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Ray Tomes: Human Activity is not the Cause of Climate Change, it is the Result
Ray Tomes is one of the wisest people I know. His depth of knowledge and insight about the universe from the sub-atomic to the extra-galactic, and how things at all scale relate to each other is unsurpassed. His mathematical work on understanding cycles and their inter-relationships is groundbreaking. In this simply argued article, he uses common sense and logic to set cause and effect out in easy to understand terms for anyone to read.
Human Activity is not the Cause of Climate Change, it is the Result
by Ray Tomes
Many people today are totally convinced that changes in human activity are the cause of climate change. I want to show that actually, the exact opposite is true. I suggest further that most climate change originates beyond the Earth, mainly in the Sun. Firstly a list of accepted facts (even though many are not usually applied to climate change):
1. Chemical reaction rates vary with temperature. A modest temperature rise can lead to chemical reactions happening much faster. This is true of a wide variety of chemical reactions. It is taught to students of chemistry.
2. Life is governed by a bunch of chemical reactions. As such its activity is affected by temperature. In general life is more active in day time than at night, and more active in summer than winter, in other words when it is warmer. Studies of animals, birds and insects invariably show that activity varies with temperature. Life is teaming at the equator and more sparse at the poles. Humans are animals too and subject to the same causes.
3. The flow of CO2 between atmosphere, plants, oceans etc are essentially chemical reactions and their rates are governed by temperature. Chemists know that solubility of gases in water is strongly affected by temperature. Atmospheric CO2 is strongly related to partial pressure of CO2 in the oceans.
4. There are long and medium term cycles in the Sun that affect climate on Earth. Some of the well accepted solar cycles are the 208 year Seuss (or de Vries) cycle and the 2300 year Halstatt cycle. See wikipedia. An irregular cycle of about 50-60 years is also important in the medium term. Very long cycles called Milankovitch cycles affect ice ages (23,000 years, 41,000 years, 100,000 years and 400,000 years) and are associated with Earth axis and orbital variations and are not at issue here.
5. These medium to long term cycles are observed in both solar proxies and climate proxies. It is clear that any variations in solar activity must affect the earth’s climate as near enough to 100% of heat arriving at the earth originates in the Sun.
6. Logically we should expect that these solar fluctuations will affect climate on Earth and as a result the amount of human activity. All the facts are consistent with this view put forward here. And yet no-one seems to ever consider this approach. When I have mentioned it as a possible cause I have generally been laughed at. But, no sensible argument against the ideas has been advanced.
7. Because of human ideas about the importance of humans, they got mixed up and somehow came to believe that changes in human activity are causing changes in climate. This is demonstrably false. The normally proposed mechanism is that human economic activity creates CO2 which affects temperature change. The observed fact is that temperature change precedes CO2 change. This cannot possibly happen if human CO2 production is the primary cause of temperature change.
My favourite quotation relating to cycles is relevant here:
“Life is a phenomenon. Its production is due to the influence of the dynamics of the cosmos on a passive subject. It lives due to dynamics, each oscillation of organic pulsation is coordinated with the cosmic heart in a grandiose whole of nebulas, stars, the sun and the planet.”
– Alexander L Chizhevsky
What I describe was clearly understood by this great cycles researcher at least 60 years ago.
If my proposal is taken seriously then it would suggest that when natural solar cycles and the resulting natural climate cycles lead to lower temperatures, then human activity will naturally decline and so will CO2 in the atmosphere. But the temperature changes will lead the CO2 changes once again.
If this idea is not taken seriously, then arguments need to be put forward against the above facts and logic. And all of the facts must be faced. Anyone who cannot explain why temperature changes precede CO2 changes simply does not understand what is going on.
2012-10-22 14:40:11
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