Lot of energy and resources are being spent world wide on reducing carbon dioxide emissions in to the atmosphere with the belief that it is causing global temperatures to rise.
Brian Bloom, the author of
Beyond Neanderthal, which looks broadly at the causes and impact of climate change, says that it could be a mistaken premise. C02 emissions may be exacerbating the global rise in temperatures rather than causing it.
The chief culprit in raising the earth's temperature could be the electromagnetic activity of the sun, according to Brian Bloom.
Common sense dictates that our more active sun must have been raising the temperature of our oceans; and that the warmer sunshine, together with the warmer oceans, together with warmer winds which they spawn, together with the greenhouse effect, has been melting our ice caps, Bloom said in a release.
He blames the changes in the electromagnetic activity in the sun to be causing temperatures to rise although a direct cause-to-effect relationship cannot be worked out.
Analysing only the atmospheric temperature changes and neglecting the heat generated in the oceans is a flawed approach. Since around 1860, 'best estimate' temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celcius, with half of this increase occurring in the last 25 odd years.
"But focusing only on atmospheric temperature is like listening only to the 'tick' of a grandfather clock. There is also a "tock". Our oceans also play a role in climate."
Whilst the heat content of our oceans -- to a depth of 3,000 meters -- certainly rose overall from 1955 to 1998, it fell between 2003 and 2005 Common sense dictates that the 1955 -1998 rise could not possibly have been caused by the rising temperature of our atmosphere.
The reason (apart from the 2003-2005 heat content reduction) relates to the significantly different amounts of heat energy required to raise the temperatures of the same quantities of water and air by one degree.
Heat Transfer Other factors remaining the same, it would take over 1,000 times as much heat energy to raise the temperature of our oceans by one degree as it would take to raise the temperature of our atmosphere by one degree.
Heat transfer is not instantaneous. Just think of how long it takes to bring a kettle of cold water to boil on a red hot stove.
Thus, for example, if the temperature of our atmosphere increases by 1 o C over a period of one year because of greenhouse gas driven global warming (of which Carbon Dioxide is but one such gas) -- and if the atmospheric temperature remains constant thereafter it would take more than 1,000 years for that incremental heat energy to be transferred to our oceans so as to raise