Monday, May 19, 2008
Global warming or cooling? Who knows?
From the RoundTable blog
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Sherwood Thoele
Thoele, of Fincastle, has been an analytical chemist for 32 years in the pharmaceutical and personal health care industries. He is also a mathematician.
Global cooling or global warming, which is it? It depends upon the latest climate study published.
In the 1960s and 1970s, they claimed global cooling because of several years of colder than "normal" temperatures.
Academia and certain think tanks claimed this cooling was from too much CO2 (carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere.
That died down and then came a warming spell, so we are now experiencing global warming, because of too much CO2 in the atmosphere.
So, too much CO2 causes both global cooling and global warming.
As an analytical chemist, I analyze all the parameters and data from studies: what prompted the study, who funded it, where it was conducted, measuring equipment accuracy and the atmospheric conditions or physical status of that area during the study.
Might there be bias for the outcome of the study, either by those conducting the study or those funding it and does the conclusion match the data?
I want to know all this information before I accept the conclusions of any study, especially when it comes from someone within a social movement or political group.
Briefly, what is CO2 and what are some of its properties? CO2 is a gas at temperatures above -78.5C (-109.3F) at sea level, and it's only liquid under a lot of pressure, like in fire extinguishers.
CO2 is heavier than air, so without air currents it won't rise above the ground (stage fog, silos, caves, mines). It is slightly soluble in water at room temperature and lower. So it is more soluble in the moisture in the colder upper atmosphere.
CO2 with water makes carbonic acid (carbonated water), making it even heavier.
Air is from 0.027 to 0.036 percent CO2, depending on the reference source.
One of the first things you learn in chemistry is that everything moves toward a state of equilibrium. So when too much water is in the atmosphere, along with other conditions, it rains.
Along with this moisture is any excess or out-of-equilibrium CO2. CO2 with water is a mild acid with a pH of 5 to 6, which is perfect for plants.
This acid helps release other minerals in the soil turning them into carbonates that dissolve easier in water, making them available to plants.
Because CO2 is slightly soluble in water and will come back to the Earth with precipitation, nature corrects for any excess, just as it does with other excess materials from volcanoes and forest fires.
CO2 comes from burning or oxidizing organic material and minerals that contain carbon. Major sources are fermenting (rotting) vegetation like in swamps, compost piles, burning limestone to make lime, gasoline or other petroleum products, volcanoes and forest fires.
Nature recycles all of what it considers excess very efficiently. CO2 absorbs some infrared radiation. Infrared absorbers accept the radiation from any direction.
Since infrared radiation is one of many parts of visible light, the biggest source is the sun. Some say excess CO2 combined with the moisture in the atmosphere absorbs infrared radiation from the Earth to create a greenhouse effect by not letting it pass through it. But how then does the infrared radiation from the sun get through the CO2/moisture, and wouldn't it already have absorbed as much infrared radiation as it could handle from the sun?
There is a limit to the amount of infrared radiation that moisture/CO2 can absorb. Warmth from sunlight means infrared radiation is getting through.
The infrared radiation absorbed by the Earth will keep it warm for a while, but as clouds linger and the sun goes down, the warmth goes away quickly.
So if there were a greenhouse effect from heat being blocked from leaving the Earth, then the temperature on cloudy days and at night shouldn't be so different than on a sunny day.
Some claim a 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in the average temperature over the last 100 years, globally.
Considering the many variables that cause temperature changes, including the accuracy of the thermometers, the average global temperature has been extremely stable in this short period of time relative to the age of the Earth.
I submit that there is no manmade global cooling/warming, that there is no study or research data that makes a good argument to that effect when carefully examined objectively and that the Earth has many different and wide-ranging cycles that man cannot control, no matter how much he would like to.
