Climate change reflects CO2 imbalance
Roger Cohen’s piece on “Climategate” (Herald, Dec. 9) miss-ed some key details. Serious scientists recognize the roles of both human-released atmospheric carbon dioxide and other natural phenomena on global temperatures.
Deniers who suggest the contrary, or who make uninformed claims over the recent decade’s temperatures, generate interesting sound bites and misinformation, but nothing more. Global temperatures result from a delicate balance between enormous heat radiated to Earth from the sun, counterbalanced with what Earth reflects back plus what it radiates into space.
CO2 reduces Earth’s radiation into space and disrupts that balance. Minute imbalances have profound long-term affects. The sun blasts Earth with, on average, 350 watts per square meter – pole-to-pole, day and night, summer and winter, 24/7. Without reflecting back 100 w/m2 and radiating 250 w/m2, average over the entire Earth, we would rapidly become a crematorium.
This precise balance controls our temperature.
Balance two 300-pound linebackers on a teeter-totter and nothing moves. Hand one a six-pack of beer, and he drops to the ground. Debating whether the 300-pound football player or the 5-pound six-pack caused the drop is ludicrous – which is the very logic used by deniers debating whether human-caused CO2 or natural phenomena cause global warming.
That humans increase atmospheric CO2 levels is beyond debate. At issue is the effect of CO2 on global temperatures. The correlation between global mean temperatures and atmospheric CO2 during the last 50 years is a stunning 79 percent. That means 79 percent of the variance in temperature is explained by CO2 level alone, the other 21 percent by all other causes combined.
It doesn’t matter if you use the temperature data from the much-maligned Hadley CRU, from NOAA or NASA. The relationship is 1 degree Celsius per 100 parts per million of CO2.
I wholly support Cohen’s suggestion to “follow the money.” Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobile most recently reported combined revenues of $1.2 trillion, with net earnings before taxes of $141 billion. Oil lobbyists received $125 million to discredit global warming science. It reminds one of big tobacco’s earlier denials of a link between smoking and lung cancer.
Gerald Baumann, Durango Editor’s note: Gerald Baumann holds a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering specializing in heat transfer and thermal science.
