Both Essential For Life
We don’t usually think of global warming or death as good things but both are essential for the continuity of life. Without death new life could not be born. Why? All chemical elements are made in stars. They are made only in stars. All the chemical elements on Earth and in its atmosphere came from a very large star that exploded around the time our sun formed 5 billion years ago, producing the chemical debris that eventually formed Earth and the other planets in our solar system.
All living things on Earth are constructed of carbon compounds, and when they die they decay which releases the carbon making it available to be used again. Without death there soon would be no carbon available for succeeding generations because life forms would continue to multiply until the carbon supply was exhausted.
Now to global warming. Yes, most leading climatologists say global warming is real and man’s activities play a large role in it. In my opinion, most people require no deep scientific insight in order to understand why these scientists consider their findings “settled.”
Almost all scientists agree that without an atmosphere containing greenhouse gases (mostly carbon dioxide), Earth would be too cold to sustain life as we know it. In my book, Settled Science, you will find an extensive discussion on how variations in the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere modifies Earth’s temperature by trapping heat from the sun. Higher concentrations trap more heat. Some life forms have evolved to thrive in warm temperatures and others have adapted to extremely cold ones. Why does the carbon dioxide concentration change? There has always been a natural battle to control the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere between volcanic activity, wildfires, and animals that produce it and photosynthetic organisms like plants and phytoplankton that consume it. In the past, when the consumers flourished and increased their consumption, and producers did not increase production, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere decreased. The decrease resulted in less heat from the sun being trapped, which led to a great cooling of the Earth. The cooling killed most of the consumers, which increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which again warmed the Earth.
This cycle of warming and cooling has been a natural part of Earth’s history for 800 million years. Now, however, man’s immense production of carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels, and his insatiable appetite to develop more land, has caused climatologists to believe the natural cycle has been greatly altered. The historical production of carbon dioxide has been greatly increased and the historical consumption of it has been greatly decreased. This battle to balance the amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have to be fought by all of us, if it is not too late already!
Climatologists warn that the full effects of increased carbon dioxide concentrations has not materialized yet due to the mitigating effects of atmospheric dimming and some temporary cooling of our oceans by melting ice caps. Although harmful in other ways, dirty particulate matter in our atmosphere has been reflecting some of the sun’s light rays, thereby slowing the progression of global warming. These scientists predict that as we continue to clean up our air global warming will likely accelerate.
You don’t need to be a scientist to know that when you heat a pot of water on the stove the water level in the pot rises. The same happens with sea levels when the temperature of ocean water increases. If you were to put some ice cubes into the pot of warming water, cooling temporarily slows the rise of the temperature and water level but adds more water to the pot when the ice melts.
Climatologists from around the world tell us that melting ice caps indeed provide some cooling to our oceans, but this adds a huge volume of water to them. It should be obvious that when the ice caps are gone the temperature of oceans will rise faster and, together with the additional water, cause sea levels to rise higher and flood more of the low lying land areas around the world. In addition to all the direct damage to life and property, floods indirectly cause more violent storms. Spreading water increases the surface area of water that is exposed to air. Since evaporation only takes place at the interface between water and air, more water will find its way into the atmosphere, which will inevitably lead to more violent storms around the world.
There are still some climatologists that question whether global warming is occurring at all and others who agree it is occurring but is due to increased activity of our sun. However, a majority of climatologists agree that warming is occurring at a faster rate than ever before in Earth’s history and only differ on how much of it is due to man’s activities, how catastrophic will be its consequences, and how soon we will experience its most devastating effects.
Other than the prospect of an all-out nuclear war or a longer, but just as deadly, world war to establish religious freedom and freedom from religion in the world, the continued increase in global warming might be the single biggest danger facing the world in the next fifty years. If Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans or the cyclone that devastated Myanmar fail to motivate the world community to prepare for future storms, and at least try to minimize them, there is probably nothing anyone could say in a blog such as this one that would. Climatologists warn us that if we fail to correct the global warming problem soon “we ain’t seen nothing yet,” but our grandchildren and great grandchildren will!
It seems to me that we should apply the risk/reward equation and not wait to see if this prediction proves to be correct or not. If we make some relatively small changes now, even though they are very expensive and inconvenient, we might be able to reverse course. Unfortunately, global warming has been adopted as a political issue by groups that still refuse to recognize the findings of most climatologists and, therefore, strongly resist recommended remedies. Fortunately, some of these former deniers have finally come to accept the “settled science” and are now grudgingly considering some remedies that will require sacrifices from all of us but, of course as always, only the convenient ones.
Read Settled Science to learn more about the science of this controversial issue along with many others.
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