Weather 101 '" Climate Change Updated

On December 7, 2009, 68 years after Pearl Harbor, known as the "Day of Infamy," the global environmental community and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have created another such tragic event. Marking the start of a global conference on climate change (determined to create a global environmental government), environmentalists poured into Copenhagen, Denmark to push for controls on the emission of greenhouse gases, even in the face of a growing scandal that casts dispersions onto the very basis of their climatic change claims. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA declares greenhouse gases as "terrorists" and will be regulating them because they are harmful. As my wife noted again today, "it's truly arrogant to think that we humans are more powerful than the forces of nature."

Hence, December 7, 2009 must now be remembered as a "Day of Environmental Infamy."

For years, I have noted that if the EPA was ever fully successful in banning everything they wanted to in the Earth's atmosphere, Earth would become a dead planet. I am in favor of controlling/limiting serious emissions, but without some pollutants and especially without greenhouse gases (like water vapor and carbon dioxide) our entire planetary hydrologic and biological system would collapse.

Long-term Climatic Considerations

First, consider Earth itself. Our planet basks in average temperature of around 59 degrees Fahrenheit. In the geologic past (millions and billions of years), there have been variations of plus and minus a few degrees. This is a far cry from the types of variations seen on a daily basis on planets with limited or non-existent greenhouse gas atmospheres. These greenhouse gases act like a blanket around our planet, keeping in warmth, yet still allowing excess heat to escape. And even when temporarily out of balance in the past, the atmospheric system managed to get itself back into synch. Hence, ice ages have come and gone, carbon dioxide levels have changed and places have transformed from desert to forest and back again. Let's face it...coal fields evolve from large amounts of decaying forest matter. So, once upon a time places like Pennsylvania and Montana had to have had lush forests that were then covered over by rock and soil. Oil fields develop from decaying marine matter. Surely, Alaska and the Middle Eastern deserts once had to have been oceans.

Within this scope of normal global change (climate, landforms, ocean currents, sea level rise and fall, glacial advance and retreat, atmospheric composition, vegetation and more), our planet has evolved. Carbon dioxide levels (and variations in atmospheric dust and other gases), whether up or down, have kept our temperatures within bounds and supported a living planet.

Even with the latest data that show growing carbon dioxide levels, hurricane frequency has dropped off dramatically from its unusually high levels a few years ago; temperatures have not warmed much, if at all, in the past 10 years, and ice in polar regions is showing signs of growing (at least in some locales). And most recently, some Colorado ski resorts opened the earliest they have in 40 years and Houston Texas received its earliest "ever" snowfall. As I write this article, temperatures across much of the western and north central U. S. are about 25 to 35 degrees below average and a major winter storm (with local blizzard conditions) is expected across a wide swath from southern California into the Great Lakes. This is highly unusual for so early in December and comes after a very cold October (and a warmer than average November). Yet, the environmental community has noted that these events are "aberrations." Couldn't the spike in hurricane frequency in 2004 and 2005 have been its own aberration? What about the warm spell from 1980 to 2005? Couldn't all of these just be part of normal weather and climate variability?

In The Shorter Term

The two aforementioned snow events (and other similar media reports) seem to almost key on the word "ever" when they mean in the last 50 to 100 years or so. After all, weather records have only been kept officially for a few hundred years or so in most places. And with technological changes and issues with siting urban thermometers, the most recent data collection does match with previous records both in accuracy and location.

A thousand years ago, Greenland was 'green." Then glaciers advanced. England lost its wineries and settlers in Greenland went elsewhere. Now the ice is melting. Several tens of thousands of years ago, glaciers advanced across North America. This lowered sea levels dramatically, allowed for a land bridge between North America and Asia, dramatically widened the Florida peninsula and more. Now, as with the ebb and flow of tides, water levels have risen.

These changes have been going on for millennia before factories and cars started spewing forth villainous carbon dioxide.

What's Changed Recently?

What has changed our atmospheric composition is not so much the increased amount of carbon dioxide we have poured into the atmosphere, but rather what we have done to systems that remove it. In some places (e.g., Madagascar, Brazil, urban centers in the U.S., China) forest areas have been removed and / or controlled such that fires and insects destroy whole stands of trees. Replanting forests would go a long way toward curtailing carbon dioxide growth in the skies. So, too, would the more extensive use of renewable fuels like wind and solar power. But these are still costly and require subsidies at some level to make them affordable.

Further, during the past 100 years, while carbon dioxide levels have grown, it is not only cars and factories that have grown in numbers. Actually, the graph of global population can almost be superimposed atop the graph of global temperature change. If the population growth is the real cause of recent climate change, then shouldn't we control or roll back population to pre-1900 levels? I'm not advocating this as policy; I'm merely making an exaggerated point.

The Water Cycle

Next comes the water cycle. Without water vapor in the atmosphere, or with lesser, controlled amounts, an unintended consequence could involve reduced precipitation. There might also be less cloud cover or fewer thunderstorms. And, the temperature control mechanism or atmospheric thermostat we rely on could be altered beyond what we view as normal geological limits. The atmospheric electricity balance could be disrupted, as well, leading to unintended consequences in our planet's ability to fend of attacks of highly charged particles from the Sun.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (and the resulting slightly acidic rainfall) is bad for some plants and good for others. But carbon dioxide is not the major acid rainfall maker. It is the other gases that EPA has tried to regulate for years and is still not successful at. Part of this is because all of the pollutants that affect skies over the U.S. don't come from the U.S. So even if the EPA regulates our emissions and large parts of the rest of the world don't do the same, we have not accomplished much.

And what will the EPA do when a volcano sends a massive pollution cloud (dust, ash and toxic gases) into the atmosphere? Will they fine the volcano? Or force it closed to keep in the gases? Maybe they'll fine the Nation that is home to the volcano!

How will the EPA keep each and every one of us from polluting with our own carbon dioxide, water vapor and occasional methane emissions? We will be arrested and/or fined as polluters just for doing what comes naturally?

Consider this situation. You have been involved in a serious accident. You require 40 stitches to prevent death by bleeding. Your U.S. doctor agrees to provide 5 to 10 these, while several other international doctors deliver another 5 to 10. You are now still dead.

But if the other doctors are waiting for U.S. doctors to provide them the supplies for the needed surgery, then why can't the U.S. doctors just do the surgery themselves?

It Comes With Strings

My point is that if other countries want the U.S. and other industrialized nations to bail them out of their so-called climatic polluting mess and the possible, yet unproven impacts of climate change, then why don't we just go into their countries and take over their industrial base and modernize it? Just as with TARP funding, governmental handouts come with (or should come with) strings.

There is much scientific evidence that suggests that climate change is a natural, ongoing process and that forces far beyond those of mortal men and women are at work. Even if Senator Barbara Boxer of California thinks otherwise, scores of climate experts have written to the Secretary-General of the United Nations voicing their concern about rushing into regulations and controls that could be both unnecessary and harmful. Sunspot cycles, plate tectonics, volcanic eruptions, El Nino events, ocean current variations and more all play a part. Yet, those who espouse the evils of human-caused climate change gloss over these in favor of a one-cause rationale. The atmospheric-oceanic-geologic system known as Earth is far more complex than having one causal agent.

Moving Ahead Logically

So, with "Climategate" now allowing for more discourse than in years and with the recognition that all data, from all sources, has to be shared and evaluated openly, we must move the true scientific process forward. This process, much like a courtroom, requires that full disclosure be provided to all sides during a "discovery" process; otherwise the evidence can be removed from consideration in trial. In the current setting, whether data used in preparing the IPCC Reports is tainted or not, it has the perception of being tainted. Only by making all data public and debating scientific results on merit will we know the truth about climate change and its causal agents.

Meanwhile, there is no reason that companies, businesses and governments at all levels and around the world can't take reasonable and cost-effective actions locally. There's no reason that individuals can't act locally, as well. These actions don't have to involve wholesale controls, regulations and / or taxes. They can involve economic incentives, improved technologies and even some creative thinking. Planting a few extra trees in the process for carbon dioxide capture, shade, thermal regulation and homes for birds and other animals can't hurt.