After living in Sen. Jim Inhofe’s state for almost four years now, I have become accustomed to tolerating some really ignorant crap. However, my blood still continues to boil every winter when I inevitably hear some variant of “I am cold, so global warming doesn’t exist!”
This type of pathetic rationalization makes me reconsider my stance on the limited use of eugenics. Perhaps we should start sterilizing stupid people as well.
For now, I’ll give people the benefit of the doubt. Maybe some people just need to be exposed to the truth.
We all know for every action, there is a reaction. Since the Industrial Revolution, human beings have been pumping significant amounts of gases into the atmosphere. Global climate initiatives focus on limiting the amount of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and “other” greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide).
There is a basic chemical process that occurs when you pump massive amounts of CFCs into the atmosphere.
The ozone layer is made up of O3 molecules. When UV light from the sun passes through them, those molecules are broken down into O2 (regular oxygen) and a free radical O. Normally, the free radical is so unstable by itself, that it immediately bonds back with the O2 to form O3 (ozone) once again.
CFCs that contain chlorine, fluorine and carbon are broken down in the atmosphere by radiation. In the process, radical molecules are formed, and these particles end up binding with that radical O that is broken down when UV light passes through the ozone, thus depleting the ozone layer.
Now, to complicate matters, as the ozone layer is broken down, less energy from the sun is reflected back into space and instead travels all the way to Earth’s surface. The Earth’s surface absorbs the visible light, and re-emits energy in the form of infrared radiation. That infrared radiation, which would normally reflect back into space, is absorbed by compounds like CO2, methane and nitrogen. Those compounds then re-emit the infrared radiation back toward the Earth, heating the lower atmosphere.
Now some people are still saying, “But I’m cold! If I’m cold, how can the earth be getting warmer?” The answer is simple. Climate is not the same thing as weather. To equivocate the two, is to take a tiny sampling and attempt to deduce a broad or universal truth from it. It is the equivalent of “Yao Ming is 7 feet 6 inches tall. Yao Ming is Chinese. All Chinese people are 7 feet 6 inches tall.”
The fact is the average temperature of the entire planet is rising. The global temperature average naturally rises and falls, but there is a significant increase in the upward trend that corresponds to the burning of fossil fuels. Look up the 20 hottest years on record. Almost all of them have occurred within our lifetimes.
But what are the actual negative effects? Well, you can forget about heat waves, hurricanes, disease, melting ice caps, rising sea levels, the extinction of species, the possible shutdown of thermohaline circulation in the Northern Atlantic (which could send us into a rapid ice age), and all of the catastrophic consequences that those things entail. Just focus on one thing: Bees are dying.
The spread of fungi and viruses into newly heated areas has caused what is known as Colony Collapse Disorder and is significantly reducing the world’s bee population. And humans can’t exist without bees.
Bees pollinate plants. Humans have never been able to do this effectively. Without pollination, plants die off, CO2 increases, more plants die off, animals die off, humans die off. Get it?
There is no conspiracy. This science isn’t based on one person’s data. It is based on the scientific method being performed by tens of thousands of scientists worldwide. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get 10,000 scientists to agree on anything?
It is commonly accepted in the worldwide scientific community that humans are affecting global climate change. The only thing that is unclear is how much effect we are actually having, and what we should do about it.
Go read up. Not Glenn Beck’s new book, but something like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s international reports on climate change. If you still feel that snow on the ground, or Sean Hannity’s smile, disproves climate change then please feel free to place your reproductive organs in a woodchipper. You are officially too stupid to use them.
Click here to read why Becca Skupin isn't so sure about global warming
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Terminate_Damnation 2 years, 2 months ago
aren't there other insects besides bees that can pollinate flowers? i know losing all bees would mess things up pretty badly, but i'm not so sure about the CCD being the beginning of the end.
one other thing, an oklahoma climatologist once told me that if you're getting your climate change info from newspapers, especially columnists, you're skipping a step. talk to a meteorology professor or a research at the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, and they will explain to you briefly and simply that climate change is happening, it is real, we are helping cause it, and it NEEDS to be addressed.
Talk to the scientists, seriously. More need to.
briareus 2 years, 2 months ago
Possibly the worst column on global warming, ever. The author relies upon scientific authority, but strangely enough can't cite a single study or research paper. He confuses depletion of ozone by CFCs with global warming and CO2. He offers Colony Collapse Disorder as an example of ill effects associated with climate change, when in fact CCD has nothing to do with either weather or climate. "Go read up." Good advice, indeed.
isotope 2 years, 2 months ago
I agree with your general sentiment, but you lose a lot of credibility when you attribute ozone depletion to global warming. Stratospheric ozone inhibits UV light from reaching the surface of the Earth, but this accounts for a miniscule fraction of the energy output by the sun. You would realize mistake if you would simply look at an energy spectrum for the sun. You would notice that the sun has a peak emission in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The emission spectrum for the sun falls off sharply to zero just as it passes into the UV, and tails off gradually well into the infrared. The fact of the matter is that the relevant molecules here are the greenhouse gases, namely CO2, water vapor and methane. Ozone is only relevant to the energy balance of Earth if it is in the lower troposphere. Such ozone is largely a product of combustion.
jssooner4 2 years, 2 months ago
Frankly I hope people continue to deny that global warming is really occurring. The real issue on the planet is over population. If global warming is true, it should take care of that real quick.
leimapapa 2 years, 2 months ago
So we don't really know "how much effect we are actually having" or "what we should do about it" but you think everyone should "go read up"?
Screw that. I have no interest in being a climatologist. And I doubt those people you hang around with care to be either.
Besides, since when are college-age kids not allowed to have opinions about subjects they don't know anything about? That's a big part of college. All college kids are wise fools. Cut 'em some slack.
edod 2 years, 2 months ago
He is not wrong about CFCs, which are implicated in both ozone problems and are also (along with CO2, methane, and a few other main culprits) with climate change as a greenhouse gas, CFC-12 for example. Though CO2 and methane are the main ones. So technically he's not mistaken here..but, yes, he still has combined the two either in confusion or poor editing or both.
Quite right that climate and weather are very different. We can't predict the exact temperature (weather) in 10 days but we can give (with high probability of success) what next February's average temperature is, averaged over all 28 days, for the United States or even for a smaller region ..climate in other words. A better analogy with teh height of the Chinese population is that is by some toxic poison they all grew a full inch taller, you could NOT notice that by looking at a few random Chinese people...Even after global warming you still have weather, and you still have cold days, and even cold spells...it's only the average over the entire planet and over a full year, that is going up...and that's a gigantic amount of energy, to warm up the average temp for a year on something a huge as Earth, by 1 degree. But you'll still have hot and cold spells. You'll still find individual Chinese who are 5 feet, 3 inches tall, 5'4", and 5'2" etc...and unless you look at averages of the entire population you'll not notice if you just look at one person from China one day, another person another day. This analogy isn't perfect either but is a bit closer to weather vs climate.
edod 2 years, 2 months ago
I don't think we make any friends, not convince people, by calling for sterilization. I'll let the hardcore right-wingers (and a few messed up on the left) talk that way...I do sympathize with this frustration though since some politicians and many right-wing think tanks, repeat stuff they must know to be false. They know climate isn't weather. They repeat lines deliberately made to mislead. The media coverage is not helpful, they don't explain that CO2 has been known to be a greenhouse gas since 1800s research revealed the potential and by second half of 20th century the more precise effects on earth were well understood.
The connection with bees isn't settled. Much better exmaple that few know about is ocean acidificdation. That's the official scientific name but it's really de-alkalinization in a way, the oceans when healthey are supposed to be alkaline but the CO2 in the atmosphere, about 1/3 of the stuff we spew out of burning coal and oil, gets absorbed by the ocean, and combines with water to form cabonic acid..the pH is lower by about 0.11 which doesn't sound like much but that's a logarithmic scale. Just like an "8" earthquake is TEN times stronger than a "7" earthquake..similarly the oceans would need to be TEN times more acidic to change pH by "1" on the pH scale. They are now 0.11 less on the pH scale meaning since the industrial revolution alone, very short in geologic time, we've made the oceans acid concentration 30% higher...organisms, many of them including those a the bottom of the food chain, are struggling to cope and it will get worse if we let the acidification get even worse by end of century. Google "ocean acidification" Not smart to mess with the ocean's food chain.