CALL IT: WEATHER INTENSIFICATION NOT "GLOBAL WARMING"

NOT GLOBAL WARMING BUT WEATHER INTENSIFICATION

Yesterday, while shoveling the fluffy white stuff during our tenth or twelfth major snow storm this year, I got a friendly glove-handed wave from my middle aged and politically conservative neighbor “Jimmy”. We were both struggling again to clear our side-by-side snow-covered driveways. Jimmy, a retired NY City police officer often chided me about “global warming”, aware of my many years of teaching meteorology and climatology. So on this obviously very cold and snowy day he called over the high mounds of snow piled between the driveways: "So are you pointy headed guys still claiming that we are having “global warming"?

“That’s a misnomer,” I countered. “A better term for what we are having is “GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.”

“Oh, so your changing your story huh? So what does THAT mean?

I waved him over into my opened garage, out of the wind and driving snow. He was cold and tired so he quietly acquiesced. I figured I had him at a disadvantage. Perhaps I could actually clear up his muddled thinking, and also avoid having to listen to ad nauseum repetitions of his "Fox News” talking-points at least about climate .

“The fact is the earth as a whole is actually warming a great deal. The reason is that we are constantly dumping increasing amounts of what are known as “greenhouse gases” into the atmosphere. Our cars, trucks, buses, all spew gases that make the air warmer. Then too we also release the same gases from our heating systems, we rely greatly on trucks for transport of our goods. Almost our entire economy runs on fossil fuels.Burning those fuels generate carbon dioxide gas which builds up in the atmosphere. That gas (and others too) has the property of absorbing heat and making the atmosphere warmer. The more CO2 in the air, the warmer the air gets. But we are also intensifying the problem by eliminating forests which naturally recycle CO2 and extract it from the atmosphere. As you well know we are cutting down our forests, and pasting over natural areas with asphalt, bull dozing down down green trees to make housing developments and parking lots. You just have to take a look at the pictures of the earth on Google Maps. Roads, expanses cleared land, industrial areas, parking lots, housing developments have replaced vast areas formerly covered by greenery and much of this has occurred in only the last few decades.  This is not only happening here in the USA but all over the world.

He nodded his head. That seemed OK he had heard that before and it made sense. “It’s possible he admitted.”

He pulled me over to the open garage door. “Look out there! That’s what we got today. How is this snow evidence of a warmer globe?”

My response: “The earth’s atmosphere IS warming...but as in many things, the answer is not so simple. The increased warming is not ONLY manifested as warmer temperatures. (Though that is what we see here every summer). The earth’s atmosphere is a  giant machine which cycles the energy from the sun. Because the earth is a near globe the heat is mostly absorbed in a belt around the equator. The atmosphere is a fluid that moves heat around. It spreads that heat absorbed in the equatorial area through the atmosphere by winds and cyclonic storms which bring rain, snow, violent winds, increased cloud cover, and hurricanes too. So when we dump  “heat-absorber gases” into the atmosphere as a result of our quest for energy we also we make the earth warmer in that equatorial zone.  But the EFFECTS of increased atmospheric temperatures are felt throughout the globe...because air is a fluid and it moves around. The effects of heating are:more and bigger storms, more rain, more snow, more instability and more unpredictability in the atmosphere..that is: in three words GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION.

So besides pumping more and more CO2 into the atmosphere to make the globe warmer, we are also simultaneously intensifying the effects of this waste dumping process by decreasing those elements on the earth which actually absorb CO2---green plants. Remember in high school you learned about “photosynthesis”?  Green plants convert CO2 and H2O into carbohydrates which bind much of the CO2 in an insoluble form called cellulose. This is a way to sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make a solid substance of it.

That's where our carbon based fuels came from.  Our fossil fuels were all produced in ancient  much warmer times by photosynthesis. But eons ago..the earth sequestered or set the CO2 as cellulose aside as fossil carbon. We know of this buried carbon as :coal beds, oil deposits and natural gas pockets underground. Today we are avidly exploiting those deposits coving in it with atmospheric oxygen and and dumping the residue of combustion..CO2 right back into the atmosphere again. But that adds this old carbon to the new carbon we already had enough of.

It's like when you have a bad cold. The Doc says: "Jimmy, listen to me--you wanna get better?  You rest, drink plenty of fluids and keep yourself nice and warm, that will help you fight the virus.”

His advice is to ameliorate the effects of the infective virus by following a known protocol of hydration, rest, and keeping the body warm, all of which which will slow the rate at which the virus is replicating in your system.

But instead of that you drink no water but slake your thirst with alcohol (dehydrating yourself), go out in the icy cold with no hat or coat on to shovel snow, and stay up all night. What YOU are doing is going to make that cold worse.

That’s about where we are regarding Global WEATHER INTENSIFICATION: we are doing everything to make the situation worse. Pumping more and more carbon  dioxide into the air and killing off the plants which absorb it out of the air. The net result more  argon dioxide in the air and more and more atmospheric heating. That external heat intensities the storms, make them bigger and more violent and gets us to where we are today...shoveling snow in March.

What we must do is SLOW  our use of fossil fuels by a concerted effort at much more efficient energy use; we must eventually end our dependence on all fossil fuels; we have to stop massive deforestation and de-greening of the earth, and turn to “green” energy sources such as wind, hydro, tidal, geothermal, safe nuclear, etcetera.

Then perhaps our kids and grandkids might see some improvement. If we don't do something..soon..we are all lost.

So remember Jimmy, stop calling it “Global Warming” the guys you hang around with at the golf course don't get it. Call it GLOBAL WEATHER INTENSIFICATION, and when they can't play because it too windy,  or they have a “freeze delay” in June, or the fifth fairway..with that low spot,  has now become a water hazard, and the greens get dry and hard as a billiard table in early summer--that’s all part of what we pointy heads now call “GWI” (Global Weather Intensification).