Global Warming2
A visual explanation (if you click on the images and you will get the source and more info).
The mechanism of global warming by CO2
Below is the mechanism by which greenhouse gas produces Global Warming. We have pretty good measures of how much CO2 we are producing by burning of various fossil fuels. These mechanisms are basic science and seldom disputed:
Below is a more detailed diagram showing shorter wave length of the electromagnetic waves easily come in through the greenhouse gas layer, but the longer wavelengths of radiation are reflected back when they hit the Greenhouse Gases:
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Solar, Volcanic, Sulfates and other natural forces which are in included in Global Warming model:
Common sense might suggest that all the heat from various sources must have a significant effect on climate. But the science says no: the amount of heat energy coming out of the earth is actually very small, and the rate of flow of that heat is very steady over long time periods. The effect on the climate is in fact too small to be worth considering:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
Has the amount of carbon put into the atmosphere by human sources been significant?
The US alone is using a "Quad" of energy a year.
Some common types of an energy carrier approximately equal 1 quad are:
8,007,000,000 Gallons (US) of gasoline
293,083,000,000 Kilowatt-hours (kwh)
33.434 gigawatt-years (GWy)
36,000,000 Tonnes of coal
970,434,000,000 Cubic feet of natural gas
5,996,000,000 UK gallons of diesel oil
25,200,000 Tonnes of oil
252,000,000 Tonnes of TNT or five times the energy of the Tsar Bomb nuclear test.
13.3 Tonnes of Uranium-235
Below is how we are using it, and as you can see, nearly all is fossil fuels, and 1/2 is lost in the process:
RelativeUse of Carbon by Countries.
Is all of this burning of fossil fuel going into the air?
What about very long term data?
Fossilized ocean organisms like this plankton, the size of a grain of sand, keep a chemical snapshot of the climate at the time they first formed their calcium-carbonate shells. Courtesy Jennifer McKay, Oregon State:
Ice sheets contain a record of hundreds of thousands of years of past climate, trapped in the ancient snow. Scientists recover this climate history by drilling cores in the ice, some of them over 3,500 meters (11,000 feet) deep.
To some ,the charts below are obviously faked because the earth is only 6,342 years old according to Creationist (40-50% of US population are creationist):
Is the CO2 in the atmosphere really causing the world temperature to rise?
Are changes in the sun's output or earth's tilt causing global warming?
The Milankovitch cycles (changes in the orbital characteristics of the Earth) does not explain the RECENT rise in global temperature because they are around 100,000-year cycles with 20,000-year sub-cycles. For more on these: http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/lectures/climate.htm. The Earth should be heading towards a cooling period, not a warming period. This is exactly the opposite of what is occurring today.
There is an 11-year cycle of the sun's output that effects global temperature, but as you see on the graph, there is a much larger change in temperature than can be explained by the 11-year cycle.
Various method of measuring Global Temperature are highly correlated and show the same results:
The Mann and Marcott reconstruction both show recent spike over anything in the past.
Model matches observed. An important issue in statistics and proof of theory.
This takes a bit of time for the graph to change of points of view:
Every 10 years the Climate Deniers can say "see there has been no increase in temperature for 10 years". Then they have to readjust and wait 10 years:
Most of the heating is going into the ocean:
What do relevant scientist say?
What other evidence is there?
Long-term correlation of CO2 and temperature show that CO2 rises before the temperature.
Sea ice is melting rather rapidly:
Polar cap melting
(Click on picture and go to source which is interactive and you can move the divider between 1980 and 2003)
Loss of Glaciers:
How much CO2 are we GOING TO add to the atmosphere?
It is my opinion that we will, unfortunately, continue to use fossil fuels until we run out or their extraction becomes more expensive than other sources.
Thus we only have to calculate reasonable reserves available and we can calculate the amount of carbon that we are daily quickly going to put in the atmosphere. Recent developments in fracking and methods of extracting from tar sands have expanded cheap oil and gas considerable and there are vast quantities of accessible coal.
Reserves before fracking Reserve after Fracking - U.S. Only
Fracking is going to add to available fossil fuels and the potential CO2 that will be released. Fracking will dramatically reduce to cost of using fossil fuels and reduce the incentive to use alternative energy sources. China and rest of the world have way more technically recoverable resources than we do, and will be less circumspect in extracting it:
WON'T THE OCEANS AND FOREST ABSORB THE CO2?
Recent estimates have calculated that 26 percent of all the carbon released as CO2 from fossil fuel burning, cement manufacture, and land-use changes over the decade 2002–2011 was absorbed by the oceans. (About 28 percent went to plants and roughly 46 percent to the atmosphere.) During this time, the average annual total release of was 9.3 billion tons of carbon per year, thus on average 2.5 billion tons went into the ocean annually.
ACIDIFICATION OF OCEANS WHEN THE OCEAN ABSORBS CO2
The increasing acidity of the oceans by increased CO2 is potentially more disastrous for the earth system as global warming.
When carbon dioxide (CO2) combines with Ocean (H2O), it forms H2CO3, carbonic acid. Most of this acid dissociates into hydrogen ions (H+) and bicarbonate ions (HCO3-1). The increase in H+ ions reduces pH and raising the acidity of ocean water.
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), about 56 million years ago, had carbon content closest to the content we have today.
The geological record shows that it took approximately 100,000 years for the oceans to return to the pH level we now consider to be "normal" after the PETM. That leads scientists to believe that, absent some unknown remedy, it could take a similar amount of time for our ocean to return to normal as well. Reference.
FOREST AND PLANTS:
We are losing forest faster than we are gaining them and changes of land use to intensified agriculture is putting more CO2 into the air. It should be remembered that the CO2 sequestered in a living tree is returned to the air when the tree dies and rots. Some of that is sequestered by the trees and plants in the soil stays there until the soil is worked for agriculture.
WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES OF GLOBAL WARMING?
Rising sea levels
6 meters
Loss of species
Loss of productive land
ACIDIFICATION of the seas
Wars-- from destabilizing populations, economic instability.
I think with a lot of work and creating financial discouragement for using fossil fuels (see: http://www.tmcquaid.com/noMoreOil.html) we can slow the process down to where it might be manageable but still painful.
Responses to denialist claptrap:
Claim: CO2 followed warming after the last ice age.
Details: Rather than an increase in CO2 causing rising temperatures at the end of the last ice age, the increase in CO2 was caused by increasing temperatures. Therefore, we don't need to worry about increasing CO2 now.
Response: A test of 80 temperature proxies referenced against CO2 levels (from air trapped in ice) shows that the the CO2 definitely came first. A fuller explanation can be found at http://www.livescience.com/19481-ice-age-carbon-dioxide-orbit.html.
tom mcquaid 6/16/2017