wave length of radiation and
convert the balance of the energy into an increase in speed. Atoms
can absorb and emit radiation in any phase, but the surface of solids
and liquids reflect most of the radiation limiting the amount of
radiation that can be absorb and emitted by liquids and solids.
Snow, ice, and clouds are excellent
reflectors, but plants and dirt also reflect radiation. Plants and
dirt are better absorbers than snow, ice, and clouds. Some atoms are
very important absorbers and emitters of radiation because they
absorb and emit certain wavelengths of radiation common to all of the
other atoms in our biosphere. These important absorbers are called
'green house gases' because the distance from the surface of the
earth determines how much of the emitted radiation will be returned
to our biosphere. Obviously, an atom in the dirt or ocean when it
emits a wavelength of radiation that radiation is more likely to be
absorbed by another nearby atom than to be radiated out into space.
So the higher an atom is above the surface the more likely any
radiation emitted will escape into space and cool our biosphere. When
an atom emits radiation it loses energy and may slow its speed of
motion.
Some green house gases absorb and
emit many different wavelengths of radiation making them very
efficient green house gases. Methane is one of the most efficient
followed by carbon dioxide and water. But water is the most important
of the greenhouse gases simply because it is the most abundant green
house gas molecule in our atmosphere followed by carbon dioxide.
Absorption and radiation must stay
in balance or our earth will become to hot or to cold. The green
house gases are very important to maintain this balance because most
green house gases stay low in our atmosphere where a large portion of
the energy they emit is sent back down to earth keeping our planet
warm. Without water in our atmosphere our earth would be a frozen ice
ball.
The different ways that energy can
be transported and transferred in our biosphere are local events
which when combined can result in a very complex interaction making
it very difficult to measure and to predict the heat balance of our
planet. Somewhere on our planet air is absorbing radiant energy from
the sun and somewhere it is radiating energy back into space, the
same for water and dirt. Somewhere water is evaporating and somewhere
it is condensing. Somewhere ice melting and somewhere water is
freezing.
Absorbing radiation, condensation,
and freezing warm our planet, emitting radiation, evaporating, and
melting cool our planet. These local events can combine to create
global events. These local events cause our local weather, but most
people are unaware of the gigantic amounts of energy that is
transferred during such events. For example, six inches of rain on an
acre of land release more energy than a small atomic bomb because of
the energy stored in the water vapor which is released when the gas
condensed to rain, the latent heat of vaporization.
When atoms absorb energy their
speed increases which causes the space they occupy to expand reducing
density. Because of gravity there are more atoms below and fewer
atoms above which causes fast moving atoms to move up because they
will collide more frequently with atoms below than above.
This small difference in density
caused by local events can combine to cause very large global events.
This is what drives the winds of our planet and the great ocean
currents. This allows great quantities of energy to be transported
over a large distance, it is convection on a global scale. Within
these large global convection events, many smaller local convection
events can occur. Because of these global convection events, the
equator is our planet's heat register and the poles are our planet's
air conditioner. When these global convection currents meet in our
atmosphere, large storms occur.
Because of the many ways energy can
be transported and transferred and the many complex interactions both
at the local level and the global level, there are many different
combinations that will allow the weather in one locality to be much
colder than any other locality and still allow global heating to
occur. Local weather can not support nor deny global heating. We can
only observe weather locally. No one can observe weather globally,
even from space we can only see one half of our planet at a time. The
effect of global heating can only be detected in the trends at the
global level from records and statistics of weather over many years.
Global heating is global not local.
If you ever went into an unheated
building to avoid wind chill you have experienced the opposite of
global heating. The wind created a convection current in the air that
transported some heat away from your body before the air could come
into a dynamic equilibrium with your body making you cold, but in the
unheated building radiation cooling became the dominate heat
transfer. Inside where the air is still, convection is negligible,
the air around you absorbed energy radiated by your body and re
radiated part of it back to your body. But when the building absorbed
the radiated energy from the air it did not re radiate as much back
to your body as the air did because of the difference in density and
specific heat, the building atoms required much more energy than the
air before it could radiate any energy.
Water Sea Air
Density
1.0
g/ml
1.025g/ml
1.29 g/l
62.4 #/cf
63.99 #/cf
0.807 #/cf
Specific
Heat
1.0
c/g/degree
0.23 c/g/degree
1.0 BTU/#/degree
Heat of
Fusion
79.7 c/g 54.0
c/g
Heat of vaporization 584.9 c/g
at 20 degrees C
Now my answer. Since we cannot
prove an event, we can only witness an event, the question then
becomes what witnesses do we have. We have many, but for me the most
important ones are the decrease in oxygen, the increase in carbon
dioxide, the increase in average ocean temperature, and the decrease
in glaciers. All four tell me that we are changing our biosphere. Any
increase in carbon dioxide causes an increase in radiation simply
because there are more carbon dioxide molecules to re radiate energy
back toward earth. An increase in carbon dioxide means we are
increasing the temperature of our biosphere, so why aren't we warm?
Because the oceans are storing most of the heat and the melting
glaciers are removing the rest keeping our temperatures near normal,
but trending up. Remember small local changes can combine to transfer
and store very large amounts of energy.
Because we can only witness a local
event our only indicators that the event is global are trends. I am a
witness for three local trends and one wider trend. Most important,
the glaciers I saw in Glacier National park in '59, half of them were
gone in '76 and the rest were shrinking.
I have recorded the amount of gas
used to heat my house. In the '88 and '89 heating season 1000 ccf of
gas were used and the trend has been down ever since. Since 2000 four
heating seasons have been below 600 ccf, but the key to understanding
trends is the number of new highs and the number of new lows. I have
not had any new highs and many new lows. Since less gas used means
warmer weather, the trend is toward higher temperatures.
The growing season for my garden
has increased by two weeks during the last twenty years.
During my tenure as a process
control chemist I measured the oxygen in our atmosphere and there was
a definite downward trend in the data over a five year period.
Reports in the literature show this trend is continuing.
When I include the trends
discovered by others I have no doubt that global heating is taking
place, but because of the difficulty of measuring each of the trends
and our lack of knowledge about all of the interactions, we are in a
very dangerous position. We don't know what will happen when our
weather which is a chaotic system jumps to the next equilibrium level
nor do we know when and we don't know what changes we would have to
make to cause our weather system to return to what we consider a
normal level.
So I think it is imperative that we
change our life style immediately in order to prevent our weather
system from ever jumping to a different equilibrium level. We are
playing Russian Roulette and it is not a matter of if, it is a matter
of when.
Each winter the open water of the
Arctic ocean freezes. This ice is new ice and is much thinner than
the old ice that did not melt during the summer. As the air
temperature rises in the spring the ice in the Bering passage melts.
When the passage is free of ice the melt water sinks to the bottom
and flows eastward into the Atlantic. This allows the warm water of
the Pacific and the warm air over the Pacific to flow north and melt
more sea ice. As the warm air flows north it pushes the cold air to
the east and then south. More open water absorbs more sun light
making the water warmer which melts more ice which allows more warm
water and warm air to flow north and a melting feed back loop is
established which continues to push the cold air east and then
south.
This melting feed back loop is now pushing warm air
over us as it pushes the cold air further to the east. As this feed
back loop continues to move east and the ice continues to melt our
temperatures will continue to rise each summer. By about 2030 this
warm air will reach the Baffin passage which will increase the
melting of the Greenland glacier.
The Arctic sea ice and the
Greenland glacier are our air conditioner. We don't know if the
Greenland glacier is enough to keep us cool when all of the Arctic
sea ice has melted. This maybe a tipping point, no one knows, but it
does mean we must do more than change our light bulbs and increase
the mileage of our cars if we are to prevent global heating from
becoming worse.
Please keep in mind, that light is
a form of energy that can be converted into heat when it is absorbed
by the atoms and molecules in air, water, and dirt. I will use the
BTU as the unit of energy in reviewing what keeps our planet warm.
First, the natural variables: heat
from the sun, heat from radioactive elements in the earth, and heat
left over from the formation of the earth. Our planet gets almost all
of its energy from the sun. Some 5,140,000,000,000,000,000,000 BTU's
per year. This is an educated guess because while the output of the
sun can be measured with a fair degree of accuracy, the amount
reaching the earth's surface can not because of cloud cover. The
density of clouds and the area of coverage is very difficult to
predict or to measure and clouds can come and go at any time. Cloud
cover can change the temperature of the earth's surface by more than
fifteen degrees, colder during the day and warmer at night. Clouds
are the second most important variable in determining the temperature
of earth.
In addition the sun spot cycle is
not very consistent from one cycle to the next. For as long as we
have been keeping track of weather, which is not very long, we have
not been able to find a correlation between the sun spot cycle and
weather except for one, major droughts tend to occur near a sunspot
maximum. Our sun varies from a maximum of 3% above average output to
a minimum of 1% below average output about every eleven years. We are
at or near the end of sun spot cycle 24. During the last three years
our sun has been very quiet and ever since '54 the amount of heat
earth receives has been declining. No one can predict what the next
cycle will do. If the next cycle is hot we are in trouble. If you log
on to wolframalpha.com
and enter sun spot cycle 24 you can see the number of sun spots for
the cycle. Below the cycle graph is the cycle graph from 1611 to 2018
and you can see that since 1954 the number of sunspots has been
declining. A high number of sunspots means earth receives more heat
from the sun and a low number sunspots means earth receives less heat
from the sun which means our temperature should be declining, but it
is not. We still have about three years of low solar out put, we need
to make the most of it.
In table one an estimate of the
number of BTU's of heat the earth receives each year from the sun is
given followed by the possible increase in BTU's received during a
sun spot maximum. Compare that amount to the amount of BTU's added
each year by the burning of fossil fuels. These numbers were
calculate from www.eia.doe.gov production numbers for the year 2006
and converted to BTU's. Electricity is included because it is
converted into heat when transported and used.
Table one BTU's/year
Sun 5,140,000,000,000,000,000,000
3% 154,200,000,000,000,000,000
coal
199,300,000,000,000,000
Oil 188,100,000,000,000,000
gas 105,500,000,000,000,000
elect 53,740,000,000,000,000
The numbers in Table one are
astronomical, so why should we be concerned about a half of a degree
Celsius increase in ocean temperature. Here is a case where the
scientists have done a very poor job of explanation.
Lets calculate how many BTU's there
are in a one half degree C increase in ocean temperature. The area of
a sphere is equal to four times pi times the radius squared. Lets
round the numbers for easy calculation, you can use more accurate
numbers and a calculator and you will discover that it really doesn't
make much difference, so much for the idiotological statement that
science must be completely accurate to be good science.
The diameter of earth is about 7924
miles, lets round to 8000 and divide by two to get the radius and
then multiply by 5,280 feet per mile, lets use 5,000 giving
20,000,000 feet, now the square this number gives
400,000,0000,000,000, times pi, lets use 3 giving
1,200,000,000,000,000, times 4 giving 4,800,000,000,000,000.
Now times one will give us cubic
feet of water, by consulting a reference book you will find that one
cubic foot of water weighs 60 pounds, multiply this by the cubic feet
and adjust this number because only two thirds of the earth's surface
is water, so multiply by two and divide by three then divide this in
half because only about half the water is near the equator where it
will receive the most heat, giving 96,000,000,000,000,000.
Remember the definition of a BTU
from above, it is the amount of energy required to raise one pound of
water one degree Fahrenheit. A half a degree Celsius is .9 degrees F.
Therefore a half degree C increase in ocean temperature is equal to
about 96,000,000,000,000,000 BTU's. Now compare this number to the
numbers in Table one and remember that the ocean temperature had been
rising by about a half a degree C every decade for the last forty
years and the increase in temperature goes down much more than one
foot. Temperature increases have been measured more than a thousand
feet down.
You may have heard it said, 'That
the poles are earth's air conditioning system', well the oceans are
earth's 'temperature equalizer'. The oceans store tremendous
quantities of heat when our planet heats up and release tremendous
quantities of heat when our planet cools down, keeping earth's
temperature more or less stable. I hope you now have an appreciation
for the significance of a half degree C increase in ocean
temperatures and realize that global is not simple.
Earth gets a very small amount of
energy from radioactive elements because the amount of radioactive
elements in the earth is very small. In addition radioactive elements
have been decaying since the earth formed; therefore there is a
smaller amount of radioactive elements to create heat with each
passing year. The same is true for the heat left over from the
formation of the earth. Earth has been radiating this heat since it
was formed. Since both are declining, neither are contributing to
global heating.
Second, carbon dioxide has been
increasing since the industrial revolution, from 280 ppm to 400 in
'19. Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere can only be increased in three
ways, by massive volcanic eruptions, burning fossil fuels, and by
heating limestone to make cement, but cement removes most of the
carbon dioxide it released when it cures. A massive volcanic eruption
has not occurred in more than a million years so that leaves the last
two man made activities which are not natural causes.
Third, oxygen has been declining
since the industrial revolution and oxygen can only be lost by
burning fossil fuels, again not a natural cause.
Fourth, the orbital parameters play a
role in the glaciations, about every 100,000 years for the last two
million years. The tilt of the axis of rotation which precesses like
a spinning top. Currently it is pointing at the star Polaris, in
13000 years it will be pointing at Vega and in another 13000 it will
return to pointing at Polaris. The axis of rotation wobbles because
the mass of the continents is not distributed equally around the
globe. This wobble causes the angle of the tilt of the axis of
rotation which is now at about 23.5 degrees from its orbital path
around the sun to move about a half a degree more one way to another
half a degree more the other way and back again every 42000 years.
The orbit of earth changes from more circular to more elliptic and
back again about every 96000 years. This is the most important
parameter because it changes the amount of heat the northern
hemisphere receives by the largest amount. More warm land means less
ice which means less sunlight is reflected back into space which
means more warm land, and repeat.
The last glaciation ended about
14,000 years ago and all three orbital parameters have been moving
from the their hot position toward their cold position for more than
4000 years, we should be entering another glaciation, glaciers and
sea ice should be expanding, but they are not.
Return to Global Heating Table of Content
O03 It is more than Carbon dioxide
Many people have a misconception of
the interactions between plants, carbon dioxide, and oxygen. Under
normal conditions plants make carbohydrates as long as they receive
sunlight which will produce an excess of carbohydrates which is
stored and release an excess of oxygen (photosynthesis). This is
necessary so plants can continue to grow when sunlight is absent.
During photosynthesis plants take
carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and remove the two oxygen atoms
from the carbon and release them into our atmosphere
(photosynthesis). The carbon is then combined with water to create
sugar, starch, cellulose, etc., the compounds the plant needs to live
and grow. These compounds are appropriately called carbohydrates
(carbon and water).
When a plant needs energy to live
and grow they use two oxygens to burn the carbohydrates they make to
create the energy needed in a process called respiration. The
burning releases carbon dioxide and water, 24 hours a day
(respiration) and continue to do so until their life cycle ends. When
animals eat plants they use two oxygens to burn the carbohydrates for
energy and release carbon dioxide and water (respiration again).
'Burning' reverses the process of
photosynthesis, it releases the water from the carbon atom and
recombines two oxygen atoms with it, producing carbon dioxide. The
'burning' releases back into our atmosphere every molecule of carbon
dioxide the plants took in and removes every atom of oxygen the
plants released. When a plant dies microbes 'burn' the plant material
in their respiration, a process we call decomposition. Animals eat
and then 'burn' plant material during their respiration and decompose
when they die. When plants die the decomposers use the excess oxygen
to burn the carbohydrates (respiration again) in the dead plant
material which means there is no increase in oxygen and no decrease
in carbon dioxide, the system is completely balanced.
But when we burn fossil fuels three
oxygens are needed because hydrocarbons have two hydrogens for each
carbon and no oxygen. This causes the cycle to be out of balance
which means we are reducing the amount of oxygen in our atmosphere
and increasing the amount of carbon dioxide which means we are
upsetting the heat balance of earth.
Oxygen increased in our atmosphere
because plant material was buried before it could decompose leaving
behind in our atmosphere the oxygen that would have been 'burned'
during decomposition.
The following equations are deceptively simple, but they explain what has just been said.
CO2 + H2O ---> O2 + CH2O (a sugar
unit)
CO2 + H2O <--- O2 + CH2O (a sugar
unit)
CO2 + H2O <--- O3 + CH2 (a fossil
fuel unit)
Notice that oxygen and carbon
dioxide are on the opposite sides of the yield sign, this means if
one increases the other decreases. When we eat, we 'burn' a sugar
unit for energy, the second equation, we are reversing
photosynthesis, the first equation. The first two equations are
balanced, no increase in oxygen, no decrease in carbon dioxide. When
we burn fossil fuel for energy, the third equation, we are reducing
the oxygen in our atmosphere because there is no other equation to
balance it and notice that it requires three oxygens instead of two.
For millions of years oxygen
continued to increase and carbon dioxide continued to decrease in our
atmosphere as more plant material was buried and continues even now.
Water and wind erosion carry plant material, sand, and silt into
streams and rivers and then into the ocean where each layer of plant
material, sand, and silt is continuously buried by the next layer.
If people do not understand what
created the oxygen in our atmosphere, they will never understand that
the danger in burning fossil fuels is not just global heating.
The buried plant material was
converted into fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas. During the
conversion process, oxygen was removed from the plant material;
therefore, fossil fuels are appropriately called hydrocarbons
(hydrogen and carbon). I doubt that the oxygen removed during the
conversion ever reached our atmosphere, it probably reacted with
minerals surrounding the buried plant material creating oxides, such
as, iron ore.
When we burn plant material
(renewable fuels) we only remove two atoms of oxygen for every carbon
atom burned, the same as respiration and decomposition, keeping the
system completely balanced provided we allow the plants to regrow.
When we burn fossil fuels we remove
three oxygen atoms from our atmosphere for every carbon atom burned
creating an imbalance in the system by reducing the amount of oxygen
in our atmosphere.
The decrease in oxygen will be less
than a ratio of 3 to 2 times the increase in carbon dioxide. The
decrease must be adjusted by the ratio of the amount of fossil fuel
burned to the amount of plant material burned and for the amount of
plant material buried and for the amount of fossil fuel removed from
burial. There should never be more oxygen in our atmosphere that an
amount proportional to the amount of plant material buried.
Unconsciously we have been burying
tons of plant material. Look at the amount of paper, wood, etc., that
we put into our land fills and the amount of garbage we dump into the
ocean. Plus look at all the lumber, cotton, wool, paper, etc., that
we have 'buried' in our homes and buildings. This amount may be
significant.
If we continue at our current rate
of reduction our atmosphere will contain less that 20.8% oxygen
before 2050. Because of the oxygen cycle non biological sequestering
of carbon dioxide will be an exercise in futility, a waste of money
and time. It may help reduce global heating, but it will do nothing
to stop the reduction of oxygen.
We must reduce the consumption of
fossil fuels to the point that the system is in balance again and we
must do it soon before the reduction in oxygen becomes significant.
We may be able to recover from global heating, but when oxygen is
lost, it is lost for ever.
During my working years one of my
first tasks was to measure oxygen, carbon dioxide, and carbon
monoxide in the flue gas of the refinery furnaces and boilers, daily.
I tested my equipment by measuring the oxygen content of air and
recorded all results in a bound lab book.
The first thing that
disturbed me was I never got a reading of 21% oxygen, a number I had
heard repeated many times, I did get a reading of about .02% for
carbon dioxide. I checked the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, it
gave 20.99% which I later learned was rounded up from 20.986%. Even
later, I learned that this number was not accurate, but it was for
the equipment with which it was measured in 1945.
Most of my
readings were a little under 20.99, I had to estimate the last
number. About five years later I got a reading of 20.97, I repeated
the measurement several times without change. I had not paid
attention because when I checked previous results I could see a
downward trend over the years.
The methods for measuring
oxygen have improved since 1945, in 1976 it 20.9476%, in 1988
20.9429, and in 1999 20.9362. Doing the arithmetic, we decreased the
oxygen in our atmosphere by 3.6ppm per year from 76 to 88 and by
5.6ppm per year from 88 to 99, a disturbing trend. (ppm equals parts
per million, one ppm equals .0001%)
Oxygen began to increase
at the beginning of the Carboniferous Period 345million years ago.
21% at the time of the industrial revolution equals 210000 ppm.
Divide 210000 by 345,000,000 equals .0006 ppm of oxygen which the
biosphere added each year. Compare the .0006 ppm increase in oxygen
by the biosphere to the decrease in oxygen caused by people burning
fossil fuels of 3.6 ppm and 5.6.
Most of the time our actions
are dwarfed by natural causes, for example the heat we get from the
sun, an enormous number. Of all our activities, the comparison of the
decrease in oxygen is the only one that dwarfs nature. This
comparison proves we are changing our environment beyond any doubt
because there is only one way to lose that much oxygen, the burning
of fossil fuels. This is why I think the measurement of oxygen is the
most significant measurement in support of global heating.
PS: the reason the % oxygen 1976 to
1999 is used, is because the politicians withdrew the funding to make
the measurement in 2000 and I have not seen what I would call a
reliable number since.
We must reduce our burning of
fossil fuels before the reduction of oxygen becomes significant.
The increasing rate of decline is
worrisome and it confirms the increasing rate of carbon dioxide
increase.
Our lungs are efficient over a wide
range of oxygen concentrations so healthy lungs will not have a
problem breathing for a long time to come. But with each decrease in
oxygen more people with lung and heart disease will require
supplemental oxygen, the domino effect, increasing our health care
costs. I hope you realize what this means to the poor people around
the world.
Earth must radiate into space
the same amount of heat it receives from the sun else earth would
become so hot the oceans would boil away. Carbon dioxide can absorb
the heat earth is radiating into space and then reradiates it in all
directions which means about half of the heat is sent back down to
earth making earth hotter. This is why a small increase in carbon
dioxide is very important.
This factor alone proves people are
causing global heating because only people burn fossil fuels, but
when all four factors are taken together there is no doubt.
All of the factors obey the laws of
the cosmos and the rules of the biosphere and they are completely
indifferent to the impact on us. We can measure the four factors
above so we know they are happening.
Our survival depends upon learning
the rules of the biosphere. We must be careful not to substitute what
we would like the rules to be. To many people think we are privileged
and do not have to obey the rules of the biosphere. People are
unique, but we are not privileged. The biosphere is completely
indifferent to our fate so if we do not obey the rules of the
biosphere we will become extinct.
Many religions say the world
will end in fire; however our world will end in heat instead of fire
and arrogant and ignorant people will be the cause. We must decrease
our use of fossil fuels and switch to alternative sources of energy
before global heating becomes completely out of our control.
The most important rule of the biosphere, as stated above, is: the
energy received from the sun must be balanced by energy radiated by
our earth. If our earth radiates to much energy, our earth would
become an ice ball. If our earth does not radiate enough energy our
oceans will boil away. We must make sure that our actions do not
change this balance.
Unfortunately, under educated
people do not under stand that every molecule of carbon dioxide that
we emit into our atmosphere by burning fossil fuels is one more
molecule that will radiate 50% of the energy it absorbs that was
radiated by our earth back down to our earth changing the balance. We
must obey the rules of the biosphere.
No one can predict what
the next solar cycle will bring, we will only know in hindsight. As
you can see from the orbital parameters it will take more than 10,000
years to cause a significant reduction in temperature, in the mean
time a very small increase in carbon dioxide will cause a very
significant increase in temperature.
There is only one thing
we can change, we can stop burning fossil fuels.
I attended a presentation on global
heating and I would like to expand on a graph that was presented
(graph 1). Like all graphs there is an implied assumption that the
graph will continue indefinitely.
Graph 1
Days over 90
60
[
o
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[
o
40
[
o
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[
o
20
[
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[ [ [ [ [ [
ppm 220 250 280 310 340 370
year 15 35 55 75 95 05
But what if it didn't, what if it was like graph 2. It implies that when the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere reaches 400ppm it will suddenly jump to the upper line before it continues. It also implies that when we reduce the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the number of days over 90 degrees F will not return to its previous level until carbon dioxide goes below 250 ppm when it will then drop back down to the lower line.
Graph 2
Days over 90
120
[
o
110
[
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100
[
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90
[
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80
[
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70
[
o
o
60
[
o
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50
[
o
40
[
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[
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10 [ o
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[
[ [
[
[
[ [
ppm 220 250 280 310 340 370 400 430
year 15 35 55 75 95 05 25 45
You may ask how can a graph be discontinuous and the answer is very simple, because carbon dioxide is not the only variable influencing temperature. Graphs 1 and 2 show only two variables. If we were to graph all the variables we would need a multi dimensional graph, one we cannot visualize. It would display a convoluted surface that we can follow mathematically and it would not be discontinuous. If we cut such a graph along the two dimensions describing days over 90 degrees and carbon dioxide the result might be graph two. Carbon dioxide went over 400 ppm in '19 and our temperatures did not jump, yet.
Graph 3
No of Sugar Molecules
[
o o
[
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o
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o
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o
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[
o
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[ o
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[ [ [
[ [ [
[ [ [
[ [
Time
Linear graphs rarely describe the inter action of variables in nature, most of them follow a logistics curve (graph 3). For example, photosynthesis, when light first hits a leaf nothing happens. Then after an interval of time one molecule of sugar is made, in the next interval two molecules are made, then four, then eight, then sixteen. At some point the rate of increase in the production of sugar will slow until it is constant. This happens because some limit has been reached, such as, the transportation of water or carbon dioxide into the leaf or the transportation of sugar or oxygen out of the leaf, one or more can go no faster. Again the graph implies that it will continue indefinitely, it may or it could decline slowly or it could crash depending on many variables.
Graph 4
Degrees F
100 [ o
90 [ o
80 [ o
70 [ o
60 [ o
50 [ o
40 [ o
[ [ [ [ [ [ [
BTU's 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
One interaction in nature that is
linear is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of
water. In fact, it is so linear, it is the definition of a quantity
of heat, either the BTU or the calorie. One BTU is the amount of
energy required to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit
(graph 4) and one calorie is the amount of energy required to raise
one gram of water one degree Celsius. Most people are familiar with
the term calorie as a unit of energy associated with food, but the
food calorie is actually a Kcalorie, it is one thousand times the
calorie. When people speak of calories in food they drop the K
because an amount below a thousand calories is usually insignificant.
Three more variables influence the
temperature of earth: the shape of orbit, the tilt of the axis of
rotation, and the precession of the axis of rotation. As earth moves
around the sun, the mass of the large planets Jupiter and Saturn,
depending on their location in their orbits, are constantly changing
earth's orbit from less elliptical to more elliptical and back again
every 96,000 years. Because the mass of the earth is not distributed
uniformly, the tilt of the axis of rotation changes by one half of a
degree and back every 42,000 years and the axis of rotation precesses
like a spinning top every 26,000 years.
These changes cause the northern
hemisphere to receive more light during part of each cycle and less
the other part. Since land has a very low specific heat compared to
water, it heats up much faster than water and it also cools down
faster. The northern hemisphere has more land than the southern, more
warm land means less ice, more cold land means more ice. Less ice
means more light is absorbed by the land increasing the temperature
which in turn melts more ice. More ice increases the amount of sun
light reflected back into space decreasing the temperature which in
turn means more ice. Therefore each condition of more or less light
reaching the land becomes a self reinforcing cycle of more or less
ice and more or less heat each year.
The glaciations over the last two
million years occur about every 100,000 years lasting about 70,000
years. The last glaciation ended about 14,000 years ago. All three of
these variables are now moving from warm to cold and we are at a sun
spot minimum so earth should be cooling down, but it is not. Why?
More man made variables.
Our use of fossil fuels is now
approaching the amount of heat added by a sun spot maximum and we are
adding this amount and increasing it each and every year, not just
during sun spot maximums. Now, add in the heat increase caused by
cement highways, about the same as gas, heat from asphalt roads, heat
from cars sitting in the sun, they are excellent solar collectors,
etc., we are approaching even closer. We have made this increase in
less than 300 years, most of it in the last 40.
By cutting down trees to grow food
we have changed the albedo of our planet. Albedo is a measure of the
reflectivity of a surface. This change began 8,000 years ago with the
advent of agriculture and has been increasing ever since. Plants
shade the ground and in doing so they reflect sun light back into
space before it can heat the earth. Most of our crops do not shade
the ground as efficiently as forests, thereby allowing the land to
absorb more light and therefore to gain more heat each day for each
acre of ground put into cultivation. We have had satellites in orbit
capable of measuring this change for only twenty years, but we have
been making the change for 8,000 years, we are not able to go back
and measure the before in order to compare it with the after.
Plants can only store carbon
dioxide in the form of carbohydrates as long as there is room for
them to grow, so when a plant dies, the new plant only stores the
same amount of carbon dioxide in the form of carbohydrates as the old
plant did so from that point on plants can not reduce the carbon
dioxide in our atmosphere. To reduce the carbon dioxide in our
atmosphere we must plant plants where there are no plants. This is
why it is very important to stop cutting down our forests to grow
crops or build subdivisions, the crops and subdivisions will only
store a fraction of the carbon dioxide the forest did.
As far
as we know the early atmosphere did not have any oxygen. Oxygen is a
very reactive element and would have reacted with many different
elements in the hot crust to form oxides. About 2 billion years ago
the first living things appeared in fossil record and released a very
small amount of oxygen. About 345 million years ago plants began to
grow on land and appear in the fossil record and their numbers
increased very rapidly during the Carboniferous Period which ended
280 million years ago.
The amount of oxygen increased rapidly
with the increase in the number of plants. But oxygen accumulated
very slowly in the atmosphere. As rain washed plant material into
steams and rivers and then into bogs, lakes, and oceans, it was then
covered with sand and silt before it could decompose leaving the
oxygen in the atmosphere that would have been consumed by the
decomposers. As each layer of plant material was covered another
layer began on top of the older layer until the older layers formed
sedimentary rock. Oil and natural gas can only be found in
sedimentary rock, no where else.
We do not completely
understand how the oxygen in the carbohydrates was removed to create
hydrocarbons, but it is almost certain the oxygen never reached the
atmosphere, it reacted with the minerals in the rocks. The rock
strata from the Carboniferous Period contains some red iron ore for
the first time, older rock strata only contains yellow iron ore.
This process continues today, but the process has always been very
slow which means the amount of fossil fuels are limited, the deposits
will run out. We are consuming fossil fuels faster than the process
can create them and by doing so we are increasing the carbon dioxide
and decreasing the oxygen in our atmosphere.
For the first 4 billion years,
earth was very warm, but it was punctuated by several ice ages when
earth was almost completely covered with ice. We can not explain why
the ice ages occurred nor why earth returned to being warm.
About 65 million years ago there is
evidence that an asteroid slammed into earth putting a lot of dirt
into the atmosphere and causing the forests to burn creating a sun
blocking dust and smoke screen which caused earth to cool very
rapidly. Following this event earth began a slow decline in
temperature which has continued until the industrial revolution when
the temperature began to rise again because people began to burn
fossil fuels.
Why did the temperature decline after the
asteroid event? My guess is at the beginning of the Carboniferous
Period 345million years ago until the asteroid hit carbon dioxide had
not been reduced enough to make a significant reduction in
temperature because as the oceans very gradually cooled, the oceans
released into the atmosphere almost the same amount of carbon dioxide
that the process of the weathering of rock in effect removed. After
earth recovered from the asteroid event, plant material was once
again buried in bogs, lakes, and the oceans reducing the amount
carbohydrates available to be converted into carbon dioxide by the
decomposers. Less carbon dioxide means cooler temperatures and the
reduction was large enough to make a difference in temperature.
Glaciations began to occur about 2 million years ago about every
100,000 year. My guess is the reduction in carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere cooled earth's temperature enough to allow the glaciations
to occur.
Now by burning fossil fuels we are reversing the
increase in oxygen and the decrease of carbon dioxide and changing
our climate at the same time. More carbon dioxide means warmer
temperatures.
Return to Global Heating
Table of Content
O04 It is more than Global Heating
Most people do not understand that
we are ground zero for the first major wave of global heating.
We
have set in motion a feed back loop of melting ice which increases
our temperatures which melts more ice and repeat. When the sea ice is
gone the winds will blow the cool air from the Greenland glacier to
Europe and we will have a major heat wave which will lead to drought.
Who is going to feed us? We must do something major now to slow down
the melting. Many people say it will cost to much, but what do they
think the drought is going to cost us?
Our country is the only
one with warm water on three sides. What do you think is going to
happen when more of the Arctic sea ice and the Greenland glacier
melt? What is going to keep us cool? This is why our country is
ground zero for global heating.
Already the drought has
reached from the pacific to the Atlantic across the southern part of
our country and up the east coast. The governors of the NYC area are
asking people to conserve water because supplies are low.
Tomorrow will never be the same as
today
The first program I wrote in '67 ran on a 32K computer
with 3 40K disc drives at a total cost of $10,000 a month. 12 years
later a 256K computer with 3 300K disc drives could be bought for
$8,000 with a 5 year life span which means it had a cost of $133.33 a
month. That is what I call a tech reduction in price. Since then the
price of computer equipment has continued to decline, but not at the
same rate and now the prices are beginning to rise because of
inflation.
This tech reduction in price made computers,
scanners, cell phones, Ipads, Ibooks, etc. very affordable. The tech
reduction can not be achieved for all products because not every
product can be micro miniaturize or computer controlled, unfortunate
for alternative energy products. They have received some reduction in
price do to mass production, but the largest price reduction has
occurred because governments are subsidizing their production.
This means people who wanted to install solar panels had make the
decision on an 'I want' basis rather than a return on investment
basis. I made my decision on the 'I want basis' plus I have received
2.2% return on my money which is much better than the banks pay.
Now people must make the decision on the basis 'Do I want my
grandchildren and great grandchildren to survive' plus if you have
good solar exposure on your roof you can now get about 4% return on
your investment in solar panels.
According to my calculations
the population bomb is going to explode sometime in the next 13 years
at about the same time as the first major global heating event. About
4 billion people will die.
We have passed the point of no
return, now we must do what we can to postpone the population bomb
and the first major global heating event so we have time to adjust.
We are not moving fast enough and the politicians are still playing
games with the numbers.
As air conditioning increases, that
cost will cause people to spend less on travel. Plus I expect a
carbon tax at about the same time. This means RV sales will plummet
along with big pickup trucks sales and the tourist industry will be
in a depression and the fast food industry will not be far behind.
The three bright spots will be an
increase in electric vehicles sales, but the down side is there will
be a smaller demand for mechanics, oil consumption will decline, and
solar panel production will increase plus the demand for installers.
The global heating changes are in progress and if we do not make
the changes that need to be made faster it will be much worse.
It does not matter that you do not
believe global heating is real, the biosphere will follow its own
rules, if we do not learn the rules of the biosphere and obey them,
the biosphere will kill us. All prayers and supplications will not
prevent it from happening, God will not protect us from what we are
doing to ourselves, after all Who created the rules of the biosphere.
The Rapture will not come because it will not be the end of the
earth, cockroaches and the creatures at the deep ocean thermal vents
will survive and life will evolve again after a few ten thousand
years. People are unique but we are not privileged.
When scientists talk about global
heating they never mention the gorilla that will come into the room
because it is impossible to predict when the gorilla will come and
how severe the gorilla will be.
The gorilla is panic.
When a large number of deniers realize global heating is real a panic
will ensue and it will make the situation much worse than the global
heating event. People will hoard, causing severe shortages which will
cause starvation.
If you think we are to sophisticated to
panic let me repeat a story I told some time ago.
Two days
after 911 I had doctor's appointment in Petoskey. I followed my usual
route. When I stopped before going under I75 I could see cars lined
up in the south bound lane of M108. As I pulled into the intersection
I could see cars lined up in the north bound lane two blocks away.
They were waiting to get into a gas station. I thought it odd, but
continued. As I approached the intersection where I turn to enter I75
cars were again lined up to get into the Shell station next to the
I75 ramp. I though to myself this is very unusual. As I approached
Levering, again cars were lined up on both sides of the road. Many
were pulling trailers with snowmobiles and boats. People were filling
up every available gasoline can they had. The same thing was
happening in Pellston, but that is where it stopped.
On my
return trip all of the gas stations where I saw cars lined up had
signs saying 'Out of gasoline'. The rural stations were out of
gasoline for three days, one in Pellston was out for two days,
Mackinaw City for only one day.
The next day I received an
email saying someone sent an email to all of their friends saying the
refineries in the Chicago area had been hit by terrorists and were
burning. None of the people filling their cars bothered to check to
see if it was true. The sender of my email had called his relatives
in Chicago to find out and the panic stopped when people received his
email.
Following a global heating event people will be
hoarding many more items besides gasoline, air conditioners,
generators, food, water, etc. If people stop working to hoard, our
economy will collapse.
The weather forecast I watch
displays a regional daily high temperature map more frequently during
the winter and summer apparently so viewers can see the cold and heat
in relation to their location.
In March more than 15 years ago
Fairbanks was above freezing and Calgary was below zero, that caught
my attention. All of the next winter the daily high temperature maps
had many -40 and -30 in Canada and -30 in the Northern US. Each month
the cold numbers would move north and east. The next winter the -40
and -30 moved further north. Each year the coldest temperatures moved
further north and east. Warm air off the Japanese current was pushing
the cold air further to the north and east before the cold air could
move south. About five years ago the map did not have any -40. In '17
and '18 no -30. The warm air is moving North and east off the
Japanese current and the US south west. This change in temperature is
the result of the Arctic sea ice melting along with the melting of
snow and permafrost.
The '17 winter was the warmest since I
have moved here and in '17 summer we only had one 80 degree day, but
in Sept we had one day at 90 and 8 days above 80. That had never
happened before. The warm air moving north and east finally reached
my back yard.
My guess is this movement of warm air will reach
Greenland by '30 which will cause the collapse of the Greenland ice
sheet and the Arctic sea ice to completely melt before the end of
each summer which in turn will cause our oceans to stratify which in
turn will prevent our oceans from storing our excess heat. We will
get very warm much sooner than current predictions.
Most people don't think about their
own contribution. We eat about 2,000 calories a day and when we burn
those calories to create energy we give off that same amount of heat.
Because of the large number of people this is a significant amount of
heat. Plus all our animals release heat. This why we must reduce our
population.
Freezers, refrigerators, and air conditioning are
oxymoron’s especially the air conditioning. By using them we cool a
small volume of space and put the heat into our atmosphere and we
ignore the amount of heat released to do so. All three use large
amounts of electricity. All three have been improved in efficiency,
but when we air condition our cars and buildings which consumes much
more electricity of the three, we put a lot of heat into our
atmosphere. Freezers and refrigerators prevent food from spoiling
which reduces the amount of energy used to transport food, this
reduces their impact on their contribution to heat. Not so for air
conditioning, it makes us more comfortable and in some cases it is a
matter of life or death, but we waste to much electricity by keeping
the temperatures to low.
If we are to keep global heating from
getting much worse we need to change our life style, we can't wait
for technology to do it.
Global heating is not coming, it is
already here. We are not changing our weather system, we have already
changed it. On Fri '18 my back porch thermometer read -17. The next
Fri it read 58. The next Fri 10 ant the next Fri 38. These roller
coaster swings in temperature are a mild wake up call. I wonder how
many people recognized it. The next wake up call will pound on your
door. The third wake up call will knock your door down. We have put
feed back loops into motion which means the changes that are coming
will arrive much sooner than anyone would have predicted.
My
guess is the next wake up call will come before 2025 and the third
before 2030. Our only hope for survival is to change our life style
and we must do it soon.
Two of my concerns about global
heating have moved to the top of my list.
First: In '19 NOAA
displayed a map of the world showing the areas that had the largest
increase in temperature. The west coast of Greenland was one of them.
This means the warm air is being pushed further to the east faster
than I have predicted. If this trend continues to happen the
Greenland ice sheet will be melting faster on the west coast as well
as the south and east.
Second: I read an article on the Pine
Island Glacier Antarctica which said a large piece of the ice shelf
holding the glacier back had broken off. But what concerned me was
the cracks in the rest of the ice shelf were not parallel to the
water they were perpendicular which means the shelf is no longer
large enough to hold the glacier back and it is pushing the ice shelf
faster causing it to form a fan which means the shelf could
disintegrate at any time. The Pine Island Glacier is one of the
fastest flowing ice streams and when the shelf disintegrates ice
bergs will calve very quickly into the ocean raising the sea level.
The ice cores from Greenland and
Antarctica tell a very important story that people should know and
understand.
The liars and deniers had a field day, they said,
'Scientists can't tell time, etc.', (as if the ice cores had a built
in calendar), when the researchers vented their frustration, they
could not make the distance between large increases in ash in the ice
cores match up with the time between known volcanoes, the distance
should have been proportional to the time. Later they learned about a
little known volcano in Iceland that released a very large amount of
ash, then they could make the distance between the ash deposits match
the recorded time between the volcanoes.
Shortly thereafter
the important stories began to be published, they published a graph
with the ups and downs of temperature and carbon dioxide. Again the
liars and deniers had a field day because the peaks in temperature
always preceded the peaks in carbon dioxide, they said, 'How can
carbon dioxide cause global heating if the temperature comes first'.
What they did not understand was the oceans released carbon dioxide
as the ocean temperature increased, like when a cold carbonated
beverage warms up and becomes flat. Cold water can hold more carbon
dioxide than warm water.
Another important fact was that
almost all of the increases in temperature were much faster than the
decreases in temperature. In other words, quick to warm up, slow to
cool down. We will only know in hind sight if this pattern repeats
for our story.
So far, the oceans are still absorbing much of
the carbon dioxide and much of the heat we are releasing by burning
fossil fuels. The oceans moderate our temperature by absorbing heat
when the air temperature is higher than the water temperature and
releasing heat when the air temperature is lower than the water
temperature preventing large changes in temperature.
There is
a very large difference between our story and the story the ice cores
tell. We have caused the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere
to more than double while the temperature has increased by only a few
degrees since the industrial revolution, a very short period in time.
So far we are putting the carbon dioxide peak ahead of the
temperature peak.
The oceans can only hold so much carbon
dioxide and heat and when that point is reached the oceans will no
longer moderate our temperature. Then with each small increase in
ocean temperature it will cause some the carbon dioxide to come out
of solution and increase the amount of carbon dioxide in our
atmosphere even faster. That is when the temperature will increase
very rapidly because of the large amount of heat we are releasing
into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
Turning on the
air conditioner will prevent the heat from killing us, but the heat
will kill all the food plants and animals we eat. We can not go to
the wall and turn down the thermostat, it will take thousands of
years for the biosphere to turn down the thermostat.
We must
stop burning fossil fuels.
The liars and deniers say, 'The
climate has always varied, we will cool down in a while.' Yes, we
will cool down in about 10,000 years if we stop burning fossil fuels.
What we are doing is not the normal, what other creature has burned
fossil fuels and put 630,000,000,000,000 BTU's each and every day
into the atmosphere.
Another thing the liars and deniers say,
'Why should we change our life style, we are only burning one fifth
of the amount the rest of the world is burning, they need to change,
not us'. It is true, we are burning only one fifth and the rest of
the world is burning four fifths, but we are doing it with less than
one tenth of the population. We burn more fossil fuels per person
than any other country. Canada is second, they burn 2/3 as much as we
do per person. The next group of countries burn about one half as
much as we do per person and the rest of the world burns less than
one tenth as we do per person.
What we are doing is
unprecedented, no one can predict what will happen because it has
never happen before. But there are things that are certain. We know
that carbon dioxide is increasing and oxygen is decreasing. We know
the oceans are getting warmer. We know that droughts are increasing
and some food crops are decreasing in yield. We know the glaciers and
sea ice are melting. We know the temperature of the arctic is
increasing. So far this year '20 there have been no minus 30's in
northern Canada or AK or Bismark ND.
If we don't change our
life style and stop burning fossil fuels, what is going to keep us
cool?
We are between a rock and a hard
place. Most people do not understand the magnitude of the problem we
face nor its complexity. We have created a meta stable society, we
must have a lot of energy or our society will collapse.
We
can't stop all drilling, all pipelines, and all refineries because
then we would not have any gasoline. How would we be able to go the
store for groceries, how would the food be trucked from the farms to
the stores, how would the farmer farm without gasoline, no plowing,
no sowing, no harvesting.
To many people are to naive. They
have no concept of how long it will take nor how much it will cost
nor how we will do it.
Another concern of mine: to many
people are placing top priority on their favorite cause such as shut
down line five, save the whales, save the polar bears, etc. But if we
do not save our earth we will not save anything. Preventing global
heating from becoming worse must be our top priority or nothing else
matters.
Because we are behind on making the
necessary changes and our technology is not keeping pace we must
change our life style. You may not like changing your life style, but
if we wait and let global heating make the changes for us, you will
definitely not like the result.
Changing our life style will
take time because we must make the changes in steps because our
economy will crash if we don't. People have a misconception that
creating and installing alternative energy equipment will create
jobs. This is true, but we have created a false economy and as we
make the necessary changes many more false jobs will be lost compared
to the new jobs being created.
The biosphere has a very strict
rule: do not let your population increase beyond your food supply. We
are rapidly reducing the size and number of our food fish and global
heating will reduce our food supply and will cause a water shortage.
Global heating is a thief and we created the thief. The thief is
now saying, 'Your money or your life'.
What is our decision?
Have you noticed?
When I
first read about global heating in '76 almost all of the predictions
about when major events caused by global heating would occur were
about 175 to 200 years away or 2150 to 2175. During 1990 to 2000 the
predictions were mostly the turn of the next century, 100 years or
2100. Several months ago several groups predicted the Arctic ocean
would be ice free in 40 years or 2060.
The prediction time is
shrinking each year because of feed back loops which no one can
predict how fast or where.
The feed back loop I am most
concerned about is: Warm air melts snow which exposes more land to
sun light which warms the land which results in more warm air and
repeat. The same thing happens to sea ice, but with even more speed
because when the water refreezes during the next winter the ice is
thinner than the old ice and melts very quickly which allows all of
the open water to be exposed to sun light as happened the summer
before so the warm water and air can melt more old ice each summer
exposing more water to sun light and repeat the next year.
The
result, ice and snow are melting much faster and will raise the the
sea level much faster than anyone is willing to predict. We are not
prepared for such a change. Almost all oil refineries and oil
terminals are near an ocean and a fast rise in the ocean water level
would put them out of commission and world economy would crash
followed by a panic that no one has ever seen.
As a result I
see no reason to change my prediction that we must make at least a
10% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 or no one will
survive.
I do not like the words 'Climate
change' because they do not point to the problem. When a person reads
or hears the words climate change they must remember what the words
stand for. Global heating at least contains two useful words, it is
global and it is heating.
To many people are focused on
carbon dioxide and are ignoring the most important consideration.
Carbon dioxide will not kill us, heat will. Carbon dioxide radiates
half of the heat it absorbs that our earth sent into outer space and
sends it back down to earth increasing our temperature. The amount of
carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is small 400 ppm so the amount of
heating cause by carbon dioxide is small, but carbon dioxide will
remain in our atmosphere for about 1000 years, methane about 12 years
and they will continue to send heat back down to earth every day.
What these people are ignoring is the amount of heat we are
releasing into our atmosphere every day. Even if all of our vehicles
are electric and all of our homes and other buildings are heated with
electricity and all of the electricity is produced by wind or solar,
the temperature of our atmosphere will continue to increase because
the use of electricity will release nearly the same amount of heat or
more than we are currently releasing by burning fossil fuels.
The following is a conversation I had with a global heating denier,
he would not accept the fact that people are responsible. I started
with:
How do you stop your car? That is a stupid question, with
my brakes, of course.
How does your brakes stop your car? By
friction.
How does frictions stop your car? He looked puzzled and
repeated, by friction.
Are you aware that friction creates heat
and if your brakes over heat you can not stop your car?
He was old
enough to remember how many drivers in the mountains could not stop
their vehicles because their brakes over heated and that is why there
were steep rising off ramps on the down slopes so the change in
direction would slow their vehicles down to a stop.
I continued
with: the friction of your brakes converts the mechanical energy of
motion into heat and as your brakes radiate the heat your car slows
down. It is the loss of heat that stops your car.
This is why
disc brakes are much more effective at stopping your car, they have a
much larger area of metal exposed to the air to radiate heat than the
old drum and shoe brakes which kept the heat contained. You released
the heat when you put on your brakes so you are responsible for
global heating. He gave me the deer in the head lights look and
walked away.
Again, why do so many people over look the other
elephant in the room, heat. Our cars release heat when it pushes the
air out of its way and the faster we drive the more heat we create.
Plus the tires on our vehicles release heat because of the friction
with the road and again the faster we drive the more heat we release.
To make all this happen we burn gasoline in the engine which releases
heat on combustion. Most of this heat is released through the
radiator, but some radiates from the metal engine and exhaust system
and the rest in the flue gases from the exhaust pipe.
The
burning of the gasoline releases most of the heat, about 148000 BTU's
per gallon. The other releases of heat are very small in comparison,
but the law of large numbers indicates that a small number times a
large number is a large number. We have more than 200 million
vehicles on our roads which makes those small heat releases a very
large number.
So change your driving habits, drive as little
as possible, slow down, and coast before you apply your brakes so you
can reduce the amount of heat you contribute to our over heating
planet.
We can not change the amount of heat we receive from the sun
and it will take 1,000 years for the biosphere to begin to lower the
amount of carbon dioxide we have already released into our
atmosphere. So there is only one thing we can change and that is to
reduce the amount of heat we are releasing because each BTU we
release raises the temperature of our atmosphere which in turn
increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold. Water
vapor is the most important green house gas because there is so much
of it.
Do not confuse relative humidity with the amount of
water in the air. The amount of water vapor varies with temperature
and pressure. The relative humidity is the % of the amount of water
the air can hold at a given temperature and pressure.
An example of a change in humidity:
one K gram of 50% humid air at 20 degrees C at one bar of pressure
contains 7.338 g of water
one K gram of 100% humid air at 20
degrees C at one bar of pressure contains 14.74 g of water
An example of change in temperature of 100% humid air at one bar of pressure
degrees C g of
water per cubic meter
20
17.1
21
18.1
22
19.2
23
20.4
24
21.5
25
22.8
Even a small increase in
temperature will increase the amount of water vapor which will have a
much greater effect than the carbon dioxide we have released by
burning fossil fuels which means the water vapor will become a feed
back loop of ever increasing temperatures even if we stop producing
carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels which means we must reduce the
amount of energy we are using, we must reduce the number of BTU's we
release into our atmosphere, we must change our life style.
The Republican defeat of Carter’s
energy policy put us fifty years behind in converting to a
sustainable energy policy. When will these idiots learn that more
oil, more coal, and more gas will not solve our problem.
Nixon
began the modern political environmental movement. But then the
Republicans did a complete about face when they defeated Carter’s
energy policy and followed with their contract with America. The
contract basically said to the American people, ‘You do not have to
change, it is business as usual, consume, consume, consume.’
The contract was followed by an active anti science agenda which was
followed by Reagan’s tax cut and a deficit spending program which
was continued by Bush, Bush and Obama.
When the Republicans
started their anti science agenda it was a sad day for America.
Nearly half our population was turned against science, the very thing
that made our country and worst of all those same people will not
accept global heating because scientist work with probability and
uncertainty. Oh, how awful.
Is it any wonder that our students
do not compare well against the rest of the world. An anti science
agenda would not have anything to do with it, would it?
A
country without a good science program will be a marginal country. A
country with an anti science agenda is doomed.
Return to Global Heating Table of Content
First, if we are to survive we must
eliminate most of our current heat releasing activities. The only
heat releasing activities should be those that use human muscle power
except for the production and transportation of food, clothing,
shelter, medical, and the transportation of workers to do so and even
these should be minimized. The solution must be done by individuals
we can not wait for the politicians to do it, I have been waiting for
the politicians to do something for more than sixty years.
You have heard all the usual
things. Insulate, weather strip, heat at 68, air conditioning at 74,
recycle, car pool, use solar, wind, etc.
Now comes the difficult part, we
must give up part of our life style. We must spend money and lose
jobs. Yes, we must give up the car and the pick up truck or at least
the gas guzzlers we now drive. Drive the most fuel efficient vehicle
when ever you drive, combine trips, never idle your engine, except at
stop signs. When you know you will have to wait at a traffic light or
stop sign, coast into it, it will not cost any time, but it will save
a small amount of fuel. Don't travel during peak traffic hours.
We must switch to electric vehicles
as fast as possible. They have two large disadvantages, cost and
short driving range, but also one large advantage, electric vehicles
do not need wells, pipelines, refineries, nor service stations. A
recharging station can be built anywhere there is electricity. We
will need to slow down and not travel as far. Plan our trips so when
the battery needs to be charged we can stay over night or as long as
it takes to recharge.
We need to install more solar panels on
more roofs faster. We need to work at home via a computer as much as
possible.
If your mail is delivered daily use
the mail not one of the express services. Buy groceries in quantity
so you can avoid making extra trips to the store. Don't buy things
you don't need, especially things that are fuel expensive to
transport like bottled water, pop, etc. Buy dried foods, cereals,
beans, rice, etc., in other words don't transport water. Be careful
about concentrates, sometimes they use more energy than transporting
water.
At this point I want to make sure
you realize that I didn't say, "Stop using your vehicle."
What we need to do is to reduce the use of our vehicles and drive
more efficiently. Put the speed limit back to 55. Reduce and be more
efficient can be applied to all our energy consuming activities.
We will have to give up
motorcycles, ATV's, personnel water craft, snowmobiles, and power
boats for pleasure and recreation. We will have to use TV and the
internet instead of attending public functions, such as, ball games,
movies, races, meetings, etc., unless we can walk or ride a bike.
Even public transportation will have to be limited, to and from work
or for food, medicine, etc. We will have to down size our homes and
other buildings. Reduce our lighting. Eat less beef, yes, it is the
largest polluter of the foods. Many people have said we need to stop
eating beef because of the methane released by cattle. A few people
include we need to stop drinking milk and eating milk products, again
because the cattle release methane. I have never heard anyone say we
must do the above because of the heat the cattle emit.
All of the above will be hard to do
and take time. We should accelerate the pace by placing tax on all
energy consuming activities and subsidies on all energy saving
activities, including recycling. I don't understand why the
politicians think we should make money on recycling.
Put carbon fee of $4.20 per barrel
on all crude oil input to our refineries and a $4.30 fee per barrel
on all imported finished products. Put a BTU equivalent fee on coal
and natural gas. The fee would raise gasoline, heating oil, and
diesel fuel prices about $.11 per gallon. Raise the fee by the same
amount each year until people reduce their consumption. Make the
landlord pay the fee for energy used in buildings. Use the fee to pay
unemployment. The fee will reduce tourism, travel (especially air
travel), RV's, big pickup trucks, snow mobiles, personal water craft,
motor boats, etc., and many jobs will be lost.
No exemptions,
not even for government agencies, everyone must pay the penalties,
bureaucracies are budget driven, the penalties need to be seen on
their budgets. I have heard people say we must make the taxes so as
not to hurt the poor. All and every inflation hurts the poor,
directly or indirectly, it can not be avoided, so why create unneeded
rules or bureaucracies, use the ones we have.
I recommend we start slow so we
don't shock our economy and so we have time to adjust, then we should
increase the taxes and subsidies on a set schedule so everyone can
plan and act accordingly.
Our society is organized around the
automobile. I recommend that everyone keep track of all car expenses
and calculate an average cost per mile. Add to it the purchase price
of the vehicle divided by the number of miles you expect to drive the
car. Then record the number of miles you drive to all your usual
destinations and calculate a cost per round trip.
Now you can avoid one of the most
common mistakes we make in our country. We make frequent trips to
save dimes and waste dollars driving to save them. Next time you are
about to drive to save money on a purchase, subtract the cost of
making the trip from your estimate of how much you will save.
I have seen people spend two or
more dollars on car expenses to save fifty cents or less on a
purchase. Many times you can save money by paying a higher price by
purchasing closer to home and driving a shorter distance.
We must stop transporting water,
such as, bottled water, pop, alcoholic drinks, etc. We must stop
eating processed food. We should eat at home or with our neighbors.
We must return to entertaining ourselves with activities within our
neighborhood instead of traveling. We should dry our laundry on
clothes lines. Use the computer to keep in touch with friends and
relatives. Plus many more.
We need to create as many ideas
as possible and implement them. We need everyone to be thinking about
how we can make the necessary changes. We need all the brains we can
develop to help discover new ways of doing things. To do this we need
to insure that every person has the proper nutrition and shelter.
Everyone must have the chance to approach their full potential. We
need to create a free health care and a free educational system to do
this and it would also create more jobs. Every woman should have free
family planing available and be encouraged to have only two children.
This would slowly reduce our population, we have to many people.
A radical change I would like to
make, is to change our calendar. Make every month thirty days, six
day per week, with December having six weeks except during skip year
when the last week would be dropped to bring our calendar back into
agreement with the vernal equinox.
The advantages of this change would
be multiple: many more work schedules could be mapped on six day week
allowing much more efficient use of the work force, our buildings,
and our factories. Our income would be reduced, we would work less
and play more and I know most people would enjoy more weekends. If we
would be willing to have even smaller incomes by working less hours
per week, we could employ more people and reduce transportation.
I know the biggest objection, a
bull headed rush to judgment. Do you really think God would object to
us going to church more frequently, every sixth day, and more often,
61 times instead of 52 per year, I don't think so.
It's this bull headed rush to
judgment, a conclusion, that I fought with for more than twenty years
of my working life, so when I retired I never missed my work and I
loved my work, I like to analyze, to solve problems, and to implement
solutions. I can't remember a day that someone didn't say, "You
can't do that because...", they rushed to judgment before they
evaluated.
Can you believe this, our marketing
department statistician, asked me for help. Each month, using a desk
calculator, he estimated sales by salesman, by product, by month for
the next year based upon the last five years of sales history, an
excellent task for a computer, many repetitive calculations on data
all ready available to the computer. I wrote a small program and a
whole month of work was done in two minutes. "You can't do
that." "Why?" "Because I won't have anything to
do."
I will guarantee that if you rush
to judgment you will never change. Next to ridicule, it is the most
powerful deterrent to critical thinking, your brain will shut down
and you will not be able to create any new solutions, no new ideas.
As long as I'm digressing let me
add: there are three basic ways to make a change. The way most people
like, is like the Japanese, get a consensus and then implement the
change. But the Japanese have been doing it for centuries, they are
masters at it. It is a long, slow, tedious way. Our country is to
impatient, we won't wait that long. The second way is to shock people
and when they recover, tell them what they have to do. This way is
quite fast, but it leaves everyone uncooperative and with a bad
feeling. The third way is to make the change and never tell anyone.
Very few people will notice and the rest will think it has always
been done the new way.
I used the last way every chance I
could; however, those chances were few and far between and I don't
see how we could possibly use it for the problem that's coming. We
will have to use a combination of the first two.
Another obstacle that has to be
over come is that most of the rules we follow are arbitrary, but most
people think they are written in stone. A solution can not be
implemented if people will not realize that we can change the rules,
at least the ones we created.
What I'm trying to do is to make
changes as fast as possible without disrupting our economy, that's
why the taxes and subsidies should be increased slowly, so our
economy has time to adjust. If our economy crashes it won't be pretty
and it will not help us reach our goal.
Second, our population problem.
People equal pollution. We should change our tax laws to allow only
two dependent deductions for children, allow four adopted children to
be claimed as dependents. Change all social programs that aid
children to be limited to two children, again exempting adopted
children. In other words, do not give any tax deductions or welfare
assistance that would encourage more than two children per woman.
Sorry, no breaks for second marriages.
Birth control pills should be free
for any woman who wants them. Vasectomies should be free for any man
who has two healthy children and mandatory for all sex offenders, if
for no other reason than to ensure that if there is a genetic cause
it will not be transmitted to the next generation.
Abortion should not be used for
birth control, but again it should be mandatory for rape and incest
for the same reason as for sex offenders and it should be available
for the health of a woman. Tubal ligation should be free for any
woman who has two healthy children. Sex education, parenting, and
family planning should be a high school requirement.
My definition of sex education is
much broader than most and I will not expand it here except to say,
we need to eliminate the male chauvinistic attitude that women are
here for their gratification. One reason I appear to be anti religion
is because all religions are male chauvinistic, at least to some
degree, mainly because they were written by men, and religions
perpetuate male chauvinism.
Many women are male chauvinists.
Until recently I was puzzled by this, but if you notice that women
favor young boys and men favor young girls, you will also notice the
instinctive awareness of the importance of the opposite sex to the
individual. Now many women are aware of this importance at the
rational level, where as, most men are not.
The hand that rocks the cradle will
never rule the world because that is not her priority, if it was she
wouldn't be rocking the cradle. Besides, rocking the cradle, the
nurture of our children, is the most important activity we can under
take, ruling the world is trivia, an ego trip. A ruler is nothing
more than the measure of the stupidity of the kingdom. Now, to be the
leader of the world rather than the ruler, that would be important.
Male chauvinists have a mental
block and will not be able to understand the full meaning of the
following:
1. Women are the way they are so
they will become pregnant.
2. Men are the way they are so
women will become pregnant.
Our country should embark on a major
assistance program to any country that asks for help with population
problems. Rather than giving money, I would rather give birth control
pills, condoms, medical training and supplies, teacher training, etc.
We should not withhold aid because of ideological differences. We
should do everything we can to improve the status of women, improve
pre and post natal care. Improve child care. Improve educational
systems, women must be educated.
In short, do everything we can to
improve the life expectancy of children so women will not feel the
need to have more than two children. If we can reach the two children
per woman goal it would put our replacement rate below our loss rate
and thereby slowly reducing our total population and our energy
consumption and our pollution.
This is not an unrealistic goal.
Many industrial countries are already below the 2 per woman rate and
South America has made steady progress toward the goal. Africa, the
middle East, and India are the only areas way above the goal. Our
country would be way below the goal if it weren't for immigration,
legal and illegal. So, you see there is hope.
Third, the most difficult task of
all. We must change our ideology. Our ideology as evolved from that
of our forefathers to one of more is better, bigger is better, more,
more, more...bigger, bigger, bigger... We must realize that we
are finite beings living on a finite planet; therefore our population
must be finite. I don't know what the number should be, but I'm
guessing about 2 billion, a number we passed many years ago. We
should move all people except those necessary to extract strategic
resources, from the tropics, out of the disease zone and get ready
for the next ice age. We should only produce what is needed, we
should only have what we need. We should use any excess for our next
big adventure, space.
Learning is and should be a life
long occupation, earning a living should be a minor avocation. Part
of our time should be spent helping our society, we don't need
things, we do need family, friends, and neighbors. We need social
interaction. We need an exchange of ideas.
Retiring to the lap of luxury,
living a life of idleness is a recipe for death. From what we have
learned, we must stay active or die, use it or lose it.
Let me explain my greatest fear.
Most functions in the biosphere do not follow a shallow linear curve,
they follow an exponential or a stair step curve. Our science is not
advanced enough to predict where we are on any stair step curve. We
may be up against the rapid change part of the curve and not even
know it and we will have little or no warning that the change is
about to take place. If we trigger a transition from one step to
another we will not be able to stop it. We can't flip a switch on the
wall and start over. We must live or die on the new level.
Two such stair step curves are the
current flow of the deep polar current and the location of our
climate zones. Both of which are a function of global heating. We are
causing global heating so we can reduce it. Most people carry
insurance on their lives, their homes, their cars, etc. Don't you
think it prudent to carry insurance on our biosphere?
Let's bring our population and
pollution under control, then let's learn how to build a better
society, then let's go to the stars.
In 1963 Saudi Arabia sent a signal
when it tried to increase the price of oil, a signal was sent again
with the war 1967, and again with the oil embargo 1974, plus five
more with each major increase in the price of oil, but very few
people noticed. Even fewer knew what the signals meant. It meant our
world had changed. It meant that the production of crude oil was not
keeping up with demand.
In 1964 I began to follow oil
production and consumption, shortly thereafter I added population,
food, carbon dioxide, GDP, and national debt. I had followed the sun
spot cycle since college. I am well aware that our planet is finite
and that we can not continue doing what we are doing.
This prompted me to calculate how
many people earth could feed. My number, 22 billion, if everyone ate
cracked field corn, disagreed with the very optimistic views at that
time.
All living creatures are taking
creatures. Humans seem to be the only wanting creatures, we take and
consume much more than we need, all others take only what is needed.
Bigger is not better. More is not better. Our impact on our earth
follows the following equation.
population = point sources = the economy = consumption = pollution
Each person, each home, each
business, each motor, each appliance, etc., is a point source. As our
population increases so does the number of point sources so does our
economy so does consumption so does pollution. Remember to include
the infrastructure point sources that expand and contract with
population, such as, planes, trains, buses, taxi cabs, trash trucks,
fire trucks, police cars, street lights, water pumps, sewer pumps,
etc.
We have made some progress in
decreasing pollution, but as the number of point sources increase,
the progress in decreasing pollution is over come by the increase in
number of point sources.
An excellent example of this is the
Los Angeles basin. Both people and businesses have reduced the amount
of carbon dioxide emitted by each point source, but the number of
point sources have increased so much that the total amount carbon
dioxide is still increasing.
This point is critical to our
survival, so allow me to explain it in another way. First in an
exaggerated manner and then in a more realistic manner.
Family A is the first family in a
new subdivision and their furnace emits 100 units of carbon dioxide.
They add more insulation and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by
3% to 97 units. Now family B moves into their subdivision and add
more insulation to their home so that they emit the same number of
units of carbon dioxide, but even with this 3% reduction the
subdivision now emits 194 units of carbon dioxide, a very large
increase.
Now a more realistic example. Lets
start with a subdivision of 100 families, each family emitting 100
units of carbon dioxide for a total of 10,000. All of them reduce
their carbon dioxide emissions by 3%, but the population increases
by 4% to 104 families. Now the subdivision emits 10088 units of
carbon dioxide even with a 3% reduction because the growth rate of
the population, 4%, was greater than the rate of reduction. This
arithmetic applies to the population impact equation.
population = point sources = the economy = consumption = pollution
Our population is increasing at a
rate of about 1% so it appears that the rate of population increase
in our country is not significant, but that ignores the multiplier
effect of the number of point sources. The key to understanding our
current situation is to realize that population growth is not the
only consideration.
We have taught the rest of the world
very well, consume, consume, consume; bigger is better; more is
better and they have learned very well. So while the rate of
population increase is not very large, the rate of energy consumption
is increasing at about 4 - 7% a year. When multiplied by 6+ billion
people this number is very significant.
This means we must make major
changes so the decrease in pollution at each point source is great
enough to over come the increase in the number of point sources plus
the increase in consumption at each point source. If we are to
survive as a species we must stop kidding ourselves and face the hard
choices we must make. Only by decreasing our population, decreasing
the number of point sources, decreasing our consumption, decreasing
our pollution, and by increasing efficiency can we increase the
quality of life, we must change our life style and we must do it
soon.
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Many tsunamis are coming our way,
you know the ones the doom and gloom people keep telling us about,
the green house effect, not enough food, water, energy, clean air,
etc. Now I would like to tell you about the three tsunamis that
concern me the most, in increasing order of concern.
First, is the loss of land to
urbanization, people need space in which to live, but so does the
biosphere, especially the spawning wet lands of our food fish. The
fish population is declining and we will need all the sources of food
we can maintain. Already the competition for land is threatening many
plants and animals, this competition can only get worse. The highways
and parking lots for our cars are consuming way to much land as well
as to many other resources.
Second, is the loss of land to the
rising sea level. Most people do not understand the danger, as the
ice shelves around the world break up the real danger is not rising
sea levels because the shelf ice is already displacing its weight in
water. The danger is the large amount of fresh water released during
melting may disrupt the ocean currents because of the difference in
density between the fresh water of the shelf ice and the sea water.
The danger from a rising sea level will come shortly after the shelf
ice breaks up and drifts away. Unstable glacier ice about a mile
inland all a long the coast which was partially supported by shelf
ice will begin to calve and it will do so very rapidly. Within months
of this event the sea level will rise about twenty five feet. Now
that may not sound like very much, but to many places around the
world it will spell disaster. One area that is completely ignored is
the location of oil terminals and oil refineries, twenty five feet of
water would put ninety per cent of them out of operation. Those not
under water by the raise in sea level would be swamped during high
tides and storms. We could not build dikes fast enough to keep them
in operation.
Before I tell you about the tsunami
that concerns me the most, let me set the stage. You have heard the
stupid statement, 'a little knowledge is dangerous'. Let me append
the statement to make it a little more intelligent, 'a little
knowledge is dangerous, but a little ignorance is deadly'.
Mark Twain said, "We are all
stupid, just in different areas." I agree because we are finite
and a finite system can not know everything so we must be ignorant in
many areas. Sadly our ignorance is vast and wide spread, and because
of our linear western thinking we tend to ignore cycles, such as the
water cycle, we take them for granted.
The biosphere has many cycles, you
may be aware of some of them, such as, the nitrogen, calcium,
phosphorous, potassium, sodium, sulfur, etc., all the nutrients
necessary for life. And of course the carbon cycle which is the most
discussed cycle of the industrial revolution. Many of these cycles
have a short term cycle through the biosphere and a long term cycle
through the geosphere. Carbon dioxide forming limestone on the sea
floor and returning as carbon dioxide and lava from volcanoes, for
example.
The carbon cycle is one of the most
interesting because it is the back bone of life.
We are changing the balance of
nature, we know we are and just because we can't measure the change
doesn't mean we should not be good stewards of our biosphere. We must
change our life style until our technologies catch up with our
consumption because if wait until we can measure the change it will
be to late.
Drastic changes are not necessary,
anarchy and chaos will not help. We need a slow controlled decline in
our consumption of hydrocarbons so our economy and society can
adjust, so we can experiment and try again in reasonable comfort.
Lets set a goal of three or four per cent a year. We don't need half
of what we have, but we do need twenty one per cent oxygen at one
atmosphere of pressure.
I have intentionally omitted a very
important topic because it is the oppsite of global heating and that
is the halo thermocline. The halo thermocline is where the hot salty
water of the Gulf Stream meets the cold fresh melt water from
Greenland along with the cold salt water from the Actic ocean. The
difference in density is very small between the three. Both the fresh
melt water from Greenland and the hot salty water from the Gulf
Stream float on top of the cold water and as they mix the hot salty
water cools and its density increases so that it sinks and joins the
deap polar current adding to its volume and momentum which in turn
creates the largest current in the oceans, it goes all the way around
the world.
If the fresh melt water increases
enough so that it disrupts the halo thermocline it could disrupt the
heat transfer to Northern Europe and it would be come an ice sheet
almost over night. Depending upon how severe the the disruption is,
the ice sheet could cover all of Europe. We do not know what will
happen if and when this disruption occurs and there will be no
warning before it does.
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