Redneck Tale # 22 - Change You Can Believe In

There is a URL at the bottom of this article for a website that seems to show a somewhat balanced view of man-made climate change that may even satisfy both the "warmers" and the "coolers."

I rely on a more personal set of facts. The climate is now warmer in the eastern part of the U.S. than at the time of the first world war, 1914-1918. Then, my grandfather worked for the army at a place called Fort Slocum. It was on a small island located in the harbor of New Rochelle, New York. The island sits in the salt water of Long Island Sound. In the wintertime Grandpa walked over the thick ice for about a mile from where he lived on the mainland to the island and his workplace. I do not ever recall that Long Island Sound froze over, but, being only a kid in the 1930s and 1940s, what did I know? Back in my day there was a ferry to take folks to the fort, but the army has now vacated the island and its one-time icy surroundings. It is now some sort of civilian real estate development. (Is that not the kind of change in which we can all believe?)

I have seen arguments some folks put forth that there is more snow now than in earlier years. They say that the increase in global temperature causes more sea water to evaporate and, when the increased atmospheric moisture rises (due to more heat) and meets up with more cold arctic air (due to decreased air pressure closer to the equator) the result is copious snow.

I can understand that business about there being more snow right now than in prior days. I can also see that an argument might be made about the causation of more snow. Without moisture in the air there would be zero rain and zero snow. Yes, northern breezes hitting southern moisture is a phenomenon not contrary at all to what is shown on regular weather maps. Cold fronts slamming into warm fronts signal us to "get out our umbrellas or our snow shovels."

Climate change proponents also have it that the sea water is becoming more salty due to evaporation of its water content, thus diminishing its volume. At the same time, they want the rest of us to believe that the sea water level is rising. That is really quite a nifty trick to pull off. There is no doubt that God could pull it off, but why would God want to do so? Less water and less volume equals more water and greater volume? I don’t think so, and my guess is that God doesn’t think so, either.

However, the stuff about more sea water evaporating leading to higher sea levels is something to wonder over. Aha ! It will be said that the sea level rise is due to the melting of the northern hemisphere glaciers, the ones the United Nation’s "climate change panel," (the IPCC) says will be gone soon enough. It was earlier said that the Greenland ice cap was also leaving us rapidly, but now that idea has been abandoned due to the ice cap having been growing for long enough to quiet down the "melters."

Some say that glaciers in the northern hemisphere are melting at an accelerated pace. Soon enough, it is postulated, they will be gone. Their melting will raise sea levels and cause inundation of coastal areas everywhere. The Himalayan glaciers will be out of here by 2035 – whoops! (Now whose typo was that? They say that they meant 2335. Ah well!)

Greenland is doing the same thing. Members of the U.S. Congress have gone there and investigated what they declared to be a shrinking Greenland ice cap. I believe it was the Nancy Pelosi lady who looked at the Greenland ice cap and declared, "I have seen the ice cap shrinking!" Well, we all know how cockeyed are the folks in Congress. It develops that the ice cap in frigid Greenland has been growing rather nicely. Those are the same people who want to bestow that "cap and trade" thing on us in order to tax everyone until people quit belching out mostly useful carbon dioxide. Does anyone doubt the ability of Congress people to measure things accurately?

Must be that the salt from the evaporated water component is dusting up into the air, sort of hanging onto the water before the water fully disperses in air in molecular form. Then the salt dust is blown here and there with some of the salt coating the top layer of remaining glacier ice. On the ice the salt acts like the stuff they sprinkle on the highways to melt ice on the roadways. Mystery solved ! The salt that lands on Greenland, though, is obviously very unsaltlike. Maybe it is simply a lot whiter than the stuff landing on Asian mainland glaciers and the Greenland whiter salt reflects sunlight better than does Himalayan darker salt. My computer fails to model salt sufficiently enough for me to make a guess.

For a time, glacial-melting worriers worried about that big equatorial glacier in Africa, the one on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Cooler heads finally prevailed. The worriers among the warmers have finally become convinced that sand and dust blowing in from the Sahara Desert, plus dusty pollution from what passed for civilization close by the mountain accumulated on top of the ice and absorbed more heat from sunshine, thus melting lots of ice. Does that scenario not remind one of the expression, "Easy come – easy go?" In came dirt and away went ice.

Anyway, the article at that URL is not unreasonable, even though it tends to rely a lot upon computer modeling and important measurements that have yet to be made. What I saw in the graphs presented in the article is that the climate as actually "measured" has not changed all that much on the average for the last thousand or so years. One of the graphs showing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere over the eons is a tribute to the penmanship of both ancient dinosaurs and our more recently employed computer craftspeople who are almost as good at graphing CO2 numbers as were the critters. Fortunately for the graph, it was based on "actual" measurement and not as computerized guessing. (Is there some difference between them?)

It was amazing to see that records were actually "kept" so well for those many thousands of years past, but there it was, right on that graph. There seems to be a problem with those records, however. They were all somehow written on Antarctic ice. Those in favor of an accelerating and worldwide ice melt have been transcribing that CO2 record as fast as they can before the Antarctic ice might disappear. Many scientists of good repute disbelieve that the Antarctic continent will become devoid of its frozen water covering. In fact they keep on insisting that the ice sheet is not only becoming thicker, but that it is growing laterally as well - that is, that pesky ice is not cooperating at all with the "shrinkers."

All of that is much like the disappearing polar bears. Not only are the polar bears romping around in the Arctic in greater number than ever before, polar bear "disappearors" cry alligator tears over their declared passing. Of course, such wailing is strange for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that alligators simply are never seen in polar bear country, probably because the bears would gobble them all up as the arctic seals are all eaten up by so many more polar bears. Bears must eat something, and a scaly alligator beats no seal for supper.

One thing that was really most interesting within that URL's article was its listing of sources of methane, a most combustible hydrocarbon gas. You will enjoy that part of the article pointed to in the URL. There you will learn why we try to zap every termite encountered.

It may come as a shock to many that the lowly termite is a master producer of methane. What's the big deal about that? Methane is renowned as a premier member of that group of gases called "greenhouse gases."

And, what is a greenhouse gas? The greenhouse effect, as it is called, is the permitted entry of energy from the sun, mainly light and heat, that has difficulty leaving the earth's atmosphere because its exit is prevented by blockage from those greenhouse gases. The gas having most of the blame is carbon dioxide (CO2), but methane is not far behind.

Inside of a good man-made greenhouse, carbon dioxide (CO2) is prized because it is probably the principle energy food of green plants. Plants suck the stuff in and use it to grow happy bodies with all of those leaves, stems, roots, and fruits. Whenever green plants take CO2 in, they use its carbon and exhale pure oxygen, a gas much beloved by humans and other animals.

It is estimated that methane, a gas produced in the innards of cattle, dogs, humans, and yes, those pesky termites, too, is many, many times more potent as a greenhouse gas than is CO2. Got the picture? While a termite is eating your house (or chomping on a dead tree in Africa or whereever) he, she, or it is cranking out methane like crazy, heating up the world with all of that chomping, termite sweat and bowel gas, trapping solar energy in earth's atmosphere 60 or more times better than does CO2.

Maybe we should put in a phone call to "Terminix" or some other exterminator company, and solve the "global warming - climate change" thing for once and for all! It may be either that or tell the sun to "cool it."

Enjoy the linked article. It seems to make more sense about climate history and causation than all the rest of the articles on this subject I have encountered to date.

FYI, this article resulted from an eMail I today sent to one of my good buddies following a somewhat heated discussion we had the other day on "anthropogenic global warming." My friend is not one to trifle with. He is an honest-to-goodness genius on pollution control and everything else there is - except earth's multi-billion year long climate. Gotta love him all the same. He recently upgraded his snow blower to handle balogna in addition to ordinary snow. If he uses the machine well, his snow-balogna blower should work to perfection, and he may even qualify to be elected to Congress (or better) next time around. He says he is open to a free trip to Greenland.

Here is that URL I promised you: http://www.climatedata.info/index.html