Will there be supertyphoons, superhurricanes and superdroughts on Earth even without increased carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere? Yes. Even during the age of the dinosaurs, there were supertyphoons, super-hurricanes, superdroughts. This was because, even in that distant past, the atmosphere was there, and that atmosphere of that distant past has been carried to the present. The supertyphoons of that distant past and of the present have only one difference: The current atmosphere has the dreaded CO2.
Why the “atmospheric calamities”? Because the sensitive, unpredictable atmosphere is detached from solid Earth and thus will always lag behind the rotation of the Earth—plus the cyclic orbit of the Earth from perihelion to aphelion, etc., (like a vehicle making a 360-degree curve)—the orbital motion upsets and ruffles the atmosphere. Such calamities are experienced by other planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, etc.—not because CO2 is present in the atmosphere (there is none) but because these planets have atmosphere.
Advances in science introduced the use of fossil fuel. Such use fills the atmosphere with CO2. Since the industrial revolution, CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 40 percent. Thus atmospheric calamities, which started in olden times, found a dreaded ally: the heat-conserving atmospheric CO2.
But it cannot be denied that sunlight, at the speed of 186,000 miles per second, makes an instant, concentrated impact of 186,000 miles length of visible light per second on Earth’s surface. This is the principal cause (97 percent, more or less) for the rising temperature on Earth, together with the manmade CO2’s share (3 percent, more or less).
A 3-percent contribution from a dreaded ally may look small but it is enough to raise heat temperatures on Earth (0.8 percent) and to tilt the balance to cause the North Pole to melt (by 50 percent so far) during summer; and to cause glaciers, as high as 14,000 feet, to retreat. (Note up to 14,000-ft high, at this point, given the present CO2 content in the northern hemisphere.) Strange, but in the southern hemisphere, glaciers aren’t melting; they are growing. The South Pole has grown a new sea ice bed. Which raises a question: Is there global warming or climate change in the the southern hemisphere, or delayed global warming/climate change?
The reading of increasing atmospheric CO2 in the northern hemisphere is now 400 parts per minute; in the southern hemisphere, it is 390 ppm. Of the 7 billion people on Earth, 90 percent are in the northern hemisphere and 10 percent in the southern hemisphere. This implies that overpopulation is inseparably connected to global warming/climate change.
What’s the view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations arm for global warming/climate change, and the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change on this?
Will Earth be like Venus which has a runaway greenhouse CO2 and temperature all around at 470 Celsius? Never. Why?
—JOSE S. ALDEA,
jsaldea12@yahoo.com