Our Planet - Part 1 Climate Change

Global Warming. The Green Energy Revolution. Pollution. Save the Planet. Climate Crisis. There's a lot of people interested in energy and the impact of climate change so I decided to write my op-ed in a series of posts with my take on the whole issue. I'm going to cover many issues, is anthropogenic climate change real? What are Governments to do? Is the world going to end? Is it a crisis? Is humanity doomed and is it too late? Will Wind and Solar be our saviors? What about Nuclear? I'm going to take a rational view of it all and will leave the drama to others. If you like good stories, conspiracies or artistic interpretations then please stop now because you will be disappointed with the rest of the article.

One of the first subjects I wish to tackle is Climate Change and whether it is influenced by the recent activity of humans. This will help define future articles. Historically we know that the Earths Climate has been erratic for millions of years through scientific research, undergoing ice ages and warm periods. There have been various factors that have contributed towards these changes. We know that the energy emitted by the sun has varied over time, in fact it has slowly been getting warmer for millions of years. We know the Earth rotates the Sun on an irregular orbit that varies every 800 years or so. We also know that our atmosphere; be that water vapor, CO2 or other gases have influenced its temperature. Also the albedo of earths surface is a great factor, how much light radiation is absorbed or emitted. The main point to illustrate is that the climate of our planet is complex. Many factors have contributed towards its changing climate.

The real question many want to know is how much of a role does CO2 play? Unfortunately climate change has been poiliticised by both the right and left. One groups denies that CO2 plays any role and believe climate change and the recent warming observed on Earth is a conspiracy to enable government to take over our lives. On the other hand groups of people have decided that the recent global warming would spell imminent disaster and have exaggerated the claims of the recent warming. According to Al Gore the Arctic should have gone by now and sea levels should have submerged half our land mass but alas nothing near that has happened. I will come back to the politisation of climate change, suffice to say it is diluting the opinion that really matters, that of scientists who dedicate their lives to this field of study. Public opinion has been tragically informed by politics and peoples personal agenda, not the scientific evidence.

So what is the evidence? Well to cut short before I go into all the details CO2 is one of the causes of climate change and is heating our planet. People are impacting climate change by burning historic stores of CO2 and emitting it into the atmosphere. Anthropogenic Climate Change is real and I will detail why that is the case.

The first fact to get out of the way is does CO2 heat up the planet. Since the 19th Century, scientists have known that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and have proved it is. What does this mean? You ask most people who are 100% sure of what climate change is I bet many still can not simply explain how CO2 causes warming. In a nutshell its where sunlight travels through our atmosphere, initially it travels at a wavelegth that is not absorbed. When it hits our planets surface heat is emitted at a different wavelength and bounces back towards space. At this wavelength it is now in a range where CO2 can absorb its energy and in effect trap heat, like a blanket on a bed. This process is undisputed and every scientist is in complete agreement with how this works. If anyone disagrees that CO2 can not trap heat then they haven't looked at the science and are pushing a political belief.

The real disagreement comes in how much of a part CO2 plays in heating up our planet, so lets take a look at some of the arguments. Unlike many proponents of global warming in the general public who follow it blindly without actually understanding any of the arguments I will take on some of the common objections against climate change. It is by no means a comprehensive list but I do want to tackle some of the main objections.

"We haven't had warming for the past 15 years"

This is a common argument used, however if we look at the data and some other factors that effect temperatures we can explain this myth. First if we look at the points at time the data is taken with the high in 1998 and the low around 2013. It just so happens that 1998 was a very warm year globally while 2013 or there abouts was a cool year. Many factors effect global temperatures and 1998 was a year when the solar cycles and the el nino/la nina effect went into full effect to heat the planet. Science has explained this and we know from its findings that the sun has a solar cycle where sun spots will be more potent in some years then others. The el nino/la nina effect explains how the seas surface temperatures can greatly effect temperatures on the planet. Along with these factors places like China and India have undergone huge industrialisation which has resulted in an increase in pollutants such as aerosols in the upper atmosphere that have reflected much of the Suns heat. However even with all these factors the temperature still hasn't gone down as we would expect. They have been stable and I now believe all these factors will go into reverse and we will see raising temperatures over the next 10 years. In 2015 and 2016 it already looks like the trend is reversing with temperatures on the rise.

Scientists look at long term trends and moving averages and don't cherry pick data points on certain years to support their theories. The data points above are like someone taking a relatively warm day at the start of February and then a relative cold day at the end of the February that has a lower temperature and concluding that we will not get summer this year as the trend has gone down. Just like our short term weather system is complex and thus hard to predict we know over the long term it will get warmer as the year will goes on. There will be lots of short term fluctuations but it doesn't mean the scientific theory of seasons has collapsed. Just like taking a couple of data points a decade apart doesn't mean the warming trend has revered.

"I've noticed no warming"

Just because you think the planet isn't getting warmer doesn't mean anything when we look at the various measurements. Many have sensationalised Climate Change to say we will have tropical weather here in the UK or will be living in water-world or the seas will boil soon. Most of this is just click bait as changes in global temperatures are a slow process. The recent changes have been very fast by historic standards, however most of us will not notice a couple of degrees warming over 50-100 year period.

And just because it currently appears to be a slow process doesn't mean this trend won't accelerate. Once temperatures get warmer then feedback loops can develop. As the seas warm it in turn warms up our planet and also releases CO2. As the ice caps melt then the Planets albedo of the surface absorbs the suns heat rather than reflecting it. As more CO2 builds up in the atmosphere more heat becomes trapped causing more heating and feeding back on other cycles. There are many other factors that complicate the process meaning we are unsure how fast temperatures will continue to rise.

"The Antarctic ice is increasing"

Scientists can again explain why the ice in the Antarctic appears to be increasing. Whats really happening in fact is that the ice and snow on land is melting. The ice on land is fresh water and as it goes into the sea it dilutes the salt water in the sea thus lowering its freezing point causing more of the sea to freeze due to this factor. However Scientists know this apparent "gain" in ice and snow is only short term. Once most of the ice and snow has melted on land then net ice will begin to retreat as the sea water becomes more salty once more thus lowering the freezing point. This point also ignores the other two significant ice sheets in Greenland and the Arctic which are melting faster and on net, the ice and snow is decreasing more than the antarctic is increasing.

"Greenland ice is increasing"

Like many of these myths, there is a nugget of truth. On the high parts of Greenland the ice and snow is increasing however on lower land the ice is melting and disappearing, again at a greater rate, thus on net its disappearing.

"We are going to have an Ice Age"

As recent warming trends have been suspended for the past decade or so, many media outlets and non scientific commentators have stated that we are on the cusp of a new ice age. But the Scientists do not agree, in fact many of them predicted this current pause. Many actually thought temperatures would fall, the fact that they haven't or not in any meaningful way means the warming we are getting is very real. As explained above climate is complex; Solar cycles, sea currents, pollution all have an affect (there are many other factors, our climate is complex). All are now reversing and with CO2 the planet will resume its rise in temperatures.

"Periods in our planets history were warmer"

While it may be true a lot of those periods were when we were not around. The so called "Medieval warming period" has been exposed as data manipulation. Basically someone took a temperature graph of the past thousand years or so and compared it to now and concluded that temperatures were warmer. The only problem with the graph is they took the current point in time to be 1950 basically ignoring some of the most dramatic warming of the later part of the 20th Century.

"Scientist are pushing a flawed theory to save face"

If this were true then what we are really saying is that science is no different to religion in that it has a dogmatic approach to the real world and ignores new facts and data that come to light. Examining history illustrates that Science is the complete opposite. It encourages critical thinking and enables individual free thought. There isn't a democratic process that wins out or theres some "shady" conspiracy theory of a "science establishment". Good ideas win out regardless of the persons background or past writings. When Albert Einstein published his 1905 Special Relativity paper many in the science community rejected it. Here was a patent clerk who in his own free time wrote a paper that dared to question 250 year old Newtonian Mechanics. I mean the guy wasn't even part of a physics department. So why was it accepted? Because great scientists read it and agreed with the calculations and mathematical proof that was presented. This in turn then was proven through later scientific experiments and observations and we now know that Newtonian mechanics generally works, however once matter approaches the speed of light we need Einsteins modifications to help explain what happens.

The point is Science doesn't care of a failed theory, it is constantly evolving and changing as we understand more of how things work. Now people will say well science has been wrong before it could be wrong again with climate change. It could be, however the overwhelming evidence that science has accrued through hundreds of independent researchers has concluded that humans are causing the recent temperature changes. With the above analogy regarding Einstein, we have now formed classical Newtonian mechanics and if anything would change it would be a slight modification like Einstein did, eg the temperature only rising 0.1 of a degree rather than 0.2 of a degree. The temperature is still going to rise if we go on our current trajectory. All the Scientific papers and writings now conclude the same thing. There are a small number of skeptics as to how much influence humans are having on climate change, however they all agree that CO2 causes warming and agree humans are the main cause in its increase. They focus on other theories; cloud cover, solar activity, evapo-transpiration. However they don't deny that CO2 increases are fine and we can ignore this completely.

If you still believe its a cover up then it would have to involve thousands of independent Scientists all colluding or coming to the same results. It would rely on not one Scientist breaking ranks however again with the Einstein example this simply isn't true. Great thinkers constantly come along and challenge the consensus. Then there is always the persistent myth that because Scientists are funded by Government then if they don't support Anthropogenic Global Warming it must be to protect their funding. In reality the opposite is true, if a Scientist were to "debunk" the narrative of Climate change then they would become an instant celebrity, become eternally famous and charge thousands of pounds for speaking at events. The majority of scientists are skeptical by default, driven by truth and observable facts; not by politics.

"We are facing imminent danger"

The green movements and pro-government type movements don't help the science. Instead of stating clearly that it's a slow process that will take decades for the ice to fully melt at the Arctic and for the temperature to rise a few degrees they dramatise it with stories of imminent collapse. Al Gores infamous film "Inconvenient Truth" (the title has become a complete irony) where he stated the ice caps would melt in the next decade. Well the decade came and went and the ice caps are still here.

It also doesn't help that many of the Global Warming movement can't actually describe the process or points I've raised above. Instead of engaging in a rational conversation they turn it into an emotional blackmail contest or do virtuous signaling of how good they are and other people are just evil or are in the pockets of big oil. When asked what has caused the recent temperature pause, rather than explain the reasons it has almost become a religious conviction with very little rational debate or points that I have listed above. The problem with this style of debate is that its just turned off a lot of people to engage in accepting Global Warming. I used to be a skeptic for this very reason, the fact that you see all these people say we are killing the planet and the world is going to end unless the Government does something to me was just as bad as the conspiracy stories. I ignored all these people however, kept an open mind and went off and read and listened to people who have informed opinions, ie the experts. Not politicians, not the media, not political commentators or social commentators. I went to the people who have dedicated their lives collecting the data and working things out using the rational Scientific method. In truth people with lots to say generally have nothing of use to say. They talk the talk but have no idea of how to walk the walk. People who are do'ers are generally the more retiring, quiet ones who crack on and get things done. So always be skeptical of people with lots to say and try to be a master of all trades; education, hospitals, railways and climate change. These people have never worked or specialised in any field thus have badly informed views. People who work their field for decades are the ones who know whats really going on.

So in recent years the debate has been distorted by politicians, the media and various political activists who are pushing a political agenda. People are told its a conspiracy of Government to increase their powers. Or the planets oceans are going to boil in the next decade. Or CO2 levels are just fine, to the opposite end of the spectrum that CO2 is to be treated as some sort of toxic poisonous substance (remember CO2 is Carbon and Oxygen which are vital for life, its plant food). Each new claim means ever more outlandish remarks are made in order to rebut the other sides story.

I've gone into some of the details on this topic but this is not even scratching the surface. If you are skeptical (as you should always be) then I encourage you to read more on this topic and go out there and find other pieces of information. However be suspicious of media, sensational blogs or political views on the topic. Look at what the Scientists are saying and dig into some select details that they outline.

While Anthropogenic Climate Change is real do not worry. Its going to take many decades to actually cause us grave concern. I also believe people will solve it and overcome all the issues be that from reducing CO2 levels or terraforming and coming up with new technologies to provide us with clean energy. Once a planets stake is at risk then the ingenuity of people will shine through. In future posts I will go into what we can do. Who will solve it? Governments? Entrepreneurs? Scientists? What options do we have? Are there so called green technologies we can use? We do have options that don't involve turning out the lights. We must also bear in mind that fossil fuels are not evil and should not be demonised, they have enabled prosperity like never before. They have allowed us to master our environment and create living surpluses like never before. It has led us on a great path of scientific and engineering discovery by freeing up people from laborious work to concentrate on hard problems. These same people will find alternative energies that reduce our need for fossil fuels and enable further prosperity and if needed will come up with ways to mitigate rises in CO2. In later posts I'll go into more detail.