Can you believe I'm actually writing a post with a title like that?
Just shows to go you that anyone can weigh in on this subject - even a dumb ole country boy from Beaumont Tx.
Who just happens to have a Chemical Engineering degree so don't throw the Baby out with the Bathwater yet.
Where to begin.... Where to begin.
I guess we should begin where all this got started.
No - not 5 million years ago!
But maybe 2 weeks ago when I had the unmitigated gall and subsequently labeled "asinine and uneducated" stupidity to make a comment that there is data to support the concept that this "recent" (and "recent" is a relative term but be patient - we'll get to the time periods here in a bit) global warming trend could be part of a longer term temperature cycle (again emphasis on "longer term").
Now, with that said, I have copied a few comments I made in Facebook regarding this phenomenon...
There is no question that if you look at the effect of population growth and what it takes to support that growth in terms of industrial output - it takes energy output to produce things and to transport a greater population - there is a greater heat output from the surface of the Earth.
However if you look at historical data - and there are only simulations available for the past 12000 years, everything longer than that is ice coring studies like EPICA and sediment core studies - there are periods such as the Medieval Warming Period and subsequent Little Ice Age - where scientists / researchers can only attribute the Peak to Valley global temp cooling of 1 degC to macro effects like cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, variations in Earth's orbit and axial tilt (orbital forcing), inherent variability in global climate, and decreases in the human population.
Note that of the 7 proposed causes for the Little Ice Age only 1 of those were correlated to the human population.
Everything else was macro - Earth or Solar System scale effects.
Now when you look at the "Reconstructed Temperature" chart in these articles, I have to say it's a little alarming because we do seem to have a "breakout" of the prior range of 1800 years.
So I decided to do a few calcs of my own.
As a little comical and chemical test I checked one particular theory - that of bovine flatulance.
Here was my data / assumptions / links:
Peak population of buffalo with corresponding 0 population of domesticated cattle.
In 1500 an estimated 60 million (high estimate) buffalo in North America.
Average bison weight = 1350 lbs.
Current population of domesticated cattle = 98.4 million cattle.
Average US domesticated cattle weight = 1364 lbs.
So basically average weight is a wash.
So 2015 domesticated cattle flatulance ve 1500s population of buffalo =
98.4 million cattle / 60 million buffalo = 64% increase in flatulance from bovines.
So there you go....
64% increase in global warming since 1500 if you assume global warming is directly proportional to bovine flatulance.
Probably as good a calculation as any of the scientists with PhD's in Science can do and probably just as accurate.
At least I did the calculation rather than just parroting back somebody else's calculations and conclusions.
And it's pretty interesting that the range of temperature anomaly ranges from 1500 - 1900 are about -0.8 degC to -0.2 degC which is a range of 0.6 degC and the breakout of this range is about 0.6 degC so about a 100% increase from the prior range which is roughly comparable to the 64% increase in global warming due to bovine flatulance increase from 1500 to present.
Just saying....
But on the other hand, there has been a 75% decrease in US industrial emissions from 1980 - 2015 which arguably can have a direct and proportional effect on global warming, i.e. it reduces global warming.
Going back to the data on longer term temperature swings, here's a link with a lot of temperature charts -
So let's just go through them one by one and make some observations:
Holy Shit - that's not good! Chalk one up for the People who are saying things are getting hotter - at least in the time frame of the last 80 years.
Next slide please.
Okay, even shorter term lower troposphere readings show an upward trend:
"
For the lower troposphere (TLT), UAH find a global average trend since 1978 of +0.140 °C/decade, to January 2011.[1] RSS finds +0.148 °C/decade, to January 2011."
So that's not good news either.
I'm starting to get depressed here.
More data please.
Same graph as earlier - I wanted to include it because it is the next available time period of data...
Proxy reconstructions extending back 2,000 years have been performed, but reconstructions for the last 1,000 years are supported by more and higher quality independent data sets. These reconstructions indicate:
[10]
- global mean surface temperatures over the last 25 years have been higher than any comparable period since AD 1600, and probably since AD 900
- there was a Little Ice Age centered on AD 1700
- there was a Medieval Warm Period centered on AD 1000, though the exact timing and magnitude are uncertain and may have shown regional variation.
Ok so we're still in time frames that show increases.
Trying to keep an open mind about this but the data so far is pretty damning. Geez - can it get any worse.
I'm almost afraid to look....
Hmmm.... there's some studies in there with some pretty significant spikes but based on the dark black line average of all the studies, we're still above the historical high.
Well I guess we're going to hell in a handbasket.
Roll out the next Armageddon data point.
Huh? WTF? You mean there is Antarctica Ice Core Sample data to show that the earth was hotter 400,000 - 320000 - 240000 - 120000 years ago than it is TODAY!
No fucking way. And you know my Math's not too good (despite having a Minor in Mathematics obtained getting my Chemical Engineering Degree - oh and a minor in Chemistry and Physics too but who's counting), but it looks like a cycle of about 80 - 120000 years.and let's see when was the last peak....
About 120000 years ago.
Damn - that Data does have a way of coming back and biting ya in the ass - doesn't it?
But let's not get too cocky... let's keep an open mind and just let the data speak for itself.
Let's look at the dataset in terms of millions of years.....
Well I'll be double dipped in doo doo and call me a chocolate swirl.
You mean the earth was actually hotter 3 million years ago than it is now.
Wow!
Now realistically, what was happening 3 million years ago doesn't do us any good with the Church of What's Happening Now which from the shorter term graphs (0 - 2000 years) shows that we are probably / likely / certainly (you pick the one you want) heating up this thing we call Earth with all of the increasing population and all the industrial output required to support them.
So let me transition to the Outback Willie (my Evil Redneck alter ego for those readers who are just now tuning in) Proposed Solution Section of this post.
And like the theme of this blog states, you're gonna get it short, simple and straight from the heart so don't take it personally.
So here's my first hypothetical solution?
What if every adult in the U.S. walked or biked 2.85 miles per day instead of driving their car?
That would be equivalent to 20 miles / 7 day week.
Now let's assume the average vehicle mileage in the US is 20 mile per gallon.
That would save 1 gallon of gasoline per week per adult in the U.S.
that's about 245.3 adult men and women in the U.S. Now I realize all of these adults can't walk or bike 2.85 miles per day because they're too old or disabled or overweight or whatever. Let's just go with that "ideal" number for the purpose of effect.
So we got 245,300,000 adults that are saving 1 gallon of gasoline per week and I just happen to know that a gallon of gasoline is equivalent to 31475 nutritional calories via this conversion tool:
So let's just see how many calories we can save or ideally prevent from contributing to global warming by virtue of burning gas.... and yes dammit I know that there's no free ride because these people will be heating up the atmosphere by their own burning of calories but it only takes about 285 calories to walk 2.85 miles -
A simple rule of thumb is 100 calories per mile for a 180 pound person.
so let's just assume we take credit for the full 31475 calories per gallon of gas saved (the main difference between the 31475 and the 285 calories is the weight of the car carrying the person vs the person just moving their own body weight).
So without further adieu or argument, here's the straightforward calculation on total calories saved in one year by the entire adult population of the US walking or cycling 2.85 miles per day:
245,300,000 adults * 1 gallon of gasoline / week * 31,475 calories / gallon of gasoline * 52 weeks / year =
401,482,510,000,000 calories = 401.482 trillion calories = 401.482 X 10 to the 12th power calories.
Damn - that's a lot of calories.
But what do we do with that number?
Well, calories are a measure of energy and energy can be used to heat things like water.
Like all the water on the earth.
From that link -
It's hard to imagine, but about 97 percent of the Earth's water can be found in our oceans. Of the tiny percentage that's not in the ocean, about two percent is frozen up in glaciers and ice caps. Less than one percent of all the water on Earth is fresh. A tiny fraction of water exists as water vapor in our atmosphere.
According to the
U.S. Geological Survey, there are over
332,519,000 cubic miles of water on the planet. A cubic mile is the volume of a cube measuring one mile on each side. Of this vast volume of water, NOAA's National Geophysical Data Center estimates that
321,003,271 cubic miles is in the ocean.
That's enough water to fill about 352,670,000,000,000,000,000 gallon-sized milk containers!
So 352.67 X 10 to the 18th power gallons of water on the Earth.
I won't show you the conversion but that's equivalent to 133.734 X 10 to the 21st grams of water.
And a calorie is defined as...
the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1 °C
So we have a total number of calories and we have the total grams of water on the earth so let's just see how many degC we will raise the temp of all the water in the world if we expend all those calories.
401.482 X 10 to the 12th calories will heat 401.482 X 10 to the 12th grams of water 1 degC
so it will heat 401.482 X 10 to the 13th grams of water 0.1 degC
That's a far cry from the 133.734 X 10 to the 21st grams of water on the earth.
In fact, based on this calculation, it would only raise the global water temp about 3 X 10 to the -8 degC =
0.00000003 degC
Dammit - I guess walking or cycling 2.85 miles per day won't solve global warming BUT
I bet everybody would be a lot healthier.
But seriously, the effects of walking or cycling 2.85 mile per day go WAY BEYOND the calories reduced going to the atmosphere by not burning the gasoline for transportation. Reducing vehicle traffic by that much has a serious upstream and downstream ripple effect including but not limited to car manufacture, road infrastructure and maintenance, refinery emissions and heat output, health - medical - drug manufacture industry infrastructure because more people walking and cycling daily will be a lot healthier and on and on.
So don't discount the benefit of the Power of the Human Body to propel itself in the fight against Global Warming.
With that said, let's try something a little simpler but probably harder to calculate and definitely more controversial.
If the global population growth and the resulting industrial output / heat increase to support that growth is the issue....
Let's just quit increasing the world population.
I'm not sure how to calculate it but every person over their lifetime is responsible for a certain amount of energy being released into the atmosphere or water or land or whatever. I guess they call that your Environmental Footprint or Impact. That number can be calculated.
And if we want to stop global warming, each person's Environmental Impact on the Global Warming effect has to be compensated for or negated.
That takes technology and money to research, design, build and implement and educate the public on what to do and what not to do and provide them with the means to do it.
Nowadays it's Solar Energy, Electric Cars, Fuel Cells, etc. OR a helluva lot more people walking or cycling a helluva lot more. I think my calc above showed that ain't gonna get us all the way there.
50 years from now there will be technologies that are more advanced.
So one solution is to just Quit having babies.
Or at least make it harder or maybe more expensive to have children.
Right now the standard US Income Tax exemption for dependents (children) is a $4050 tax deduction, so for every child you have you get $4050 knocked off your taxable income so if you're in the 25% tax bracket that saves you about $1000 on your taxes.
Reverse that - for every child dependent a taxpayer has, increase their taxable income by $4050 or the equivalent of a $1000 contribution and put that money in a Fund to Address Global Warming and I don't just mean Think Tank support, I mean REAL INFRASTRUCTURE to actually begin reducing heat output from industry OR ways of reducing atmospheric temperatures. Do that every year for every kid from birth to 18 years and you probably have enough money to reduce the effect of that kid and subsequent adult's impact on the Environment.
Not only will it reduce the rate of population increase, it will create a dedicated fund for reducing Global Warming.
Now - will any of this actually happen in our lifetime?
No. But who knows?
Maybe we'll have some significant volcanic activity that will put enough ash in the air to cool things off OR
The Sun will take a reduced service Holiday for a few decades OR
The Earth will experience Catastrophic Flooding because of the Ice Caps melting (think Noah and the Ark) and we'll cut the World Population in half.
The long term temperature studies say it's happened before because there have been Long Term Temperature swings.
Hell I don't know - I've overtaxed my brain thinking about all this and it's about time for a Rum and Coke.
I'll leave you with this.
In the last 4 years I've ridden my bike 10000 miles in lieu of driving my car.
If you have done the same or more or an equivalent, Congratulations - I think you and I have done our parts to reduce global warming.
If you have not and you are passionate about doing something about Global Warming, you might want to consider what you can do personally to reduce Global Warming besides criticizing a Person on Social Media who likely does more than you to reduce global warming.
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