Dear Gramps
My question is about global warming. I love and respect the earth and I try to do my part to keep it a beautiful and healthy place to live. I also want to be a good citizen and preserve this world for my grandchildren. So much is being said now about man being responsible for global warming and how we need to walk, rather than ride, recycle and even use less toilet paper. Some of this seems a bit foolish to me and I can’t help wondering if this will be looked on sometime in the future as a time in our history when we were over zealous over nothing, such as the a-bomb drills that children did in school in the 50s. I also have a hard time understanding those with much more money than I have using private jets and large automobiles for transportation and justifying it by buying “offsets”. I seldom use even public airlines, since I don’t have a lot of money. I certainly don’t own a Humvee or ride in limos and I could never afford to give money to an environmentally friendly organization. I do drive to the store and to church but I don’t use a lot of gas. I also try to not waste. Any suggestions as to what we citizens really NEED to do to help keep Mother Earth healthy and, yes, “green”?
Bette, from Nashville, Tennessee

Dear Bette,
At first you talk about the foolishness of the concept of global warming, and then you end by reciting how careful you are not to contribute to global warming by increasing the emission of “greenhouse” gasses. Global warming is not a scientific issue. It is a political issue! First, let me promote a scientific point of view. The conventional wisdom, which is creating such a political stir, and which is creating wealth for the few and resulting in exorbitant needless costs for the many, is that due to the emission of carbon dioxide from industrial and transportation energy consumption, CO2 in the atmosphere is reflecting the heat (infrared radiation) radiated from the earth back to the surface of the earth, thus increasing its temperature. Let’s examine that concept just a bit. If the greenhouse gasses are reflecting radiated heat from the earth back to its surface, those same greenhouse gasses must of necessity also reflect heat from the sun back into space!! Is more heat being directed to the earth from the sun, or is more heat being directed from the earth toward the sun? The answer to that question is obvious! Whatever fraction of heat escaping the surface of the earth that is reflected back to the earth, that same fraction of the heat coming from the sun is being reflected back into space. Since the energy received from the sun is many times greater than the energy radiated from the earth, the reflection of heat by the greenhouse gasses reflects much more heat back into space from the sun than is reflected back toward the earth from the heat radiated from the earth. Thus, THE GREENHOUSE GASSES ACTUALLY PRODUCE A GLOBAL COOLING EFFECT!! There is no question that the earth is heating up marginally, but it is not BECAUSE OF the greenhouse gasses, it is IN SPITE of them.
Here is an excerpt from a discussion forum on the internet that bears on our subject—
“Recently, scientists hotly pursued by the press, informed us that our atmosphere is dimming due to the by-products of fossil fuel emissions not only producing greenhouse gasses, but particles (aerosols) that affect the properties of clouds. As a result, it was reported that less solar radiation was reaching the earth’s surface because the sun’s radiation was being reflected back into the atmosphere. A good thing apparently as this phenomenon has so far provided relief from the full effects of global warming. Unfortunately, any short-term relief that this may have provided was short lived. A new study then revealed that the dimming trend is now in reverse, and as a result, the earth will be subject to global brightening. This trend, we are told, reveals that the cloud pollutants shielding the Earth’s surface from greater solar radiation are decreasing. Why? Well again there is little agreement on this, but there is yet more doom-and-gloom to this story. While particles previously shielding us from solar radiation are diminishing, greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide are not. Some greenhouse gasses have an extended life span and can hang for a century or more. So in this respect, some scientists are claiming we are already committed to an unacceptable rise in global temperatures in the future. But climate change is just as much an argument about whether humans are the cause of it as it is about whether global warming is happening at all.”
So you can see that the issue of the causes of global warming is still in debate by the scientific community. We have been measuring the intensity of solar radiance for only a few years. Long term trends are only inferred from such secondary evidence as tree ring growth, which has only given us definitive data about the sun’s 11-year solar cycle.
Although the possible causes of global warming is still a matter of debate in scientific circles, to the politicians there is no question and no argument. They have determined for themselves that the present global heating cycle is man made, and we’d better do something about it without delay or mankind will be lost.
My own feelings are that 1) the earth has recently increased in average temperature by about half a degree. That is a measured quantity. 2) The greenhouse gas effect is very likely more of a “red herring” than a real threat. 3) It would be hard for me to believe that an orb like the sun would not have long term variations in radiance that would have much more pronounced effects on the earth’s climate that would any man-made changes in the atmospheric constituents. Our past ice ages and their melting away are a powerful case in point.
Gramps

 

 Standard Podcast [6:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download