The Issue of Global Warming
Posted: Saturday, February 17, 2007
by Bill Dulude
About 75 years ago Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius and American geologist Thomas C. Chamberlin hypothesized that increasing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases could raise the atmosphere's temperature resulting in a greater absorption of solar radiation which would otherwise be reflected from the Earth's surface back into space. It appears the concept of global warming started in the early 1900s. In the 1970s and 1980s, scientific opinion supported that hypothesis as a result of data gathered since the 1950s showing a steady increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, supposedly some computer modeling efforts supported the greenhouse hypothesis. Since then the global general public has become focused on the suggestion of rising temperatures is the result of the issue referred to as “global warming."
Having read Al Gore’s book “An inconvenient Truth" I have to agree with him that global warming is “An inconvenient Truth," however he blames global warming on the presence of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other “greenhouse gases," a hypothesis that has failed to be proven. The question to be answered is what are the heat trapping and/or heat reflecting properties of carbon dioxide.
Al’s book contains many pictures that graphically demonstrate the vast expanses of many glaciers over the globe that are either gone or disappearing. NASA tells “huge ice sheets, [once] covered large areas of North America and Europe 18,000 years ago. In fact, ice extended as far south as New York and the Ohio River Valley." Additionally they say the Oceans now cover almost three-quarters of the Earth. They say if all the global ice in the existing glaciers and ice sheets melted, the sea level would rise by about 80 meters (262 feet) - about the height of a 26-story building.
In the late spring or early summer of 1999 the US News & World Report magazine reported that archeologists discovered a 7,000 year old primitive campsite off the British Columbia Islands some 270 feet below the current sea level. If true, that would indicate the oceans have raised an average of about 0.04 feet per year in those 7,000 years. In October of 2004 there was an article in the Popular Mechanics magazine, which reported that in the use of seismic data to locate oil fields in the North Sea off the coast of Europe there was a discovery of a prehistoric village that they named “Shotton River" area. The article said that the melting ice from glaciers caused the area to be submerged 7,000 years ago and that it had once been inhabited by hunter-gathers. That was according to England’s University of Birmingham archeologists who used help from computer scientists to create a 3D model of the Shotton Village. They also reported that the University’s director, Vincent Gaffney, of the Institute of Archeology & Antiquity was planning another project of creating a model of a now submerged land bridge that once connected the United Kingdom to Continental Europe. The February/March 1, 2004 issue of US News & World Report magazine contained an article that talked about 10,000 year old campsites being discovered 300 to 400 feet below the current sea level. The article also suggested there was at one time a land bridge across the Bering Straight, which was used by inhabitants from Eastern Asia to migrate to the Americas. From this information we can deduce that the oceans have been raising approximately 0.03 to 0.04 feet annually over the past 10,000 years – rise numbers consistent with what is being observed today.
Is it conceivable that the Earth was once an asteroid, covered with ice, traveling through the outer reaches of space at about 67,000 miles per hour and it eventually flew into the Sun’s gravitational field resulting in it being snagged into an orbit around the Sun? And as a result of having been snagged into the Sun’s orbit the earth began continuously receiving heat from the Sun resulting in the melting of the ice glaciers and over time producing the earth’s oceans?
A recent article in the Sacramento Bee newspaper, contained a prediction that the oceans are expected to rise by 3 feet over the next century, that calculates to be a rise of 0.03 feet (0.36 inches) per year. Other predictions have been in the range of 0.3 to 0.5 inches per year while as previously noted above, there have indications that the oceans have risen about an average of 0.04 feet (0.48 inches) per year over the last 7,000 to 10,000 years.
If the NASA data and the archeological data cited above are valid and correct, does that not contradict the current belief that greenhouse gases are causing global warming which in turn causes the oceans to rise? Has not global warming been with us since day one?
If one stops and thinks about what some in the scientific community say about CO 2 and its heat trapping ability and/or any albedo capability it may have, why do they not wonder why that occurs. Carbon monoxide (CO) does not have the same reputation that CO 2 has, so what is the magic in adding that additional oxygen molecule to give CO 2 its reputation? The scientific community should step up to the plate and give the public some answers. Additionally it is said there is a layer of CO 2 that resides in the atmosphere – how is that possible when CO 2 is half again as heavy as air?
The whole world is of the opinion that the greenhouse gases, and in particular CO 2 , is the cause of global warming and much time, effort and resources are being spent on this issue. One wonders: does the scientific community have the world chasing its tail?
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