Dec. 22 - A Closer Look at Global Warming (Part 1)

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A Closer Look at Global Warming (Part 1)

By George E. Bushell

Sunspot values from: http://spaceweather.com

While looking at some old copies of Life magazine in an antique store in the spring of 2008, I came across a very interesting article from August 1956 about the fear of global warming. It reviewed many possible causes for the phenomenon, including increased levels of CO2. There seems to be nothing new today that goes beyond this 1956 article.

The most interesting possible cause presented was the sunspot cycle. It described the 11-year cycle commonly referred to today. However, it also mentioned that both global weather variations and sunspots also follow a longer cycle where sunspots shut down completely for a few years at the end of this lengthy cycle. (The mean cycle length over the last 400-year sunspot history seems to be about 95 years). The article also suggested that, within this 95-year cycle, there are more sub-cycles: increased sunspot activity with some increased global warming followed by decreased sunspot activity with some global cooling.

The summer of 2008 was cool and moist and the summer of 2009 was, for the most part, even more so, especially in Eastern Canada. This is not that unexpected as the earth has actually been cooling since 2005—not warming as it did in the previous two decades—according to the Climatic Research Unit in the U.K. Sunspots have also been decreasing since the last maximum was reached in about 2003 and are now at their lowest level in 100 years. Careful measurements by several NASA spacecraft have also shown that the sun's brightness has dimmed by 0.02 percent at visible wavelengths and a whopping 6 percent at extreme UV wavelengths since the second last solar minimum of 1996-7. Radio telescopes are now recording the dimmest “radio sun” since 1955.

But global CO2 concentrations have continued to rise according to National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s measurement site at Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Thus, there appears to be a negative relationship between CO2 levels and global temperature and a positive correlation between sunspot numbers/sun strength and global cooling. If CO2 were actually the dominant cause of global warming and sunspots accounted for only 20 percent of recent global temperature increases, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims, global cooling should not have started in 2005 because mean monthly CO2 levels have not stopped rising.

The last 25 years have seen an increase in sunspot activity which has likely caused much of the global warming that many attribute almost completely to CO2 increases. During the late 1960s and 70s, the press, the public and many “scientists” were worried about global cooling and the return of an ice age. However, if we look at the variation in sunspot levels over the last 100 years it is highly likely that changing sunspot activity was at the base of these climate concerns, as illustrated in the graph below:

As we are now at the end of a 95-year cycle, we are most likely going to have 25-50 years of lower than average sunspot activity, which means some global cooling. However, if sunspots do not return at all for an extended period as was the case in the 1600s during the Maunder Minimum when the Thames River froze every winter, people skated on the canals of Holland, and snow stayed on the ground for about 3 months each winter in these countries, we could have another Little Ice Age.

In fact, the first London Thames Frost Fair was held in 1607. Some authors, such as Steven Stol in the November 2009 edition of Harper Magazine, blame the Little Ice Age on the effects of the Black Plague. That is, the reduction of up to 40 percent of European populations as a result of this disaster caused much of the cultivated land to return to forests and grassland, which absorbed considerable CO2 and caused global cooling. While this event likely did have some effect on temperature, it should be noted that cultivated land still absorbs considerable CO2 and that the Black Plague peaked in 1350 although the worst of the Little Ice Age occurred from 1600 to 1675 during which time sunspot activity nearly bottomed out completely.

What about greenhouse gases? As noted in the Scientific American of July 2004, atmospheric methane gas remains in minuscule concentrations of only about 1.7 ppm, CO2 is roughly 220 times as concentrated at the planet's surface (although, still at a very low 0.038 percent), while water vapour is a whopping 6,000 times as plentiful. Surely, the sun’s effect on atmospheric water vapour plays a much stronger role in global temperature variation than does CO2.

Furthermore, Ian Clark, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa, gave a presentation in March 2009 in which he showed that most of our recent global warming is not the result of increased CO2. In fact, after many years of studying Arctic ice cores, he concluded that CO2 levels, for the most part, follow global climate change instead of causing it.

There does not appear to be any direct evidence that CO2 has caused most of the global warming we have witnessed during the last two decades. Most global warming advocates simply presume that CO2 is the major cause because it is technically a greenhouse gas, and consequently build computer models with this assumption included in the code. They then make hundreds of computer runs that show the detrimental effects of higher concentrations of CO2 and conclude they have proven that CO2 is the cause of global warming and will wreak worldwide havoc.

However, tests have shown that increasing the level of carbon dioxide in a greenhouse to 550 ppm will accelerate plant growth by 30- 40 percent. (The mean level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is around 380 ppm or 0.038 percent while oxygen is at 20.95 percent). CO2 is a beneficial gas that stimulates plant growth—it is not a detrimental substance like acid rain, mercury, lead, and other real pollutants. In fact, CO2 is at its second lowest level ever—it was only at a lower level during the Carboniferous period about 300 million years ago.

Related Articles

• A Closer Look at Global Warming (Part 2)

Part 2 of this article in next week’s Epoch Times discusses melting glaciers and ice sheets, long-term weather forecasting, and political support for CO2 reduction.

George Bushell (www.georgebushell.com) is an Ottawa-based retired operational researcher who has studied meteorology, climatology, and glaciology. He currently serves on the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt Master Plan Advisory Committee.