Climate of the Earth CO2 and Climate Change地球气候变化的二氧化碳和气候变化.ppt

The Climate of the Earth: CO2 and “Climate Change” (=Global Warming) Note: “climate change” was a term invented by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, for the Bush Administration in 2003, for political reasons. I’ll use “Global Warming” as it’s more accurate and doesn’t have the political spin. Is there a Scientific Controversy about the Cause of Global Warming? No. Climate scientists themselves are convinced by the evidence – global warming is human-caused, primarily by fossil fuel burning. And have been, for over 20 years AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming, a useful abbreviation Millions of dollars of oil money is financing an ugly mis-information campaign to seed cynicism towards legitimate science in the American public and in politicians about the cause. See my website page on the politics here. Note How The More Closely You Understand Climate Science, The More Convinced You are that Global Warming is Human-Caused Are Global Average Temperatures Rising Significantly compared to Recent Geologic History? Yes. Longer Term: Over Several Hundred Thousand Years - Ice Ages Ice Ages show a strong correlation with small changes in the Earth’s orbital ellipticity, orientation, and angle of the Earth’s spin axis. As these go through cycles – the Milankovitch Cycles – the amount of heat delivered to the Arctic Circle varies, showing a strong correlation with inducing Ice Ages Reason: Ice is its own refrigerant. White ice reflects incoming sunlight, radiates little IR. More ice means more reflection, means more cooling, means more ice… etc. Without Humans to add large amounts of greenhouse gases (GHG’s) to the atmosphere, temperatures rose and fell with very slow geological changes (or occasionally, by a big comet/asteroid impact) Rising temperatures will slowly lower the amount of CO2 that can be dissolved in the oceans, pulling it out and adding to GHG warming coming out of an Ice Age. This mechanism explains why temperature rises preceeded CO2 rises IN THE PREHISTORIC GEO