There is no doubt that the weather we have had this year has been weird, culminating in rare June rain. Can we attribute these record highs and lows, droughts and floods to a newly unstable climate? Might that be because a century of greenhouse gas emissions has trapped solar heat, magnified the shifts of the jet stream and polar vortex, and wildly distorted one of the principal determinants of our weather systems?
Absolutely! Climate scientists began predicting such weather weirding more than a century ago. According to NASA’s climate website, back in 1896 Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius predicted that atmospheric CO2 would raise global temperatures by the greenhouse effect. The connection was confirmed by Guy Callendar in 1938.
Now CO2 levels have reached a record high of 424 ppm, up from the 280 ppm level of the pre-industrial age, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The jet stream looks like a pretzel; Canada is suffering record heat, severe drought, and wildfires while we’re seeing record low temperatures and flooding. If this continues, such weird extremes will get weirder.
So, we might ask, “What can we as individuals do?”
Plenty! We can electrify our cars, homes, and businesses. We can plant carbon-absorbing trees and support the preservation of forests. We can join groups such as Citizens’ Climate Lobby and the SLO Climate Coalition to fight the problem together. There is strength in numbers, and together we can slow the rising CO2 emissions that are weirding our weather.
George Hansen
Arroyo Grande
This article appears in Jun 22 – Jul 2, 2023.
Water vapor is 22 times more abundant than CO2 in our atmosphere. CO2 is heavier than air and what CO2 makes it past the tropopause by diffusion deflects photons back into space. Any claim CO2 has any affect on climate must include how CO2 interacts with water vapor, which you neglect. If you can halt from being a flying monkey for the CO2 conspiracy cultists, then read Dan Pangburn’s Climate Change Drivers blog. It was evil to represent yourself as understanding conservative thought and posting links on climate a couple weeks ago in your opinion letter to CCN. Your assertion in CCN that our society is more secure going all electric is silly. The USA sent 89 tanker trailers to Ukrainians, which is what a battle fleet needs after day one of a fight. Not EV’s with batteries with no way to charge them after the electric system is targeted or hoping you can get a 100kva generator on a trailer dispatched. Every transmission electric system operator at the CAISO knows that replacing rotating mass generators that have stored inertia with solar farms or batteries weakens the grid’s ability to survive line, bus and bank faults. Yet, no one at the CPUC or CEC will pound that fact into ne’er-do-well politicians that set climate goals based on a false speculation of CO2 and methane impact. Nor did any of those politicians put sustainability measurement metrics in their assembly or senate bills. http://globalclimatedrivers2.blogspot.com/
Oh, ok, just because EVs are not war tested, they should be abandoned as useless. The Luddites are cheering.
Unfortunately, I would suspect that Scott Moore and Dan Pangburn believe themselves to be smarter than the 97% of climate scientists who have produced peer reviewed research that has concluded that continuing to spew carbon into the atmosphere will result in warming that will be detrimental to the planet. These results are already evident in most places, particularly in the Sahel.
Don’t be fooled by Mr. Moore’s apparent knowledge. He is either being paid by the fossil fuel community or is simply not that smart. If Mr. Moore is serious, he will show us a link to a peer reviewed paper he has written or that Mr. Pangburn has written. Otherwise his statements are ridiculous.
We had heavy rains and flooding BEFORE the invention of the SUV. Just ask Noah.
And Ishrod the neighbor of Noah did sayeth unto Noah “rain hath fallen before”. Thou art alarmist and our sinning doth bringeth forth much pleasure while our wealth doth increase.