|
bar
|
|
xx
|
nasa
|
|
hubble
|
xx
|
|
|
Scientists, financial analysts and sportscasters,
can tell us with absolute certainty what happened last week,
last month and last year.
But when they dare to make predictions, they're often
off the mark. Frequently then, they cheerfully explain
that their predictions were fine, but the events went wrong.
|
x
Some Dictionary Definitions...
x
Scientific; (adj.)
based on measurement, systematic observation
and verified conclusions. Dealing with fact, evidence
and proof.
Forecast; (n.)
a speculative prediction about a future event
based on assumptions, which may or may not
be correct.
Prediction;(n.)
a thing predicted; a forecast.
Projection; (n.)
a forecast or estimate, based on present trends;
eg. a projection of next year's profit.
Note: Forecasts, Predictions and Projections
are, by definition, unscientific.
|
|
Those observations added credence
to the 'scientific' projection that cooling
continued at that same rate until the
temperature reached absolute zero in
outer space.
|
So it came as a surprise when the penetration of space disproved
that widely accepted 'scientific' fact - when it was found that
fifteen km up (above the troposhere where we live) the temperature
becomes steady at about -50°C, then rises almost 50° as
altitude increases, until it hovers just below the freezing mark
(-3°C).
At that point in the stratosphere the trend reverses and the temperature
falls to -93°C at about 85 km above the earth. Then again, the
trend reverses, and in the Thermosphere, temperature can reach more
than 1120°C before finally falling off to absolute zero in outer
space.
|
Those facts suggest that when 'scientists'
offer projections or forecasts, based only
on conspicuous observations and conjecture,
they can be totally wrong, regardless of
the merit of their credentials.
|
> Back to Top
> Back to Home
< Coal
> Oil
> Hurricanes
x
> Greenland
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
> Home
> Global Destiny
|
bar
Fearmonger; (n)
One who deals in or disseminates fear.
bar
|
Coal ...
a Global Burning Issue
x
\
The age of coal was launched in the mid 1700s when James Watt's
steam engine enabled miners to dig huge amounts of that black
flammable rock from deep in the ground, and at the same time
created a huge market for its consumption in industry
and transportaion, as well as production of gas for heating
and lighting.
|
|
Prophets of doom feared that the supply
would become exhausted, and in the mid
1930s, those fears spawned a series of
articles in a Toronto newspaper, based
on 'scientific' projections that the world
was running out of coal.
|
|
COAL
was converted into gasolline in Germany duriing two world
wars to fuel its huge war machine... For years before and after
those wars, coal bins were standard equipment in countless
millions of commercial buildings, homes and factories
throughout the world.
|
COAL has been largely replaced for home heating in
western countries, but it is still used to generate about 40% of
the world"s electricity. One billion tons is used for that annually
in the U.S.A. and close to two billion tons in China.
|
COAL resources in the world are not in danger
of exhaustion. The world's supply is measured in
mega-billions of tons.
|
Back to Home
|
bar
Current Predictions...
should be judged against equally
bold past predictions.
bar
|
OIL
scarcity was proclaimed loudly in 1973, when OPEC sent the price
of oil soaring, and caused long lineups at the gas pumps. The alarm
was sounded again in 1979, but the panic passed on both occasions
when the shortages were found to be politically induced.
|
OIL
and gas are first thought of as energy. We're accutely aware of its
importance as fuel for warmth and transportation. We're less aware
that we live in a petrochemical world surrounded by the products of
that industry. Acrilic carpets; Polyester clothing; Polyethelene grocery
bags; Polyvinyl water pipes; Styrofoam insulation; Latex house paint;
Melamine counter tops; Epoxy glue; The list goes on and on. Much
of it we just think of as plastic, but almost
everything we touch has roots in oil or gas.
|
OIL
production in the lower 48 of the United States alone in 2005,
was 66% higher than Hubbert's peak projection for the entire world,
according to a 2005 report from Cambridge Energy Research
Associates.
|
OIL
consumption continues to increase steadily, despite efforts
at conservation.
Meanwhile, the number of oil consumers in the world (people)
grows exponentially and we seem reluctant to come to grips
with that
|
|
Peak Oil ....
Global Exaggeration
x
Predicting the end of oil was legitimized as a 'science' by
publication of the Hubbert Peak Theory in 1949, in the trade
journal Science; and further when Marion King Hubbert, an
American geophysicist and author of the theory, presented it
before the American Petroleum Institute in 1956. |
|
Hubbert observed that output from an oil well increased
rapidly until it peaked, then fell off at a directly opposite
rate until no more could be drawn from that source.
Geometrically plotted, that forms a bell curve known as the
Hubbert Curve, in which the downside mirrors the upside.
|
Hubbert then applied his finding to entire oil fields, and ultimately to
the total world supply. He then predicted that U.S.A. production would
peak in 1970 and worldwide production would peak in 2006. Many
'scientists' agreed with him in principal, but chose different end dates;
1989, 1995, etc.
Significant oil production began in about 1900. Thus, in 2011, a little
over 100 years later, we've gone just beyond Hubberts projected
worldwide peak and are now into the following 100 year decline,
leading to the end of oil extraction in the year 2100.
Then there will be none.
But Hubbert's predictions could be no better than the assumptions
on which they were based and limitations in those assumptions.
In 1956, how could he have factored in North Sea oil that came on
stream in 1970? Or Hibernia in 1979, with reserves of 1.24 billion
barrels? Or the Beaufort Sea in 1981? Or Hebron that same year?
Or the Terra Nova and White Rose discoveries in 1984 and 1988?
How could he have considered the East/West dispute over oil at the
North Pole in the Lomonosav ridge? Or Brazilian and Cuban oil?
How could he have anticipated that horizontal drilling, CO²
injection, electro-thermal extraction and other new technologies
would increase extraction by 35% or more?
There is no doubt that oil and natural gas, like coal, are finite
resources and may eventually be exhausted. But those who
pick an end date when that will occur, based on short term
local observations, might be likened to
fortune tellers reading tea-leaves.
|
|
Such predictions debase the title 'scientist' and raise this question;
"Are today's predictions of oil exhaustion any more valid than the
1930's forecast of the end of coal?"
|
> Back to Top
> Home
< Coal
> Hurricanes
> Lapse Rate
x
> Greenland
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
> Population Explosion
x
> Global Destiny
|
bar
Weather... is short-term and Local
Climate... is long-term and Global
bar
|
Hurricane Disasters....
and Disastrous Forecasts
x
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into Louisiana from
the Gulf of Mexico in August, 2005, it should not really have been
"unanticipated," for it was not "unprecedented."
Equally ferocious storms have been a regular part of weather
patterns in that part of the globe since time immemorial.
Forming in the South Atlantic, they move west and north
to strike North America.
The Galveston Hurricane in 1900,
more than a century ago, is said to have been the worst
weather disaster in U. S. history. It killed 6,000 to 12,000
people. Five other hurricanes in the southern United States
killed 240 to 350 each in the years before 1928, when 1840
people died in central Florida near Lake Okeechobee.
Still others in the U.S.A. such as the Labor Day hurricane in 1935,
Camille in 1969, and Andrew in 1992, have been similarly
furious, but thanks to better warnings, somewhat
less lethal.
|
Notwithstanding this history of hurricane violence,
'scientists' and the media quickly linked Katrina's ferocity to the
now popoular theory of global warming, citing a connection to
warm water n the South Atlantic, as though that phenomenon
was a new discovery.
|
At the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate
Center (NOAA) scientists merged Katrina data into their prior
computer models, and boldly predicted that the 2006 hurricane
season would "match or exceed" that of 2005. But that
prediction failed to materialize.
In the 2006 season when, contrary to forecasts, Zero hurricanes
made landfall in the U.S.A. 'scientists' were quick to explain that an
"unexpected" El Nino caused the forecasting error.
Undaunted, they predicted a 75% chance of above normal
hurricane activity in 2007, with 17 named storms to come.
Conversely, in the event, weather records showed
just an average hurricane season. Failed forecasts such as these
suggest that 'scientists' regularly make inadequate allowance for
regular irregularities; which raises this question:
|
|
How can we believe 'scientific' predictions
of Global Warming and Climate Change in future centuries,
when local hurricane forecast for just one year ahead can
prove to be so wrong?
|
|
WEATHER
predictions in bygone days were usually found in the old
Farmers Almanac. Now, thousands of weather stations
throughout the world generate mountains of data each day,
and process it to produce extremely accurate, short-term
weather forecasts for days and even weeks ahead.
|
In Canada in 1954, Hurricane Hazel raced north from
its rampage through the eastern U.S.A. and struck
Toronto, Canada, killing 81 people.
|
CYCLONES and TYPHOONS build up to great force
and rage out of the Indian Ocean each year, just as hurricanes are
spawned and grow in the South Atlantic. In 1963, one such
cyclone struck Bangladesh, killed some 22,000 people and
damaged or destroyed a million homes.
|
HURRICANE FEROCITY like that of cyclones and
typhoons, has been observed to wax and wane over past decades.
Most evidence indicates that in sum, such storms have been neither
more or less frequent or vicious in this decade than they have been
in previous centuries.
|
An RLM Website
Back to Home
|
bar
Hypothetical Speculation...
should not be taken as proven fact.
bar
|
Greenland is in the path of the North Atlantic Oscillator,
a long-established and well known pattern of decadal climate
variability. When winter is extremely cold in Greenland; Scandinavia
and Northern Asia are relatively mild. Conversely, when Scandinavia
is severely cold; Greenland becomes milder with a higher rate of
melting. Some authorities link this and other climatic oscillators
to Solar cycles.
|
Greenland has been shedding icebergs from its perimeter
for centuries, with no apparent depletion of the supply; just as water
has been flowing over Niagara Falls without emptying Lake Erie.
Outflow is replenished by input.
As glaciers move outward toward the perimeter of the island and
beyond, long tongues of ice extend out over the water and break
away, forming icebergs that drift south in the Atlantic.
The Titanic collided with such an iceberg almost a hundred years
ago, long before the concept of global warming was conceived.
|
|
Greenland Ice Sheet ....
Global Melt Down
x
The Greenland ice sheet (or cap) extends over more than
660,000 square miles (1,710,000 sq. km.) about
four times the size of California.
It is about 1500 miles long from North to South, which is
almost a hundred miles more than the distance from
New York City to Dallas, Texas. At its widest, Greenland
ice spans about 680 miles; greater than the distance from
Knoxville Tennessee to Sarasota Florida.
Ice cores from depths as much as 2.5 miles (4 km) trace the
history of the ice for more than 100,000 years, and like the
Vostok cores retrieved in the Antarctic, reveal repetetive
fluctuations in temperature and other conditions over the
centuries. Some scientists now predict however, based on a
mathematical calculation of the present volume of ice, a
theoretical melt rate and the calving of icebergs, that the ice
will be gone in just a few hundred years, with catastrophic
consequences.
It is noteworthy that the rate of melting has been measured
only during the few years since 1979 and does not take into
account the colder years from 1945, through 1975, when
global cooling was feared and all Arctic ice was increasing
in depth and volume.
Normal replacement of Greenlands's lost ice comes from
snowfall in the interior of the island. As the snow packs
down, its weight causes a continuous glacial movement
outward. Only since the early 1990's has measurement by
satellites been available to augment the few weather stations
on the island and produce accurate data concerning that
snowfall.
|
|
Predictions that the Grenland ice sheet will disappear hundreds
or thousands of years from now with disastrous results,
based on current observations over a scant few decades,
invite skepticism and doubt.
|
> Back to Top
> Home
< Coal
> Hurricanes
> Lapse Rate
x
> Peak Oil
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
> Population Explosion
x
> Global Destiny
|
bar
Irrational Predictions...
destroy the credibility of forecasters.
bar
|
Rising Sea Level ....
The 23 ft. Inundation
x
In 2010, faced with irrefutable evidence, scientists at the the
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) backed away from their ill-conceived prediction that the
Himilayan Glacier would be gone by 2035. Nonetheless,
they continued to forecast that ocean levels will rise by seven
metres (23 ft.) some thousands of years from now, due to
melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and disappearance of
ice in the Arctic and Antarctic
In support of that forecast, they tell us with a tone of certainity
that mean sea level has risen 1 to 2 millimetres (mm) per year
for the last hundred years, roughly equal to the diameter of
one drop of ocean spray per annum. But while that report allows
a margin for error of 100% in the annual rise, other 'scientists'
define the sources of the rising water in fractions of a millimeter.
Half a millimeter from melting glaciers; a third of a millimeter
from Greenland ice etc. Can such reports have any validity?
Ocean levels vary thoughout the world and are constsantly
changing. 'Mean sea level' is a calculated 'smoothing' value,
and any predicted increase in it must be calculated aganst
past records of that value. Current calculations will naturally
reflect the reliability or otherwise of that prior data.
In pre-satellite times, undulating ocean levels were measured by
tide gauges in various countries in relation to different references
marks on shore, then averaged over some years (see sidebar).
Those primitive approximations were a crude basis for calculation
of mean sea level, but they served well for practical purposes.
At the same time, atmospheric pressure was measured and
averaged over time, and a pressure of 14.7 psi (pounds per
squae inch) or 29.92 inches of mercury etc. became established
as a 'proxy' for sea level. This is vital to aviation, where altitude
and the elevation of airports is measured against that theoretical
sea level.
With more candor than the IPCC scientists, those at the
"Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level" based in Liverpool,
England at the UK Natural Environmental Research
Council (NERC) have pointed out the fact that mean sea level is
far from being a well established datum line.
In recent times, satellite radar has been deployed to measure
sea level more precisely. The Topex/Poseiden satellite takes
thousands of measurements with latitude of about two centimeters
in accuracy; a margin for error ten times as great as the
one-or-two-millimetre 'scientific' reports.
Fractional millimetre precisioin in reports and predictions from
'scientists' might imply that they possess awesome skill and
knowledge, but their bravado in publlshing such fanciful numbers
in respect to sea level suggests that their daring exceeds their
wisdom. It is doubtful if the old Farmers Almanac would have
been so brazen.
|
|
It would be easy to conclude that the deluge of reports,
analases, calculations, estimates, and precise forecasts
of a future rise in sea level, reflect primarily the complex
computerized manipulation of a massive array of questonable
data, with a final result near zero.
|
|
Tide Gauges,
like those used in bygone days consist of a large pipe
(a foot or more in diameter) fixed vertically to a dock with its
lower portion immersed in the water. The bottom of the pipe
is closed, save for a small hole which allows water to seep in
and fill the pipe to the level of the surrounding sea.
The water level in the pipe changes gradually with the ebb and flow
of the tide, but the effect of waves is largely eliminated.
A float mechanism records the water level in the pipe in
relation to a reference mark on shore.
Readings are averaged over months or years to arrive
at a value for mean sea level.
|
Ocean Levels undulate constantly and unevenly.
They respond continuously to changing conditions all
around the world, such as:
- Varying pressure in the
atmosphere;
- Changes in evaporation
from daylight heating and
overnight cooling;
- Rainfall at different times
in different areas;
- Water drawn up by storms
and hurricanes, then
dropped as rain on land or
other areas of the seas;
- Surface bulges from
undersea earthquakes or
shifting
tectonic plates;
- Ocean currents that lower
the surface at their source
then raise it along their
path and at their final
destination;
- Gravitational pull from
other planets and the
moon that changes with
their relative positions in
space and, interacts with
the Earth's rotation to
cause the tides.
|
Normal intra-day tides
range from one to two metres (high to low) while that in
Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy averages twelve metres high
and sometimes reaches sixteen metres.
|
|
bar
Current Conditions...
are a poor indicator of future trends
bar
|
By the Mid 1970s
'scientists' were sounding the alarm about
global cooling. In April 1975, Newsweek
magazine published a thoroughly researched
article, 'The Cooling World" which spelled
out the chilling predictions of a frigid future.
|
Dr. Kukla of Columbia U', along with Robert Matthews of
Brown University, convened an international conference that
reached a consensus on the cooling crisis and warned then
President Nixon of the United States about the climate
deterioration, said to be worse than anything mankind had
ever known. The cooling to come was compared to that
of the last ice age, and a severe winter in 1976-77 supported
the prophecies of Earth's impending deep freeze.
|
In 2006, as 'scientific' and public opinion shifted, Newsweek
retracted its 1975 feature that had defined the global cooling
crisis. It explained that global cooling had been a mistake.
The real plroblem, it avowed is global warming.
|
> Back to Home
|
Global Cooling ....
Death by Frostbite
x
Based on geophysical records, Encyclopedia Britannica
reported in 1979 that in early geological times the Earth's
temperature was relatively warm, with few extremes.
Polar latitudes were cool, with open seas.
Furher, Britannica reported that around the year 1550, glaciers
began to grow and continued to advance until a warm-up
arrested the glaciers' growth in the mid 1880s.
That warming continued until
1940, with Arctic ice retreating hundreds of miles.
Earth's temperature then began to fall again. Cooling
persisted and glaciers grew once more until the 1970s.
Winter in 1962-63 was said to be the coldest in four
centuries in the northern hemisphere.
Global cooling, it was widely believed, was upon us.
Agricuture would suffer severely. The world's food
supply was forecast to fall significantly in as little as
ten years. That would have been by 1985. The growing
season in England was said to have shrunk by two weeks
from 1950 onward, due to the cold.
Reinforcing those stark beliefs and predictions, a 1974
survey by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) reported a half degree drop in the
temperature of the northern hemisphere in the twenty three
years between 1945 and 1968. A study by NOAA
also concluded that sunshine in the U.S.A. diminished
by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972. Dr. George Kukla
of Columbia University reported that satellite photos
showed a sudden increase in snow cover in the
northern hemisphere during the 1971-72 winter.
|
In September, 1979, then President Carter responded
to the cooling crisis by signing into law in the U.S.A.
the "Climate Control Program Act" to predict the
climate and combat global cooling.
|
|
Significantly perhaps, the level of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere at that time was 335 parts per million
(ppm); just about 45 ppm below the current level.
Apparently, no one thought to increase it by anthropogenic
intervention.
|
> Back to Top
> Home
< Coal
> Hurricanes
> Lapse Rate
x
> Peak Oil
> Sea Level
> Greenland
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
> Population Explosion
x
> Global Destiny
|
bar
Science ...
is awesome when uncovering facts.
bar
|
|
|
Climate History Revealed at Vostok
in Antarctic Ice Core
In 1988, the Uniited States, Russia, and France joined forces
in an ice-drilling project at the Russian Vostok base in East
Antarctica and recovered an ice core from the deepest level
ever reached to that time.
Scientific examination of that core revealed
a 400,000 year record
of climate fluctuations in the Antarctic region. By relative extention
it defined four major climate cycles in the entire world,
each lasting about 100,000 years.
During each of those cycles, temperatures in the Antarctic rose
to about 3 or 4°C (38°F) then fell to
-8 or -9°C (17°F). Meanwhile,
the concentration of
Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere rose and fell concurrently
with those temperature fluctuations.
Four times as the temperature peaked in those 100,000 year cycles,
the CO² level topped out at or near 300 ppm, and four times
as the tempetature bottomed, the
CO² level dropped to about
180 ppm.
| |
Within each of those 100,000 year cycles, there were frequent
shorter oscillations over 10,000 years or so. Often, those
oscilllations were as large as 50% of the overall range of the major
fluctuations, and the CO² level during those oscillations rose
and fell as much as 60 ppm, about the same as we've witnessed in the
past 50 years.
Even if interpretations of those findings vary, as indeed they do,
one fact is indisputable; Those fluctuations in the Earth's
temperatrure and atmospheric carbon dioxide could not have
been man-made, or anthropogenic as scientists prefer to say.
We were not even here in sizeable numbers untill about 60,000
years ago.
Clearly also, given the time frame of past climate cycles,
changes we obsereve in a few years or decades can't
reasonably be projected as long term trends.
Continue >
| |
|
bar
Climate Change ...
has gone on forever... with and without people.
bar
|
bar
Change ...
is the only constant in climate.
bar
|
Dr. Christopher Essex, Professor of Applied Mathematics
at the University of Western Ontario, has been said to contend that
there is no such thing as an 'average' global temperature. He has
compared the method of calculating such an average to the
meaningless process of averaging telephone numbers.
|
Voices of scientists who present contrary facts or offfer
challenging opinions on the global warming theory are drowned
out by ridicule. Their findings are labeled junk-science. Scornful
argument and personal invective have displaced rational debate.
|
Dr.. Hans Storch, a well known climatologist, writing in
Der Spiegel said, current 'scientific' predictions of doom are idiotic, hysterical,
and bereft of merit. Global warming theories, he said, have
left the laboratory and become the stuff of Hollywood.
|
Dr. Reid Bryson a member of the United Nations
Global 500 Roll of Honor, and widely considered to be the father
of scientific climatology, described claims of man-made global
warming thus; "That is a theory for which there is no credible
proof. There is lilttle truth in what is being said and an awful lot
of religion." As to the Al Gore movie, he said, "It is not science.
It is not true."
|
Professor R. Lindzsen of M.I.T. (the Massachusettes
Institute of Technology) has been quoted thus: "Future generations
will wonder in bemused amazement that early in the 21st century
the developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally
averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree; and on
the basis of grossly exaggerated and uncertain computer
projections, combined in an implausable chain of inference,
proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age."
|
Professor T. Patterson of Ottawa-Carlton Geoscience
Centre, Dept. of Earth Sciences at Carlton Uiversity has also
challenged the climate-change hype, saying, "Climate stability
has never been a feature of planet Earth." His studies, consistent
with many others, show that change is the only constant factor
in the Earth's climate. At times in the past it has been warmer, and
sometimes it has been cooler.
|
|
Global Warming ....
Death by Sunstroke
Is it Fact or Fancy? That is the real Global Warming question.
But after being processed through the mass media and
public opinion polls, it has morphed into the more nebulous question,
do you “believe” in global warming? Belief has become
a proxy for proof. Faith replaces reality.
The concept of global warming succeeded the fear of global cooling,
which occupied public concern in the mid 1970s, and advocacy of
climate crisis has now taken on the trappings of a pseudo-religious
cult. Former Presidential candidate Al Gore, and environmental
enthusiast David Suzuki have become high priests in the
western-world-wing of that movement. Those who question their
pronouncements are disparaged as deniers, or so-called skeptics.
The threat of global warming and extreme climate change captured
worldwide attention in 2007, when the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change) published a series of reports on the subject.
Those reports underscored prior data reported by NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies, declaring that 2005 continued a 25 year
trend of rising global temperature and was the hottest year on record.
|
|
In the seven years from 1988 to 2005, it was said, average global
temperature had risen by 1/10th of a Fahrenheit degree. That is 0.0143
degrees in each year of that seven year period, an extraordinary
achievement in measuring past world temperatures.
|
Those reports failed to point out however, that the prior years used
as a base for comparison (1950s to 1980s) included the age of perceived
global cooling. Nor did they acknowledge that data from those
prior years was somewhat dubious, having been compiled by methods
that were much less sophisticated than 21st century computerization
allows.
At the height of the global warming frenzy, 'scientists' in the thousands
took up the cause like true believers. In turn, they were
encouraged by the intense promotion of Al Gore's climate-crisis
documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
One scene in that video shows a cartoon character, a little girl, eating an
ice cream cone. Suddenly, the ice cream melts and drops to the ground.
A solemn voice then announces, “Global Warming” in an obvious
distortion of reality.
In an interview with Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC on the occasion
of the 2010 Copenhagen conference on climate change, Gore
solemnly declared that the Arctic had been ice-covered for three
million years, inviting the inference that current global warming has
undone that age-old condition. Some might accept that bold
statement as fact, but Gore offered nothing to support his
remark, and there's ample evidence to refute it.
Following the hot year, 2005, a cooling trend set in, marked by
many local extremes. According to NOAAA (the U.S. National
Atmospeheric Administration) February 2007 was the third coldest
on record. A huge portion of the California orange crop was
frozen by the lowest temperatures that natives could recall
since 1978, the nadir of the global cooling period.
Similarly, in Canada in 2007, Union Gas reported that
in its service area, average temperature in February was -9°C:
six degrees colder than recorded in 2006, just one year earlier.
In December 2009, aircraft departures at the Edmonton Alberta
airport were delayed by temperatures close to -49°C which
prevented application of the de-icing fluid.
In January 2010, the temperature in Iowa dropped to minus 29°,
breaking the 1958 record. Tampa Florida had snow, and the
National Weather Service reported that the mercury would drop below
zero in St. Louis for the first time since 1999.
|
|
Such extremes are of course just local snapshots, but not until 2011
did NOAA announce that world temperatures had risen again to the level
of 2005.
|
The time frame offered by IPCC for catastrophic global warming is
some thousands of years from now. Close reading reveals the less
precise predicton that waming might amount to as little as 0.09°C
in this century (9/100 of one degree) or maybe 4.4°C or possibly
6.4°C, depending on which of several computer generated
climate models you favor.
Such indefinite forecasting flexibiity in the time frame of a hundred years
says in effect, if it gets warmer we will have global warming.
It still leaves the fundamental question in doubt; Is it fact or is it fancy?
|
> Back to Top
> Home
< Coal
> Hurricanes
> Lapse Rate
x
> Greenland
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Peak Oil
> Carbon Dioxide
> Population Explosion
x
> Global Destiny
|
bar
Cause and Effect ...
can be linked incorrectly.
bar
|
|
|
Carbon Dioxide… CO²...
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are said to be responsible for the predicted
horrors of global warming, but they are also nature’s way of keeping us
warm. GHGs include water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, carbon
dioxide (CO²) and other gases in trace amounts. They allow the sun’s
rays to penetrate the atmosphere and heat the earth’s surface, from
which it is reflected back into the atmosphere as long-wave, infrared
radiation.
Some of that reflected heat escapes into outer space but most is
absorbed by the greenhouse gases, thus heating the atmosphere.
Without that greenhouse effect, our world would be a lifeless,
frigid orb like Mars with a temperature of about –18ºC.
Predictions of a climate-crisis on Earth reflect a fear that the
greenhouse effect is being dangerously distorted by excessive
man-made (anthropogenic) greenhouse gases, particularly CO².
thereby trapping excess heat in the atmosphere.
Air contains 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and about 0.03%
carbon dioxide. nature maintains a balance in the air near those
proportions, by a continuous cycle. CO² is constantly
being absorbed in the oceans and consumed by vegetation which,
in turn, creates oxygen for us to breath.
|
|
Natural phenomena, including volcanoes, maintained CO²
in the atmosphere at or near 280 parts per million (ppm) for many
centuries prior to about 1750 AD. Generally, volcanoes send
more than 130 million tonnes of CO² into the air each year.
|
Likewise, humans contribute to the greenhouse effect just by
breathing. Every day, we each breathe about 9000 litres of air.
That which we exhale contains about 4% CO², so each of us
create about 360 lt or 12.71 cu ft of CO² every day, for a yearly
total of 131,400 litres or 4639 cu ft.
Multiplied by the seven billion people on Earth, that becomes
an astronomical quantity (7,000,000,000 x 131,400 lt) or
(7,000,000,000 x 4639 cu.ft.) You do the math.
Animals too, makes a huge contribution to GHGs. The Food
and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. reports that the meat
industry, with upwards of 1.5 billion cattle, generates about
18% of all greenhouse gases; methane, nitrous oxide and CO².
Those herds are expected to double in number (and so double
their gas output) by the year 2050, to satisfy the world’s increasing
demand for food.
On a still larger scale, motorized transportation, industrial
activities and heating, burn tremendous amounts of fossil
fuel and discharge immense amounts of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
|
|
It can be argued that apart from purely natural sources
such as volcanoes, virtually all atmospheric CO² comes
either directly or indirectly from human activity.
|
As shown in the following charts, atmospheric CO² began
to increase in about 1800, when the Earth’s population reached one
billion. It continued to increase gradually for a hundred and fifty
years until about 1950. After World War II it surged upwards,
in step with the baby boom and is now about 380 ppm (parts per million)
an increase of about 100 ppm in the past 200 years; 70% of
that in the last 50 years.
That increase tends to reinforce predictions of impending disaster,
but the Vostok ice core has revealed natural variations of 100 ppm
in atmospheric CO² in both pre-industrial and prehistoric times.
Continue >
| |
|
Carbon Chart
|
Population Chart
|
|
|
More Carbon Dioxide…
The current level of atmospheric CO² has evoked a broad spectrum
of reaction, and efforts to reduce it have focused largely on energy,
from production of fuel from the Canadian oil sands to consumption
of electricity in ordinary light bulbs.
|
|
In every aspect of our lives, we are being relentlessly driven to reduce
CO² emissions molecule by molecule, and cut energy consumption
one erg at a time.
|
Politicians who believe taxes can solve every problem, now advocate
a carbon tax, with the hope that it will encourage a reduction in
CO² emissions. Others are promoting a cap and trade proposal
that will impose emission caps on companies that discharge CO²
into the atmosphere.
Those companies that reduce emissions below their assigned cap will
be allowed to sell emission permits to those that fail to reach their
legislated limit. It is unclear whether cap-and-trade will actually reduce
greenhouse gases, but it will certainly generate some profits. World
famous investor, George Soros said “The system can be gamed.
That’s why financial types like me like it. There are financial opportunities.”
If indeed, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a serious
problem, understanding it is made more difficult by the confusing
terms used to define it. Concentration in the atmosphere is measured
in parts per million (ppm) while emissions are measured in metric tonnes.
The relationship between those two measurements is obscure and they
convey contradictory impressions. A hundred parts per million seems
minuscule, while a tonne is seen as a huge amount. Tonne also raises
the question of just how a gas can be weighed.
There is a convoluted scientific explanation of course, but it is difficult
for ordinary people to grasp the concept of a pound of CO²,
let alone a tonne.
|
|
Tonne is a unit of weight, which is a product of gravity and which
changes with elevation or altitude. For example,, an American gallon
of water occupies 231 cubic inches and weighs 8.35 lbs. at sea level.
At an altitude of 20,000 ft, it still occupies 231 cu. ins. but its weight
is considerably less.
|
Unlike water, CO² is a gas, so its volume changes with atmospheric
pressure or altitude or mechanical compression. When compressed
to its limit, it liquefies and can be converted to dry ice.
In its solid state, CO² can have a ‘weight per unit of volume’
(like pounds per cubic foot.) Ordinary people would understand that,
although it would only apply at a specific elevation above sea level.
Scientists have defined various volumetric dimensions to represent a
tonne of CO², but they are largely misleading. One of those
was a large cube, displayed in a public square at the 2010 conference on
climate crisis in Copenhagen. The impression was conveyed that it was
filled with CO², but the pressure was left to the viewers
imagination along with other questions. Was it filled with liquid CO²,
or perhaps dry ice? Was it weighed at sea level, or on a mountaintop?
Or was it just a gimmick with no relevance whatever to a tonne of
carbon dioxide?
|
|
Conveniently however, it was sized appropriately to accommodate
a giant TV screen on each of its four faces.
|
Difficult as it is to grasp the concept of one tonne of CO², common
references to millions of tonnes are mind boggling, and those amounts
contrast sharply with the microscopic measurement of CO² in the
atmosphere. Presently that is about 380 parts per million, or 0.03%.
The tonnage needed to raise that concentration by one ppm
is also mind-boggling.
Whether or not CO² will be the final nail in the coffin of the
human race is open to question. But regardless of that, there
appears to be no benefit from higher levels of that ubiquitous gas
in the atmosphere. So it is a legitimate issue to be addressed. Despite
the best efforts of governments, industries and consumers however,
the treadmill continues to stay ahead of the runners, and there’s little
sign of that changing.
|
The jury is still out on the fundamental
question of global warming.
Is it real or is it really an illusion?
|
Prophets of doom are nothing new of course, but those who make dire
forecasts of climate change based solely on CO² levels, and project
fractions of degrees in temperature change over past centuries into
imminent and disastrous global warming in the future, cause many to
doubt their predictions.
It might be more beneficial to apply some thought to a more
immediate, more pressing, more valid and largely ignored root cause
of the condition..
|
All kinds of personal and industrial activity discharge CO² into the
atmosphere, and
more people create more such activity.
Ergo; More people create more CO².
|
|
As long as we continue to ignore that root cause of the CO² problem,
and nibble only at its edge, we may be doomed
indeed, for we will be fighting the wrong battle.
|
> Back to Top
> Back to Home
< Coal
> Oil
> Hurricanes
x
> Greenland
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
> Vostok
> Antarctic
x
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
> Population Explosion
> Global Destiny
|
|
bar
Birth is a Privilege ...
It should not be just an acciident.
bar
|
|
|
Economist Brian O’Neill of the United States’ National
Center for Atmospheric Research defined the climate conference
dilemma well when he declared that linking global warming and the
population explosion in such discussions would be a political minefield.
|
As to our origin, we may ask dubiously if human beings
materialized suddenly
in ancient times as a couple of adults who began at once to
copulate and reproduce? Or did we first arrive as helpless infants
requiring parental care? Obviously, neither of those alternatives
makes much sense.
More reasonably, the theory of evolution posits
that we evolved from some lower form of animal life, and that
theory seems to fit better with our level of comprehension and
proof.
|
Sixty thousand years is a long time when compared to a normal
person’s lifespan, but it’s a mere blip in the life of our planet.
|
Word by word, over thousands
of years, Thales, Aristotle, Plato, Copernicus, Pythagoras, Galileo,
Archimedes, Newton, Einstein, and a succession of others
helped us to a better understanding of science, mathematics, the
solar system and universe, the planet we call home and we, ourselves.
|
In 1930, perhaps not many pondered the fact that it took
58,000 years after we arrived in Europe from Africa, for our numbers
to reach the One Billion mark in 1810 AD, but took just 120 years
more for the population to double.
|
When babies born this year become teenagers, the world
will be home to Nine Billion people… and when our offspring
are middle aged in 2050, the population of their world will have
reached about Ten Billion.
|
Population Growth, 1800 to Present
See Larger Chart
How long can the Earth sustain the madness of an
exploding population whose consumption of food and water
threatens to outstrip the world’s supply? Nations that once
fought wars for land and treasure, may battle next for
food and water.
|
In view of the swelling mass of people on the face of the Earth
and the potentially catastrophic consequences of that growing number,
the focus on spiral light bulbs and gas-powered leaf blowers to counteract
perceived climate change, is either the trivial product of small minds,
or ludicrous political posturing, or both.
|
Even if the dire forecasts of searing heat and surging
sea levels come to pass some millennia hence as predicted, how
can that be relevant? Who will be here to know?
|
Like worms in an apple, we are destroying the host that supports
us, yet some among us, inflicted with a strange form of mental
myopia, turn blind eyes to the mushrooming growth in population;
or worse, stubbornly insist that it is the plan of some or other god
and must not be challenged.
|
Poverty, frustration and idleness will lead to a worldwide and
unprecedented but predictable spiral of violence. Impoverished and
oppressed people have already begun to riot in the streets. Iran, Tunisia,
Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain are but a foretaste of what may come.
|
The capacity to grow food, produce energy and dispose
of waste from our lifestyle is not unlimited. Those who would
argue otherwise are the real deniers. If we don’t take steps to
limit the population of the world, nature will do it for us. Our health
care systems will collapse. Disease, pestilence, and starvation
will run amok.
|
Twenty Billion people? Fifty Billion? A Hundred Billion?
How far will we allow explosive population growth
to escalate before we come to grips with reality?
It can’t go on forever.
|
China is slowing population growth by legislating family size,
while we in the western world have invoked education and voluntary
measures in our hope to stem the runaway increase.
|
When faced with proposals to reduce the population, narrow
minded wiseacres ask facetiously, “Who should we kill?”
But of course, the question is not ‘who to kill.’ Natural disasters,
war, pestilence and disease will take care of that. The proper
question is, “How to save millions from being born.”
|
In the post-war years from 1950 to 2010, the population of the
United States alone doubled from 152,000,000 to 310,000,000.
That of Canada has more than doubled from 13,700,000 to
34,000,000 and those increases have come largely from immigration.
|
Countries that have achieved some reduction in their birth rate
through persuasion and better education, and would willingly spread that
benefit to other countries, are frustrated by religious and
pseudo-religious objectors; fundamentalists who seem to believe
that every time a man has an erection, another child must be born,
regardless of the privation that child may suffer in its lifetime.
|
> Back to the Top
> Back to Home
> Lapse Rate
> Coal, a Burning Issue
> Peak Oil
> Hurricanes & Forecasts
> Greenland Ice
> Sea Level Surge
> Global Cooling
> Antarctic Ice
> Vostok Ice Core
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide - CO²
> Global Destiny
|
|
The Population Explosion ...
Global Catastrophe
x
Climate Change conferences in Cancun 2010, Copenhagen 2009,
and Koyota before that, agreed in their decision that anthropogenic
(man-made) influences are causing climate change. They failed
however, to suggest that the surging number of ‘anthros’ in the
world might be the root cause of the perceived problem.
As to the environment, we humans are but one of its by-products.
On a global scale, we do not control the environment, it controls us.
To change world conditions, we’d first have to agree on
the need, and considering the difficulty in persuading a few people
to agree on a trivial issue, the possibility of reaching worldwide
agreement on a global issue like climate change would seem to be
somewhere between negligible and nil.
Accordingly, we might consider setting aside our theoretical
predictions of an over-heated world flooded by rising oceans and
drenched in CO2. Instead, we might focus on the past and future
of the human race itself, as we know it to be.
Anthropologists have determined with reasonable certainty that
some kind of humanoids lived on Earth a million years ago, and
that homo-sapiens who walked upright, appeared in the sub-Sahara
region of Africa just 200,000 years ago.
|
|
Although the early days of the human race are shrouded in
mystery, there is ample evidence that those early African
homo-sapiens gradually evolved and spread throughout the globe.
|
After about 140,000 years of evolution, (that is 60,000 years
ago) those migrants had become much like today’s humans, and
one branch of them reached Europe, where they developed
agriculture; planting and harvesting. That time corresponds with
the end of the last ice age and the beginning of a warming phase,
as revealed in the Vostok ice cores.
From that time (60,000 years ago) until the present, humans have
continued to develop in mind and body. Some might argue that
our physical development has stabilized or peaked, but our minds
continue to absorb new knowledge at an accellerating rate.
Some 7,000 years ago, that is 53,000 years after we humans
migrated to Europe, we began to record things in pictographs
and written language, thus establishing a foundation of knowledge
for later generations to build on.
Just about 200 years ago, at the time of the North American war of
1812-14 AD, (1800 years after the birth of Jesus Christ) the world’s
population had grown to One Billion People.
|
|
That’s Billion, with a ‘B’, a large number of people indeed.
But it was a long, slow climb for 200,000 years before the
population of the Earth reached that One Billion level around 1810 AD.
|
A mere 120 years later, in the 1930s, while we wrestled with
the great depression, few knew or cared that the number of
people in the world had doubled to Two Billion.
A scant 45 years after that… in 1975, notwithstanding the
slaughter of millions in plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis and
world wars, the number of people on Earth had again doubled,
to Four Billion.
Twenty-five years later, at the turn of the century in the year
2000, while we dwelt on the imagined perils of Y2K, most of
us were blissfully unaware that the population had increased by
another 50% to Six Billion.
|
Now, in 2011, it is close to Seven Billion
and is headed for Nine Billion in 2025.
|
Records show that the rate of population growth has surged
in recent years, and advances in medicine will no doubt generate
future expansion in the population by increasing human
longevity with a corresponding impact.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, 70% more food will be required to feed the
hungry masses in 2050. The rising cost of food throughout the
world is already being felt, and is threatening to put food beyond
reach of millions.
Like food, water is also a fundamental requirement for the
existence of life. But as the population grows, the demand for
food and water continues to outstrip the supply. Already in
under-developed countries, women who have the task of
collecting water, commonly have to walk for miles each day
to fetch water for their families.
But a shortage of water exists in developed countries as well.
Much of the southwestern United States, including a large
part of California, draws its water from the Colorado river
and its drainage basin, but each year that supply is depleted
by consumption, more than it is replenished by nature.
|
|
Within the lifetime of this writer, the world's population
has multiplied more than 3.75 times; from Two Billion to
Seven-and-a-Half Billion. If we continue on this path, the
doubling to Fifteen Billion, and Thirty Billion, and then to
Sixty Billion, will occur in the foreseeable future.
|
The human mind can scarcely conceive of Ten Billion people
plus a Billion-or-More cars and trucks on the face of the Earth
by the year 2050, along with millions of airplanes flying
overhead. It is distressing to imagine the living conditions that
will then prevail.
Tens of thousands of years is the future time frame cited by
the IPCC in its frightening forecasts of rising oceans and dead
polar bears. But if unbridled population growth continues,
it is probable that the human race will succumb to disaster
from that growth, long before those tens of thousands of
future years have passed.
Long before New York City and Los Angeles disappear
beneath the waves, our descendants will probably have
become a wretched mass, battling among themselves for
survival. When the Earth can no longer support its swollen
burden of people, the human race will expire and the planet
will go on without us to its ultimate death, billions of years
from now.
|
|
It is impossible to predict when the human
race will come to its end, but we can be certain that people
will bring on that demise long before the planet dies. Our exponential
proliferation, our voracious appetites,
and our exploitation of knowledge and technology, has launched us
on a march to make the Earth unfit for human habitation.
|
We humans eat everything we can devour… far beyond our needs…
and reshape all else. With massive machines, we gnaw away at
the Earth, gouging out its minerals and leaving behind a trail of
waste. We tear down forests, leaving barren land behind, then
reshape the wood into shacks or palaces.
We suck oil and gas out of the Earth’s innards, burn it, and
dump the residue into our lakes, rivers and atmosphere, making
the waters unfit to drink; the air unfit to breathe; and as we
increase in number, the impact of our ravenous excess likewise
increases.
At the same time, growth, globalization, and technological
advancement are mantras of business, industry and politics.
More and more stuff is being made by fewer and fewer people.
In the name of improved productivity, thousands of workers,
idled by robots and computers, are added daily to the millions
of unemployed, unable to purchase the stuff that robots make.
In the western world, transition to a five day work week followed
the great depression and World War II, but the concept of a
four-day week to reduce current unemployment now, is not even
on the radar screen. Perversely, many governments seem
determined to raise the retirement age, to keep elders in the work
force longer and bar new entrants from breaking in.
Still the population continues to swell, while competition for
food and living space becomes more and more intense.
In time, today’s riots and tribal fights will escalate into
international, racial and religious wars. We’ll fight to survive
by killing each other, even as we continue to reproduce.
|
As Walt Kelly’s cartoon character, Pogo,
so aptly put it, “I have seen the enemy
and it is us.”
|
There is little doubt that the Earth will ultimately become a
dead planet but it will surely outlast the human race by billions
of years. No one can predict when the end will come, but
that is only of academic interest. We humans will be long
gone by then. It is widely agreed that the Earth can support
only a finite number of people. But it is less widely
acknowledged that ignoring the population explosion and
allowing it to continue unchecked will ultimately write finis
to the human race.
If benign acceptance of exponential population growth persists,
it can only reinforce the fact that the human race is much less
at-risk from nuclear energy that we fear, than it is from sexual
energy that we prize, and that men take pills to prolong.
Certainly, our natural urges make restraint difficult, but we may
already face the choice between survival and extinction, and
if we continue to recklessly do what comes naturally, we will
accelerate our inevitable march to doom.
|
|
If we stay on our present course, we will simply fuck ourselves
into oblivion and the Earth will spin on merrily without us.
|
But, billions of people still unwittingly follow the command that
God is said to have given to Noah and his sons; Be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth.” (Genesis 9: verse 1:).
That command may have been relevant in Noah’s time, but
its need is long past. Human beings have a devastating propensity
to multiply without being encouraged, and unbridled procreation
is most prevalent in poorly educated third world societies.
To postpone the demise of the human race, while preserving a
decent quality of life, there’s a clear need to move past the noisy
resistance, and initiate well known steps to control our numbers.
People who are educated in birth control methods and are free or
obliged to practice them, have fewer offspring, but ill-informed
third word populations provide an endless number of births to
negate the restraint in better educated societies.
Studies show that the fifty poorest countries in the world have
the highest birth rates, and that 23.5% of all children born in
those developing countries are unwanted. So those countries
continue to function as baby factories, turning out a continuous
supply of people to move to other countries that are striving to
limit their population growth.
|
|
Meanwhile, the world population will reach Ten Billion within
the lifetime of our children.
|
Countries on the receiving end of such migration, legal and illegal,
are acutely aware of the impact it has on their social and economic
structure. Generally, it is defined as the “the immigration problem.”
Laws are enacted to control it, but they mainly affect migrants only
after they have arrived at their destination. They do nothing to
mitigate the endless supply of people who desperately need a better
place to live, and willingly risk their lives to find it.
Political will or ability to deal with the exploding population is sadly
lacking, or difficult to harness. Politically acceptable or effective
means to address the issue are extremely limited.
Evangelical Christian radicals and militants have been known to
shoot doctors who perform abortions, and torch their premises.
Some other religions regard their women as chattels or prisoners
in slave-like service; cover them in burkas and confine them
indoors for breeding like farm animals in a stable.
No amount of logical argument seems powerful enough to
overcome such extreme chauvinistic bigotry and mental calcification,
but hopefully, before the human race nears extinction, there might
be an awakening.
There’s some hope that money might triumph over religion and
bigotry. A capitalistic solution has been proposed by no-less a
personage than Ted Turner of CNN fame.
|
|
Family allowances are well known, whereby parents receive
a payment to help support their children. Unfortunately,
they indirectly reward parents for having larger families. But
Turner’s proposal would reward people for NOT having children.
|
As with the cap and trade concept (hoped to reduce carbon
emissions) there would be a market for fertility rights. People
could profit by not having children. Turner’s proposal is
obviously unconventional and has been widely ridiculed, but
conventional means have led us into this mess, and
unconventional measures may be required to get us out.
Millions of sincere people have defined with near-religious
fervor, the disasters predicted to come from global warming,
while other millions, equally well informed, challenge the
validity of those frightening predictions.
But those arguments become irrelevant when we face the fact
that the exploding mass of people in the world will ultimately
destroy the planet as a habitat for human beings,
regardless of global warming, rising sea levels, or any other
environmental upheaval that may come to pass.
|
Can we find the political will to solve this problem?
. . . Is there any alternative?
|
|
bar
Alpha and Omega...
The Beginning and the End.
bar
|
Global Destiny ...
the Shape of Things to Come.
Who will deny that people’s observations, conjecture and
unwarranted conclusions can be misleading? Over the ages,
people seeking to discover where and how the universe began
indulged in endless observation and speculations. Some of that
led to dubious theories. The sun and stars appeared to revolve
around the Earth which was thought to be the centre of the universe.
Many theories of creation were pure fantasy, but as human knowledge
gradually grew and accumulated, far-fetched ideas were slowly
abandoned in favor of more reasoned theories, inspired
by new discoveries and elements of proof.
Theories of the solar system and universe, proffered by Copernicus
and reinforced by Galileo, were rejected for a very long time before
they were accepted as reality. Only slowly did ancient superstitions,
folklore and mystic ideas yield to education and increased knowledge.
Only slowly did proven facts supplant ignorance and irrational beliefs.
Einstein’s scientific theories and explanations of creation finally
reached acceptance over those of his predecessors, yet even his
theories are now being ammended by new discoveries and
speculation. Quarks, quantum theory and string theory are joined
by “M’ theory, propounded by Stephen Hawkins, said to be the
greatest physicist since Einstein or perhaps even greater.
|
|
Hawkins’ “M” theory seems to embody a mind-boggling
concept, wherein multiple universes all began in the same and
different places at the same and different times in the unimaginably
distant past.
|
Undoubtedly, a structural arrangement of matter, energy and
motion has existed in our universe since its beginning. Beyond
doubt, natural laws govern that structure and its functions.
Likewise, they govern our solar system within that universe, and
in turn, the function of our habitat, the planet Earth.
The Big-Bang theory posits that the universe was created in a
monstrous explosion of ultra dense matter and energy 13.7 billion
years ago. Over time, we have accumulated substantial knowledge
to support that theory and refute the notion that creation of the
universe was the miraculous work of some mystic, super-human
god on a golden throne.
Big-Bang asserts that super-heated gaseous debris from that
immense explosion was hurled into space. There, it condensed
into clouds of dust, which in turn congealed into clusters of
galactic particulate to form the many galaxies.
The theory goes on to contend that stars and planets were
formed by further coagulation of that gaseous debris into large
clumps that grew by sweeping up more and more debris as
they traveled through space. Planets, the smaller clumps then
fell into orbits around larger clumps, stars, such as our sun.
It’s generally accepted that in the beginning, Mars, Earth, and
Venus, along with all the other planets, originated in this way.
So, it naturally follows that they’re all about
the same age and are made of the same stuff. It also follows
that in the beginning, they all shared the latent heat of their source.
And because they all became suspended in the same frigid
medium (space) all will have been seeking equilibrium with the
temperature of space ever since. Likewise, all will have been
going through parallel evolutionary changes as their formative
processes progressed. And because Mars, Earth and Venus
are relatively close to each other, their cooling and evolution
will have followed more or less similar paths.
|
|
But those three planets have
reached different stages of development at this time,
due to immutable laws of physics.
|
One immutable law of cooling is the effect of size. Large
objects cool more slowly than those that are smaller. Big things
hold more heat, and it takes longer for inner heat in a larger
object to migrate to the surface and radiate into its environment.
Mars is about half the diameter of Earth and about one eighth
of the earth’s volume and mass. So, in its inexorable cooling
process, Mars has cooled down further and faster than Earth.
The mean surface temperature of Mars is observed to be a
frigid –23º C, while that of Earth is calculated to be
about +10º C.
A second law of cooling involves simultaneous heat input.
Even as planets in the solar system lose internal heat, they receive
external heat from the Sun, and for each planet, the amount
of heat received is related to its size and distance from
the sun.
|
|
Because Mars is about 50% further from the Sun than the
Earth’s average distance, the Sun’s rays that reach Mars are
substantially more diffused.
|
Solar radiation that strikes the surface of Mars has only
about 44% of the intensity of that which impacts on any similar
area on the Earth’s surface. And because Mars is little more
than half the diameter of Earth (6800 miles vs 12,800 miles)
the face size that Mars presents to the sun is just 28% of the
comparable face presented by Earth. So the aggregate solar
energy striking Mars is less than 13% of that reaching Earth.
(((44 x 28)/100) =12.32 %)
Venus, by comparison, close to the same size as Earth (about
95% of the diameter and 82% of the mass), is on average,
30% closer to the Sun than is the Earth. So the Sun’s rays
striking Venus are about 80% stronger than those reaching
Earth and substantially retard the reduction of its surface
temperature of 480ºC. Thus, the natural cooling process of
Venus proceeds much more slowly than that of Earth or Mars.
Beneath its acidic cloud cover, Venus is solid. But it must cool
a lot more before it can host any form of animal or vegetable life;
longer still before it will accommodate human life; and far beyond
that again, before it eventually become a silent, dead mass like
Mars is at present, and Earth will have become long before
Venus reaches that stage.
|
|
Therein lies the fundamental flaw in the global warming concept.
Over time, the Earth’s temperature must change in one
direction; down. Ultimately, some billions of years hence, the
temperature of planet Earth, like that of all objects in space,
must reach equilibrium with the frigid state of its environment,
outer space.
|
Similarly, the laws of inertia rule that an object in motion must
ultimately come to rest unless energy is continuously applied
to keep it in motion. Following the initial thrust from the big
bang, interaction of gravity between the bodies in space provides
continuing energy that supports the secondary (orbital) motion
of those bodies and makes that motion appear to be perpetual.
Nothing in space has yet come to rest, although it can be expected
to do so some billions of years from now.
Astronomers have observed that at present the universe continues
to expand; that fragments from the Big Bang (planetary systems
and the like) continue to race outward from their exploded source,
and spread out further from each other as they go, propelled by
the lingering force of that initial explosion.
When the effect of that explosive force wears off completely,
the outward movement will cease and gravitational pull from the
source of the big bang will overpower the expansion. Fragments
from the explosion, including planets, will then begin to fall back
into their original source and compress under unimaginable
gravitational force to form a black hole in space, only to repeat
that entire process in yet another explosion. We’re talking mega
billions of years here.
Meanwhile, as we quiver in fear from threats of global warming
to come, and disastrous climate upheavals about to befall us
from that perceived phenomenon, it may be worthwhile to
juxtapose those ruminations against what we do know of the
Earth’s long term future.
|
|
A telescopic examination of the terrestrial planets in our solar
system, (that is, those that are in the so-called habitable zone
of proximity to the sun) is revealing. It offers valuable evidence
to inform the study of Earth’s beginning and ultimate destiny.
|
For a close-up view of our future, we can look at the past as
reflected in Mars, often called our sister planet. In the U.S.A.
there’s some interest now in the prospect of a manned expedition
to Mars, to extend the exploration already carried out there by
robotic vehicles and orbiting satellites.
That robotic exploration has already confirmed that some water
is present on Mars, and telescopic observations reveal that polar
ice caps still remain. More detailed examination by orbiting
satellites has revealed the shorelines of ancient oceans that appear
to have covered much of the planet at some point in the past.
But all those discoveries may come as no surprise to students
of the solar system.
It’s reasonably certain that we’ll succeed in sending humans to
Mars, if only to prove that we can, though the merit of such an
excursion or the possibility of benefit from it may seem obscure
to many observers. It’s even more certain that the Earth will
ultimately reach the same end as that red planet. The cold
desolation of Mars provides a stark picture of what Earth will
eventually become. Conversely, the boiling cloud cover over the
scorching core of Venus reveals what Mars and the Earth
undoubtedly were, eons ago.
Fatalistic as that may sound, it doesn’t absolve us from the
obligation to nurture the environment while we’re here. But
when all the theories about global warming and climate change
have tested by time and proven or disproven, one simple fact
remains; The world cannot endlessly support a population of
human beings that grows exponentially forever, and time is
running short for us to come to grips with that reality.
|
|
The handwriting is on the wall. We can read it and govern
ourselves accordingly, or ignore it at our peril. We cannot
change the ultimate destiny of the Earth or the universe, but
we can protect the habitability of our environment from the
scourge of over-population and extend our term as custodians
of the planet.
|
> Back to Top
> Home
> Lapse Rate
> Coal
> Hurricanes
x
> Vostok
> Oil
> Greenland
> Sea Level
> Global Cooling
x
> Antarctic
> Global Warming
> Carbon Dioxide
x
> Population Explosion
|
No matter how compelling an observation or conjecture may be…
in the absence of proof, it can be misleading and easily
misinterpreted as factual evidence.
|
The more the ‘M’ theory is explained, and the more argument
it engenders, the more the multi-universe mystery deepens for most ordinary
people. Some say it is so incomprehensible that
even if were possible to understand it, it would have little or no connection
to the here and now insofar as ordinary people are concerned.
|
Certainly, the universe and natural laws existed long before
we were here to know anything about them. Beyond that simple
fact however, there’s a lot we don’t know. Knowledge about the
universe and the laws that govern it, have been discovered only
slowly by humans over many centuries.
|
Initial development of a habitable planet such as Earth,
will have been the change from a gaseous state to a molten semi-solid
and then to solid. The next phase, as cooling continues, will have
allowed water to exist as vapor, then as liquid. Cooling would then
go on over time until it reached a temperature where basic life
forms could survive. Finally, conditions would allow human life
to flourish. Planets can be expected to continue cooling until they
reach equilibrium with the temperature of their environment,
outer space.
|
The Sun’s rays that reach Mars are less intense than those that
reach Earth in inverse ratio to the square of Mars’ greater distance
from the Sun The time involved in planetary cooling is beyond range
of normal human comprehension, even if it may be within the scope
of scientific calculation or speculation. Best estimates are that the
Sun, now at a temperature of 6000ºC will continue to burn for an
unimaginable 5 billion years.
|
As the Earth marchesto its ultimate Mars-like state,
fluctuations will occur. If global warming proves to be factual,
it will be nothing more than an irrelevant blip in that progression.
|
The fundamentals of the Big Bang are partially replicated in miniature
when we launch a projectile from Earth to the moon. At launch, the
application of immense energy is required to overcome the missile’s
gravitational bond with Earth. Then, as the satellite travels further
and further from Earth, the force of that initial thrust gradually
diminishes and the satellite slows down in its climb.
In a successful moon shot, as the missile slows down, it also
approaches nearer and nearer to the moon. Presently, it reaches
a point where the pull of the moon’s gravity exceeds the diminishing
gravitational pull of the receding Earth. The satellite then begins to
accelerate under the effect of the moon’s gravity until it falls onto
the moon or is inserted into an orbit around the moon. If insufficient
force is applied when the satellite is launched, its ascent will stop
before it transitions to the moon’s gravitational field, and it will
fall back to Earth.
|
The human ego attaches great importance to our existence, and
presence on Earth, but we can expect our time here to be
quite brief as compared to the expected lifespan of the planet itself.
Surely we are of little consequence in the greater scheme of things.
|
It may be argued that it matters little which of the concepts of
creation we favor or reject. Clever as we may be, the laws of nature
will be unaffected by our discoveries or opinions or argument
and will continue in place as always. In the greater scheme of
things, we are but puny latecomers and have little influence, if any.
The universe preceded our existence by billions of years and will
continue to exist for billions of years after we’re gone.
We keep learning more and more about it, but our knowledge or
behavior can have no effect upon it.
|
In the fullness of time, when the human race vanishes from the Earth,
as dinosaurs and other species have done before, human knowledge
will also vanish. But there’s no reason to believe the universe will
be affected in any way by our extinction. It will continue without us.
We just won’t be here to know.
|
Everything in the Universe has reached some stage in its slowing
process. Eventually, the moon will fall to Earth; the Earth and
other planets will fall into the sun and the sun will fall back to
whence it came.
|
> Back to Home
|
Return to Small Chart
