Have you stood on an asphalt parking lot or basketball court during a hot summer day then moved to the adjacent grass? Then you have experienced what an artificial surface can do to the air above it by radiating in the infrared.
Assume that humans are affecting temperatures by releasing greenhouse gases if you want. But give some thought to potential causes of varying temperatures beyond the emission of greenhouse gases. Earth’s albedo has changed slightly because we have changed its surface. More absorption of solar energy? Less? Reflectivity is a control, and that’s obvious from your experience with asphalt surfaces and adjacent grass.
So, how much have we “artificialized” this place we call home? Well, Columbia University and NASA have measured 3.5 million square kilometers of urban and extended-urban areas.* This is not the planetary surface of your ancient ancestors. Can’t grasp the idea of 3.5 million square kilometers? Try sliding Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, and Nevada together into one landmass. Then urbanize every square meter they cover. Can’t think in meters and kilometers?
Those four states cover 1,355,284 square miles.**
Those recently (with respect to Earth’s age and even with respect to human evolution) covered areas can be added to the areas denuded of trees but not urbanized, as in Brazil or on Madagascar, where the albedo has also changed in a short period. Deforestation plays an important role in changing that planetary albedo. It might, in fact, give a previously dark green area of energy absorption a more reflective surface that throws incoming solar radiation back toward space. Puzzling. Are we changing Earth’s surface to absorb in cities or reflect in deforested areas?
Just askin’. Have we added billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the 5.5 quadrillions of tons of nitrogen and oxygen in our atmosphere? Yes. But let’s put that in perspective. Five and a half quadrillion divided by, say, the 10 billion tons of annually emitted greenhouse gases equals an output of 1/55,000,000 of the atmosphere per annum. Think we’ll become Venus as the doomsayers say we will become? At the current level of emissions, the atmosphere would need almost the same length of time that has elapsed since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a very, very warm period on our planet that occurred about 55 million years ago.
So, I ain’t smart enough to know whether or not the change in albedo caused by deforestation and extended urbanization will raise temperatures or eventually lower them. But, just sayin’, why don’t we just prevent people from urbanizing, spread them out, and let them emit carbon dioxide for a thousand years or so to see whether or not we can get back to that “perfect” climate the doomsayers say we need to have simply by reducing the area of asphalted surfaces and increasing the area denuded of dark green energy-absorbing forests?
And, with regard to some “ideal” worldwide climatic condition, the doomsayers base that “ideal” climate spectrum on…what? Until we actually know what the “ideal” is and what complex of causes makes the planet definitively vary from that “ideal,” maybe we should just park on the grass. That’s my modest proposal.
*NASA. Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project online at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/grump-v1
**Three and a half million square kilometers equals 1,351,357.5 square miles. Can’t think what that means? What’s one mile away from you? Draw a mental line to it. Make a 90-degree right turn for the same distance. Make another right turn for the same distance. Make the third right turn to return. That’s a square mile. But just one. Now cover that square mile with asphalt and concrete. Then do that again 1,351,356.5 times.
Assume that humans are affecting temperatures by releasing greenhouse gases if you want. But give some thought to potential causes of varying temperatures beyond the emission of greenhouse gases. Earth’s albedo has changed slightly because we have changed its surface. More absorption of solar energy? Less? Reflectivity is a control, and that’s obvious from your experience with asphalt surfaces and adjacent grass.
So, how much have we “artificialized” this place we call home? Well, Columbia University and NASA have measured 3.5 million square kilometers of urban and extended-urban areas.* This is not the planetary surface of your ancient ancestors. Can’t grasp the idea of 3.5 million square kilometers? Try sliding Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, and Nevada together into one landmass. Then urbanize every square meter they cover. Can’t think in meters and kilometers?
Those four states cover 1,355,284 square miles.**
Those recently (with respect to Earth’s age and even with respect to human evolution) covered areas can be added to the areas denuded of trees but not urbanized, as in Brazil or on Madagascar, where the albedo has also changed in a short period. Deforestation plays an important role in changing that planetary albedo. It might, in fact, give a previously dark green area of energy absorption a more reflective surface that throws incoming solar radiation back toward space. Puzzling. Are we changing Earth’s surface to absorb in cities or reflect in deforested areas?
Just askin’. Have we added billions of tons of greenhouse gases to the 5.5 quadrillions of tons of nitrogen and oxygen in our atmosphere? Yes. But let’s put that in perspective. Five and a half quadrillion divided by, say, the 10 billion tons of annually emitted greenhouse gases equals an output of 1/55,000,000 of the atmosphere per annum. Think we’ll become Venus as the doomsayers say we will become? At the current level of emissions, the atmosphere would need almost the same length of time that has elapsed since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, a very, very warm period on our planet that occurred about 55 million years ago.
So, I ain’t smart enough to know whether or not the change in albedo caused by deforestation and extended urbanization will raise temperatures or eventually lower them. But, just sayin’, why don’t we just prevent people from urbanizing, spread them out, and let them emit carbon dioxide for a thousand years or so to see whether or not we can get back to that “perfect” climate the doomsayers say we need to have simply by reducing the area of asphalted surfaces and increasing the area denuded of dark green energy-absorbing forests?
And, with regard to some “ideal” worldwide climatic condition, the doomsayers base that “ideal” climate spectrum on…what? Until we actually know what the “ideal” is and what complex of causes makes the planet definitively vary from that “ideal,” maybe we should just park on the grass. That’s my modest proposal.
*NASA. Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC). Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project online at http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/grump-v1
**Three and a half million square kilometers equals 1,351,357.5 square miles. Can’t think what that means? What’s one mile away from you? Draw a mental line to it. Make a 90-degree right turn for the same distance. Make another right turn for the same distance. Make the third right turn to return. That’s a square mile. But just one. Now cover that square mile with asphalt and concrete. Then do that again 1,351,356.5 times.
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