Global Over Warming

It's too much warming, global over warming, that's the problem, not global warming. Global warming is necessary to keep the Earth warm enough for life to exist. The average temperature on Earth without global warming would be zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Reducing CO2 Emissions Is Still Adding CO2: Removing The Excess CO2 Already In The Atmosphere Is Truly Necessary:

The exact reason why we have global warming is that more CO2 (carbon dioxide) has been released (since the early 80s) than all plant life can remove (by photosynthesis). In the U.S. there's a lot of talk about laws and technology to reduce the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere (emissions). Reducing CO2 emissions will not stop or reverse global warming because reducing CO2 emissions is still CO2 emissions. According to Al Gore in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, each day "70 million tons" of global warming gases are added to the atmosphere each day. If we reduce CO2 emissions to 30 million tons each day, obviously adding 30 million tons of CO2 each day to the atmosphere is not going to stop global warming because there's already more CO2 in the atmosphere than all the plant life on Earth can handle. Even if CO2 emissions were reduced to zero, global warming would continue because of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. While reducing CO2 emissions is necessary, reducing CO2 emissions alone can not stop global warming.  

If effective CO2 removing technology isn't developed, as temperatures become higher and higher, more and more forms of plant life will die off in larger and larger areas.  As plant life dies off there will be a greater demand for the plant life that hasn't died off (fruits and vegetables and plant life to feed livestock). As global warming continues, most plant life will die and the rest will be eaten. 

Man starving himself to death by causing global warming may not be relief for other life on Earth. Global warming, can lead to the runaway greenhouse effect. Humidity is the central problem in the runaway greenhouse effect. Like CO2, humidity also keeps solar rays from leaving the Earth's atmosphere. As more water evaporates into humidity, more humidity prevents more solar rays from leaving the Earth's atmosphere, more solar rays heats the Earth even more, causing more water to evaporate into more humidity. The cycle leads to 900 degree Fahrenheit weather. The weather on Venus is a great example of the runaway green house effect.

Since we have excess warming of the Earth (global over warming) and nothing is removing the excess CO2 from the atmosphere, it's best to assume the runaway greenhouse effect is on the way. The only thing that can prevent the runaway greenhouse effect is to stop global warming with a strategy and or device that removes more CO2 from the atmosphere than is released into the atmosphere. Capturing and storing more than 70 millions tons of CO2 a day would be quite difficult. It's much more realistic to find a way to split CO2 into carbon and oxygen (C and O2), like plants and some algae do.

We're Lucky CO2 Is The Problem

It may sound quite unbelievable to say that we're lucky that the current cause of global warming is CO2, but for two reasons we are. First, plant life via photosynthesis splits CO2 into C (carbon) and O2 (oxygen), which are not global warming gases. We can work with photosynthesis to stop global warming. Second, CO2 is heavier than air so it hovers at the Earth's surface where it can be reached to be removed. The are other global warming gases (methane, ozone, CFCs, and many others) that are not used by plant life and do not hover at the Earth's surface. Freon 318 for example is 10,000 times more insulative than CO2. Sulfur Hexafluoride is 22,000 times more insulative than CO2. If we manage to gain control of CO2 and stop global warming and then cause global warming again by excessive release of these other global warming gases, even if the problem is miraculously solved, the destruction of plant life and oceans from the first global warming crisis may not recover enough to survive the second global warming crisis.

In The News

Less Ice Reflecting Solar Radiation Back Into Outer Space Is Reason Why There's More Energy Melting Ice Faster Marine Mammals On Thin Ice CO2 Emissions Incr. 19 Billion Worst 20 Counties In The US Salmon In Danger (4/08) U.S. West Really Heating Up Flooding From Ice Cap Melt  Solid Fuels, Diesel Much Worse Polar Bears Endangered  (3/08) China' CO2 Emissions Much Worse Than Predicted (3/08) Glaciers Meting 20 Times Faster World's Oceans Changing (2/08) Excess CO2 Increasing Acidity Of Oceans (2/08) Climate Tipping Points (2/08) Prediction: World Wide Worry Will Turn To World Wide Anger When Favorites Become Extinct (12/07) Eleven of The Last 13 Years Were The Warmest In Recorded History (12/07) UN Desperate For "Leaders" To Wake Up after IPCC Report The IPCC Is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The First Ever North American CO2 Cycle Report By The U.S.(11/07) UN Report: Urgent Action Needed Climate Change (11/07) Global Warming Will Have A Major Economic Impact On All Countries (10/07) Disappearing Common Birds are Environmental Wake-Up Call (6/07) Whales In Hot Water: Global  Warming Effects On World's Largest Creatures (5/07) Alarming Acceleration In Carbon Dioxide Emissions Worldwide (5/07) Southern Ocean Carbon Sink Weakened (5/07) Arctic Ice Retreating More Quickly Than Computer Models Project (4/07) High Acidity Infiltrates The Ocean (7/06) Earth Could Warm Up Faster Than Previously Thought (1/06) Ancient Air Bubbles (11/05)

Sugar Best Bio Fuel (4/08) We Can Solve It . Org Scientist Get A Little Traction On Splitting CO2 - Since CO2 Is Heavier Than Air We May See Governments Covering Very Large Areas With Algae Screens Fantastic For Maintaining Normal CO2 Level - Useless For Getting CO2 To A Normal Level (2/08) Printing Solar Cells(2/08) New Electric Car Supplies Electricity to Power Grids - Removes Need For Oil and Coal Power Plants (12/07) Major Advance In Hydrogen Storage (11/07) Significant Advance Brings Hydrogen Cars Within Reach Of Auto Industry (10/08) Fuel Cell Cars For Sale In 2008 (10/08) New Device Captures CO2 Directly From The Atmosphere (10/07) Al Gore And The IPCC Win Nobel Prize For Bringing Global Warming To The Attention of The World (10/07) Hydrogen Breakthrough Could Open The Road To Carbon-free Car (5/07) New Process Generates Hydrogen From Aluminum Alloy To Run Engines, Fuel Cells (5/07) Device Uses Solar Energy To Convert Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel (4/07) Invention Could End "Bottleneck" in Developing Pollution Free Cars (12/06) Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Race For Electric Car Market (6/06) Motorcycle Runs on Hydrogen Fuel Cell (6/05) UPS Uses Three Hydrogen Powered Delivery Trucks (8/04)

The Candidates

It's hard enough to figure out how to undo global warming, but when Katie Couric asked the candidates about global warming, not one had anything to say about removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. Apparently they think the forests of the world that are being deforested are going to remove the accumulation of CO2 from 50 years of coal and oil burning. (Photosynthesis of plants dismantles CO2.)

Tell Your US and State Governments Your Concerns On Global Warming

Here's a great letter you're welcome to use to send your senators, congressmen, congresswomen, assemblymen, and assemblywomen.

Two solutions are needed to reverse global warming.

First, a government driven effort no different than the effort to develop the nuclear bomb is needed to remove the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere. Plants do it by photosynthesis, we can develop a device or method to remove excess CO2.

Second, the government has to get involved in the development of fuel cell cars and electric cars for all countries to use for transportation and electricity generation. Part of the development of the computer was the successful British government effort (the Colossus) to decipher encrypted messages between Nazi generals. Global warming is a much greater threat than Hitler ever was.

Please answer these questions: 

1) What bills have you written that would require the government to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere to stop global warming? 

2) How much money have you been able to allocate for developing inexpensive fuel cells to stop global warming? 

3) All the oil companies say global warming doesn't exist. What bills have you written to prevent oil companies from buying and shelving green technologies being developed to force people to continue buying petroleum products?

Global Warming Part 1 - Warming of the Earth's Surface

The energy the Earth and it's atmosphere receive from the sun is called solar energy. Solar energy is made up of infrared light (IR), sunlight, ultra violet light, and x-rays. There are two types of infrared light, near infrared and far infrared. Far infrared is heat. Near infrared is invisible light.

About 30% of solar energy never reaches the Earth because it's reflected back into outer space by clouds and light colors of the Earth (sand, snow, ice). About 25% of solar energy is absorbed by the upper atmosphere and clouds in the lower atmosphere. The lower atmosphere (troposphere) is the air between the surface of the Earth and up about 50,000 feet. About 45% of solar energy is absorbed by the different surfaces of the Earth (plant leaves, darker color land, oceans and seas).

Most of the solar energy reaching the Earth's surface is sunlight. When a surface absorbs sunlight energy, the sunlight energy changes is changed to a different form of energy - heat. (It's not any different than heating something in a microwave oven, except the wavelength of sunlight is different than microwaves.)

The heat will move further into the Earth and will also rise and warm the lower atmosphere. Eventually all of the heat will leave the surface and rise into the lower atmosphere then the upper atmosphere and into outer space. This is most noticeable at night time when the sun is not warming the surface. Of course as the sun continues to shine the surface is kept heated.

Before the heat rises to outer space, much of it temporarily collects in the lower atmosphere helping to keep the Earth warm; this is global warming and is correctly called global warming. The lower atmosphere is like a blanket and slows the release of heat a little, causing heat to collect and keep the Earth's surface warm. Without the insulating effect of the lower atmosphere, the temperature of the Earth's surface would average about zero degree Fahrenheit. Even though zero degrees is pretty cold, it's still pretty warm considering the temperature outside the Earth's atmosphere (outer space) is 455 degrees below zero (minus 455 degrees). Below the land and oceans at the center of the Earth is the Earth's blazing hot core (about 9,000°F), which does most of the heating of the Earth.

Global Warming Part 2 - Warming Of The Earth's Lower Atmosphere

The heat leaving the Earth's surface is absorbed and then dissipated by the CO2, moisture, and methane in the Earth's lower atmosphere. The heat is dissipated in all directions including back towards the Earth. CO2 collects in the lower because CO2 is twice as heavy as air. The lower atmosphere also contains plenty of moisture (humidity, clouds) and methane, both of which are also heavier than air. When the amount of CO2 in the lower atmosphere increases, it's somewhat like adding more blankets except that the more the Earth is insulated with CO2 the warmer the Earth's surface becomes and with a warmer surface more liquid water will become a gas (humidity, clouds) which insulates the Earth's surface even more. As the Earth's surface becomes more and more insulated by CO2 and gaseous water, the slower and slower the heat leaves the Earth's lower atmosphere; this is global over warming and is incorrectly called global warming. (But this site also calls global over warming by the common term global warming because the term global over warming is not a term recognized by search engines; getting the message out is more important than terminology). Simply put, global over warming energy coming into the environment faster than the energy is leaving the Earth.

Sources of CO2

CO2 is twice as heavy as air, so CO2 stays close to the Earth's surface. Global warming is caused by too much CO2 being released into the atmosphere. The break down (burning) of oil, gasoline, and coal as sources of energy to run machinery releases the CO2 in these fuels. With the world using millions of barrels of oil and millions of tons of coal each day, it's easy to see why so much CO2 is being released into the atmosphere each day. Some of the excess CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans causing the pH of oceans to lower which harms ocean life.

Effects of Global Warming On Weather

When something is warmer it has more energy. Warmer oceans and warmer weather systems create larger and more powerful hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, and other types of weather.

Dimming The Sun

Global warming has actually been slowed some by pollution. Pollution in the atmosphere reflects some sunlight back into outer space. Ash from volcanic eruptions also reflects sunlight back into outer space. Three major volcanic eruptions brought on what's called the little ice age. No doubt pollution standards will be reduced in the future if they haven't already started lowering pollution standards.

A Simple Analogy

Here's a simple analogy demonstration of global warming:

Imagine a pitcher is the Earth and its atmosphere. Water in the pitcher at a level 1/2 and represents the normal level of CO2 and other greenhouse gases. Imagine a 1" diameter hole in the pitcher. CO2 entering the atmosphere from the excessive oil and coal burning in the U.S., similar countries, and CO2 from natural sources is represented by water moving into the pitcher through the 1" hole. Imagine another hole in the pitcher 1/4" in diameter. Plant life which removes CO2 from the atmosphere by changing it to C (carbon) and O2 (oxygen) is represented by water leaving the pitcher through the 1/4" hole.

Global warming is represented by more water coming into the pitcher than leaving the pitcher causing the water level to rise. Since we all can see the Earth is warming with our own eyes, let's say that currently the water level in the pitcher is now more than 1/2 full. Water overflowing the pitcher represents the runaway greenhouse effect. The runaway greenhouse effect would overheat the Earth until all plant life dies off, starving all animals and man to death.

Obviously more water will come into the pitcher through the 1" hole than leaves the pitcher through the 1/4" hole. So if you reduce the 1" hole to 1/2 " by reducing energy use (reducing the 70 million tons of greenhouse gases released every day to 35 million tons every day), the water will continue to rise and soon overfill the pitcher causing the runaway greenhouse effect. So the belief that reducing energy will prevent the runaway greenhouse effect from occurring is clearly false and mathematically insane. The only way to bring the water level back to 1/2 full is to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than is being released into the atmosphere until a normal level of CO2 in the atmosphere is reached.

To Those Who Think Global Warming Isn't A Danger,

What are the consequences if we do nothing about global warming and you're wrong? The consequences will be the Earth becoming another 900 degree Venus, the end of all life on Earth. What are the consequences if global warming isn't a danger but in believing it is a danger we develop ways to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere, stop CO2 emissions by avoiding oil, and use solar, geothermal, fuel cell, and other non polluting forms of energy? The consequences will be less pollution, less expensive transportation costs, and a world economy not dependent on the Middle East.

©2008