What's this Global Warming stuff?

Every place goes through a natural cycle of warming and cooling. We call this Day and Night, Summer and Winter. We get warmer when the Sun shines; we get colder when it doesn't. In the Summer time, the rays of the Sun are coming at us more directly so the heating effect is greater; whereeaas in the Winter the Rays are coming at us at a lower angle so the heaating effect is minimized. Everyone around our country is familiaar with this effect.

There is also another, much more difficult effect of warming and cooling in addition to Day and Night, Summer and Winter, called Precession. We think that the North Pole is at the top of the Earth and the North Pole of Earth if extended out into space would be pointing at the North Star, called approriately enough, Polaris.

You have seen a spinning toy top or a toy gyroscope when it starts to slow down start to wobble in its axis. The Earth does almost exactly the same thing only the wobble is very slow, taking 25,600 years per wobble. In this case the cause is not so much that the spin of the Earth is slowing down, but that the Gravitational pull of the Moon, Sun and to a lesser degree the other planets are interacting with Earth's lack of perfect roundness. It has a slight buldge outwards at the equator sort of like the typical "Middle age expansion" of its human passengers.

Right now Polaris (at 1 Hour Right Ascension by .5 degree Declination) is the North Star, but 4500 years ago the North star was Alpha Draconis (currently at 14 Hours R.A. by 65 degrees Dec). 8000 years from now Alpha Cygnus (currently at 20 H R.A. by 46 Degrees Dec )will be the Pole Star, and in 12,000 years, the very bright star Vega (currently at 18 H R.A. by 39 Degrees Dec) will be the Pole Star.

In layman terms, some pleasant places that are about the latitude of Denver (39degrees) will find themselves at the North Pole and and the people around the opposite side of the Earth who also used to be at a pleasant 39 degrees latitude, will be sweating it out on the equator. But only 12,800 years later they will find the poles have wobbled around another 180 degrees and the climates will exchange. Sure glad I am alive today!

You have seen how trees have yearly rings and these rings can tell a lot about the climatic conditions each year. Well, scientists can core out a long hole in a glacier and do the same thing over a period of 25,600 years!

 

So What does this have to do with Global Warming? Simply put, when everyhing is running normally, while one side of the Earth is getting warmer, the other side of the Earth is getting Colder.

But the glacier corings are showing, that starting about the time of the Industrial revolution 300 years ago, BOTH SIDES WERE GETTING WARMER! SOMETHING IS VERY SICK WITH THE EARTH! And the ICEBERGS ARE MELTING ON BOTH SIDES OF THE EARTH, WHEREAS THEY SHOULD BE FREEZING ON ONE SIDE UNDER NORMAL CONDITIONS!

All liquids except one contract when they freeze. Water expands when it becomes the solid Ice, fortunately, or aquatic life would all be killed when the ice sunk if it contracted like all the other liquids do when they enter nto the solid condition. An Icebergs float with 1/8 of its mass above the water.

When the ice melts, that 1/8 part that was above the water is now in the water, and the water level rises very slightly. But it's no big deal normally, since on the other side of the Earth the water should be freezing and this will result in the water level staying about the same.

But with BOTH SIDES MELTING AND THE MELTING RATES ARE STILL INCREASING, the result will be more water in the ocean with nowhere to go, but up over the land at the seashore. BYE, BYE Rehobeth Beach, Delware, Carmel and Monterey, California, Honalulu, Florida, Manhattan and Long Island. The NY City subway will really become a SUBMARINE way! Your great grandchildren will need a mask, snorkel and fins to tour Disney World! And if something isn't done immediately, it won't be your great grandchildren, it might be your grandchildren!

The warming trend will mean more storms, and bigger storms with more Lightning and Tornados and Hurricanes and Typhoons. It will surely look like the Earth is getting revenge!

Mother Nature is going to become a real Bitch.

 

So what does CO2 and all that have to do with an Iceberg? Remember how your car gets real hot on a sunny day , especially in the Summertime? You can slow the heating process by using one of these window covers they sell. You can stop the process by putting the window covers on the outside of the windows instead of the inside.

CO2 is just part of the natural process before 300 years ago. The trees love it, and give off oxygen in return. Real nice for us animals who take in the oxygen and give off the CO2. But things got out of control about 300 years ago when the trees were overwelmed, or cut down for the expansion of civilization or burned for keeping the home and industrial fires lit. And when prehistoric trees & long gone dinosaur carcusses, called Coal and Oil got into the act when these were burned in large quantity, it really got grim. People could see the pollution in the form of the infamous Denver Brown Cloud which made people like me cough and get Asthma.

In many ways, the Brown Cloud is like puting up the window cover on the inside of your car when go shopping at the Mall. It actually is causing a bit of a global cooling effect. The troublemakers are the chemicals on the upper side of the Brown Cloud which are trapping the heat like your car does on hot day in the Summer. Unfortunately there is more warming effect than a cooling effect. By the way, your window cover would work much better on the outside of the windshield. So would a global warming "Earthshield" cover, but more about this later.

When the Phillipine Volcano, Pinatubo, blew up 10 years ago, the ash blew around the world and stayed way up there in the sky all Summer. We had quite a burst of global cooling that year! But don't worry, people will object to getting all the volcanos to blow up, and it really won't help much in the long run.

Next topic is "What are the main causes of all this CO2?"         or Return to Beginning.