"Dr Willie Soon has many studies and presentations where his position is the sun provides 98% of heat load onto earth’s atmosphere."
And CO2 traps the heat.
Is global warming a hoax?
There is only one fact that matters. It doesn't matter what 97% of scientists say, what Al Gore says or what NASA says.
It’s a simple equation:
1: Energy coming in
Earth constantly receives 342 watts/m2 of energy by the sun. That’s the average, on the equator it’s more, on the poles it’s less.
2: Energy absorbed
Of those 342 watts, a total of 235 watts are absorbed, 67 watts by the atmosphere, 168 by the surface, and 77+30 = 107 watts are reflected back into space.
Compared to preindustrial times, Greenhouse gases absorb an additional 2.6 watts/m2. This is called Radiative forcing and this is a physical law. Anyone can test the radiative forcings for each gas in school lab.
The present radiative forcings of each greenhouse gas (compared to their greenhouse effects in pre-industrial times) are:
Carbon dioxide: 1.5 Watts per square meter.Methane: 0.5 Watts per square meter.Nitrous oxide: 0.2 Watts per square meter.Halocarbons: 0.2 Watts per square meter.Water vapor: 0.2 watts per square meterTotal radiative forcings from all greenhouse gases: 2.6 Watts per square meter.
3: Energy absorbed through CO2
Since CO2 makes up 1.5 watts/m2 out of the total radiative forcings of 2.6 watts/m2. Thus, at present, carbon dioxide is responsible for 55% of the anthropogenic greenhouse effect, methane is responsible for 18%, nitrous oxide, water vapor and halocarbons for 9% each.
This is easy to understand.
4: The consequences
This leads to a cascading greenhouse effect that takes decades to centuries to come into full effect:
Less iceLots of additional greenhouse gases that were trapped in ice released ? higher temperaturesMore darker surface area that reflect less sunlight (6%) and less white areas that reflect more sunlight (60%) ? higher temperaturesMore release of CO2 and water vapor from the oceans when the oceans gets warmer ? higher temperaturesMore droughts ? More forest fires ? more co2 ? higher temperaturesLess iceLots of additional greenhouse gases that were trapped in ice released ? higher temperaturesAnd so forth. This cascading effect repeats itself constantly.Due to this effect, a 1% increase in energy absorption results in increase in energy absorption by 3%. With the increase of energy absorption of 1.1% by 2.6 watts from 235 to 237.6 watts/m2, we can expect an increase in energy absorption by 3.3%.
This is where we are at right now and this cascading effect is not reversible for several hundred years even if we stopped all CO2 emissions now, since it takes 200 years on average for CO2 to be reabsorbed by the surface or by the oceans.
With another doubling of CO2, we can look at a total increase of 10% in energy absorption. Here is what happens when the sun delivered 10% more energy in the past. It led to an average temperature increase of 4 degrees Celcius.
A temperature increase of 4 degrees would make the home of 90% of the world’s population uninhabitable and destroy 90% of arable land.
Potentially moving to newly thawn land on the poles is also not feasible, because it takes hundreds to thousands of years for newly thawn land to be solid enough to sustain roads, buildings and to become arable for agriculture.
5: What it is not
One of the popular arguments is that water vapor is responsible for the greenhouse effect. It is responsible for 60% of the greenhouse effect, but we cannot contribute to it via human emissions, because human water vapor emissions stay close to the surface and don’t enter the atmospherere.
The only way we can contribute to it, is through increased CO2, which heats up oceans and increases water vaporization that goes into the atmosphere.
Methane is also a strong greenhouse gas, in fact it is 84 times stronger by volume than CO2. However, its concentration is 250 times less than that of CO2 (0.00017% vs 0.04%). That’s why its contribution to climate change is 5 times less than that of CO2 (4% vs. 26%).
Secondly, 80% of the Methane disappears from the atmosphere within 25 years on average while it takes 250 years for 80% of the CO2.
So, if we reduced Methane emissions drastically, we would already remove most of its greenhouse effect. However, even if we reduced all CO2 emissions drastically right now, we would not see a reduction of the greenhouse effect and experience the entire cascading effect of CO2 for 200 years.
That’s why CO2 is such a bigger problem than Methane or any other greenhouse gas.
Read more about this here. How long do greenhouse gases stay in the air?
This chart also shows how much the increase in those greenhouse gases increased their heat trapping.
Here, just some more of those arguments that shows just how little effort is put into fact-checking:
CO2 is a heavy gas, so it sinks in the atmosphere. - Great, that doesn’t change anything.CO2 lags temperature. - Yes, and as explained, it’s not the only cause of climate change (Milankovitch cycles, solar radiation, volcanic, geological activity), but those all remained unchanged while CO2 increased by 40%.Medival Warming Period - This was not a global phenomenon and a tiny temperature change of 0.2 degrees celcius.The temperature records were faked and temperatures in the past were pushed down and pushed up for the recent years so that it appears that the temperature changes were higher. - If you fact check, it turns out this gif just shows the differences for U.S. temperatures vs. global temperatures. Whither U.S. Climate?
It was the sun. - No, the sun’s energy sent to earth decreased during the largest temperature increase during the last 200 years while CO2 increased by 40%. This literally only takes 1 minute to fact-check.
You’ve seen that people jump on sound bites like “CO2 is a heavy gas that sinks”, “medival warm period”, believe blatantly fake data without any doubt or fact-checking.
This is the oldest technique in the book of pseudo-science, overwhelming the reader with 50 arguments, using scientific words and it works, so that they think it’s true and don’t fact check them.
Summary
Earth receives 324 watts/m2 of energy from the sun constantly.
Of those 324 watts, a total of 235 watts is absorbed, 67 watts by the atmosphere, 168 by the surface, and 107 watts are reflected back into space.
Greenhouse gases increase the energy absorption of sunlight by 1.1% directly compared to pre-industrial times and by 3.3% overall due to the cascading effect.
This increases total absorbed watts/m2 by 7.2 watts/m2 from 235 watts to 242.3 watts/m2.
This effect is not reversible even if we stopped all CO2 emissions now, since it takes CO2 200 years on average to be reabsorbed by land or by the ocean.
We can only try to slow down the cascading effect.
All in all, the recent climate change is man-made and these numbers prove it without a doubt. |
