How Global Warming & Ice Ages Begin & End
by
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Chapter 1
OUR ENVIRONMENT: IT’S SCALE
In the early 1980s interest in global warming (GW) started to grow. At the time I was a physicist working in applied research for a business machine company, and I dismissed it, because I thought that mankind’s puny efforts had little chance to influence climate, which is a massive.
Recently GW has great attention (and hype) in the media. It’s on everybody’s mind intermittently, and politicians often use it as a political football or as a photo op. Finally, tired of it all, I decided to do my own archival research and calculations.
Initial research showed that GW is loaded with huge numbers. I looked on the internet to find estimates of the volume of water in the Earth’s oceans, because they can store a lot of heat and affect climate greatly. The Pacific has about 163.1 million (163.1 times 10 raised to the 6th power – 10^6) cubic miles. To most people this number is so far out of their normal experiences, that it’s difficult to comprehend. Even if the number had been billions or trillions of cubic miles, most would have thought of it the same way; “Wow,
that’s huge!”
The Atlantic is estimated at 75.2 million cubic miles. Standing on the shore of either and looking out, each seems to stretch to infinity. Yet the numbers show they are finite. The Pacific has 2.17 times the Atlantic’s volume. Both numbers are of the same order of magnitude. (2 numbers are the same order of magnitude if, when 1 is divided into the other, the result is greater than 1/10 but less than 10, depending on which is divided into which.) We relate better to the 2 large numbers by comparing them ratherthan thinking of each alone.
‘Our environment’ is a somewhat vague phrase. For most people it’s reallythe local territory, its climate, and its infrastructure. For the purposes ofthis book I will defi ne it globally as follows. Mt. Everest is less than 6 milesabove sea level; the greatest ocean depths are about 6 miles. Everything within this 12-mile thick shell is our environment. There are external things that enter our environment like sunshine, meteorites, heat from the Earth’s interior, etc. Once they have entered, they become a part of it. Energy is constantly entering (and leaving) our environment.
To get some sense of the scale of this environmental shell, picture yourself standing in front of a large blackboard holding a piece of chalk. Draw a circle of radius 4 feet. Now draw a horizontal diameter of 8 feet. Suppose that this is a scale drawing of the Earth, whose diameter is 8000 miles. Then each foot of the diameter represents 1000 miles, each inch about 83.3 miles, and each quarter inch about 21 miles. The width of the circumference line is probably greater than one quarter of an inch. On this scale our entire environment lies within the thickness of that outer chalk line.
In Figure 1 I have added some details of the Earth’s interior structure. It is surprising. At the center is a solid sphere composed primarily of iron. Surrounding it is a thick molten liquid shell made mostly of iron. Then there is the shell of the lower mantel followed by the shell of the upper mantel. Atop all of this are the crust and, finally, our environment.
It puts things into perspective. People can sympathize more with environmentalists, and they rightly can develop some concern. Our environment looks minuscule and fragile compared to things nearby. Yet most of us know that it and we are quite resilient. Our species have been around more than 1 million years and have survived the extreme cold of many ice ages and the GWs in between.
In the 20th century we experienced rising temperatures near one of those peaks. Ahead I hope to give more insight into our contribution to this warming trend, and how we might deal with it.
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About the Book
The first 6 chapters deal with standard GW topics. In Chapter 1 I define “our environment”. Chapter 2 quantifies world energy use in the 20th and 21st centuries. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 relate to energy required in heating the Earth’s atmosphere, water, and to melt all the planet’s ice, respectively. Chapter 6 covers sea level rise as ice melts.(Final level and time to reach it)
Chapter 7 diverges from ordinary GW topics. There I estimate the energy stored in the Earth’s 2 metal cores, 1 solid and 1 liquid.
Furthermore, in the lower mantel is stored more than in the 2 metal cores, and in the upper mantel there is a similar amount. This means that more than 2/3 of the internal heat is stored in the mantels. Its thermal interaction with the surface is very significant.
In Chapters 8, 9, and 10 I present a different theory of global warming incorporating Earth’s interior energy. In Chapter 8 there is a 400,000-year graph showing climate history as it pertains to CO2 (carbon dioxide) concentration and temperature. The new theory is strongly supported by the close connection between the two, especially during GW. Chapter 9 shows a massive increase in worldwide flooding over the last 22 years. Chapter 10 discusses more aspects of the graphs presented in chapter 7. It connects flood data of Chapter 9 with the new theory.
Chapter 11 compares climatic numbers with very large numbers in common use. Chapter 12 addresses climate control. Chapter 13 covers some odds and ends not yet discussed, but that may be among people’s concerns. Some very different ways of looking at GW concepts are stated. Chapter 14 is the conclusion, which briefly summarizes the new theory. It offers a solution to reduce greatly or stop our contribution to global warming.
About the Author
Mr. George Sourlis attended Purdue University from 1960 through 1964 when he received his BS. He holds a double major in physics and math. In 1965 he entered the Master degree program at the University of Arkansas majoring in physics. After 2 years of course and thesis work, he took a position teaching physics at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri in 1967 112 miles from the U. of A. During his teaching there he commuted on weekends and spent his summers at the U. of A. finishing his thesis work. In 1969 with that completed he had earned an M.S. in physics. In December of 1969 he left academic work to find something doing research. He was hired to work in the Applied Research Department at Videojet Systems Inc., a division of the A.B. Dick Company at that time. In his 14 years there he studied and help develop a continuous-jet industrial ink jet marking machine, which is now used world wide to bar code mail and date code food and beverage product containers. The public sees these codes daily on their U.S. mail, bottoms of beverage cans, and on other grocery products. They are printed in a dot matrix format as bar codes or alpha-numerics During his time doing applied research as a physicist for Videojet Systems, Inc. he patented 1 item and developed 1 proprietary process. He is an expert in the process of continuous-jet ink jet printing. The company changed hands in the early 1980s, and in 1987 he left to start his own company in an unrelated field. He retired in 2002.