Man Causing Global Warming? Methinks Thou Dost Protest Too Much
The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said,
What a dust do I raise!
—Aesop, Greece, 6th Century, BC
Between cows farting, Hummers humming and smokestacks belching pollution into the sky, the Earth is undergoing changes. But to what extent? Are we (humans) the cause? And most importantly, can we (the humans again) do anything about it?
Left unsaid by the Humans-Causing-Global-Warming mythologists, the hockey-stick-graphing Alarmists, is the other potential cause of Climate Change:
the interplay between the Sun and the Earth.
More to the point, the sun’s blasting many billions tons of material into space in the course of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). One such blast may be the equivalent to the mass of 200,000 cruise ships—not a trivial amount of energy.
When one of these blasts is directed to Earth, this mass of ionized particles—energy if you will—collides with the magnetic fields surrounding the Earth, collectively known as the Van Allen Belts (see the graph above).
Normally, the Earth’s magnetic field, which shares a polarity similar to the Sun, deflects much of this energy. However, solar and geomagnetic researchers have observed that our magnetic shield is diminishing, even if slowly. Could THAT be a cause of any natural, cyclic climate change?
Earth’s Magnetic Field is Fading
Earth’s geodynamo creates a magnetic field that shields most of the habited parts of our planet from charged particles that come mostly from the sun. The field deflects the speeding particles toward Earth’s Poles.
Without our planet’s magnetic field, Earth would be subjected to more cosmic radiation. The increase could knock out power grids, scramble the communications systems on spacecraft, temporarily widen atmospheric ozone holes, and generate more aurora activity.
Cracks in Earth’s Defenses Let Space Storms In
Earth’s magnetic field emanates from the poles and extends beyond the atmosphere and past the highest Earth-orbiting satellites.
Earth’s natural defenses are routinely compromised by huge cracks that open up for hours, allowing space storms to pour through like a hurricane through an open window.
The magnetic field absorbs the brunt of a solar storm, which is a huge cloud of charged particles, ions and electrons. The Sun constantly spits out a “wind” of these particles. During intense activity, it can shoot a coronal mass ejection (CME) our way. A CME—the most damaging sort of solar storm—is to the solar wind what a hurricane is to a summer breeze.
Magnetic Storms Rip Through Earth’s Magnetosphere
A magnetic storm produces about a million megawatts of electricity, enough to power the United States. the Sun regularly sends massive solar explosions of radiative plasma with the intensity of a billion megaton bombs hurtling through the solar system. The travel time for the solar wind from the Sun to the Earth is two to four days.
The Sun’s corona can rip open and spew as much as 20 billion tons of material into space—equivalent to the mass of 200,000 cruise ships. These explosions are known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), the hurricanes of space weather.
When a CME ploughs into the solar wind, it can create a shock wave that accelerates particles to dangerously high energies. Behind that shock wave, the CME expands into a huge cloud that engulfs planets in its path with plasma.
The solar wind pushes and stretches Earth’s protective magnetic field into a vast, comet-shaped region called the magnetosphere. The magnetosphere and Earth’s atmosphere protect us from the solar wind and other solar and cosmic radiations.
Luckily for us, few CMEs are aimed at the Earth. If a CME erupts on the side of the Sun facing us, the results around Earth can be spectacular and sometimes hazardous.
At the speed of light, flashes of X-rays and ultraviolet rays from the Sun arrive at the Earth in 8 minutes. Hitting the atmosphere they cause disturbances in the ionosphere, which reflects radio signals. Changes in the ionosphere can interrupt short-wave radio transmissions and cause errors in navigation systems.
Also at a high speed, but following a curved path, solar protons and other energetic particles from the Sun reach the Earth in an hour or two. They can harm astronauts, damage spacecraft and if they reach the ground they can cause errors in computers.
Gusts and shocks in the solar wind due to an eruption take a few days to reach the Earth. When they arrive, they buffet the Earth’s magnetic shield, the magnetosphere, causing a magnetic storm, which makes compass needles wander. The varying magnetic field can provoke damaging surges of current in long metallic structures such as power lines and pipelines. The magnetic disturbances can also dump particles from space into the upper air, where they cause auroras.
An average solar flare or CME releases, in two hours, enough energy to power the United States for 10,000 years.
and here…
At present, the overall geomagnetic field is becoming weaker at a rate which would, if it continues, cause the field to disappear, albeit temporarily, by about 4000 AD. Other sources have put the date of field collapse as early as 3000 AD. The strong deterioration began at least 150 years ago and has accelerated in the past several years; however, it should be noted that the geomagnetic intensity has declined almost continuously from a maximum achieved approximately 2000 years ago. So far the strength of the Earth’s field has decreased by 10 to 15 percent over the last 150 years, and approximately 35% over the last 2000 years.
and here…
The energy in sunlight at the top of the atmosphere, for example, is 1.4 kilowatts per square meter, which reduces to about 1 kW/m2 by the time it reaches the Earth’s surface. The size of the target is p RE2, or about 1.2 x 108 km2 (1 RE is defined as one Earth radius, or about 6378 km). That means the total solar energy hitting Earth is about 1017 Watts!
So to discount the massive amounts of energy we are being bombarded with by our nearest star, and then to focus on car exhaust and cow farts seems to be engaging in delusions of grandeur as to how much effect man really has on this, our Spaceship Earth.
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Wing Chun Geologist
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