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What Is Climate Change, and what Is the Problem?
Unless otherwise cited,
all graphics are NASA, or open source, such
as: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/
Jay Moynihan
UW-Extension Shawano County
Climate Change:
1. Is not new. The climates on earth have always
slowly changed over long periods of time.
2. Is not the “Greenhouse Effect”, though that is
important to it.
3. The problem we have, is rapid climate change.
The Greenhouse Effect:
Carbon dioxide important for retaining heat in the atmosphere.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has varied over time
In the early 1960’s NASA sent probes to Venus and Mars
We came upon the “Goldilocks Problem”
Lead would melt on
the surface.
Atmosphere 93x
thicker than ours,
and made of CO2
Just Right!
Atmosphere 95%
CO2, but less than
1% as thick as ours
Cold
The reason earth is
“just right” is the
way our planet’s
carbon cycle works.
A complex dynamic
inter-relationship of
geology, chemistry, and
biology, all in relation to
energy from the sun
creates and maintains
what we call “climate”.
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu
Lets zoom in on the
geology part for a bit.
•A molecule of CO2 deposits in the
oceans after about 100 years of
rolling around in plants, animals, and
the atmosphere.
•Some carbon from dead plants and
animals get covered over, eventually.
•It slowly gets crunched down in the
earth’s crust.
From that, you get:
•Carbonate rocks
•Oil
•Natural gas
•Coal
•Diamonds
In the early 1700’s we learned to do something really amazing.
We figured out how to get that old carbon out of the ground, nearly
completely processed by geology for burning, to do work!
But burning that old buried carbon (hundreds of millions of years
worth), pumped new CO2 into the carbon cycle.
So :
Climate models predicted the first extreme signs
of warming would be in the Northern Circumpolar region
Alaska
Melting permafrost, street collapse
“Drunken Trees”
Sudden collapse of
permafrost redirects river
through a highway
Invasion of the Spruce Bore Beetle
ALASKA
NOW
As of August 9, 2007
Scientific models re ice
melt in arctic as of
02/2007, are at current
observed rate, too
slow.
Image is from http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/LargerImages/RegionGraphics/Alaska/SeaIce.jpg
DOD images
Shows the timescales over which
emitted carbon dioxide is removed
from the atmosphere. Mixing in the
biosphere and oceans remove 7085% of emissions after 200 years,
but the remainder establishes a new
equilibrium that may persist for
hundreds of thousands of years.
So, what difference does a few degrees centigrade change in
the average planetary annual temperature make?
Well.
About 72,000 years ago, the average planetary annual
temperature slide down about 3 degrees centigrade (that’s
5.4 degrees F.)
And this is what happened…
Wisconsin Glaciation (Ice Age) 70,000 – 18,000 BC
Summary:
The balance of the carbon cycle, which “regulates” the
greenhouse effect has been disrupted by the injection
of carbon dioxide by us into the system.
The system balances the books over a long time span.
Our new deposit is really fast.
It is getting warmer and it is compared to normal, rapid
Images & graphics were used from The IPCC, U.S. Department of Defense, NASA, Nelson Institute (UW), and
Creative Commons public domain climate change image banks, and http://www.globalwarmingart.com