Bumpy Warming
Christians and other science deniers claim that because global temperatures do not rise smoothly, then CO₂ warming must be a hoax. They forget that there are many factors combine to influence temperatures:
- The sun cycles every 11 years hotter and colder.
- Pollution blocks the sun, causing cooling.
- El Nino ocean current cycles hotter and colder every 2 to 9 years.
- Most of the heat is stored in the oceans. Just a tiny fraction of it is in the atmosphere. Heat is transferred back and forth.
- Ocean currents move heat around the earth. The current paths change.
As of 2015, there are a number of temporary cooling effects in progress. However, we are still experiencing the hottest year ever from the CO₂ effects.
Is CO₂ the Real Culprit?
How do we know it is CO₂ causing the warming?
- Svante Arrhenius (1859-02-19 1927-10-02 age:68) (the Swedish chemist who discovered ions) discovered the greenhouse effect way back in 1896. We have had over a century to test his formula.
- We have been able to check back 500,000 years. We find CO₂ is well correlated with temperature.
- We can measure the greenhouse effect with extreme precision in the lab.
- There is no competing hypothesis.
How Do We Know Humans Are To Blame?
How do we know it is us humans creating the CO₂ not volcanoes or some other source?
- We have the receipts. We know how much coal, oil, gasoline… each country burned each year. We know how much CO₂ is emitted for each kg of each type of fuel you burn. So we know with great precision the amount of CO₂ the world releases in each year.
- We can measure the of CO₂ in the air each year and calculate the increase. We can compute the rise unaccounted for by human activity. It is quite small.
- We also know the CO₂ is coming mainly from fossil fuels because fossil fuels and volcanoes emit a
different proportion of C₁₂ and C₁₃.
How we know volcanoes are NOT the source of rising CO2
- We can look at the 500,000 year history of CO₂ The levels took off explosively with the industrial revolution.
- There are a number of greenhouse gases, some, such as methane even more potent than CO₂. We have accurately measured the concentration of each type of gas in the atmosphere and its greenhouse gas power. CO₂ is by far the most important, Not surprisingly, it is the gas we release most often, since it is released any time we burn pretty well any fuel. We humans burn fuel on a massive scale. Burning is our favourite chemical reaction.