CONJECTURE: My thoughts on global warming
CONJECTURE: My thoughts on global warming
This isnt a satire, or a parody, or even an attempt at humour. Its my opinion, my prediction, and Id be really happy if it were disproved. If it cant be, then maybe Ill get the Nobel Prize. Hey, if Arafat and Obama can do it, why cant I?
The ice caps north and south are melting, as are the glaciers. There is drought to an extent not previously known. Is this just a cycle?
My scientific knowledge is limited to what you might call sophomore lab courses in Chemistry, Physics, Botany and Zoology (the last two combined well after I studied them into Biology). I was a whiz in Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, and I made history in my university for scoring the lowest mark in Calculus anybody had ever been able to achieve: 17%. Ill bet the record still stands, but I guess it wont get into the Guinness Book of Records.
I used to like reading Scientific American, and even before that grew up reading Science Fiction stories. Therefore I feel qualified to give my opinion on what is causing Global Warming. After all there are so many different opinions out there already, and more added every day, so why can't I take a shot at it?
Here is my theory. It isnt in a language that only Einstein could have understood, and Im sure any 10-year old will be able to follow it. It all has to do with centrifugal or centripetal force, mass, elliptical orbital motion and gravity.
You all know what gravity does. Just think of yourself as Newton sitting under an apple tree. Anyone who could do an Around the World with their yoyo knows what centrifugal or centripetal force is, and mass? Hey, how much do you weigh?
Think of the fact that for untold millennia (Ill not deal with those who think it might have only been 6000 years) the earth has been spinning in a near-elliptical but mostly regular orbit around the sun. What is keeping it from just flying away into outer space, sort of like how the Palestinian kids launch their rocks at the IDF (oops! Id better not get too political).
Gravity, thats what. The Earth is spinning around the sun just like the moon is spinning around the Earth because the sun has a huge mass and exerts a gravitational pull on the Earth that is balanced by the centripetal/centrifugal force that would otherwise tear the Earth out of its orbit.
The mass of the earth for millennia has not changed much, providing a balance, but NOW, heres the rub. We have been burning our land-based fossil fuels. The smoke, made up of minute particles, has been dissipating into space, more and more. In other words, some of the mass of the Earth is being thrust into space, as have all those space probes going on to visit other planets, all of which reduces the mass of our home planet. Because the mass of the Earth is reducing, even minutely, the pressure of the centrifugal/centripetal force is reducing as well, and that means that the pull of gravity from the sun is starting to outbalance little by little the forces that keep the Earth in orbit. So what is happening? The Earth is slowly moving closer to the sun. There it is. Now you have it. Global warming is caused by the Earth moving closer to the sun. The big problem is that once that imbalance has started, it will accelerate. So we are going to be drawn faster and faster into the sun.
It will not be a disaster in my lifetime. Im getting close to becoming an octogenarian, but I do feel sorry for my descendants, and yours. In the meantime, enjoy the warmth.
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Any scientists out there?
There are going to be a lot of ''Red'' people out there.
Buzz
There was a show on this topic on the weather channel the other day, Friday I think.
The show gave data supporting two hypotheses (1) the earth slowing moving closer to the sun based on increasing gravitational pull by the sun on the earthor (2) the earth slowly moving farther and farther from the sun based on lessening gravitational pull as the sun slowly dies.
According the presenter neither scenario worked out well for the inhabitants of earth
Thanks for the article
p.s. no scientist here
Maybe we need a hit from a major asteroid to balance things out and end global warming.
What's your preference, Dean? The Earth's depletion faster means my scenario while the sun's depletion faster means the oppositie - i.e. the gravitational pull from the sun reduces causing the Earth to pull away from the sun. Then you can wave to the Martians on the way out of the Solar system.
Less, if Ambi shares the sun-screen.
Right, Hal, that should add to the Earth's mass and maybe balance things out. However, where do you hope the asteroid will land?
It really doesn't matter to me. I accept that things change and nothing stays the same. Right now I'll take all the global warming I can get as it was still snowing here last week.
It's a little off the wall (the theory) and it does have a certain amount of .... ah, it is .... I mean..... well..... it's interesting.
Yes, Feronia, there are so many complex possibilities, and mine is so simplixtic. Occum's Razor.
Mais, madame, plus a change, plus c'est la mme chose.
I think any of the reasons for climate change you have brought forth could play a part, but there is only one problem and it is at the beginning of the article. If it isn't broke, then why fix it. Now I'm all for doing all we can to help keep earth in the cleanest shape we can by doing all we can to provide all creatures a safe environment to live in, but when I follow the money and the desire to control people I wonder how much faith I can put in "Climate Change" especially when it started out as "Global Warming" and the protesters had to walk through snow and freezing temperatures to somehow prove their religion was in fact true while the people they passed were shoveling snow out of their driveways and the snow was being pushed to the side of the road so people could travel a little.
Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar IceRetreat
Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earths polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average. The updated data contradict one of the most frequently asserted global warming claims that global warming is causing the polar ice caps to recede.
The timing of the 1979 NASA satellite instrument launch could not have been better for global warming alarmists. The late 1970s marked the end of a 30-year cooling trend. As a result, the polar ice caps were quite likely more extensive than they had been since at least the 1920s. Nevertheless, this abnormally extensive 1979 polar ice extent would appear to be the normal baseline when comparing post-1979 polar ice extent.
Updated NASA satellite data show the polar ice caps remained at approximately their 1979 extent until the middle of the last decade. Beginning in 2005, however, polar ice modestly receded for several years. By 2012, polar sea ice had receded by approximately 10 percent from 1979 measurements. ( Total polar ice area factoring in both sea and land ice had receded by much less than 10 percent, but alarmists focused on the sea ice loss as proof of a global warming crisis.)
NASA satellite measurements show the polar ice caps have not retreated at all.
A 10-percent decline in polar sea ice is not very remarkable, especially considering the 1979 baseline was abnormally high anyway. Regardless, global warming activists and a compliant news media frequently and vociferously claimed the modest polar ice cap retreat was a sign of impending catastrophe. Al Gore even predicted the Arctic ice cap could completely disappear by 2014.
In late 2012, however, polar ice dramatically rebounded and quickly surpassed the post-1979 average. Ever since, the polar ice caps have been at a greater average extent than the post-1979 mean.
Now, in May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average.
During the modest decline in 2005 through 2012, the media presented a daily barrage of melting ice cap stories. Since the ice caps rebounded and then some how have the media reported the issue?
The frequency of polar ice cap stories may have abated, but the tone and content has not changed at all. Here are some of the titles of news items I pulled yesterday from the front two pages of a Google News search for polar ice caps:
Climate change is melting more than just the polar ice caps
2020: Antarctic ice shelf could collapse
An Arctic ice caps shockingly rapid slide into the sea
New satellite maps show polar ice caps melting at unprecedented rate
The only Google News items even hinting that the polar ice caps may not have melted so much (indeed not at all) came from overtly conservative websites. The mainstream media is alternating between maintaining radio silence on the extended run of above-average polar ice and falsely asserting the polar ice caps are receding at an alarming rate.
To be sure, receding polar ice caps are an expected result of the modest global warming we can expect in the years ahead. In and of themselves, receding polar ice caps have little if any negative impact on human health and welfare, and likely a positive benefit by opening up previously ice-entombed land to human, animal, and plant life. Nevertheless, polar ice cap extent will likely be a measuring stick for how much the planet is or is not warming.
The Earth has warmed modestly since the Little Ice Age ended a little over 100 years ago, and the Earth will likely continue to warm modestly as a result of natural and human factors. As a result, at some point in time, NASA satellite instruments should begin to report a modest retreat of polar ice caps. The modest retreat like that which happened briefly from 2005 through 2012 would not be proof or evidence of a global warming crisis. Such a retreat would merely illustrate that global temperatures are continuing their gradual recovery from the Little Ice Age. Such a recovery despite alarmist claims to the contrary would not be uniformly or even on balance detrimental to human health and welfare. Instead, an avalanche of scientific evidence indicates recently warming temperatures have significantly improved human health and welfare , just as warming temperatures have always done.
~Link~
Thank you, Sixpick, for providing your take on this. As we all know, there are as many opinions on the phenomenon as there are shades of gray, if not morel. You made reference to some phraseology as the beginning of this article, with which you took exception, and I will point out that RIGHT at the beginning of the article is one very important word: CONJECTURE. I also made note of my qualifications as to being able to provide some conjecture.
Oh, I'm not criticizing you in any way. I realize this article was not meant to be very serious. I agree with everything you've said as reasons there can be climate changes on this earth.
Let me respond;
If the earth is losing mass, since the (gravitational) attraction between any two objects is directly proportionate to the mass of the objects and inversely proportionate to the square of distance between them, centripetal force aside, the attraction between the earth and the sun would thus be diminishing and the earth's orbit around the sun, becoming a wider ellipse with more distal peri and aphelia.
So, I don't agree with your theory, Buzz although it is well-conceived.
I'm going with the Greenhouse Effect.
My misconception then. I had thought that if the Earth lost mass, its centrifugal/centripetal forces would not balance the gravitational pull of the sun. I guess my prowess in calculus didn't allow me to think clearly enough. I would have asked the "Beautiful Mind" to work out the formula for me but he went and died.
I can't prove or disprove your theory, Buzz -- or mine.
But it makes a great discussion.
I think that will easily be offset by the increasing human population. Lots more mass.
Wait a second Pat. If people (or animals) are growing it's because they're consuming what is available on Earth, such as food and water. It's equal - and no different for increasing population.
Kav........
The mass that becomes human population at one point was the mass of other organisms --
Many examples at the link.mmm I don't know about that, not sure that the mass we consume is equal to our physical mass as we expand weight wise and numbers wise. But I'm not a scientist either.