What REALLY causes rising temperatures?
What if we are being led down the garden path by the most trusted people and institutions?
Does “land use” cause air temperatures to rise?
To me, here are two related facts: 1) Temperatures are rising faster than expected and 2) Temperatures are hotter over land than over the oceans. Could this mean that degraded and developed land warms the air as much as greenhouse gases?
Let’s briefly look at these two related (?) phenomena in a bit more detail, and then make some observations.
1. Mainstream climate scientists are noticing that global average temperatures are rising faster than expected.
From “The Conversation”:
“… the latest international climate report … describes how rising temperatures caused by increasing greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are having rapid, widespread effects on the weather, climate and ecosystems in every region of the planet, and it says the risks are escalating faster than scientists expected.”
2. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), land surface air temperature has increased more than global average temperatures:
“Since the pre-industrial period … the observed mean land surface air temperature has risen considerably more than the global mean surface (land and ocean) temperature (GMST) (high confidence). From 1850-1900 to 2006-2015 mean land surface air temperature has increased by 1.53°C (very likely range from 1.38°C to 1.68°C) while GMST increased by 0.87°C (likely range from 0.75°C to 0.99°C).”
https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/
These two facts, taken together, suggest that land is a great contributor to warming temperatures.
Or maybe the ocean absorbs excess heat faster than land. That’s possible.
But are climate scientists asking the right questions?
HEAT DOMES
A heat dome is a local or regional dome of hot air caused by hot surfaces such as pavement, desert sands or bare dirt in crop fields.
Are scientists asking how much urban heat domes or agricultural heat domes or desert heat domes contribute to the increase in global average temperatures?
The IPCC includes the world’s top climate scientists. Have they “determined” that atmospheric carbon is the only substantial contributor to climate change and that land based hot plates play a negligible role?
Or are they ASSUMING this without doing the research?
What would they find if they studied the impact of hot surfaces on air temperature?
What would they find if they studied the increased prevalence of pavementand its impact on air temperatures?
What would they find if they studied the increased prevalence of bare dirt in crop fields before planting and after harvest, and the impact of this on temperatures?
What would they find if they compared the temperatures of bare dirt in crop fields with the temperatures in similar fields having cover crops?
What would they find if they compared temperatures in old growth forests with temperatures on commercial tree plantations?
What would they find if they discovered the effects of deforestation? Could they not measure the warming effects of cutting down trees by measuring and comparing local temperatures. Sure they could.
But you never hear about this, except in the “fine print,” and hardly even there. So the public never hears about the actual, potential or theoretical effect of surface temperatures on air temperature, because scientists and the media do rarely talk about it.
If scientists were to compare temperatures before and after deforestation, they might raise questions about deforestation. Who benefits and who loses from deforestation?
Same with real estate development. Who benefits and who loses? And not just commercial and residential, real estate development but military bases, airports and maritime ports. These are built at public expense but rarely with public knowledge or consent, let alone a public minded analysis of the costs and benefits. Commercial interests drive these decisions.
And with industrial agriculture, who benefits and who loses? Agribusiness corporations—not farmers—drive the relevant policies.
But you don’t have to ask any of these questions about “land use” if greenhouses gases are the only impact worth talking about.
And that’s the point.
We are taught to look to the sky (greenhouses gases) if we want to understand rising temperatures.
We are taught to look to the sky if we want to understand flooding, though it’s easy to see how mistreatment of the land causes flooding. When we abuse the land, we degrade the soil, so that the rainwater runs off instead of soaking in. When we design our stormwater systems we design them to slough off water ASAP, which virtually ensures flooding.
We are taught to look to the sky if we want to understand drought, though it’s easy to understand how abuse of the land causes drought. For example, deforestation causes drought because otherwise the forest would act as a sponge and absorb the rainfall and hold onto it, releasing it gradually into the streams.
We deforest for myriad reasons including the limitless demand for timber, shopping centers, distribution centers, roads and luxury homes, all of which are put in place with nothing resembling public knowledge or consent.
We are taught to look to the sky if we want to understand wildfires. But wildfires often occur due to timber industry propaganda that encourages and facilitates short sighted forest management practices, such as excessive road building, forest thinning and “fuel reduction.”
But when wildfires rage in Canada, it’s all because of “climate change,” which we are to understand as global warming caused by CO2.
WHO CAN WE BELIEVE? AND WHAT CAN WE DO?
If you choose, you can believe what the mainstream climate scientists and the corporate media say about climate change.
I believe less than half of it.
The media and the major scientific institutions—including universities—are controlled, ultimately, by the people make all the decisions in our society. And it’s not the people or anything resembling a democratic process.
The solution? It starts with awareness. The first step is to stop lying to one another. That’s up to you and me.
Richard,
I may be misusing the term heat dome. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
Hart
Is the cause of Heat dome from the bottom up (land use) or the top down (climate related conditions)? What I read about Heat dome is "When a high-pressure area builds up within a jet stream, the air descends towards the surface and gets compressed towards the ground, forming a heat dome. Air is crowded within a smaller volume, so it is forced to heat up. The layer of high-pressure blocks the hot air from rising and prevents clouds from forming, allowing more radiation from the sun to hit the ground. Heated air that is trapped below the high-pressure system will become increasingly warmer because it is unable to escape beyond the dome." Attribution