Welcome To Josh's Blog O' Thoughts: Space

I was recently sent a link to part of a Martin Bashir documentary about Global Warming. While the documentary doesn't try to disprove that Global Warming is happening (as some other "investigative" reporters claim), it does raise questions about the causes of Global Warming.

The overall message of his documentary is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the primary contributor to Global Warming. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore uses ice core samples dating back thousands of years to show that there is, in fact, a correlation between temperature and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. He doesn't give the level of correlation, but even an amateur can spot that the graph lines are mostly aligned.

In Freakonomics, the authors explain the difference between correlation and causation. Just because two things are correlated (they move together) doesn't mean that one is the cause of the other or vice-versa. Obviously, the movie is implying that the CO2 is the cause of Global Warming, but it can't be proved just from the data shown in the movie.

Martin Bashir's report, however, claims that the CO2-Temperature correlation is simply that, just a correlation. His documentary claims there is no causation there. He may or may not be right. This documentary claims that the true cause of Global Warming is an increase in activity on the Sun. The explanation is as follows. The Earth is normally bombarded by cosmic rays which combine with rising water vapor to form clouds. With the Sun's activity currently in a heightened state, the Solar Wind is "blowing" away many of the cosmic rays. This leads to less cloud coverage and higher temperatures.

The data presented in the YouTube clip show a negative correlation between cosmic rays and temperature (when cosmic rays go down, temps go up), and a positive correlation between sun activity and temperatures. This all sounds very reasonable, but unfortunately, I don't think it gets us any closer to a proven cause than Al Gore's CO2 stance. They both have correlations, but we haven't necessarily proven causality.

Either way, you can't argue that reducing our CO2 emissions is a bad thing. Even if it has very little effect on Global Warming, reducing emissions means that we are driving more efficient standards, and thus will be promoting cleaner living all around. Additionally, it will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, of which price will become a deterrent as extraction becomes more difficult.

So, don't watch this Martin Bashir documentary and think "CO2 isn't causing Global Warming, so I can continue on doing whatever I please without being responsible." Regardless of who is right about the cause of Global Warming, we still need to try to be more energy efficient.

As if there aren't already enough side effects of global warming, scientists have concluded that global warming may actually change the speed with which the Earth rotates thus changing the length of a day on this planet. However, there seems to be conflicting views.

One study shows that as global warming heats the ocean water, water pressure will increase due to the volume expansion that occurs in water when heated. This extra water pressure will force a lot of the water from the deep ocean areas to shallower ones at the poles. By bringing that amount of mass closer to the axis of rotation, the speed of rotation will increase, thus shortening the length of a day by approximately 0.12 milliseconds by the year 2200.

Other evidence shows that global warming may slow the speed of rotation and increase the length of an Earth day. This study theorizes that as global warming heats the air and increases the speed of airflow, the rotation of the Earth will slow. This is because the rotation of the atmosphere and the rotation of the planet have an inverse relationship. When one increases, the other must decrease. Over the course of the next 200 years, this could lengthen an Earth day by 0.22 milliseconds.

So basically, we are to surmise that global warming will cause both an increase AND decrease of ~0.11-0.22 milliseconds in the length of an Earth day over the next 200 years. So do they cancel out? Maybe. The bigger question is why are these scientists spending a considerable amount of time trying to estimate if the earth's rotation will change by less than a millisecond over a 200 year period? That wouldn't even be noticeable. Seems that there are probably other side effects of global warming that could use some extra attention.

So, what would you do with an extra 0.3 nanoseconds per day? Or what would you cut out if you lost it?

There was a recent discovery from European astronomers showing they have likely found an Earth-like planet in another solar system. Since light from neigboring stars usually drowns out the light from any planet, we have a hard time trying to find extra-solar planets. Because of this, the astronomers used a method of observation where they monitored the "wobble" of the system's star related to the gravitational pull of the planet. From this, they were able to surmise quite a bit of knoweldge about this planet.

Basically, they estimate it to be about 50% larger than Earth and circling a red dwarf star (a third the size of our sun) about 20 light years away. It is relatively close to its star thus one year on that planet is only 13 Earth days. However, due to the fact that the planet's star is so cool, the planet's mean temperature is in a range that would support liquid water and possibly life (as we know it).

Obviously, this is a huge find. Could this planet possibly support life like ours? Would we be able to survive on a planet like this? Could our bodies survive on a world that had twice the gravitational pull as our own? Everything would weight twice as much.

I think I'd be able to survive if I was transplanted to this new planet, but I figure there would be some who would not be able to. It would be almost like a massive and quick form of natural selection whereby the people that were in good physical condition would survive. Future generations would then learn to adapt. But that's just a theory.