Back to the physics textbook

I started on this quest because I could not understand how moving from 300ppm to 600ppm CO2 in the atmosphere could ever warm up a planet to the extent that the whole climate system would go into meltdown.

I also thought that if it could be harnessed then we might even be able to use it! As a building services engineer I knew it was quite hard to get air to warm up, and get any energy into it. But this reaction sounded promising – if it could warm up a whole planet then who knows, we might be able to use the cause to solve the problem.

However, after spending lots of time with my A-level physics textbook, as well as experimenting and making use of a bit of blogging, I reached the conclusion that the reaction isn’t actually that powerful and with water vapour around the reaction is probably negligible.

Much more sophisticated experiments have been done by proper scientists that more or less reached the same conclusion so that was a bit of a disappointment.

But I did carry on and try to fully understand the complete picture and I have learnt about different absorption wavelengths in the troposphere etc and about theoretical positive feedback mechanisms and so on.

I must admit to getting lost in the theory at this point, it just got far too mathematical. No wonder they need computer models to do the calculations. The algorithms used are not available (a blessing, as I didn’t fancy going through them).

But I did also conclude that climate change is a natural, constantly occurring process. If we weren’t getting warmer, we would be getting colder. If the sun had turned itself up half a notch, then that seemed a far more likely explanation of warming, particularly spectacular episodes such as the ice melting at the end of the last glaciations.

There is no evidence of CO2 causing this climate change event.

John Cooknell MCIBSE