Climate change and global warming.
Are they just “buzzwords” or are they reality? Is it our fault or is it nature? It is not a political decision; it’s about data and cows. When I see a word, especially a buzzword or term, I tend to look up the word origin. In the case of the word climate, Merriam’s Dictionary says it’s the word’s changing meaning from a geographical zone to a prevailing set of weather conditions. The original term came from the Greek word for incline, as to the tilt of the earth. So what are we saying when we say “climate change”? Was there ever a period of time where the weather was predictable until now? No. The earth froze and burned to the ground several times over long before man built his first campfire. For a long time Poor Richard’s Almanac was our best predictor of the weather. That is until Punxsutawney Phil, Phil the True groundhog, came along in the 1880s. “Climate change” presupposes that weather had a stable and predictable pattern and now that pattern has been disrupted apparently by human activity. The truth of the matter is we have only about 120 years of reliable data concerning the weather worldwide. That data is not enough. Back then we could have used satellites and worldwide wifi sensors, a map of the ocean floor, a huge worldwide data bank that held the information about wind, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, humidity, rain, etc. We needed data from pole to pole and all points in between. With that, we may have been able to see where the world’s climate would be going. But even that may not have been enough, however. Our ancestors knew that the winds were unpredictable day to day but over a period of time they were consistent, which would assist their commerce. This is why we used the term tradewinds. So are we seeing actual global warming? Well, what do we mean by that? Does it mean a trend that may last a generation or two and then change? Does it mean a one-way temperature trip to oblivion? The truth of it all is we simply don’t know enough to make that decision with reasonable certainty. The other part is how much is man responsible for it? How do our activities affect the weather? Let me start there. We have our fossil fuel power generating plants and automobiles (with apologies to Elon Musk) which spew sulfur, carbon and nitrous oxides. We have industrial mining, which releases gases and causes earthquakes. We have our vast corn fields, 40 percent of which is used to manufacture ethanol, which affects our jet stream, which increases rain and storms where the frequency was less. We have flourocarbon production that affects the ozone layer, which is our cosmic blanket. We have the buildup of garbage in the oceans that store heat from the sun’s rays, which would otherwise be reflected. We discovered algae on the glaciers of Greenland, which is still causing rapid melting of the ice there, in fact enough melt has already occurred to fill all the Great Lakes. This algae is not a recent discovery but is growing more rapidly, possibly fueled by man’s activities. Finally, as you Arrogant Worms fans already know, there’s methane produced by cows. Simply YouTube “I am Cow” and you will be enlightened and transformed. So there you have it. Now what is done by nature? Well, we have sunspots, thermal inversions, tectonic plate movements, the center of the earth which is 6,000 degrees, the sun’s magnetic activities, volcanoes, the gravitational affect of the moon. Of these properties we are barely scratching the surface, save for the moon. We cannot affect those activities. What makes this significant is that we have to face our powerlessness over these things. We must come to the realization that these features are beyond our control. We must accept the fact that the earth has been on a climatic knife’s edge for 4.5 billion years. But have there been climate changes before? I believe so. I think the answer to that might be found in the migratory patterns of the Tohono O’odham and the Jocome and Jano Indians of southern Arizona. These indigenous people would move south and north according to the climate change of that era, this to believed around 1000 to 1200 A.D. They apparently were aware of climate change with their periodic activities. The Jacome and Jano Indians would built stone structures, which indicates some permanency, then leave them and then come back to the same spot years later. Sort of like the “Snowbirds” of Florida only instead of every season it would be 10-20 years between migration. Was this because they understood that the climate would predictably and periodically go from hot to cool and then back again? Over a span of centuries, this would be a clue that such climate change was periodic and natural. I think a lot could be learned from the migratory history of the Laplanders, being from the north as well. So is the earth experiencing global warming? Check out the before and after aerial photos of the polar ice caps, look at before and after pictures of the Ross shelf in Antarctica, also I hear there is a great sale on boats at Lake Aral. So yes Virginia, there is global warming. But is it natural or is it Loréal? Only your meteorologist of the future will know for sure. Post script: On my last article there was some criticism from folks who make ethanol. In general I disagree with their comments. Ethanol is heavily subsidized and environmentally ineffective. I stand by what I wrote, and I appreciate all comments good and bad. If I accomplish one thing with this series it’s to get people engaged in alternate energy and to value its extremely broad significance.
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AuthorJames Bobreski is a process control engineer who has been in the field of electric power production for 43 years. His “Alternate Energy” column runs monthly. Archives
June 2020
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