Global Warming Is Real

(Even if the Term “Greenhouse” Is Bogus)

By John Winders
Note to my readers:
You can access and download this essay and my other essays through the Amateur
Scientist Essays website under Direct Downloads at the following URL:

https://sites.google.com/site/amateurscientistessays/

You are free to download and share all of my essays without any restrictions, although it
would be very nice to credit my work when quoting directly from them.
Note: The picture on the cover is a radar image of Venus, where the atmosphere is really thick and
the air quality is bad. Venusian global warming causes surface temperatures to hover near 460º C.
There have been debates lately over the issues of evolution vs creationism, and climate change vs
climate change denial. Actually, these have ceased being debates at all and have become heated
altercations instead, fueled by religious and political differences. I'm not getting into the evolution
debate here – I've already touched on that subject in another essay, Order, Chaos, and the End of
Reductionism. Much of the blame for the lack of consensus concerning climate change can be
placed on the scientific community for not presenting their arguments in a clear, coherent manner.
In fact, even some members of the scientific community itself are among the “climate deniers” who
are not convinced that global warming is being caused by human activity, specifically by adding
CO2 to the atmosphere. Truth be told, I wasn't convinced either until I thought the process through
based on sound physical principles – not some silly story about greenhouses.
Climate change is usually explained as having something to do with the so-called “greenhouse
effect.” Everyone knows that a greenhouse is warmer on the inside than it is on the outside. This is
supposedly because glass reflects infrared. According to the popular myth, visible light streams into
the greenhouse and is absorbed by the plants, soil, or whatever is inside, heating them up. Those
hot objects radiate infrared towards the glass, which reflects it back again, trapping the heat inside.
Unfortunately for the composers of this fantasy, ordinary glass doesn't reflect infrared any more
than it reflects visible light. If you hold a glass milk bottle in front of an IR TV remote control, it
works just fine. Air inside a greenhouse heats up due to sunlight, of course; but the only thing the
glass does is to prevent the air inside from mixing with the cooler ambient air outside. And even if
glass really did reflect IR, that still wouldn't explain global warming. Gases don't reflect IR (or
light either); gases only transmit or absorb it. Here's how I finally constructed my own simple step-
by-step explanation of the process, thereby convincing myself that global warming is real.
Suppose for a moment that the Earth's atmosphere were composed entirely of non-“greenhouse”
gases. Sunlight consists of infrared, visible, and ultraviolet wavelengths. Much of the ultraviolet is
absorbed by the ozone layer and re-radiated at longer wavelengths while most of the infrared comes
straight through the clouds and smog. Clouds reflect some of the visible light back into space; some
of it is absorbed by the clouds and is re-radiated as infrared. A good portion of visible light reaches
the surface where some of it is reflected; but most of it is absorbed by the surface.
Now all of this sounds very confusing, with sunlight changing directions, being absorbed and re-
radiated at different wavelengths, etc. But I'm only interested in the changes that take place when
we substitute an IR-absorbing atmosphere for the non-absorbing atmosphere. Let's concentrate only
on the visible light absorbed by the Earth's surface. We can think of this light as a constant source
of heat at the Earth's surface. At this point, we've totally accounted for the Sun, so we can now
remove it from the picture entirely and just think of the Earth as a giant spherical heating pad
suspended in space. If the temperature is to remain steady, then the Earth must somehow get rid of
every watt of heat generated at its surface; otherwise, the temperature will keep going up.
Now, the only way the Earth can get rid of this heat is by radiating it away (there's no conduction or
convection in empty space). The formula for radiative heat loss is the following.
q = ε σ T4 A
Here, q is the heat that needs to be radiated away in watts, T is the absolute temperature in ºK, A is
the surface area of the surface doing the radiating in m2, and σ is the Stefan-Boltzmann constant,
which we don't need to worry about for now.1 The factor, ε, is the emissivity of the surface, which
can vary between zero and one.2 The bulk of the radiation would be at infrared wavelengths.
Again, the actual values aren't important; the main thing is that the heat radiated is proportional to
the fourth power of the absolute temperature, assuming there is no impediment to radiation leaving
the surface and traveling all the way out into space.
1 Okay, it's equal to 5.6703 ×10-8 (W/m2K4) if you really have to know.
2 Strictly speaking, ε varies according to wavelengths. If the Earth were perfectly black, ε would equal one.
We can solve for the surface temperature of the spherical heating pad: T = 4√ q/( ε σ A)
If we work out the numbers, plugging in actual values for q, ε, and so forth, we would find that the
average temperature is around 273 ºK, which is the freezing point of water. That would be the
Earth's surface temperature if all the infrared radiation from the surface went right out into space.
Now, let's surround the Earth with an infrared-absorbing atmosphere. Common gases that absorb
infrared include water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and
ozone (O3). There isn't much N2O around, so we don't need to worry too much about that. Most of
the O3 exists as a thin layer in the upper atmosphere, where it blocks harmful ultraviolet rays, and
that's a good thing. CH4 is the main component of natural gas, and it is also emitted by cows, sheep,
and other farm animals, as well as termites. Even though CH4 is a pretty powerful IR absorber, it's
not found in large concentrations. Besides, as long as there are cows, sheep, and termites, it's pretty
much unavoidable. H2O is also a strong IR absorber, but its presence in the atmosphere is
absolutely necessary; otherwise, it would never rain. This leaves CO2. There's about 390 ppm
(parts per million) of CO2 in the atmosphere right now, and it's going up every year. Plants use CO2
and H2O in photosynthesis, but they can get along just fine with a lot less than 390 ppm. Bad things
start to happen to the climate when CO2 exceeds that level, and humans are mainly responsible for
this by setting fire to everything we can get our hands on.
What happens IR-absorbing gases are included in our Earth model? Well, the nice, neat equation
for radiative heat loss no longer applies. That's because the infrared photons being emitted at the
surface can't zoom off into space. They get absorbed instead, and they don't go very far before that
happens. So in effect, we've placed a blanket around the earth. Now don't get me wrong; the heat
still escapes. But it escapes in a different manner than before. Instead of the IR photons zooming
straight into space, they bounce around between the IR-absorbing molecules. This process looks a
lot more like heat conduction instead of radiation. Slowly, the IR photons migrate upward into the
atmosphere until the air finally thins out to the point where the average distance between absorbing
molecules becomes large. Then, and only then, can the IR photons zoom off into space.3
The same slow process of photon migration also takes place inside the Sun. It takes millions of
years for a photon generated in the Sun's core by nuclear fusion to bounce around and finally make
it to the Sun's “surface.” That “surface” – the photosphere – is actually an optical illusion: it's
simply the region where the gas density drops low enough for visible light photons to escape into
space instead of being absorbed by plasma particles in the Sun's atmosphere. Likewise, the Earth's
IR-absorbing “blanket” would also appear to have an infrared “surface” where IR photons escape.
The average temperature of this “surface” would be around the same 273 ºK that we calculated
earlier as the temperature needed to radiate q watts of heat into space.4
There must be a temperature gradient through the atmosphere in order for IR photons to migrate
outward; otherwise, they would just bounce around instead of migrating. So if the temperature of
the radiating “surface” in the upper atmosphere is 273 ºK, the temperature at ground level must be
greater than 273 ºK. That, my friends, is global warming in a nutshell. It has nothing to do with
greenhouses, glass, or reflection. It's simply a matter of changing the mode of heat transport from
purely radiative (very efficient) to a combination of conduction through the atmosphere (not very
efficient) followed by radiation near the top of the atmosphere, while maintaining the same amount
of heat, q, dumped onto the surface by visible light from the Sun. The less efficient heat transport
by conduction creates a temperature gradient through the atmosphere, making the region near the
Earth's surface hotter than it would be without any “greenhouse effect.” Humans are causing
atmospheric temperatures to rise by discharging CO2 into it. Are you convinced now?

3 This assumes there are no other heat transport mechanisms, such as convection. It also assumes the “blanket”
effectively stops all IR photons from making it from the Earth's surface into space in one shot. In reality (and
fortunately for the planet), the “blanket” has some “holes” in it. But the blanket story line more or less accurately
depicts differences between an Earth with a “greenhouse” atmosphere and an Earth without one.
4 Actually, it wouldn't quite be the same because the “surface” area, A, of the atmosphere would be slightly larger
than the Earth's surface below, and the ε of the atmosphere would be different than the ε of the Earth's surface.
Will Global Warming Lead to a Total Ecological Disaster?
Now that we're convinced that global warming is real and that human beings are causing it, the
question is whether we need to drastically alter our lifestyles by enacting draconian laws that
severely curb the release of IR-absorbing gas into the atmosphere.5 To answer that question, we
need to quantify the effect of global warming and work out the consequences. We know for sure
that IR-absorbing gas increases the temperature gradient through the atmosphere, making the
surface temperatures warmer than they would be otherwise. But how much? I'm afraid the
computer models climatologists have at their disposal aren't terribly accurate in that regard. The
reason is simple: weather is chaotic. The effect of throwing a thermal “blanket” over the Earth's
surface just doesn't take into account all of the complex dynamical processes that make a climate.
The bulk of our weather serves one purpose: to take heat the Sun deposits near the equator and
move it to the poles, thereby increasing the effective surface area to radiate heat into space. The
water cycle is an extremely efficient way to do this. Water evaporates from the tropical oceans in
prodigious quantities, and this removes huge amounts of heat. The water vapor is transported to
temperate and polar zones where it condenses and falls as rain and snow, releasing heat into the
upper latitudes. Hurricanes account for a good portion of the heat conveyor effect. So as more heat
is trapped in the atmosphere, nature ramps up the heat transfer process. Result: more hurricanes
and violent weather, and warmer temperatures especially in the higher latitudes.
Now warmer weather in higher latitudes melts the ice caps, which is a bad thing in the short run.
For one thing, it could make polar bears and possibly other arctic mammals extinct – unless, of
course, these animals can adapt by not walking around on ice. For another thing, when all that ice
melts, it will raise ocean levels by a lot. This will make places like Florida and New Jersey much
less desirable, as they will be mostly under water. But the Earth has existed without any polar ice
caps for much of its long history, so this isn't really anything new. Remember, we're currently in an
ice age period, but who's to say that living in an ice age with polar ice caps is “normal”? About 635
million years ago, there was a period known as “snowball Earth.” At that time, the polar ice caps
extended in both directions all the way to the equator. Scientists aren't sure, but they think that all
of the Earth's land mass was concentrated in one place, which messed up ocean currents and
weather patterns. That was not a very good situation for life on Earth, even for polar bears. At any
rate, I think most people would prefer a little global warming over the global snowball option.
Looking at the big picture, global warming may not be so bad. Much of the Earth's land mass is
currently uninhabitable simply because it's too darned cold. Remember that although global
warming raises temperatures overall, most of the warming effect will be in the polar regions as the
Earth's heat conveyor belt speeds up. So even if Kansas becomes a desert, the vast region of Siberia
could become a bread basket, thereby increasing the amount of food available to humans compared
to now. Of course all of this is highly speculative, which is why most people prefer the status quo.
There are just too many unknowns, like the possibility of fresh water from melting polar ice
shutting down the Gulf Stream's heat conveyor and turning Great Britain into an arctic wasteland.
One thing is for sure: the Earth will not turn into Venus. First, Venus' atmosphere has a pressure
about 90 times greater than Earth's and it's composed mostly of CO2. Second, it has no oceans to
move heat around. Third, Venus is about 30% closer to the Sun, so it gets twice as much sunlight as
Earth. Finally, something melted much of Venus' surface not long ago, so there seems to be a lot of
thermal activity going on. Should we be concerned about global warming and try to limit the
amount of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere? I'd say yes, because it's better to err on the safe side.
Plus, our fuel is running out and we're going to have to change eventually, so why not start now?

5 Burning hydrocarbon fuels is self-limiting, for the simple reason that we're running out of hydrocarbons. However,
mankind's love affair with the internal-combustion engine runs deep. So as we run out of oil, we've started burning
our food supply to power our cars. Not directly, of course, but we're turning corn into ethanol fuel, which is
basically the same thing as burning corn. The problem is that the energy a gallon of ethanol produces in a car's
engine is less than the energy (mainly from hydrocarbons) it takes to manufacture a gallon of ethanol from corn.
Somebody ought to clue Congress in on that fact to make them stop creating subsidies for turning corn into fuel.
 Appendix A – Deepest Humiliation: Voodoo Chemistry in the Ozone Layer

There's a great example of how the scientific community discredits itself with outlandish theories
that turn out to be fraudulent. It's no wonder that the general public is skeptical of science. I'm
referring to the great CFC scare. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are compounds that were used in
refrigeration and as propellants through the latter part of the 20th century. Then someone noticed
there were “holes” in the protective ozone layer, which screens out harmful ultraviolet (U/V) rays
from the Sun, which got CFCs banned. Here's how normal ozone chemistry works:
Oxygen (O2) is a stable compound, although it can be broken apart into individual oxygen atoms by
electric arcs and U/V light. The free oxygen atoms tend to recombine back into O2, but one
occasionally reacts with an O2 molecule to form ozone (O3). These reactions are as follows.
O2 + U/V → 2O
O2 + O → O3
Ozone gives off the pungent odor you smell around electrical motors and sunlamps. It's pretty
corrosive and a relatively unstable compound that tends to decompose back into ordinary oxygen
molecules. At sea level, O3 is considered a pollutant because it causes respiratory problems among
humans, but it's welcome in the upper atmosphere where it acts as a natural sunscreen.
When the chemists found out about the ozone “holes” they panicked. They put together computer
models that told them that the chlorofluorocarbons were wreaking havoc in the ozone layer by
eating up the ozone. When CFCs leak out of air conditioning units or are sprayed from spray cans,
they migrate upward into the atmosphere. There they encounter U/V rays which break the CFC
molecules apart and release single chlorine atoms. Now single chlorine atoms are generally not
found in nature because they readily attach themselves to other atoms and molecules to form
compounds. But according to the chemists' computer models, these lone chlorine atoms break the
ozone molecules apart and form molecular oxygen plus a strange oxide of chlorine:6
2Cl + 2O3 → 2ClO + 2O2
This compound then supposedly reacts with the single oxygen atoms in the ozone layer to form
another oxygen molecule and resurrect the original lone chlorine atom:
2ClO + 2O → 2Cl + 2O2 (where O atoms are consumed and then replenished by U/V splitting O2)
Conveniently, the second “reaction” allows the same rogue chlorine atom to be recycled over and
over again, destroying all ozone in its wake. The overall reaction is ozone depletion:
2O3 → 3O2 (where Cl atoms and stray O atoms act as “catalysts”)
The problem with this scenario is that the “catalyst” is acting in only one direction: destroying
ozone. But catalysts aren't “one way.” They can speed up or slow down reactions, but they do not
shift the equilibrium of two-way reactions. The overall 2O3 ↔ 3O2 reaction is actually a two-way
reaction in the presence of U/V light. There is an equilibrium between the reactant on one side of
the chemical equation (O3) and the reactant on the other side (O2). The only way this equilibrium
can be shifted is by changing the relative concentrations of the reactants or the U/V intensity. A
catalyst can't do that; the reason is because this would violate of the second law of thermodynamics,
as I will soon demonstrate. Therefore, the ozone-depleting model is simply “voodoo chemistry.”
I will now describe how this “voodoo chemistry” could be used to make a perpetual-motion
machine that violates the second law of thermodynamics. The figure on the next page illustrates a
transparent container bathed in ambient U/V light. A semi-permeable membrane (the dotted line)
separates the container in to two chambers. This membrane is permeable to oxygen atoms, oxygen

6 Unfortunately, ClO is not one of the compounds of chlorine and oxygen found in nature. Real compounds are
Cl3O, ClO2, Cl2O6, Cl2O7, and Cl2O8, but not ClO. That's only the beginning of the problems with this model.
molecules and ozone, but not chlorine atoms or any chloride compounds.7

Oxygen atoms are depicted as blue circles, with oxygen molecules and ozone molecules shown as
double and triple blue circles, respectively. The chamber on the right converts oxygen molecules
into oxygen atoms under U/V light, which combine with oxygen molecules to form ozone. The
chamber on the left contains the evil chlorine atoms, shown as red circles. Now, according to the
ozone-depletion theory, the O3 molecules on the left are eaten by the Cl atoms forming O2 and ClO,
which quickly becomes Cl and O2. This results in an overabundance of O3 on the right and an
overabundance of O2 on the left, causing O2 to diffuse from left to right and O3 to diffuse from right
to left through the semipermeable membrane.
The ozone breakdown reaction in the left chamber: 2O3 → 3O2 + ΔEL
The ozone formation reaction in the right chamber: 2O + 2O2 + ΔER → 2O3
The energy ΔEL is greater than ΔER, and the difference, ΔEU/V, is the U/V energy required to split O2
apart: O2 + ΔEU/V → 2O. The ΔEL that is released elevates the temperature of the left chamber
above the temperature of the right chamber, and we could then use the temperature difference to
operate a Carnot-cycle heat engine. The overall result is a “1T engine” that absorbs ambient energy,
ΔEU/V, and converts it directly into work without discharging any heat into the environment.
Over many decades, patent examiners have been amused by a parade of would-be inventors of
perpetual motion machines employing faulty designs like this one based on a “1T heat engine.” All
of them violate the second law of thermodynamics, and this is what the renowned astrophysicist
Arthur Eddington had to say about such things:
“The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of
7 Although this is just a “thought experiment,” selective semi-permeable membranes are perfectly legitimate and
violate no physical laws. Such membranes are routinely employed in chemical laboratories and in chemical
engineering applications.
Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with
Maxwell's equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be
contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your
theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is
nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
I used no sleight of hand in this thought experiment: both chambers are bathed in the same amount
of ambient U/V light, so there is no energy being directed into one chamber or out of the other
chamber from the outside. The internal “voodoo chemistry” creates a self-sustaining temperature
difference enabling a “1T engine” that violates the second law of thermodynamics, so there is
nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation
I think it's so unfortunate that the ozone scare persuaded governments around the world to ban
chlorofluorocarbons outright. In the process, entire industries were created and destroyed, and
billions of dollars were spent in remediating a problem that may not exist. “Holes” in the ozone
layer are natural events that occur annually, mainly in the extreme northern and southern latitudes.
It just so happens that sunlight is diminished significantly during the winter months.8 This causes a
drop in U/V, allowing unstable ozone to return to being stable oxygen: 2O3 → 3O2. That's right: in
the absence of sunlight, unstable ozone changes back into stable oxygen. What a surprise. And
guess what? That produces “holes” in the ozone layer above the arctic circle and below the
antarctic circle. Every year. With or without chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere.
During the ozone panic, most of these holes were found below the antarctic circle. This caused
quite a bit of consternation in Australia and New Zealand. It always seemed kind of strange to me
that those holes were reported to occur mainly in the southern hemisphere, whereas most of the
chlorofluorocarbons were being released in the northern hemisphere (where the majority of people
live and most industrial activity takes place). It also seemed strange that there were no holes in the
tropics, where most of the sunlight falls on the Earth (and where you really need the ozone for U/V
protection). Finally, I was mystified why nobody was bothering to actually measure U/V radiation
levels at ground level in populated areas where excessive U/V exposures would be a problem, and
then compare those UV data to measurements taken before chlorofluorocarbons were invented.
They just looked for holes in the ozone layer and found them in the southern hemisphere in the
wintertime when there is very little sunlight (and very little U/V exposure to worry about).
The whole principle behind this strange chemistry depends on recycling evil chlorine atoms over
and over, which act as one-way catalysts that break apart ozone.9 The chemistry I was taught in
engineering school says reactive chemicals always try to form stable compounds. Those
hypothetical ozone-eating chlorine atoms, which are highly reactive in isolation, should form stable
compounds with oxygen – and not keep going back to unstable chlorine atoms. Any genuine
process would be self-limiting, and whatever ozone was actually consumed would be quickly
replenished by UV. But of course that would not generate sufficient panic to ban a whole family of
chemicals, forcing everyone to retrofit their air-conditioning units with “enviro-friendly” ones.
Well in retrospect, it seems that the whole ozone thing seems to have been a big misunderstanding.
The data collected throughout the panic period have turned out to be rather suspect, and may have
been fudged a bit by people trying to further their careers as “voodoo chemists.” Recent
measurements seem to contradict the earlier data, as pointed out in a book by Rogelio Maduro.
There are many naysayers and climate deniers who are just plain wrong; so it's very easy to write
off people like Maduro and me as “crackpots.” But you just can't make up a theory with non-
existent one-way catalysts without an engineer like me calling you out. The real tragedy as I see it
is that whenever a group of scientists say the sky is falling, it seems that the rest of the scientific
community gets right on board with them without doing much critical analysis – scientific group
think. Over time, this discredits science and turns the general public into anti-science skeptics.

8 Well, duh. That's why there's winter.

9 As I stated earlier, one-way catalysts do not exist. It would have been nice if legitimate chemists had pointed this
out, or if physicists and engineers would have realized that such a thing violates the second law of thermodynamics.
 Appendix B – Gaia Is in for the Long Haul

Okay, so I agree that global warming is currently happening and that human activity is largely
responsible for this (lest anyone accuse me of being a climate change denier10). And for the record,
I agree that changing the climate could have disastrous effects on life on Earth, so maybe it's best
not to play around with it. It is also true that levels of CO2 are at “historically high levels” in terms
of human history. But what about in terms of the Earth's history?
I just finished reading an excellent book, “The Life and Death of Planet Earth” by Peter Ward and
Donald Brownlee. In it, the authors traced CO2 levels starting right before the Cambrian Explosion,
some 540 million years ago, up to the present time. Those early levels were approximately 15 to 20
times higher than the current “historically high level” of 390 ppm. That was a good thing too,
because the Sun was measurably dimmer back then, so if it weren't for all that CO2 , the earth would
have been covered with ice and there would have been no life and no Cambrian Explosion.
Then a funny thing happened around 400 million years ago. The CO2 levels started to drop
precipitously. This was due to two factors. The first factor is that vegetation finally made it to dry
land. Plants removed carbon from the air and sequestered it as dead vegetation, which was buried
underground and eventually became coal and oil deposits. The reason why this occurred is because
all that dead vegetation could not decay and release CO2 back into the atmosphere, given the fact
that the microbes which eat dead vegetation hadn't made it to dry land yet.
The second factor is that carbon from CO2 is sequestered in limestone,11 which gets cycled into the
Earth's mantle in subduction zones due to plate tectonics. Unless CO2 is released from volcanoes, it
stays trapped in the mantle, so the Earth would eventually absorb all the CO2 from the atmosphere.
The recent reduction in CO2 levels is generally a good thing, because the Sun is getting measurably
brighter and there would be a so-called runaway “greenhouse effect” were it not for plants and the
Earth itself scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere. It seems that life invents ways of regulating the
Earth's environment to suit its own needs, turning the Earth itself into a living organism. This is
referred to as the Gaia Effect, the details of which I'm not getting into here; however, there is one
side effect of lowering the CO2 levels: We are currently living in an Ice Age.
Every 100,000 years or so over the past 2.5 million years, we've had glacial periods where much of
the water in the atmosphere freezes out as glaciers. This produces positive feedback. Water vapor
is a very potent IR absorber – much more so than CO2 – so removing that particular so-called
“greenhouse gas” from the air greatly reduces temperatures in the lower atmosphere. Also, glacial
ice reflects sunlight, which further reduces temperatures. That is why glaciation lasts a long time.
Exactly what triggers these events and what causes them to end is a mystery, but it may have
something to do with the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit and the precession of its axis of rotation.
Anyways, glaciation is very bad news for the human race, and it's very doubtful that civilization as
we know it could survive another round of it. Interestingly, without humans dumping CO2 into the
atmosphere, the Earth would right now be poised on the precipice of another glacial cycle, which
could start within the next couple thousand years. So maybe, just maybe, we're doing this
(unconsciously of course) as a way to postpone or prevent the next round of glaciation; i.e., we're
acting out in a Gaia-like fashion to maintain a warm climate that best suits human needs.
By the way, left to its own devices, the Earth would absorb virtually all of the CO2 in the
atmosphere in a few hundred million years by converting it into limestone and burying it in the
mantle through plate tectonics. Once the CO2 levels drop below 150 ppm, plant photosynthesis
becomes difficult. Below 10 ppm, photosynthesis stops completely, which would kill off virtually
all plants and animals on Earth. Maybe it's good to look at the big picture over the long haul.

10 I dislike the term “greenhouse effect” intensely because it bears no relationship to actual greenhouses.
11 Limestone = calcium carbonate (CaCO3)
 Appendix C – Beyond the Tipping Point

Thus far, I’ve convinced myself that: a) global warming is happening and it is due, at least in part,
to CO2 being dumped into the Earth’s atmosphere, keeping solar heat energy absorbed at surface
from radiating directly back into space, b) the ozone layer is doing just fine, thank you, and c) in the
very long term CO2 levels will fall thanks to sequestering CaCO3 in the Earth’s subduction zones. I
hope the readers of this essay will find these conclusions convincing as well.
It is now the year 2019 and there have been several years of record-breaking average temperature
across the globe and also some record-breaking weather events, such as floods, hurricanes and
typhoons. It should be noted that weather in general and storms in particular are driven by heat
trying to escape from the Earth’s hottest regions to its coldest regions and ultimately into outer
space. A very efficient way of doing that is by evaporating water over the oceans, absorbing heat,
having the moisture travel away from the equator, and having it condense into precipitation,
releasing heat. This thermal process drives storms and causes “weather” in general. The more heat
trying to escape, the more severe the weather. So as the average temperatures continue to rise, we
can expect the frequency and severity of storms and other weather events to increase, meaning there
will be larger swings in temperatures over short time periods (both hotter hots and colder colds) as
seasonal average temperatures steadily increase.
One important effect from global warming is disruption of monsoon rains. Every spring in the
northern hemisphere, the Sun crosses the equator and travels northward, heating tropical seas and
oceans and increasing evaporation. The added moisture then travels over cooler land areas where it
precipitates as rain. There are vast habitats and agricultural areas that depend on these seasonal
rains and they would turn into deserts without them. With the Earth covered by a heat-absorbing
CO2 blanket, the seasonal temperature changes in the tropics would be diminished, disrupting the
reliable monsoon cycles and replacing them with violent, unpredictable storms – not the best
outcome for agricultural societies that depend on predictable rainfall.
The most disturbing thing about all of this is the possibility of non-linear positive feedback loops,
which amplify these effects. Cloud cover is currently keeping global warming partially in check by
reflecting sunlight back into space, reducing the solar heating of the Earth’s surface. Some climate
models suggest that stratospheric clouds will disappear when CO2 levels approach 1200 ppm (parts
per million), resulting in a dramatic increase in surface heating. But the following fact is more
alarming: Based on pan-evaporation data and corroborated by direct monitoring surface solar
radiation, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface has actually decreased over the past 50
years.12 It is believed this decrease was caused by man-made aerosols (aka pollution) released into
the upper atmosphere, promoting cloud formation. In other words, global warming would be even
worse without man-made pollution! This reminds me of the movie “Speed” where a bus is rigged
with explosives that are set to detonate if the bus slows down below 50 mph, forcing the driver
(played by Sandra Bullock) to keep the pedal to the metal throughout the movie. This means we
can’t significantly replace our dirty fossil-fuel economy with clean energy without making global
warming even worse than it is already.
There are even some empirical data to validate the argument that we’re stuck like the characters on
that runaway bus in the movie. Commercial airline flights over the USA and Canada were halted
for several days following the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. People
noted that the air over North America seemed “clearer” when no planes were flying overhead.
Temperature data taken during this period bore this out: Temperatures across the continent rose and
the changes were most dramatic over populated areas where typical air traffic is heaviest; huge 2ºC
temperature increases were recorded in those places.13

12 You can read about this effect here: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/298/5597/1410

13 See this Global News article: https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set-the-stage-for-an-
unlikely-climate-change-experiment/
The long-term effects of climate change are dire. Climatologists have been warning the public and
politicians about the dangers of adding too much CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere for nearly half a
century. The experts muddled their warnings by using bogus terms like “greenhouse effect” and
depicting IR radiation reflected by non-existent greenhouse surfaces overhead, instead of correctly
explaining how the Earth’s natural heat-transfer mechanisms work and covering the Earth with a
layer of CO2 insulation increases temperature gradients. The experts failed to educate the public
that even as average global temperatures steadily increase, local temperatures can actually decrease
drastically over the short term, as occurred recently during a “polar vortex” in the US that set low-
temperature records. Focusing on the term “global warming” instead of the more accurate term
“climate change” provides an excuse to a willfully ignorant US Senator and a delusional president
who pander to the masses, claiming that snow falling in Washington DC proves global warming is a
hoax.
I have a strong feeling we have already passed the tipping point in terms of climate change. If
temporarily grounding the commercial airline fleet can cause an immediate 2ºC rise in surface
temperatures, what would happen if all industrial activities were significantly curtailed? Our
current situation brings this image of the RMS Titanic to mind:

Edward John Smith, the captain of the Titanic, was warned about icebergs in the North Atlantic and
was advised to travel slowly through the area. Like today’s so-called “leaders,” he placed his own
financial interests above the safety and welfare of others and ordered the ship to steam full speed
ahead in order to break the record for crossing the Atlantic. Besides, everyone knew that the Titanic
was unsinkable. The fate of the Titanic was sealed the instant she hit the iceberg and nobody could
do anything to save her at that point. I think the medium-term fate of the Earth’s climate is also
sealed and denying this fact is like a man clinging to the stern of the Titanic as the bow slid into the
Atlantic, all the while insisting it was impossible for the ship to be sinking because he was 500 feet
above the surface.
It’s certain that climate change will destroy habitats. Most life forms have adapted to climates that
must exist within narrow ranges for them to survive. Even small climate changes can wipe out
susceptible species if changes are too sudden to provide enough time for them to adapt to new
conditions through mutation and natural selection. Like other life forms, our survival depends on
maintaining a viable human habitat, which we have effectively doomed by our actions. Fortunately,
humans are clever animals, so we could build artificial habitats after the natural one is gone.
By scaling back our demands for creature comforts and entertainment, we could maintain a
minimalist lifestyle in such artificial habitats using wind and the Sun for energy sources. This
would be analogous to boarding Titanic’s lifeboats. The ship did sink, taking well over 1,000
passengers and crew with her to the bottom, and unfortunately there weren’t enough lifeboats to
save everyone, Nevertheless, there were another 706 lucky enough to board lifeboats and survive.
I’m hopeful that at least some humans will survive within artificial habitats until the Earth can
eventually recover from the damage we inflicted on her, which could take tens or even hundreds of
thousands of years to repair. The ship is sinking and we’d better start building lifeboats now.