The north pole is melting, forest fires raging and hurricanes are spinning out of control. These are the long awaited signs of anthropogenic climate change (global warming). Being a science minded person, and someone who appreciates nature: I am concerned by the statement as I have always been. However, I never accept anything without question… not science, not religion and certainly not claims, which have political overtones, such as this. I neither accept the premise, nor do I discount it… I simply acknowledge it and since it is so concerning, I shall research and devote my next few blogs to that end. I admit my starting point it not one of complete open-mindedness, though I am a fair, honest person capable of change.

The claims, on it’s face, strike me as alarmist. The people and/or groups who are the loudest proponents of climate change are those with leftist/anti-capitalist agendas. It would seem to play a little too perfectly into their agendas for me to accept this without a large body of evidence to support it. This is not to say it doesn’t exist but rather that I would need incontrovertible evidence to support any claim coming from these sources. The proponents of this notion have been growing. Neutral groups and groups not associated with leftist agendas are taking up the cause. This raises the credibility and hence, my concern.

Internationally speaking, there is no shortage of anti-capitalist/anti-US sentiment out there. Our status as the last Superpower has it’s disadvantages. The United Nations has always been the vehicle by which the world expresses this disdain and provides them various tools by which to bludgeon us. Europeans have a long history of persecuting success. Our Jeffersonian philosophy is antithetical to their Marxist/Socialist educations… as was the similar ethos of the Jewish People in the 40s. The fact that we have been so successful with our way of life, puts into question every precept that they were indoctrinated with and is an affront to their own sense of national identity. The fact of the matter is that I wouldn’t believe either the UN or any of the European States if they told me rain was wet.

This issue fits a little to perfectly into their leftist agendas and would instantly validate their fundamental way of life and completely invalidate ours. We would have to virtually dismantle our society while Europeans would only have to make minor adjustments… if ever we hoped to repair climate change. I would be willing to accept the fact that mother nature has given the leftist/socialists/communists the most perfect tool by which to destroy the capitalist world… if I be given incontrovertible evidence. I would be willing to accept that judgment and deal with whatever may come.

Another point of contention that I have is: The technology to measure global trends hasn’t been around that long, 30 years… tops. It seems a bit egocentric of us to extrapolate less than 30 years of measurements to a planet which is 3.5 billion years old. Even if we consider the small slice of human existence, we are still dealing with at least eighty-thousand years. I will have to evaluate the efficacy of long term measurements such as Ice Core and tree ring data, before I can accept this small time-slice as meaningful.

On a final analytical note: The end result of global warming/climate change is a rise in average global temperature. A good question to consider is: so what? How does that impact the citizens of the world? The ecosystem has many homeostatic mechanisms which keep things in balance. A good example of which was the impact of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill: every environmentalist group, every researcher and every governmental study concluded that it would many decades for the ecosystem to recover. The reality which bore out in less than one decade, was a complete and utter reversal of nearly every scientific prediction. With this in mind, consider two, very hypothetical scenarios… as the world heats, things like water vapor are going to increase; water vapor makes clouds; clouds reflects sunlight and sunlight is what heats the earth… another possible scenario is as fossil fuels are burned it creates particulates and particulates absorb and scatter sunlight. It is not outside the realm of possibility that Earth’s ecosystem has a compensatory mechanism for which to deal with the heat? I would be surprised if the earth hasn’t had such things to deal with in it’s 3.5 billion years without us.

From what I know, there are many factors to consider when discussing the temperature of the planet. The Sun would seem to me, a good place to start any such discussion.

The sun is a yellow star, it is 1 solar mass (what a coincidence) and it is middle aged. It is the central, overwhelming source of gravitation and energy for this solar system. All the major bodies of this system orbit the sun. The sun wobbles a little due to Jupiter’s own gravitation. The Earth’s orbit is practically circular and maintains a roughly constant distance from the sun each orbit. The Sun has 11 and 22 year cycles of increased irradience due to increase solar flare activity (in the short time we have been taking note). There are variations in the Earth’s position and orientation with respect to the sun called Milankovitch cycles.

The sun irradiates the earth. The amount of energy which is imparted to the earth is called the solar constant. Because of the difficulty in achieving accurate measurements, the exact value of the solar constant is not known with certainty but is believed to be about 2.0 cal/cm²/min. Not all of the energy makes it to the surface. The white cloud tops and radio-reflective nature of the topmost portion of the atmosphere reflect a significant portion of the sun’s energy back into space. What isn’t reflected off the top of the atmosphere, continues down through the various layers. The various gases, vapors and particulates determine which wavelengths of the suns radiation will be absorbed, scattered or make it to the surface. The ability of the atmosphere to interact with photons is inversely proportional to it’s wavelength which works out well because prolonged exposure to wavelengths less than 300nm are harmful to living organisms. The visible (mostly) and IR photons are more likely to make it to the surface, than are cosmic, gamma or x-rays.

How many photons make it to the surface depends on various factors. The amount of cloud cover affects how much “whiteness” the planet has and therefore how much is reflected back into space. Clouds also absorb photon as do Oxygen, Nitrogen and Ozone. For a given position on earth, the angle to the sun and how thick the atmosphere is at that angle, are important.

A steady state between that which comes in (solar flux) and that which goes out (IR Flux) must be established. There is also an equilibrium between the greenhouse gases which absorb and re-radiate IR photons both upwards (to space) and downward (back to the ground). It is here at the equilibrium between upward and downward fluxes which are the issue. From what I can gather there are at least 50 models (probably 10 times that) currently which speak to this process. There are also a large body of theories addressing the consequences of various possible scenarios. Overall, there is no shortage of conjecture and extrapolation here. A distinct arm of science: climate science, has developed. It has large numbers, good funding and a large international network of state-supported, like-minded, fellow scientists. The US and EU have devoted the bulk of their scientific power towards these subjects. There is no shortage of eyes on the problem. (more to come)