by Daniel Fretts For those who have been terrified by Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth you may re-watch this film and take comfort that, rather than causing the rise in temperature, the rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) lags behind the temperature increase a few hundred to a thousand years. When the planet and the oceans warm up, the result is the release of CO2 from the world’s largest CO2 reservoir, the ocean. What is missing from Gore’s commentary is that rather than causing the warming trend, atmospheric CO2 increases are caused by the increase in the earth’s surface temperature.
In the Viewpoint, June 18, Ted Cooper calls for skepticism when receiving IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) climate science, and I would echo here that the fear-driven models predicting climate catastrophe may not be as science-based as one might think.
An alternative to the CO2 paradigm is found in the pioneering work of Milutin Milankovic, a scientist of the early 20th century, who studied the changing cycles of the earth’s orbit, and calculated the strength of solar radiation based on the earth’s tilt and orbital ellipticity. The resulting work demonstrated that the sun’s strength varies over eons and the resulting solar cycles correspond to the ebb and flow of ice ages over the last million or so years. The details of this theory continue to be documented and confirmed in the peer-reviewed scientific literature of the world.
Up until the inception of the IPCC, there was not much controversy that over geological time periods major climate patterns such as the ice ages are driven by astronomical cycles. Variations in the sun’s output overshadow the minute variations in CO2. CO2 is only one of several greenhouse gases, and is a minor contributor, while water vapour is a major factor in the atmospheric greenhouse effect. Since the pre-industrial era, CO2 has varied by about 100 parts per million, or one part in 10,000. Hard to think such a small change would spell disaster for humanity and trigger the melting of polar ice caps.
While technological models are able to track minuscule variations in CO2 and generate doomsday scenarios, they are contradicted by the influence of water vapour on warming. There are many scientific experts who dispute claims that infinitesimal changes in CO2 levels are the underlying cause of dangerous changes to the planet’s climate. A more reasonable view is that greenhouse gases act as amplifiers influencing more important solar effects, and CO2 is a minor contributor overall.
In summary, skeptics in science have always had an important role and we should not block their important messages. Large climate research dollars have distorted the scientific effort to understand the climate challenges we now face. Distorted scientific research does not help us solve the many challenges on the planet today. Questioning the IPCC’s carbon dioxide agenda is a good first step.
Daniel Fretts is a resident of Powell River
