The Most Serious Threat? Or Climate Science 101?
The short article below was authored by Penny Teal, a UC Berkeley trained PhD (chemistry). Dr. Teal has outlined straightforward facts on which sound conclusions can and should be formed in regard to the current state of the climate. Penny has also spoken out about the first hand experiences she has had with universities and their power structure paid for agenda to program their students and thus society. Dane Wigington geoengineeringwatch.org The Most Serious Threat? Or Climate Science 101? By Penny Teal, PhD, contributing writer for geoengineeringwatch.org The POTUS (President of the United States, or perhaps Puppet of same) has made it clear, most recently in an address to the cadets at the Coast Guard base in New London, CT, that climate change (more appropriately called global heating, or global meltdown) poses a serious threat to the planet's security. He did not clarify, however, what he meant by "the planet's security". From this citizen's perspective it is very clear that global warming poses an existential threat to every living thing on the planet; the planet itself, however, seems likely to remain on course around its star for millennia to come. How do we know that global warming is a problem? It's in the data, all of which is available on this website already. Just one example: fourteen of the fifteen hottest years on record are to be found in the new century (that is, somewhat shockingly, in the last 15 years); the fifteenth is 1998. Already 2015 is on track to be the hottest year ever. Okay, that was two examples. Obviously, if we care about the planet, we need to reverse global warming. And since we humans have caused it, we can, at the very least, stop doing whatever led to the problem in the first place. There is no doubt that human activity, primarily the wanton burning of fossil fuels, is causing global temperatures to rise. If you meet a skeptic, here is a simple defense of that statement – that is to say, that fact. A Tale of Three Planets One need only look over the planet's shoulders, toward Venus and toward Mars, then to our own blue Earth, to see a perfect model of the Greenhouse Effect (GE) that keeps life thriving on the planet in the middle, while making it impossible for life to develop (life as we know it, at any rate) on the other two. The GE is quite simple to explain to the skeptic. Sunlight, in the form of… well, light (electromagnetic radiation, if you want to be more precise, because there are non-visible wavelengths in addition to the light) arrives at a planet, warms its surface, and is radiated back upward as heat (or thermal energy – you have to choose the terms based on the look of understanding or confusion on the sceptic's face here). This radiant heat energy (because it involves only long wavelengths) interacts differently with chemical gases in the atmosphere differently than does the full spectrum of electromagnetic radiation from the sun. Specifically, gases like carbon dioxide, water, and methane will reflect some of the heat, sending it back downward like the roof of a greenhouse (hence the name for the… you get it). Just as in a greenhouse, the area under the atmospheric "roof" gets warmer. Mars, for starters, has no atmosphere to speak of. No atmosphere means no gases, hence, no GE. Hence, a very cold and barren (but nicely red) planet. Venus, over the other shoulder, has a planet thick with greenhouse gases, thus is extremely hot; and Venus is incapable of sustaining life as well (and Venus would not be significantly warmer than Earth without those gases, even though it is closer to the sun). In the middle is our Earth, with its mix of gases wherein CO2 used to be present at under 300 parts per million (ppm). However, our industrial age burning of fossil fuels has filled the atmosphere with increasing levels of CO2, up to and now over 400 ppm – and done so inevitably. This is a fact that cannot be wished or hand-waved away. Increasing the greenhouse gases increases the heat- retaining capacity of a planet – again, this happens inevitably. These two facts alone are proof that human activity has caused the planet to warm, regardless of what may have been happening with sunspots, regardless of whatever trend (warming or cooling) the planet has otherwise been on. The planet has means of adapting, within limits, but it also has a need to maintain a balance. Increasing a greenhouse gas by over 33% is utterly disrespectful of that balance. Putting more red dye in a pool will make make it redder; you can dilute the pool water all you want, or add to it from other sources, but the dye still has the effect of making the water redder than it was. That is all that need be said to refute the claim that humans have not contributed to global warming. It may not satisfy all sceptics, but some people think there is virtue in claiming to keep an open mind (an attitude they would drop in a heartbeat if you told them they were about to be run over from behind by a buffalo, when they finally heard it snorting a half-foot away from them… but alas, too late. Same story with global warming, unfortunately.) At present, the warming caused by increasing CO2 is intense enough that it is causing the tundra in Arctic regions to melt, and ocean waters to warm dramatically, both of which are causing methane (an extremely potent greenhouse gas – more than 100 times as heat-trapping as CO2 in the short term) to be released into Earth's atmosphere. The level of CO2 is now well above 400 ppm, although several years ago we were warned that 350 ppm represented a point of no return. The methane level could soon begin to rise exponentially (it could, in fact, be doing that now). Again, all the data and all the sordid truth is to be found, fully documented, on this website, including a discussion