5 Surprising Scientific Facts about Earth’s Climate
There are many environmental facts that run contrary to popular belief. Here are five of them.
On the weekend of August 10–11, as if in chorus, major online news websites called on people to stop consuming meat. The calls echoed a recent United Nations report that recommended doing so to fight climate change.
It surprised many, but there are other more surprising facts about climate change that are hardly published in our everyday news media.
Below are some facts—scientifically recognized and published in peer-reviewed journals—that may raise your eyebrows.
1. Climate Has Always Changed—Always
All proxy temperature data sets reveal that there have been cyclical changes in climate in the past 10,000 years. There is not a single climate scientist who denies this well-established fact. It doesn’t matter what your position on the causes and magnitude and danger (or not) of current climate change is—you have to be on board on this one. Climate has always changed. And it has changed in both directions, hot and cold. Until at least the 17th century, all these changes occurred when almost all humans were hunters, gatherers, and farmers.
2. Temperature Increase in the Past Was Not Caused by Humans
Industrialization did not happen until the 17th century. Therefore, no prior changes in climate were driven by human emissions of carbon dioxide. In the last 2,000 years alone, global temperatures rose at least twice (around the 1st and 10th centuries) to levels very similar to today’s, and neither of those warm periods were caused by humans.
3. The Arctic and Antarctic Are Doing Better than Ever!
Yes, you read that right. The 10,000-year Holocene paleoclimatology records reveal that both the Arctic and Antarctic are in some of their healthiest states. The only better period for the poles was the 17th century, during the Little Ice Age, when the ice mass levels were higher than today’s. For the larger part of the past 10,000 years, the ice mass levels were lower than today’s. Despite huge losses in recent decades, ice mass levels are at or near their historic highs.
4. Polar Bears and Other Species Are Not Dying But Flourishing!
If you paid attention to the previous fact, then the following one is not hard to understand. Polar bears—often used as a symbol of climate doomsday—are one of the key species in the Arctic. Contrary to the hype surrounding their extinction fear, the population numbers have actually increased in the past two decades.
Last year, the Canadian government considered increasing polar bear killing quotas as their increasing numbers posed a threat to the Inuit communities living in the Nunavut area.
The increase in population size flies in the face of those who continue to claim otherwise in the popular news media. And it is not just the polar bears in the Arctic. Other critical species elsewhere, like tigers, are also making a comeback.
5. Carbon Dioxide Is Not a Temperature Control Knob
While most of the current climatologists who collaborate with the United Nations believe anthropogenic CO2 emissions have exacerbated natural warming in recent decades, there is no empirical proof to support their claim. The only way to test it would be to wait and see if their assumptions come true.
The entire climate fraternity was in for a surprise when global temperature between 2000 and 2016 failed to rise as anticipated by the climate alarmists. The scientists assumed that rising CO2 emissions from human activity would result in a rapid rise in temperature, but they didn’t.
This proved that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are not the primary factor controlling global temperature. Consideration of a much longer period (10,000 or more years) suggests that CO2 had no significant role to play in temperature increases. CO2 never was the temperature control knob.
These are some of the many climate facts that the media refuses to acknowledge, like the impending solar minimum that NASA has predicted for the next two solar cycles between 2021 and 2041, ushering in a period of global cooling like it did during the solar minimum of 17th century.
There are other facts that run contrary to popular belief, such that there has been no increase in the frequency or intensity of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, droughts, or other extreme weather events. Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported low confidence that global warming—manmade or not—was driving increases in extreme weather events.
The list is endless. It would be naïve not to acknowledge this blatant and lopsided reporting in our news media.
COLUMN BY
Vijay Jayaraj
Vijay Jayaraj (M.S., Environmental Science) is the Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He currently lives in Udumalpet, India.
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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. © All rights reserved.
The GreenHouse Effect Anti-Theory
By reflecting away 30% of the incoming solar energy the atmosphere/albedo makes the earth cooler than it would be without the atmosphere much like that reflective panel behind a car’s windshield.
Greenhouse theory has it wrong.
The non-radiative processes of a contiguous participating media, i.e. atmospheric molecules, render ideal black body LWIR from the surface impossible. The 396 W/m^2 upwelling from the surface is a “what if” theoretical calculation without physical reality. (refer to: TFK_bams09)
Greenhouse theory has it wrong.
Without the 396 W/m^2 upwelling there is no 333 W/m^2 GHG energy up/down/”back” loop to “warm” the earth. (refer to: TFK_bams09)
Greenhouse theory has it wrong.
Man caused climate change is negated by these three points. Hysterical speculations over sea levels, ice caps, glaciers, extreme weather, etc. are irrelevant noise.
Zero greenhouse effect, Zero CO2 global warming and Zero man caused climate change.
Geoengineering
One popular geoengineering strategy proposed for countering imaginary global warming/climate change is through reducing net solar heating by increasing the earth’s albedo.
This increase is accomplished by various physical methods, e.g. injecting reflective aerosols into the atmosphere, spraying water vapor into the air to enhance marine cloud brightening, spreading shiny glass spheres around the poles with the goal of more reflection thereby reducing the net amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere and surface and cooling the earth.
More albedo and the earth cools.
Less albedo and the earth warms.
No atmosphere means no water vapor or clouds, ice, snow, vegetation, oceans and near zero albedo and much like the moon the earth bakes in that 394 K, 121 C, 250 F solar wind.
These geoengineering plans rely on the atmosphere cooling the earth thereby exposing the error of greenhouse theory which says the atmosphere warms the earth and with no atmosphere the earth becomes a -430 F frozen ball of ice.
Zero greenhouse effect, Zero CO2 global warming and Zero man caused climate change.
Space – the Hotter Frontier
One of the heated issues underlying greenhouse theory is whether space is hot or cold.
Greenhouse theory says that without an atmosphere the earth would be exposed to a near zero outer space and become a frozen ice ball at -430 F, 17 K.
Geoengineering techniques that increase the albedo, the ISS’s ammonia refrigerant air conditioners, an air conditioner in the manned maneuvering unit, space suits including thermal underwear with chilled water tubing, UCLA Diviner lunar data and Kramm’s models (Univ of AK) all provide substantial evidence that outer space is relatively hot.
But outer space is neither hot nor cold.
By definition and application temperature is a relative measurement of the molecular kinetic energy in a substance, i.e. solid, liquid, gas. No molecules (vacuum), no temperature. No kinetic energy (absolute zero), no temperature. In the void & vacuum of outer space the terms temperature, hot, cold are meaningless, like dividing by zero, undefined. Same reason there is no sound in space – no molecules.
However, any substance capable of molecular kinetic energy (ISS, space walker, satellite, moon, earth) placed in the path of the spherical expanding solar photon gas at the earth’s average orbital distance will be heated per the S-B equation to an equilibrium temperature of: 1,368 W/m^2 = 394 K, 121 C, 250 F.
Like a blanket held up between a camper and campfire the atmosphere reduces the amount of solar energy heating the terrestrial system and cools the earth compared to no atmosphere.
This intuitively obvious as well as calculated and measured scientific reality refutes the greenhouse theory.
Zero greenhouse effect, Zero CO2 global warming and Zero man caused climate change.
Conclusion
Since the earth is actually hotter without an atmosphere, radiative greenhouse effect goes straight into the historical trash bin of failed theories and all the handwavium, pseudo-science, thermodynamic nonsense pretending to explain it follows close behind.
If my anti-theorem is incorrect why so and how so, bring science.
If my anti-theorem is correct contemplate the consequences.
Nick Schroeder, BSME CU ’78, CO PE 22774