A Climate Quiz for Cheaters
The purpose of this Quiz is not to test your knowledge, but your capacity to acquire knowledge. On the question of Climate the great majority of us are not Scientists, and it is all too easy to lump all Scientists together under one heading, as if they are all equally knowledgeable, but this is scarcely true.
There are Physicists and Chemists; there are Climatologists and Paleo-Climatologists, there are Physiologists, Geologists, Botanists, Astro-Physicists, Oceanographers and Biologists. It is simply impossible for any one person to be expert in all the disciplines. Furthermore, just as there are good mechanics and bad mechanics, so there are also good scientists and bad scientists. How do we define a ‘good scientist’? Very simply – a good scientist follows the well-known principles of testing a hypothesis, while a bad one has an agenda and works to prove a point, either for himself or his employers. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
So since the great majority of us are not scientists, how can we engage in, how can we judge of, the ongoing arguments hurled about over Climate Change? Well we can make some judgments provided that we know the Facts - and I mean the Facts that are agreed upon by both sides of the argument. So it is the purpose of this Quiz to allow you to cheat, and by that I mean that you can avail yourself of every possible means to get to the Facts through the Information Highway, more commonly known as the Internet.
For example, it is easy to forget just how big is the Earth, but with the Internet it is easy to find its circumference and to establish its radius. It is also easy to read in a few minutes about the various layers of the atmosphere. It is quite important when so much talk goes on about the Greenhouse Gases to know what they are, what function they perform and how big they are in relation to one another. This leads me on to my very first question, which concerns the Troposphere, the very lowest layer of the Atmosphere. Now this is quite a difficult question and requires some Maths, but since you are allowed to cheat you can come up with an answer to this question with the aid of Mr Google, for example, in the space of 10 minutes flat.
Question 1: The Earth is a sphere. Actually it is flattened at the Poles, but take it as a sphere for the sake of this experiment. Work out the Cubic Capacity of that sphere. Here is the formula to make it easy for you.
or Volume = 4/3 Pi Radius Cubed
Take the Diameter of the Earth as 7,900 miles, or use Kilometers or exact figures if you prefer, and the height of the Troposphere as being 7 miles. These are only average figures to help you with your calculations. First work out the Volume of the Earth. Then work out the volume of the Earth and Troposphere combined.
Then subtract the volume of the Earth to leave you with the volume of the Troposphere.
When I first composed a Quiz several months ago this was one of the questions I posed, and I have to be honest with you I am not too sure that I would have been able to arrive at an answer. But you can cheat, just as I have done, and you can quite easily arrive at the Volume or the Cubic Capacity of all the levels of the Atmosphere. This is quite enlightening and will give you the confidence that you will be able easily to answer all the rest of the questions in this Quiz, and once you have done that you will know more about Global Warming and Climate Change I promise you than Prince Charles, The Archbishop of Canterbury, Kevin Rudd, Gordon Brown and Chancellor Merkels - combined.
Question 2: What is CO2, alias Carbon Dioxide? This is a pretty fundamental question, which would be simplicity itself to anyone who has done O Levels in Chemistry. But I am assuming that you like me are an absolute ignormamus as far as Chemistry is concerned. (a). Is Carbon Dioxide an atom composed of 1 Carbon and 2 Oxygen molecules? (b). Or is Carbon Dioxide a molecule consisting of 1 Carbon and 2 Oxygen atoms?
It is quite important to get that right. Now here is another question and this concerns smoke. In order to help you, or bemuse you – take your pick - here is a picture taken from the Met Office website, no less.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
That is a pretty impressive picture, wouldn’t you say? It infers, nay insists, pretty directly that the smoke issuing from tall Power Station chimneys is CO2, Carbon Dioxide.
Question 3: Is that a Fact? Is that a partial Fact? Or is it downright misleading, what Winston Churchill once called a ‘terminological inexactitude’?
Now this is a Quiz for Cheats, and instead of trying to catch you out, I am doing exactly the opposite. I am hoping that with the help of Mr Google that you can quickly avail yourself of some very precise information. I suggest that you ask simply for the Composition of Emissions from Power Stations. In that way you can see that I have not made up the answers for my own convenience. I think you will find, as I did, a cocktail of chemicals. Was there any Carbon Dioxide?
We, who are not scientists, but laymen, can very easily be persuaded of all sorts of gobbledy-gook, by advertisements we see on TV for every sort of item, we can even be persuaded by some excellent programmes on the BBC. I don’t want to insult your intelligence, but I want to get this question out of the way. It concerns the Greenhouse Effect and Greenhouse Gases.
Question 4: The first level of the Atmosphere is the Troposphere, above which is the Tropopause. Is this where the Greenhouse is? Ask a silly question and get a silly answer. Is there a huge ball of glass up there? Or sheet of self mending plastic?
I had to ask a silly question, because, believe it or not, there are some people of low I.Q. who might well be stumped by that one. And even some, believe me, of quite high intelligence can turn on you and yell ‘What about the Greenhouse Effect?’, as if you had committed some heinous blasphemy!!
Question 5: What is a Greenhouse Gas? What makes a Greenhouse Gas any different from the other gases that make up the atmosphere? Why is it that Nitrogen 78% of air and Oxygen 21% (rounded up figures) are not considered Greenhouse Gases and yet Argon 0.93 and Carbon Dioxide .038% are? Not to forget Water Vapour, which is some 95%of the Greenhouse Gases!!!
Since there are all these advices bandied about concerning your carbon footprint, since Ministers of State are inclined to meet and solemnly declare how they will cut emissions, it is as well at this point to remind ourselves of the sources of Carbon Dioxide. OK, No 1, we all know that we breathe in Oxygen and exhale Carbon Dioxide, all 6.3 billion of us humans, together with all the animals on the Planet. We are all producing Carbon Dioxide night and day. Luckily for us plants love Carbon Dioxide and by a process of photosynthesis turn it back into Oxygen for us to breathe. No2, Carbon Dioxide is very soluble in water and the oceans and the earth contain the most of it. When the sun warms the earth and the oceans, streams of Carbon Dioxide arise into the air, by a process called the champagne effect and outgassing.
By now you will have looked up the answer to Question 4 and you will know that the emissions from Power Stations consist of – wait for it –
Below is an introduction to the principal pollutants produced by industrial, domestic and traffic sources.
Sulphur Dioxide (SO2),Particulate Matter,Carbon Monoxide (CO),Nitrogen Dioxide(NO2),Ozone (O3),Hydrocarbons,Benzene1,3-ButadieneTOMPs (Toxic Organic Micropollutants), Lead (Pb) and Heavy MetalsAcid Deposition
This comes from ‘The Chemistry of Atmospheric Pollutants’ found via Google.
Better still is to look at the page from DEFRA called ‘Air Quality and Main Air Pollutants’ - http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/airqual/aqmainap.htm This is a Government website and guess what! No mention of Carbon Dioxide!
Hey! Just look at that list! What a cocktail! Surely the Met Office were kidding! Surely they did not expect us to be of so minimal intelligence that we should believe that smoke from Power Stations is pure CO2! Come now! Pull the other one! I suppose if Vice President Al Gore could get away with pictures of belching Power Stations, the Met thought they could do the same.
Of course, that cocktail, that acrid sulphurous smoke is Pollution, no question about that. Nobody would argue with that. We are all against filth. And some of us are against innuendo also!
Unfortunately those pictures have caused quite a lot of confusion. Even today someone said to me, ‘What about all those Power Stations in China? Building one a week, aren’t they?’ Yes, that is a concern for many well-meaning people. But it is a concern about Pollution, it has very little to do with Carbon Dioxide.
You know, Google is great. I did not even pass School Cert in Chemistry, but now I can turn to the Internet and look everything up, provided I ask the right questions. So where does the Carbon Dioxide from the combustion of Fossil Fuels come from? Ask Google and he will tell you, if you look hard enough. Indirectly. That Carbon Monoxide as it gets blown into the atmosphere has a tendency, so I understand, to bond with an available Oxygen atom. So the burning of fossil fuels does produce Carbon Dioxide but only INDIRECTLY.
Please don’t believe me! Check it out, with an industrial chemist if you know one. Prove me wrong – I stand to be corrected.
It is said that Carbon Dioxide is a Natural Gas. You understand – produced by Nature. It is also clear, colourless, odourless and tasteless. So that even this Carbon Dioxide produced indirectly through the combustion of fossil fuels will also be colourless, tasteless and not a pollutant. Or would a man-made molecule of CO2 have a name tag on it declaring its human origin?
Am I wrong? You can imagine an airline Pilot flying at 35,000 feet, and he spots a cluster of Anthropomorphic Carbon Dioxide molecules, and he says to his co-pilot, “Hey Ed, did you see that, a cluster of Anthropomorphic CO2 molecules, and they were all coloured sepia brown!” Than which, I hasten to add, nothing could be more ridiculous.
Let’s get back to the Quiz. Let’s be even handed. The Met Office agrees that the figure for Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is 380 parts per million. Both sides agree to that figure, though the Met Office adds that this figure is increasing, and this will cause extra Global Warming. Both sides by the way agree that the Globe in the last 150 years up to 1998 has warmed by 0.7 degrees centigrade, but has been cooling since that date. The Met Office say that this is only temporary setback, all because of La Niña, an Inconvenient Ocean Current, which has gone and changed course.
Let us just think about those 380 parts per 1,000,000. That is the same as 38 parts per 100,000, or the same as 3.8 parts per 10,000. Let us be generous and round the figure up to 4 and let us imagine them all magnified a billion times so that the molecules of Carbon Dioxide are white and all the rest are red, like snooker balls. They are all milling around in the wind, sometimes rising by convection and sometimes falling because of gravity. So there are these 4 white balls amongst all those 10,000 red ones. However at the very most only 1 in 4, actually it is more like 1 in 40, of those white balls (not sepia!!) are anthropomorphic, man-made, CO2 amongst some 10,000 other molecules. You would be hard put to see them. Indeed, once you have worked out the volume of the Troposphere, you will see what I mean. The Carbon Dioxide is simply a trace!
How much of that trace is man-made? That is the question. So let us look at a chart.
Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many "facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effect of water vapour
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
What does the chart show? If the total Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is 380 parts per million, or 3.8% of the Greenhouse Gases, the anthropomorphic contribution is a mere 0.117%, which is some 11 parts per 100 million! It is a trace of a trace.
Now the Global Warmers want all of us to reduce our Carbon footprints. We cannot possibly reduce the Carbon Dioxide that arises naturally from the oceans or that outgases from the earth. Nor can we stop volcanoes erupting! Not even Kevin Rudd can do that! We could of course all agree world wide at the Spring equinox on March 22nd say, we could agree, all mankind, to hold our breaths for 1 minute, and not use our laptops and computers for a whole day and night and we could all go to bed as the sun goes down and get up at dawn. Would that help I wonder?
Actually this Global Warming is a serious matter, so we members of the public are lead to believe. If Carbon Dioxide increases then the whole Globe might get warmer by 2° centigrade, which we are told is a ‘tipping point’ and that could cause immense flooding, the Arctic ice could disappear, the Tundra could thaw, the sea could rise by a couple of feet, Manhattan, half Florida and some of India could be flooded. All of this scenario could happen if we reached that tipping point. (Please observe the use of the word ‘could’.)
This is clearly serious business. So what is the solution that is proposed by the Met Office and that famously inconvenient Vice-President? How can we ordinary people, how can Mr Joe Public help to avert this disaster?
Just lookup the Hadley Centre and there you can read what you can do to avert this Climate Change which could possibly produce all these disasters. There you can get a list of what you can do. Here are some of the world saving recommendations. 1. Turn to a Green energy provider. 2.Turn down your thermostat. 3.Only boil enough water for a cup of tea. 4.Don’t cover your front garden with concrete or asphalt. 5.Don’t leave your computer on stand-by.
What? Are you serious? Is this the way to stop Climate disaster? Is this the way to reduce my Carbon Footprint?
I ask you, pull the other one. I think my suggestion that we all hold our breaths for one minute on March 22 would serve the purpose better, and better still if the politicians of the world would hold theirs for a full 90 seconds!!
Question No 6: If we lump all the minor Greenhouse Gases together and arrive at a figure of 500 parts per million, this is just an approximation, then express Water Vapour in the same way. That is 1,000,000 minus 500 = ? One million minus five hundred equals what?
That was not too difficult, was it? You know, I worked that one out in my head, I did not even use a calculator – except to check my ‘rithmetic – nor did I use Excel, as I was afraid I might forget to put the = sign in first. There you go.
It’s funny how they go on about 380 parts per million for CO2 and nobody reminds us that Water Vapour is a whopping nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and five hundred parts per million and is considered by those renegade Skeptics as being the thermostat of the Earth.
Question Number 7: While we are at it, let’s ask Google, ‘What is Water Vapour (or Vapor!) exactly? Is it a Gas, a Liquid or a Solid? And what are clouds, are they Gas or Liquid or Solid?
Next we have a little question about the mainstream.
Question No 8: How many scientists signed the Oregon Petition against the Kyoto Protocol? And as a rider to this question how many scientists are there in the IPCC? (You can take the total numbers even allowing for hangers-on and civil servants who know less than nothing about science. That’s OK. To help you find your way to the first part of this question just Google Professor Fred Singer and his deposition before Congress, and you find the figures.)
A lady friend of mine expressed the opinion that we should leave the matter to the experts. Well, I am half inclined to agree with her, but only half. And that is because I feel that we should not abdicate, that we should not abdicate our God-given faculty to reason.
Question No 9: Who are the experts? Which is the main stream? The 17,000 scientists who signed the Oregon Petition, or the 2,500 scientists plus civil servants of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?
What’s in a name? you might say. Perhaps it’s just me, but that Panel on Climate Change, it just sucks, it just irks me. Who the hell do they think they are? Climate Change? It is so fundamentally irreligious, so utterly pagan – no, less than pagan. Oh yes, they want to Save the Planet – ok that is very worthy – except that they believe that they are greater then Great Nature, who has been the custodian of this Planet for millions of years.
Now a lot of scientists would not even consider themselves as religious, but to my mind the mass energy equivalence as stated by Albert Einstein, E = mc2 was a blinding flash of illumination. We have in the UK one world famous naturalist who has produced great documentaries on Natural History and Evolution, and is on record as declaring that he wished he had Faith, he who has enlightened millions of people with a paean of praise to Great Nature. Perhaps he mistakes Faith for Credulity, while he has provided for us a faith based upon evidence. Surely Science and Religion are but two sides of the same coin, as inseparable as Fact and Value. When Fact and Value are divorced, or when Science and Religion are divorced, then all that is left is credulity and superstition. For my money that is not Religion at all. And equally Science that is not supported by evidence is not Science either. It is hysteria.
My next question is a really important one with a curious name.
Questions 10: What is the Hot Water Bottle Effect?
I am not kidding – once again you can look this up in Google. There are a whole series of articles by Stephen Wilde, where he argues that the oceans are the reservoir for storing heat from the sun, far greater even than the Greenhouse Gases. What intrigued me most was the following: -
To be convinced of that one only needs to consider the impracticality of heating the air in a bathroom in order to raise cold tap water to the temperature of a warm bath. It just doesn’t happen. Where air and water are involved the air temperature is always dictated by the water and never vice versa.
http://uddebatt.wordpress.com/2008/07/16/greenhouse-confusion-resolved-the-influence-of-anthropogenic-co2-but-a-molecule-on-the-back-of-the-microbe/
This means that everyone of you, whoever gets to read this, can conduct an experiment for himself. Fill a bath with cold water, then do everything you can to heat the air in the bathroom. Take a dip! Did you enjoy that?
2nd Experiment. First take the temperature in a cold bathroom. Fill the bath with hot water. Half an hour later take the temperature of the air again. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Shall I tell you something, O my unscientific brother, who is as unlettered as I am in the Sciences? There are an awful lot of laws of Physics that you and I know just by living. I know that heat rises just by lighting a bonfire in my garden. I have never seen the flames go downwards, everything rises up. I even know something about black heat as I put my hand toward the radiator in my tiny office. I know that the sun warms the earth and me and you too, as I watch the dew rise up in steam. I know that no man can control the weather, though in my youth with a friend on top of Kinder Scout I had a crack at dispersing clouds! Thereby hangs a tale! The fact is no one can make it rain, no one can determine in advance whether we will have wind or snow. The Meteoroligists can read the signs, and give us some idea of the weather within a couple of days, but these forecasts keep changing from day to day.
Even as a non-scientist we can understand the laws of Logic. We can understand that Cause always precedes Effect. Think about that – an Effect cannot ever precede a Cause. Once this Law becomes firmly established in our mentation, many things become clearer. Combustion is a Cause, whether from a Power Station, an automoblile or a Jet, and the gases that result from Combustion are an Effect. The heat from the Sun is a Cause and evaporation is an Effect. We know that the Greenhouse Gases merely delay heat loss. We know that when the air is clear, when there is High Pressure, then the absence of humidity at night will result in a rapid drop in temperature, and that applies in a temperate zone where one could get frost, or in a very hot country like Morocco, where the daytime temperature can be enormous and the night can be below zero. Conversely moisture in the atmsophere can preserve warmth, - one has only to experience the humidity in Java and Bali for example – and we know that cloud cover in winter can produce a mild night. However have you ever heard of a cloud lighting a fire?
Let us go along with the Global Warmers, and go to their websites where they explain Global Warming to children, with simple animated diagrams. What is the first thing one notices in these diagrams? – it is the sun.
http://students.washington.edu/nofrills/phil.htm
http://students.washington.edu/nofrills/phil.htm
The Sun is shown as the prime cause heating the Earth. Some of this heat is absorbed by the oceans and the earth, some of it is reflected back into outer space. This heat, so they argue, would bounce off into infinity were it not for the Greenhouse Gases, of which Carbon Dioxide is a minute 0.038%. So the Greenhouse Gases, primarily Water Vapour at 95% and Carbon Dioxide at 3.8% prevent heat loss. Well that is OK then. Pictures are shown of Power Stations and automobiles causing an aggregation of CO2 in the troposphere, and even in minute quantities aiding the retention of the sun’s heat.
But let us examine it a bit more closely, just with logic, not with any scientific hair-splitting. Does the argument suggest that the power stations, car and plane exhausts are heating the atmosphere directly? Not even the most rabid Greenpeace apparatchik would suggest that. No, they show correctly that the Sun is the main Cause of heat. They also show that Combustion creates gases, amongst which, let us allow the whole of their argument, is Carbon Dioxide. This Carbon Dioxide has apparently increased in the last 150 years, and is inhibiting heat loss. Let us say that this is corrrect. That Carbon Dioxide along with Water Vapour and Methane, plays its part in slowing down the exit of the sun’s heat into outer space.
And that is curious, as Global Warmers are inclined to deride the place of the Sun and attribute Global Warming exclusively to man-made Carbon emissions. It is a bit like attributing the heat in your hot water boiler to the lagging and not to the boiler or immersion heater.
Yes, you’ve got it! There is no greenhouse up there. There was no need for an Editor friend of mine to yell at me, ”What about the Greenhouse, Tony?” The Tropsosphere yields seamlessly into the Strathosphere. Heat is not emitted back from those Greenhouse gases at all – they merely delay the heat from the sun being bounced back into outer space - just as the humidity in Java keeps the place unbearably hot, while the dry heat in Morocco means that the nights are cold. That is experience, that is evidence.
The Greenhouse Gases act as a blanket round the Earth. Actually a blanket is a very good analogy. Since I am older I still use a blanket on my bed. When I enter my bedroom is the blanket glowing red? Of course not. Is it emitting black heat? No, it is completely neutral. However if I wrap it around me at night it prevents the heat loss from my body.
I have often stayed with my daughter whose house was right next to a huge Gas Holder. Did that Gasholder emit heat, red, black or otherwise? Of course not. Only when this gas was ignited on a gas hob did it produce heat. This takes us back to logic for the layman. All the Global Warming that we know is produced by the Sun. If you don’t believe me, if you don’t believe the Skeptics, just go to Google and look at all the Charts and Diagrams produced by the Global Warmers. Without exception they show the sun as the prime source of heat.
Once we realise that the Greenhouse Gases are insulators, then we also realise that they cannot possibly be the cause of Global Warming. We know that Cause must precede Effect – it cannot possibly be otherwise.
Now in spite of Prince Charles latest pronouncement, that he fails to understand how anyone can deny the science of Global Warming and Climate Change, we are totally in agreement with him. The Skeptics have never denied that the Earth is warming gradually, nor that Climate is changing. On the contrary, the Skeptics say that Climate has alwayse been changing these last few million years. And as to the Science that is just what the Skeptics wish to preserve. The Science is simple.
In no way could a minute trace gas be the cause of Global Warming, when it is agreed by all parties to be the result. Insulation may preserve heat, but in no way can cause it. If the Earth is warming we have to look elsewhere for the cause, and in fact we have already found it. The Global Warmers illustrate it in a hundred Charts – the cause of Global Warming is the Sun!
Now let us consider for a moment the rallying cry of all politicians when they want to pull out the stops and get a few cheers. Gordon Brown used it to great effect in his speech before Congress in the USA. As soon as he promised to tackle Climate Change Whoa! The whole assembly rose ot their feet, and not a few wiped away a tear. Tackling Climate Change has become the rallying cry, but just what does it mean? Has anyone stopped to consider the meaning of that one word Climate. I had a Cambridge PhD in Chemistry no less who assured me that Climate was the average of Weather. Now how about that? Just think about that for a moment, and let your mind be like a scalpel to cut the wooliness away. The average of the Weather? You cannot possibly mean the average of the world wide weather. What the average of Alaska and Australia? But do either of them have an average? Or let us take the average weather of the West Coast of Scotland the East Coast. They are quite close together, but one is warmed by the Gulf Stream (Hot Water Bottle Effect) and the other is prone to north-easterlies descending from the Stratoshpere, so one of our esteemed Weather forecasters told us.
An average of Weather is just a nonsense. In fact the whole business of tackling Climate Change is not just a nonsense it shows an abysmal degree of unconscious arrogance.
The fact is that there are too many unknown factors. Who is to say when the next volcano will erupt? This will upset all kinds of calculations, as vast amount of Sulphur Dioxide and Carbon are spewed into the atmosphere. And then the oceans have their own geo-thermal activities. We often think of plant life on the land, we know that plants convert Carbon Dioxde to Oxygen, but it is easy to forget the enormous plant life in the sea, the plankton and the algae. That is also converting CO2 and much of it is dropping to the bottom of the sea, so I understand.
The wish to Save the Planet is basically a noble wish, but it does need to be informed. Both sides of the argument agree the need to preserve the rain-forests, or at least to replenish the stocks of trees, for the sake of Oxygen, the amount of which appears to be declining. Here Greenpeace and the Skeptics can make an unholy alliance.
Question 11: This is a serious question. How much toilet paper, or loo-roll is used in the USA?
Believe me this is a serious question and you can Google this question too. Actually in large parts of the world the natives don’t use loo roll, but after defecation wash their bottoms with water. My wife and I spent a holiday in Italy with a bus load of Americans from Pennslvania, near the Amish country. We were rather amused that in Stresa they came across bidets, which they had never seen before, and used them for cooling bottles of wine!! Now, there is an enterprise for any enteprising person who wants to save the Planet. Introduce bidets to the USA, and sell them from Coast to Coast. You can imagine the ads!
Buy a Bidet and Save the Planet! The Hygienic way to clean your bum! Will save a million trees! Beat Carbon with a Bidet! A gentle jet is better for haemorrhoids! No need to clog your Septic Tank! Full instructions how to use!
I think President Obama should be alerted – this could create a million jobs!
Here is an interesting Chart that I have only just found: -
http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/greenhouse-gas.html
As you can see this is produced by the Global Warmers – please go ahead and read their pitch. However, I am grateful to them, because here we can see the temperature Chart showing the Holocene Optimum and the Medieval Warm Period, which some like to leave out. Look closely at the point Now – that is where we have reached, approaching the Medieval Warm. Beyond that is a computer projection, the dotted line. Gosh! Shiver my timbers! There it is, Global Warming, the Tipping Point and Climate Change all in one scenario. Switch off your computer! Turn your thermostat down! And save the Planet, if not for us, at least for our Children!
Actually since 1998 that graph should have levelled off and turned down. But let us imagine for a moment that this IPCC projection of 2001 is correct, does that mean that we shall necessarily overheat? Or could it mean just the opposite, that we are about to enter another Ice Age?
In order to satisfy ourselves of this question we have to ask the question correctly. Here goes: -
Question No 12: In the History of the Earth is there a history of Carbon Dioxide levels? Have Carbon Dioxide levels ever been higher than today? Have they ever been higher than before the Industrial Revolution?
I guess if you ask these questions you will let yourself in for an education. But I will leave you with one thought provoking quote, from my own researches. But please don’t let me prevent you from cheating, from asking your own questions.
“Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age while at the same time CO2 concentrations then were nearly 12 times higher than today-- 4400 ppm.”
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html
Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time
Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
Food for thought?
Anthony Bright-Paul
March 5th ’09
