Mike Ault's thoughts on various topics, Oracle related and not. Note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are not contributing to the overall theme of the BLOG or are insulting or demeaning to anyone. The posts on this blog are provided “as is” with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are mine and mine alone, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Global Warming

The other night I watched two shows on different networks that both proposed to show what would happen to the earth should all of mankind just up and disappear. Then another show talked about global warming. Gloom and doom let me tell you!

But all of the gloom and doom got me thinking. I’ve seen the same reports most of you have, and probably a couple you haven’t, I am sure you can say you’ve seen reports I haven’t. Anyway, mashing it all together my mind came up with a few salient points.

Population of China: 1,321,851,888
Population of India: 1,129,866,154
Population of USA: 301,139,947
Population of Europe: 788,000,000
Population of South America: 371,000,000
Population of Russia 141,000,000
Others: 2.5 billion

China and India are charging into an economic growth unprecedented in history. This growth will mean industry, power production, cars, trucks, etc. all on a scale we have never seen.

Even if USA and Europe drop their carbon and other emissions to zero immediately I seriously doubt China, India and South America will go back to the primitive conditions they have striven to climb out of over the last decade or two. So, unless we are willing to force stagnation and no growth on China, India, South America and everyone else who falls into the “third world” category there is precious little we can do about humans global warming contributions.

Of course there are computer models that show that if all human greenhouse gases stopped dead tomorrow, it would make maybe a half a degree or less difference over the next 50 years. The major problem is that the Earths orbit is fairly circular right now, meaning that the solar energy being input into the Earths ecosystem is at a maximum. This happens on a grand cycle of about 100,000 years as the orbit goes from elliptical to circular and back again and as the Earth “nutates” on its access.

One of the well meaning scientists showed a chart of CO2 levels and temperature over the last several thousand years which clearly showed the rise in CO2 levels corresponds to a rise in temperature, as has happened over and over again as far back as can be determined! This means this cycle has been happening since before the industrial revolution, heck, before the agricultural revolution, before the stone age. In short, it is a natural cycle. To my slightly trained eyes the curves looked nearly identical right up to the most current one. Of course he immediately zoomed in the on the most current and blamed it all on man.

The graphic above shows the CO2 curve I am talking about, it shows the CO2 concentrations as charted at Vostok, Antarctica from ice cores. Notice a sudden jump in CO2 about every 100 thousand years (some say corresponding to a long solar cycle where we reach the closest we ever get to the sun.) You can also see we are right on schedule for a sudden jump and are right on path. Of course what usually happens after this cycle is an ice age (are you ready for global cooling?) The graph is the current time on the far left going to 400,000 years ago on the far right. At the low point in the current graph the city recently found submerged off of India, the one off of Cuba and the carvings off of Japan were thriving on what was the sea shore. No telling what other archeological marvels are sitting on the old sea coast at about 120-160 feet deep along the continental shelves.

In fact the largest jumps in CO2 happened well before man was doing anything other than scraping the ground with sticks in most places to plant maze. Now I suppose I could really go off the deep end and propose that these 100 thousand year cycles correspond to previous peaks in heretofore unknown civilizations that because of glaciations and natural decay we have no clue about, but I am afraid the fossil record doesn’t support that.

To think us humans are the sole agents of change in all of this is rather egotistical don’t you think? Especially ironic is that Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn are all experiencing their own global warming, I suppose we are responsible for their problems as well.