Global Warming

April 10, 2013 update

Don’t pay too much attention to these several global warming pages.  They were created as a “thinking out loud” attempt to maybe discover some surprising insights.  If you’re really into global warming, go ahead and read.  Otherwise, they were created in early 2010, about a year and a half before the big May 2011 spiritualization happened that changed everything during the year and a half that followed.

I’m going to leave the global warming pages, but they’re not in any way part of well-being for all (wb4all) theology except to say that thinking in science terms as a layman, rather than leaving even the toughest theoretical thinking to the experts, is encouraged in the wb4all system for both laymen/women and experts outside their fields.

Enough on that for now.  Other fish to fry in tuning up this site to be a good reflection of post-May2011 and post-Dec29 2012 events.  Actually, only the About Us page, EOOW’s Logbook page, and Church pages are a good reflection of post-May2011 and post-Dec29 2012 events.  The rest — a lot of pages — are just what I was doing to pass the time before then.

*********** below here is the old stuff

bp 001 – global warming – draft – under construction – jan 19, 2010

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if the earth is, in fact, warming up, why?

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everything in this blog post might be wrong.  especially the theory of giant rubber bands.

this, of course, is yet another amateur non-expert exercise in just thinking about something in life.  don’t claim to have any special expertise or sources.  don’t claim any of the possible conclusions are definitely right.  in fact, as i’m working through drafts, adding pages, generating questions, getting facts, and thinking about the two new ideas that got me started on this theme, i’m beginning to think they don’t work.  that happens sometimes.  but i’m not done yet.  and, even if they don’t work for reality, they might work as background and storylines for fiction.  and, as always, it’s interesting and useful to use blogging out loud to combine and consider new and old issues, in new and old ways, to see if they now maybe look a little different, or still look pretty much the same.  if you like that kind of thing, and you want to do it in the context of global warming, then here we go …

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is global warming real?

i’m pretty much persuaded by the reports of melting and lack of refreezing of the north pole and glaciers, plus the reports of sea level rises, plus reports of hot temps in various places, plus the apparent higher energy in ocean-based storms that the earth’s definitely warming up some.

is it a cyclical thing?  warming today, cooling later, then warming again, then cooling again, and so forth?  have heard that argument, but don’t know if it’s right or not.  i’ll come back to it because wondering what could cause that kind of cyclicality gives rise to two pretty wild thoughts about the pattern we might actually be seeing.  in the meantime, it seems prudent to assume, until otherwise informed, that we’re living through either a permanent or extended warming period.

so much for the “is it real?” question.  nothing startling there.   i’m assuming it’s real.

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why is it happening?

this one will get to be a little more unusual, interesting, and maybe completely off-the-wall.  but why not play with some ideas and see which ones fit together?

what’s causing global warming?

hydrocarbons in the atmosphere?  that’s the one we always hear about.

earth drawing closer to the sun?  seems like i heard of that somewhere as one theory, but I don’t think i’ve heard it in the context of global warming.

heat from molten earth’s interior conducting slowly up through the earth’s crust?  have never heard that one before, but, when i was thinking about something else today, that came to mind.

all of the above?  i’m thinking that may be the best.  but thought i’d draft blog a little to explore all of this stuff.  let’s take them one at a time …

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hydrocarbon emissions?

most of the talk about global warming that i’ve heard suggests it’s because of hydrocarbons from use of coal and oil.  that may be right.  some say it is.  some say it isn’t.  people express these two positions in various ways.  i’m going to express them both this way: since man-made hydrocarbon emissions might be the cause, and since that’s the one possible cause we can conceivably do something about, we have to seriously consider (a) reduce current hydrocarbon emissions and (b) avoid things that could increase them.  Item (a) is a problem since a lot of people are dependent on the energy created by the current emissions.  Item (b) is a problem since countries with over a billion people want to join group (a) in emitting hydrocarbons to create energy to support development of their countries.

ok, that part’s mostly mainstream thinking with a little dash of my own speculative thinking.  let’s go off the deep end a little by looking at my phrase, “one possible cause we can conceivably do something about.”  That suggests there might be other causes.

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earth, ever so slowly, falling back into the sun?

Ever consider that the Big Bang theory and the idea of the expanding universe, or at least our expanding solar system, might have another chapter called the contracting solar system?  That the earth and other planets shot out from the sun in the Big Bang, got pulled into orbit by the gravity of the sun, and that the sun’s gravity wasn’t finished yet, and that — the earth is slowly drawing closer to the sun?  🙂  Yeah, I know.  That’s not just speculation.  That’s science fiction!  Ok.  I’ll go with you there.  But that’s one line of thinking to explore.

If the planets came flying out away from the sun, what would make them slow down, stop, and then start coming back?  The answer is giant rubber bands.  Right.  Like the ones on those kid toys where the little rubber ball is connected to the wooden paddle by a rubber band.

Let’s go back to the start of the Big Bang.  Spinning ball of gas shoots out from sun.  Gets far enough from sun that cools into molten lava.  Still cooling, crust forms on the ball of lava.  Crust becomes heat insulator keeping heat in the lava keeping the lava molten.  Crust is insulator so surface crust ices over.  Ice age.  Were there two ice ages?  Anyway, second ice age melts.  I have to check these “ice age” sequences.  Compare to when man showed up.  Anyway, why did second ice age go away? Have to look up the explanation for that.  They probobly told us in grade school, but I don’t remember.  But, in our sci fi story here, maybe second ice age melted due to earth getting a little closer to sun?  Or due to lots of time passing and some of that heat from molten interior lava conducting through the crust?  Or both?  Can’t blame the melting of the second ice age on man-made coal and oil hydrocarbon emissions from cars and jets and power plants and stuff, can we?  🙂  What if Noah’s flood was melting of glaciers … no.  I don’t think CNN was on that story, but I’m pretty sure all reporting from that event said that was rain. 🙂 … …

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heat from earth’s interior?

when volcano’s erupt, tossing out all that molten (liquid) rock and hot gases, we are reminded that the earth’s center is hot hot hot!  hot springs spas remind us too.  “old faithful”, the geyser at yellowstone national park, reminds us.  the “heat pump” systems in green construction do too.  when we drive pilings for porches or decks “below the frost line,” we are doing that because, when the air on the surface is freezing the first several feet of ground, the … hm.. not sure about this fact … think about it later … but, wait, it makes sense that the soft earth under the “frost line” would be kept warm by the heat from the hot earth’s center, doesn’t it?

draft draft draft

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one huge thing this leaves out is the atmosphere.  right, that little thing.  like i said, i’m no expert.

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is global warming happening?  seems like, yes.

what are the primary causes?  i don’t know,  but it may be two very very very very very VERY slow processes we can’t do anything about (the earth very very very slowly getting closer to the sun and heat from the earth’s interior continuing to make its way to the surface) made a little bit worse, but maybe an important little bit worse (as in the “tipping point” idea), by one thing we can do something about (hydrocarbon emissions).

probobly best just to ask al gore.  he probobly knows.  after all, they gave him those nice prizes.

the end

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bit and pieces … some that fit within some perspectives and lines of thinking … some that fit in others … some that may turn out to be off point completely …

what would earth’s surface be like with no atmosphere?  super hot during sun hours and super cold during night, I guess.

the discussion of white glaciers reflecting vs. absorbing heat, and glaciers going away, so more sun heat absorbed and less reflected, and that causing more warming and more white glacier melting, and so forth, all creating a “tipping point” …

seawater absorbing sun’s radiant heat …

wonder what the temperature is in space?  are space suits shiny silver color to reflect sun radiation?

What goes up must come down — unless it goes into orbit or has escape velocity

When we throw a ball straight up in the air, it comes back down.  Why?  Gravity.  Air resistance (friction) too, but nevermind that for now.

When we throw a ball up and over across a field, it goes up, over, up some more, over some more, then peaks and starts coming down, and over some more, and down some more, and over some more, and down to the ground.  Why does the ball come down?  Gravity.  Air resistance too, but mainly gravity.

If we could throw it up and over hard enough (make it go so fast it overcomes both the de-acceleration effects of gravity and air friction), it would get high enough to have less gravity pulling on it, would keep going over across the earth, and that’s how things go into orbit around the earth.

If we could throw it even harder, so that it was going so fast it achieved “escape velocity,” it would, well escape the earth’s gravity enough to also avoid going into orbit, and that’s how spacecraft go to the moon, mars, and other places in space.

But let’s go back to the being in orbit around the earth issue.  Don’t things that go into orbit eventually, due to gravity, get drawn back toward earth like the baseballs we throw?  Let’s see.  There’s inertia (object in motion retains velocity, direction and speed, unless acted upon by some force), gravitational force, and probobly minimal or maybe zero friction.  Inertia means the speeding orbiting thing would fly in a straight line if it were not for the gravitational force pulling it into an elliptical orbit.  Does even the math of that allow for  perpetual orbiting?  Planetary orbits, maybe all orbits, are ellipses, not circles, although a circle is a special case of an ellipse, a special case no real orbit probobly ever can be … well, be all that as it may … we’ve isolated a key theoretical question … is it possible for things that get pulled into orbit, by gravity as they were on outgoing travels away from the gravitational source, to get into orbits that don’t contract over time? … i can see how it might be possible for man-made satellite with little thrust engines to adjust, but, if like the baseball that goes up, doesn’t escape earth, and comes down, the planet goes away from the sun, slows enough to not be getting further from the sun, does it then stay the same distance from the sun or does the same gravitational force that slowed it down still operate and slowly pull it into tighter and tighter, as in closer and closer, elliptical orbits? … not sure even what the vector math of inertia, velocity, force, mass, and acceleration would say about that … come back and tighten this up later …

Relate that to the earth as gas ball, becoming hot fluids ball, to hot fluids ball with a crust, to hot fluids ball with a crust with ice on it — going into orbit around sun, vs. escape velocity and keep on going outside our solar system, vs. peak, orbit a bit, and then have orbit get smaller and smaller and smaller … like the old satellites supposedly do … that … in other words, is there such thing as permanent orbit?  or just orbit that lasts so long that, for our purposes, we can consider it forever? … permanent orbit would probobly require at least frictionless, not just miminal friction, travel path, or else friction would slow the satellite …

(“satellite” – anything, man-made or natural, orbiting around anything else is the satellite of the thing it’s orbiting around … satellites we launch on rockets to orbit the earth are satellites, of course … earth is satellite of sun … moon is satellite of earth … pretty sure that’s right … yes, just checked wikipedia article on “natural satellite” … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_satellite … main  use of term is natural satellite is moon around planet, but it’s also correct for planet around star/sun and even dwarf galaxies around main galaxies … same issue for all of them … all orbiting around more massive thing due to gravity …)

Giant rubber bands

The main alternative to the theory of gravity is the theory of giant rubber bands.

Like the child’s paddle toy that has a small rubber ball attached to by a long rubber band, the sun holds the planets of the solar system in their orbits with giant invisible rubber bands.