Tag Archives: global warming

Hmmm, Part III. Ch-ch-ch-changes.

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Climate model changes. Well, this is good news.¹

Or not.²

It seems a group of scientists have found more time in their studies for humans to respond to global warming/climate change.

Hmmm, really?  For your consideration, I’m going to drop some thoughts, ponderances, and questions on global climate change and science here:

  • The recent discovery that Mars has unexpected weather.³ The nights are cold, cold, cold. While this information might ‘help future explorers colonizing the planet’, may I suggest that it could be useful in understanding the colonization we have on Earth already?

“It’s a bit like a Russian doll,” planetary scientist Paul Hayne from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who wasn’t involved with the study, told Nature, “with each successively higher-resolution model fitting inside the other.”³

I like this quote. It illustrates that climate scientists have a very difficult job. Peeling away the layers, uncovering the next doll. They are working with a very complex system and small changes in modeling, make measurable differences in projected results.

  • I’m totally gobsmacked when I read ” … we have more than 700 billion tons left to emit to keep warming within 1.5°C. ‘That’s about 20 years at present-day emissions,’ Millar said.” ¹

Well, hold the phone even though it’s ringing, statements like this released into the wild give us permission to continue bad habits that harm the environment. My individual contribution to 700 billion tons is just puny. I could jump up and down on that scale and it wouldn’t register so not my fault, right?²

I’ll be as cold, cold, cold as Mars at night here, but human life on earth may be a passing age regardless of any action we take. Regardless of any scientists, politicians, soothsayers, sooth-nay-sayers, we may all be doomed regardless of any action we take.

As evidence, the K-Pg event which sounds like a children’s show was actually a cosmic collision of the earth with an asteroid or comet. It extincted the dinosaurs.  “In the geologic record, the K-Pg event is marked by a thin layer of sediment.” Whoa! Big dinosaurs time left a geologic thin layer. Humans en masse? A geologic smudgy smear. Maybe. Who will know?

So regardless, let’s do the right thing.  Governments will argue, politicians will posture, manufacturers will whine about fairness, et cetera et al ad nauseum.

Let’s bring back “pollution”, the word, not actual pollution. Individuals can identify pollution and change pollutive habits and consumption. Personal actions and changes done by the millions have a HUGE measurable impact on the environment. (See also, plastic continent at the bottom of the ocean.)

And as we start environmentally hygienic habits and start trends designed to leave a smaller footprint, we unwittingly become consumer activists. (See also Hmmm, Part II. Remeber the Aerosol!) Rather than wait for government regulation and limits, dirty manufacturing cleans up due to market demand, clean-up happens because consumers require it.

And we remain the enthusiastically skeptic gardener.

¹Mooney, Chris. “New climate change calculations could buy the Earth some time — if they’re right.” Washington Post. 18 September 2017. Web. 19 September 2017

²Viva Nostradamus predicts that any time humans have gained by this news is just another distraction for politicians, governments, businesses, et al to argue about cause, effect and blame.  So, if you’ve read this far, just do what you can do today.  Stop polluting as you know it to the extent possible.  Trust me.  Micro actions in macro numbers makes a difference. To the planet.

³ Dockrill, Peter. “We Have First-Ever Evidence That Mars Gets Intense Snowstorms in The Dead of Night.” Science Alert. 22 August 2017. Web. 19 September 2017.

Hmmm, Part I. Earth sciences & Viva.

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In the 50+ years I have lived on this little blue dot hula-hooping the small star in our solar system which is in the Milky Way which is itself hurtling toward the Andromeda galaxy, I have seen, heard, and learned things to which my response is a low ponderous ‘Hmmm’.

  • Sometime in the ’70’s while in sixth grade, I was alarmed to hear that the earth might be entering another Ice Age.  Prepare to be cold. Hmmm. It was also during this decade I learned of OPEC & barrels, supply, demand, and fuel-pump gas prices.
  • In the 80’s while in college, a Physics professor mused that nuclear power generation was releasing energy which had been captive in the earth’s mantle. Potential energy gone to thermal is adding heat to the system.  Hmmm.  The same is true of burning fossil fuels. All that contained heat, energy, and greenhouse gas released.
  • The Lake Nyos disaster. The release of a concentrated cloud of CO2 killed 1,700 people in Cameroon in 1986.  Silent but deadly, a killer fart if ever there was one, an epic natural disaster.  Hmmm. Technological advances have been in the making to capture CO2 during energy production using coal generation, CCS – Carbon Capture & Storage.  Hmmm. Where do we dispose of these hot little Lake Nyos containment cannisters? Dispose of them with the nuclear waste? Oh. Wait. Never mind. (This link to the Lake Nyos disaster is interesting. And thorough.)
  • Water, aka H2O, in it’s vapor form, is a greenhouse gas.  With the globe warming and ice melting, there will be more H2O in the atmosphere which will reflect the sun’s rays tending toward cooling? Or oppressive humidity? The difference between clouds that warm and clouds that cool is small. Hmmm.
  • The solar cycle, magentic pole reversals. Hmmm.  The earth is acted upon by universal forces out of our control.  And gravity.  That low slow pull towards bigger things, and we’ve all fallen …

And should you, my dear reader, be concerned that this list be construed as a nod to those who contend that human impact on climate change is insignificant, be not afraid. When was the last time you used an aerosol spray can?

We are a skeptic gardener.