Time Immortal

Count Roland writes in again with some follow-up regarding my previous response to him.

Agreed.

But the hypothesis was looking at the methane produced by large swaths of putrifying organic matter, as in vast rice paddies. Also, the period of NA buffalo depopulation coincides with the tail end (1700-1850) of a deepening mini ice age between ~1300 and ~1900. At the begininng of that, likely somehow related, the bl;ack death eliminated populations in Eurasia, likely impacting rice production among other things, reducing methane as well.

Also, it did not say that human induced methane production caused global warming - it said that such production slowed global cooling such that by now, given solar output, a pivot point for the commencement of an ice should be well past but we have not arrived at it, yet. But then again, perhaps the sun is acting a little differently this cycle.

However, a point that can be gleened from this hypothesis. If it is solar activity that is the principal factor and is in a ‘downward’ general cycle with some upticks (we are talking 1000’s and 100’s of years respectively) our human global warming, as little as it may be, may be the only barrier between us and and ice age which would cover most of the developed world with ice. Another way to say this is to remember that the last hundred years’ supposed “hockey stick” is but a fraction of an average glacial cycle let alone the longer solar cycles we have yet to gather the data for. Last time I checked, looking at the smallest fraction - a prooftext, of data and giving a conclusion is not good science.

I think the maxim “correlation does not imply causation” is relevant here with regard to the observation of the correlation between buffalo depopulation (1700-1850 AD) and the “tail end” of a “mini ice age” (1300-1900 AD), especially since a) the aforementioned “mini ice age” was already long in progress by the time buffalo depopulation began, and b) while significant, buffalo were not the only source of methane production in the world, and it seems suspect to suggest that even as catastrophic a decline in population as they underwent would precipitate sweeping changes in global average temperature, especially since by the time the buffalo were being hunted to the brink of extinction, the rice paddies would have been back in action.

There is also to be considered the observation that post-1850, the “mini ice age” came to an end (i.e. temperatures began to rise), even though the buffalo herds were no longer churning out massive quantities of methane (and at the time, cattle farming wouldn’t have made up the shortfall; it doesn’t even manage to do that today). One could potentially point to the Industrial Revolution as the culprit in this case, although given the analysis that has been done about the insignificance of CO2 and other industrial emissions as a driver of global temperature change, that thesis also falls deeply into question.

It serves to note that the Sun is only now coming to the end of an unusually energetic cycle that has, among other things, triggered warming trends on other planets in our solar system, Mars and Neptune to name but two. That diminishment in solar activity has already triggered a downward shift in global average temperature that has more or less undone the warming trend that Al Gore et. al. were so up in arms about, as one would expect if one accepts the theory that CO2 does almost nothing to affect changes in global average temperature, and that the Sun effects profound changes in same.

I also question whether it is humanity’s minimal contribution to changes in the average global temperature that stave off a coming ice age; personally, I tend to think that even under the most carefully controlled conditions, nature will do whatever it damn well pleases. Yes, there are cyclical patterns in climate, as there are in many things, but those patterns can shift for any number of reasons. The Sun has been unusually active for the last while, and is now entering a phase where it is much less energetic than it has been. This may trigger a mild drop in the global average temperature, or it may trigger an extreme drop in same, thus ushering in a new ice age. Either way, I don’t think anything humanity does, in terms of emissions, will offset the results to any meaningful extent. It has been said that even if humanity ceased all CO2 production (even from out of our own lungs), we would have an effect on the global average temperature that one would need percents of percents to measure properly — i.e. statistically and quantitatively insignificant. Even if methane had a hundred times the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere, cutting all our methane emissions would still only result in a change in global average temperature of a percent, or perhaps a few percent (if we were lucky).

If humanity wanted to really stave off a coming ice age, we’d find a way to maximize our production of water vapour, since it is vapour that contributes the most to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. But even then — next to the natural water cycles of the planet, our contribution at present is almost meaningless, and it would be a mighty effort indeed to change that.

Count Roland writes in some commentary with regards to this article about global warming, climate change, and CO2’s negligible effect on changes in the average global temperature.

Well, CO2 may not be as big a force as once thought.

However, I remember seeing at least a hypothesis that human activity has stopped the next ice age for another reason, and a reason with much more powerful greenhouse gases involved. The increased methane production from thousands of years of domesticated animals and from rice and other water/organic material intensive farming, not to mention systematic transformation of forest into farmland has had a much greater impact - in slowing a temperature drop over the past several thousand years. If I remember correctly, the hypothesis tracked global temperatures (from ice cores and others) and indicators of caqrbon, methane, sunlight and found that sunlight and temperature and the rest tracked together and should have us living on ice right now if not for human activity.

We may be alive only because of human global warming (aside from God’s grace). But, the big ball of fusing hydrogen and things like galactic and atmospheric dust [does] have a much bigger impact (witness the ‘year without summer’ after a rather large volcanic eruption in the 1800’s) than our cars. Now, we should, perhaps, limit our comsumption of materials for other stewardship related reasons such as sustainability…

I distinctly remember a radio show some years ago, in which David Suzuki was giving an interview in regard to methane production from agriculture in North America. His assertion rather matched Roland’s assertion, that human livestock farming and its attendant methane production (let’s face it, O Reader — cows are quite flatulent) was causing a rise in the average global temperature. The interview was going along quite well, until one caller phoned in with a question about North America before humanity’s major emergence there. We don’t know exactly how large the buffalo herds were, but even during the first few decades of European colonization, what figures we have on those populations suggest that there were more buffalo in North America back then than there are cattle in North America today. And buffalo, this caller reminded Dr. Suzuki, are both much larger and much more flatulent than cattle. And yet we observe, in the historic temperature record, that temperatures fluctuated quite a lot between those years and the modern era.

The caller was quite particular on that point, and David Suzuki had to beat a hasty retreat from the points he’d been making, conceding that yes, there were many more buffalo back then than there are cattle today, and that yes, there would have been a lot more methane produced by those much larger herds.

In one sense, I do agree with Roland about methane production — it is a stronger contributor to global warming than CO2 is. At the same time, it’s still not a strong contributor — the major culprit is water vapour. And there is very little that humanity can do to limit or control vapour levels in the atmosphere, anymore than we could do anything to stop the rain when it comes. I also do agree with Roland that there, but for the grace of God, humanity goes. I even agree that, for reasons of stewardship, humanity should be careful in its use of resources for any number of reasons; we ought not to be wasteful, we ought not to be gluttonous, and we ought to care for the world that God has given to us. We ought to care for each other, furthermore, by limiting to all reasonable extents the quantity of truly harmful pollutants that we put into the atmosphere; sulfur dioxide, for example.

At the same time, I continue to doubt that humanity makes a meaningful contribution to global warming; we’re fairly insignificant as regards biomass to begin with, and most of the emissions from our industrial processes, even the ones that are harmful to us to breathe, are not major contributors to the atmosphere’s ability to retain heat. Even our production of water vapour is, as I understand it, rather insignificant next to the naturally occurring vapour from the planet’s water cycle. This is equally true as regards methane; there was a time in history where the animals of the Earth, roaming freely, produced vastly increased amounts of methane as compared to what we see produced by livestock today — during those centuries, the Earth’s temperature fluctuated quite a lot, at times rising well above the point at which the global average temperature is at today, and at times dipping well below same.

For an explanation of those cycles, I still look to the Sun.