About Climate Change

The below comments are those of the Author (Doug Simmers).

Life on earth has successfully endured many eons of disruption, from huge volcanic eruptions, to asteroid strikes , to multiple ice ages. Many extinctions have occurred, but life has continued to evolve to adapt to the new conditions, and eventually thrive. Human- induced climate change is already stressing many species of animals, and new extinctions are likely to result. The loss of biodiversity will leave the earth with a longer path to recovery than just eliminating the CO2 and other greenhouse gasses we have created. This will be hard to watch, but remember that Natural Selection has no time limit, and Mother Nature’s cruel edict always works-- the weak die, and the strong propagate. Mother Nature will recover.

Human beings somehow got up on the intelligence curve (be it a Higher Power, alien seeds, or luck ), and learned to adapt to the disruptions Mother Nature threw at us. We learned how to make shelter, developed animal husbandry, agriculture, and communal cooperation so that Natural Selection has affected our development less and less over time.

One of the most significant of mankind’s developments has been learning to use and even create fire. Fire has warmed us, given us light, scared predators away, and cooked our food. Combustion additionally allowed us to smelt metals, make steam to power industry, promote transportation, and of course, make electricity. Every step of the way, fire has made our lives better.

So now we face increasing evidence that our use of combustion has elevated levels of CO2, and it's becoming clearer that this is a significant contributor to the warming of our planet.

A key to understanding this problem is the ability to perceive size and time scales, both large and small:

-The earth is so big

-The tiny CO2 molecule is such a small part of our atmosphere (only 420+ parts per million, or .042%

-Geologic time is so long.

It’s hard to believe that mankind could have possibly had much effect over the entire earth. How can increasing CO2 by .01% or so over several centuries cause so much temperature increase? It’s hard to wrap our heads around something so small affecting something as big as earth’s atmosphere, but it’s increasingly true.

"Greenhouse gas effect" is a bit of a misnomer. The light passing into our atmosphere is composed of many wavelengths- the rainbow colors we can see, but also longer wavelengths like infra-red, and shorter wavelengths, like ultra-violet, which we cannot see. This light heats up the earth, and some is also re-radiated back out into space, mostly at infra-red wavelengths. All CO2 molecules have a discrete physical structure, and can be thought of as tiny tuning forks. When infra red radiation at 15 micrometers wavelength passes through CO2 gas, the CO2 molecules vibrate and rotate, thereby, heating up. This is not conjecture, and has been known for over a hundred years. Many diatomic molecules display the same property, but at differing wavelengths. Other "greenhouse gases" of concern are, methane (CH4), nitrus oxide (N2O), and Ozone (O3). Even water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but it's condensible, and also required for life.

Although Methane is more than 25 times as heat absorbing as CO2, there is less of it, and it reacts over time. CO2 molecules last many hundreds of years but are consumed in plants for photosynthesis.

A more comprehensive explanation of greenhouse gases can be found at www.epa.gov>ghgemissions.

Understanding this issue IS complex, but the evidence gets stronger and stronger that mankind's ability to efficiently overharvest earth's combustibles is a key cause of climate change.

This is not our first rodeo.

The human difficulty of understanding large scale, and our ability to overharvest is not unprecedented.

The buffalo were too numerous to count, but we nearly wiped them out. The same for Sea Otters, Blue Whales and Wolves.

Passenger Pigeons, the Dodo, Stellar's sea cow and 83 other mammalian species have become extinct because of man's overharvesting.

The oceans are much bigger, covering 70% of the earths’ surface, and life flourishes all the way to the bottom, constituting up to an estimated 80% of all life on earth.

The thought of catching all the fish in the sea was unthinkable, until we started doing it. Shutting down fisheries has put many fishing fleets out of business, but most have recovered over time, and good management has often created a sustainable situation.

The atmosphere is even bigger, 60 miles or so high, but year by year, additional evidence is collected that among some natural causes, man’s combustion appears to be a primary cause of warming global temperatures.

The expectation that if we wait, someday unequivocal evidence will settle the climate change matter is naive. By the time that the science is “settled”, the situation will be very bad, and recovery could take as long or longer than the few hundred of years it's taken for climate change to reach current levels.

Again, this is not our first rodeo.

We need to accept the lead of the fishermen who permitted fisheries to recover.

We need to follow the lead of our excellent wildlife management.

We need to follow the lead of our global success in reducing the hole in the Ozone layer

We need to become better stewards.

We need to permit Mother Nature to recover from our relentless consumption.

Climate change is no different, except for the huge scale.

We can't blame our forefathers for past overharvesting- they didn't know.

We , however, increasingly do know what is happening, and future generations

may well place blame on us for letting things get out of control.

I started out by saying that Natural Selection will allow Mother Nature to recover as she has so many times in the past. While Natural Selection has affected humanity less and less, our ability to adapt is amazing. Humanity will also will survive, but future generations may find life much more difficult than it has been for us. Life has generally gotten better for humanity throughout history, but a reversal of fortune may be in store for our descendants.

We need to take action now!