Global Warming conspiracy

This is a very complicated idea, but some people claim that global warming is a conspiracy propagated by governments to control us. They believe that it has been fabricated to stifle dissent. The main contention of the people that believe this is that global warming due to human activity is the greatest hoax of all time and that it's purpose is to instill fear and panic and gain political gain.

As you probably know, global warming has now been lumped into the general theory that the Earth is undergoing climate change. It turns out the Earth is always undergoing climate change. It's been doing this ever since it cooled down and had a stable atmosphere several billion years ago. The real question is: is the current climate change caused by human activity? The answer is that it probably is, but how much change is actually occurring and how much of it can attributed to humans is highly debated.

There is no doubt that the planet is warming, but the amount is not that large. Compared to the 1950-1980 mean, the temperature has climbed around 0.7 C. However, fourteen of the warmest fifteen years were in the 21st century.

What's causing these increases? The consensus is that it's the result of the emission of greenhouse gases. The main culprits are water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane. The reason why these gases cause warming is that they trap infrared radiation that usually gets radiated out into space at night. Nitrous oxide and ozone are also greenhouse gases, but they're minor players.

The way that the greenhouse effect works is that the sun radiates visible light that passes through the atmosphere and this warms that Earth. At night the Earth radiates infrared heat back into space, but the greenhouse gases trap this heat. The net effect is to heat the planet. That's why it's called the greenhouse effect. If it weren't for this effect, the Earth would be a frozen ice ball. However, the heat balance has been thrown out of whack by too much greenhouse gases. The atmosphere is trapping too much heat.

There is no doubt that human activity is producing more carbon dioxide than normal. However, the more effective greenhouse gas is water vapor. It's 36 to 72% effective. Carbon dioxide is 9-28%. Methane is 4 to 9%. The problem is that carbon dioxide has the longest lifetime potential. We humans are generating lots of carbon dioxide because of burning fossil fuels in power generation and automobile emissions. The concentration of carbon dioxide has risen from 280 ppm (parts per million) in 1750 to 395.4 ppm today. This is obviously the result of more population generating more carbon dioxide.

The fossil fuels most responsible for carbon dioxide increase are gasoline, fuel oil, and coal. They contribute 35 - 36%. Natural gas adds almost as much at 20%.

Although water vapor is much more efficient as a greenhouse gas, it only lasts days in the atmosphere as opposed to carbon dioxide, which lasts years.

China has replaced the United States in amount of carbon dioxide emission. India, Russia, Japan and most of Europe emit much lower amounts compared to the U.S. and China.

The oceans have a lot to do with the so-called carbon cycle (the uptake and release of carbon dioxide). Carbon dioxide is soluble in water to form carbonic acid. Colder water is able to dissolve more of the gas than warmer. This is a physical chemistry law. The deeper parts of the ocean hold around 15% more carbon dioxide than the water at the surface because there is more (volume wise) of this deeper water. Calcium carbonate is also formed from carbon dioxide by aquatic shelled organisms. To appreciate the enormity of this cycle, roughly 90 gigatons of carbon are exchanged between the oceans and the atmosphere each year. That's a huge amount. When carbon dioxide is first dissolved in ocean water, it's converted to carbonic acid H2CO3. This molecule then ionizes to H+ and HCO3 - ions. The HCO3 - ion is further ionized to CO3 2- the carbonate ion. These follow the chemical laws concerning equilibrium. The coefficients of these ionization reactions have been determined for ocean water and they vary according to temperature and pressure. The bottom line is that a 10% increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere results in a 1% increase in the ocean. So, the oceans can only take care of so much carbon dioxide.

Another factor to consider is that plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen by the photosynthesis process. Plants convert light into chemical energy at an efficiency of 3-6%. However, this varies from plant species to plant species and the frequency of light. The problem with photosynthesis is that while the amount of carbon dioxide is high, a plant enzyme, RuBisCo, binds it, but if the concentration of carbon dioxide is low, this enzyme binds oxygen. This is a disadvantage for plant metabolism. The good news is that plants do produce oxygen most of the time, and a high concentration of carbon dioxide stimulates plant growth, and this extra carbon dioxide allows plants to withstand environmental stresses including soil salinity, air pollution, temperature swings, and air-borne pathogens. The bottom line is that plants help sequester carbon, but they also release carbon dioxide (respire). Fortunately, most plant species are a net carbon dioxide fixer, but when plants die, their decomposition produces carbon dioxide and methane, both good greenhouse gases.

Carbon dioxide is also produced by respiration of most animal species, including us. We need oxygen to produce energy, and like most thermodynamic systems, we burn (by a very complicated biological process) a fuel (sugar) with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is not considered toxic, but at high concentrations can be harmful and even result in death. This could become a problem if the concentration of carbon dioxide keeps rising in the future. It's around 400 ppm (0.04%) now. At a concentration of 0.5% (5000 ppm) carbon dioxide causes headaches, mental slowness and emotional irritation). This is what you feel in a closed area with a lot of people. Stop breathing people!

The average human produces 1.0 kilogram of carbon dioxide per day. There are approximately 7 billion people, so that means that we humans contribute roughly 7 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide per day. There are around 3-30 million species of animals, most of which exhale carbon dioxide. Trying to estimate how much carbon dioxide they produce is difficult, but it's probably in the billions of kilograms per day. Overall respiration produces 30-50 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide each year. Supposedly we humans breathe out 8% of the total carbon dioxide emissions.

Now let's see what we humans emit from consumption of energy. It's roughly 32 billion metric tons per year. Humans emit 136 times more carbon dioxide than volcanoes do per year.
So, trying to determine where this extra carbon dioxide comes from is difficult. Most of it is estimated.

The real question is: can anything be done about the rise in greenhouse gases? It appears from the data that I've found that the burning of fossil fuels contributes as much carbon dioxide as if there were twice as many humans and animals on the planet. The fact that the planet's population will continue to rise means that more greenhouse gases will be emitted. The amount and how fast it will increase is open to debate.

Since the economies of most countries are linked to burning fossil fuel, this source of greenhouse gases is not going away anytime soon. Stopping this source in a draconian way would result in chaos and global conflict. The only answer is to slowly convert to energy efficient processes and environmentally safe energy production, the so-called eco-friendly way of life. Although wind power and solar power are viable methods of producing energy they are not cheap and take up huge amounts of space. Wind power also threatens birds. Nothing is perfect when it comes to green energy production.

Making eco-friendly autos is possible. The technology exists, but it won't be done using electric cars because the electricity needed to charge the batteries in these vehicles also consumes fossil fuels. One possible fuel is hydrogen. This burns to make water. Currently, it is used in some locations, but it will be a difficult conversion to a pure hydrogen economy. There are various methods of producing hydrogen, including electrolysis of water and splitting of hydrocarbons, but there are storage and distribution issues. Hydrogen is very flammable. Remember the Hindenburg.

I believe that humanity will slowly wean away from fossil fuels, but it will take a worldwide effort to accomplish it before climate change becomes a serious problem. So, the fact is that climate change is happening, but no one really knows for sure where it's going. I don't think that governments are conspiring to use climate change as a political weapon. Climate change is a big problem that no one really wants to tackle. Governments are too taken up by political conflict and greed to do anything about this problem. Hopefully, they'll come to their senses and fix it.

Thanks for reading.