Chapter 4
Global Warming
The two preceding Chapters on Population and Economic Growth are the driving forces of environmental breakdown, leading of course to climate change and global warming. Much has been covered in these Chap- ters about global warming and its causes but the impor- tance of the subject is such that I think it will be useful to present more of the critical aspects of it in this Chapter.
As any modern researcher knows, a search of the Internet is the "library of the world" to check first. The website for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is a large source of reference material on global warming.1)
By happenstance I picked up a book off the bargain counter in my favourite book store by Jonathan Weiner The Next Hundred Years 2). It was a fortunate choice.
Weiner's story of the research by Charles David Keeling reveals a lot about the occurrence of CO2 in the world's atmosphere and therefore global warming.
Keeling graduated in chemistry from Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill and began working at Caltech in Los Angeles in 1954. Early on he took an interest in measuring the amount of CO2 in the air including devising a manometer to do that. It was the beginning of a life career to measure CO2 and he did this first around the laboratory then out in the field, up the local mountains then finally around the world. What was surprising was the consistency of the results, around 315 parts per mil- lion, no matter where he measured it. There were varia- tions in the seasons and in some local regions but the 315 figure seemed to be consistent average. That was in the early years of his measurements. By 1988 that figure had risen to 350 ppm. Weiner's book was published in 1990 but a check on the Internet showed more up-to-date values of CO2.
The Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, reports data from 2004 showing 378 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. And Wikipedia shows the 2007 rate to be 384 ppm. So there is a documented steady rise in the content. Their information also included some historical data showing that pre-industrial levels of CO2 (however they measured it at the time) at 278 ppm. They report also that the rise per year appears to be about 1.5 ppm. This is very significant information.
Keeling also looked into historical data and as Weiner reports:
"The record shows an exponentially rising curve, in lock step with the rising curve of the human popu- lation. In one hundred years there had been only three hesitations in either rise. These hesitations occurred around the years 1915, 1930, and 1940; one world depression and two world wars."
I can't help but be amused by the quote from Weiner about the occurrence of methane (worse than CO2) as a contributor to global warming.
"Cows belch about twice a minute, and put a few pounds of methane into the air every week. Thus,clearing a rain forest to make a cow pasture releases methane twice over. First the gas rises from the explosion of termites that eat the wood, then from the grassy herds that eat the grass."
So it seems that no matter what you do, it creates more global warming!
Keeling met Roger Revelle when they were work- ing on the planning for the International Geophysical Year program. And when I reviewed (for the third time) the DVD of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth I noticed that when Gore was a student at university one of his profes- sors was Roger Revelle.
Revelle impressed Gore with his information on the growing presence of CO2 in the atmosphere and the resulting global warming and all its implications. Thus began Gore's lifelong interest in these critical issues. Gore also mentions in the DVD presentation that his efforts as a Senator in Congress to promote concerns for global warming were not too successful. I also learn