My friend Pieter Tans is a climate scientist who for many years headed NOAA’s Carbon Cycle Greenhouse Gases Group, a body that constantly measures CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. He has drilled me extensively on how greenhouse gases not only help keep our planet toasty warm, but are increasingly doing a better job than needed.
Pieter uses technical terms and numbers in explaining the “greenhouse effect.” But when I relay that information to friends I usually receive polite nods that substitute for eye rolls. Fact is, most people don’t have time or interest to delve into nitty-gritty details of climate science.
When I ask Pieter for a quicky explanation he says he won’t “dumb it down” because he feels that would show lack of respect for his audience, and fail to show that he actually knows something about the science.
But it is crucial that folks know. Why? Because the future of large life forms on Earth depends on it (bacteria and insects will be okay).
Since I have no reputation to worry about, let me give it a shot, starting with the “greenhouse effect.”
Our atmosphere acts like windows of a greenhouse. It lets sunlight through to warm the surface of Earth (the interior of the greenhouse). Earth’s surface re-radiates energy in the form of lower frequency (infrared) radiation, back to space. Greenhouse gases, mainly water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), and methane, though composing a tiny percentage of our atmosphere, are particularly good at absorbing infrared radiation, much of which is radiated back to Earth. Thus, greenhouse gases, like greenhouse windows, are excellent heat trappers without which Earth would be an ice planet, uninhabitable by creatures like us.
Thing is, we don’t want our planet to get too hot, and releasing more CO2 into our atmosphere, which we have been doing since the industrial revolution began in about 1850, does exactly that.
A lot of atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by our oceans where it is converted to carbonic acid, a substance detrimental to coral and other creatures at the bottom of the food chain.
Earth is slowly warming, too slow for some folks to realize – the frog in the cooking pot. Some want to believe warming is a natural cycle. Others don’t know the difference between weather, a local short-term effect, and climate, a global long-term effect.
At present, Earth is emitting back to space about a third of a percent less energy than it receives from the Sun. Nature will correct this is out-of-balance condition by means of a law of physics I won’t mention because I promised to keep it simple.
Let me explain energy balance by analogy.
You pour yourself a cup of hot coffee in the morning. Say you don’t keep it on a heating pad and forget about it until the next day. By then your coffee will be the same temperature as your room. The coffee is at equilibrium temperature (in balance) with your room. Same with a glass of iced tea you take outside on a hot day. If you fail to drink it, by tomorrow the ice will have melted and your drink will be the same temperature as outside.
Our Earth must be in energy balance with our sun and surrounding space. If it does not radiate back to space as much energy as it receives from the sun IT MUST GET WARMER until balance is attained at a higher temperature. It’s that simple.
Pieter, like any good scientist, admits that because of “feedbacks” and other uncertainties, predicting future climate is difficult. Thus, models vary in how bad this will get how soon. It’s akin to “spaghetti models” that predict different hurricane paths. But even the least-dire models are not good for us. Pieter says we are playing Russian Roulette with the gun pointed at the heads of our grandchildren.
What can we do? At minimum, two things.
- Do not deny that we have a human-induced problem. Ignorance or hope that it goes away is not going to solve it.
- Support weaning our energy production away from burning fossil fuels as soon as economically feasible. Do not support idiots who say “Drill, baby, drill”. They are killing your grandchildren and mine.
Bob Moores retired from Black & Decker/DeWalt in 1999 after 36 years. He was the Director of Cordless Product Development at the time. He holds a mechanical engineering degree from Johns Hopkins University
Claire Joseph says
Good and clear explanation. I understand, and I agree, Bob! Thank you.
James Nick says
Explaining the effects of global warming can be made even simpler than Mr Moores offers.
Simply put, waste products are materials discarded as useless in a process or life function. No living thing or machine can live or thrive in the presence of its own waste. One principal waste product of animals and machines that convert hydrocarbons to energy is carbon monoxide. Dumping CO2 into the very air we breathe is no different than the medieval practice of dumping a chamber pot full of feces and urine out the window to the street below. Each practice results in an environment that does not augur well for the continuation of life regardless of the exact mechanism be it disease or increased global temperatures that are inconsistent with life.
Ed Plaisance says
Excellent explanation…so simple and obvious…but there will still be deniers.
Bob Moores says
Thanks Claire!