A Simple Science Quiz

A science quiz. Science’s answer to each of the following questions concerning climate in the past 10,000 years is “yes.” 

 

Has Earth been significantly warmer?

 

Sea levels higher?

 

 Glaciers much smaller?

 

This is a link to many studies that show that during the past 10,000 years glaciers were predominantly smaller than they are now. 

 

 

Below is a US government chart of glacier retreat at Glacier Bay, Alaska, which shows that there was over 60 miles of glacier retreat from 1760 through 1900, and less than six miles of retreat since 1948.

 

 

 Was the Little Ice Age (1300-1800 AD) the coldest period?

 

 

 Has Earth had a cooling trend for 8,000 years?

See above.

 

 Were wildfires more frequent and burn far more acreage before 1900 than now?

 

Fire ecologists say that far more land burned each year during the 1800s and earlier, than in recent years. In the preindustrial era, from 1500 to 1800, an average of 145 million acres burned every year nationwide — about 10 times more than the nation’s recent annual burns. In the West, it was estimated that 18 to 25 million acres burned each year, as recently as the 1800s. 

Click this link to go the study.

 

Globally, more recently NASA satellite systems have been able to determine a decreasing trend in global burned area.

 

 

Source: Nasa Earth Observatory 
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-long-term-record-of-fire

 

 

 Were there megadroughts that lasted over 200 years in North America 1,000 years ago?

 

This Bjorn Lomborg article succinctly describes the California wildfire problem and why, even if California, even if all the United States were suddenly carbon neutral, the wildfire problem would just get worse. Logic and critical thinking demands that the forests be managed regardless of climate. Just 200 years ago a lot more of California (and the US) burned annually when average temperature was over a degree lower.

 

 Has the Greenland icecap grown?

 

These diagrams determined from ice core and satellite studies show it has.

 

 

 

Have temperature increases preceded CO2 increases?

 

“Ice core analysis does reveal that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels did lag behind increasing temperatures at the end recent ice ages. Although there is a certain degree of uncertainty regarding the lag time, it is generally accepted that at the end of an ice age, temperatures began to increase, and then carbon dioxide levels began to increase.”

 

Of note, during all the times this has happened there has never been a single case of unstoppable global warming. In fact, at each temperature and CO2 maximum, cooling began and the next 100,000-year glacial period was launched.

 

 

This chart below shows that for the past 600 million years, CO2 at times was over 15 times the current level and that cooling oceans absorbed CO2 as temperature fell. It also shows that for most of the past 100 million years, temperature was 10C (18F) higher than now, even as vast numbers of photosynthesizing organisms removed CO2 from the atmosphere. 

 

 

 

 Is food production setting record highs?

 

 

This article has links to studies showing global record harvests.

 

Do wind and solar combined only produce three percent of total energy consumption?

 

Was half of current warming before the rapid increase in CO2 after 1950?

 

The NOAA chart below shows no temperature trend. The temperature spikes are in El Niño years.

 

 

The chart below shows that 11 of 12 hottest years were before 1960.

This NOAA chart shows Santa Rosa average annual temperature, a cooling trend, for over 100 years. 

 

The answer to the following questions is “no.” 

 

During the Eemian interglacial period 125,000 years ago, when sea levels were up to 30 feet higher and global temperature eight degrees Fahrenheit warmer, was there runaway warming?

 

Obviously not, or we wouldn’t have had a 100,000-year glacial period following it. 

 

Is carbon dioxide the most significant greenhouse gas (hint: water vapor at 96-99% is)?

 

Both water vapor at 0.4% of the atmosphere and CO2 at 0.04% are trace gases. Temperature changes resulting from orbital variations periodically (every 100,000 years) cause temperature to increase with resulting increases in both water vapor and CO2 levels in the atmosphere. The pattern of the past million years show that the Sun – via its position relative to the Earth – drives climate change and that CO2 and water vapor changes are a result, not a cause, of the climate change.

 

Is a colder Earth more productive?

 

It wasn’t for the 100,000-year period glacial period that lasted from the end of the Eemian interglacial until the current interglacial began 11,700 years ago. At one point atmospheric CO2 was at 180ppm, barely above the level of plant starvation of 150ppm.

 

Are storms more frequent and powerful?

 

From 2006 through 2014 no Category 3 or stronger hurricane struck the continental United States, the longest such period since the Civil War.

 

The science behind each of these questions is robust and irrefutable. Climate change is natural and unstoppable.