In this climate change post, I’ll briefly outline why blaming solar variation for recent warming is incorrect, interpret the Vostok Ice Cores, and then tell you the political part of my position.
That big nuclear furnace in the sky is the ultimate source of all energy on Earth, so it would make sense if recent warming was due to the sun being a bit brighter. However, observations show that in recent years, solar output has been steady at 1366 watts per square metre. Maximum variation up or down from this figure is 0.7 watts. Variations in total solar output are so slight that they were barely detectable until satellites were invented.
Variation in solar output has affected Earth’s climate – witness the Maunder Minimum – but in general, changes in solar output over the past 400 years are unlikely to have played a major part in global warming. Solar output is a factor in determining the climate, but solar variation is far too small to account for recent climate change.
I want to tackle one last point from The Great Global Warming Swindle before putting the scientific side of climate change aside. Swindle uses Antarctic ice cores – the best record of historic temperature vs carbon dioxide – and points out that most of the time, temperature change starts before carbon dioxide increases. In fact, it looks like temperature increases cause CO2 increases!
This is absolutely correct. And the thing is, this is what we’d expect to see. In Earth’s history, warming is usually going to occur for non-CO2 reasons – a major cause being Milankovitch cycles (orbital variations which bring Earth closer to the Sun) which occur over tens of thousands of years. When these natural causes warm the oceans, they release carbon dioxide, which in turn induces additional warming. Carbon dioxide-related warming is usually a consequence of other natural sources of warming.
But in the last century, we’ve had an unnatural carbon dioxide increase. Humans extracting and burning fossil fuel essentially form a naked CO2 source, unrelated to other climate events. Carbon dioxide is suddenly disconnected from the carbon cycle equilibrium. This has almost never happened before. Humans are the anomaly here.
So why do some find it so hard to believe that humans could affect the climate?
- Remember that one time we screwed up the ozone layer?
- Remember acid rain?
- Did you hear about the temperature effect from stopping plane traffic after 9/11?
I believe humans can – and have – affected the climate of this planet. But I don’t believe the hype of 20-foot sea level changes drowning poor island nations.
Remember Chernobyl and how terrible it was? Of course it was a terrible accident, and I’m not trying to deny that. But remember the stories we were told of the tens of thousands of predicted cancer deaths, and the mental images we had of mutated animals glowing in the dark? It turns out that the number of cancer deaths was massively overestimated, and the untouched countryside around Chernobyl is a veritable nature haven. The darkest predictions were wrong. Things got better because the biosphere is adaptable.
And Y2K! The millenial disaster. What a fizzer that one was. Let’s face it, we’re pretty bad at predicting disasters. Even Hurricane Katrina wasn’t a disaster because of the wind, rain and rising sea levels – it was a disaster because some silly people didn’t evacuate when they should have, and governmental response – surprise, surprise – was slow, incompetent and racist.
I believe humans are affecting the climate of our planet, and we will may see a few changes. But I don’t believe in disaster scenarios. Give humans more credit. We can survive hurricanes and floods. Heck, we survived the Cold War! A bit of climate change will be a piece of cake. Give the environment more credit, too. Its been here for a few billion years, and it isn’t going anywhere.
So, Al Gore and Co., you can take your food mile taxes and ‘sustainability focus’ and just bugger off. A bit of climate change doesn’t scare me, and neither do your catastrophic fairy tales. We’re going to be just fine.
