It’s Tuesday, which is the day I answer mail. But over the last week, I’ve gotten nothing but nice messages full of warmth and support. Thank you. I like getting these, I really do, as I rarely think my writing ability is remotely adequate (I can’t stand re-reading my own stuff after it’s published). But a Midwestern sense of modesty prohibits me from answering only happy letters, so I wasn’t sure what to do – skip the mailbag routine, or risk looking like an arrogant jerk?

As always, I’m taking the third way out. I’m going to dive into some discussions I found myself in yesterday. It’s sorta like getting mail.

Apparently, Monday was “Blog Action Day on the Environment”. Many people took part, and I honestly have no idea how they all knew about it. I certainly didn’t. But, then again, I’ve never been one of the cool kids.

Many of the bloggers chose to write about global warming, especially since the Nobel Peace Prize went to Al Gore, the first Emperor of Mars (that’s an obscure “Futurama” ref). I can see why they chose it – very topical stuff. But � well, I had a problem with it.

My problem is largely academic, and I’m sure many of you will think I’m a total crankshaft for it. But I don’t think that global warming is likely to have been caused by humans. There are many other reasons to eliminate our use of fossil fuels, ranging from sulphur oxides to cadmium to mercury, in addition to the terrible social problems and war the junk has caused. I advocate complete elimination of fossil fuels, and I think it is entirely possible (as I have written before). But I don’t think it’ll cool our planet down one bit. I have three problems with the prevailing theory:

First, I have run infrared spectrometry (FTIR) for many days on end. This is where you shine an infrared light through a sample and look at the wavelengths of light it absorbs. To do this, you have to purge the machine with dry nitrogen to eliminate the water and carbon dioxide, because both are such good infrared absorbers you’ll mask your sample’s signal. When I ran this, I had many things fail at various times. If I ran low on nitrogen, I got a big ol’ carbon dioxide peak. If my drying column went bad, I got a HUGE water blorch right in the middle of your signal. Water is a massive infrared absorber, but carbon dioxide much less so. And there’s a lot more water in the Troposphere, the lower part of the atmosphere. Combining the absorption coefficient and the higher concentration, you’d expect the water to absorb 40-80 times more infrared than carbon dioxide. Yet we focus on the miniscule changes in carbon dioxide concentration? No one has ever explained this to me. It simply seems that water is a far more important “greenhouse gas” than carbon dioxide, and it’s plain everywhere.

Secondly, we really don’t know much about how the output of the sun fluctuates. What we do know is that sunspots are a measure of solar activity, and that an increase in them is an increase in solar output. How much? People are working on it. What’s interesting is that sunspots have been measured since 29BC in China. The data collected show that sunspots were numerous during the Medieval Warming, 1000 years ago, almost nonexistent during the “Little Ice Age” from 500-200 years ago, and peaking like crazy now. The level of sunspot activity is higher than ever recorded at this moment. Now, consider that the temperature of the planet is equal to the energy radiated in, minus the energy radiated out, times a heat capacity. Let’s assume that heat capacity is constant. That means that for a rise in temperature from 0 to 5 Celsius, we need 1.8% increase in energy – because this has to be done on the absolute Kelvin scale, which is Celsius plus 273. Has the sun fluctuated by 1.8% in the last century and a half? Very possibly, we’re not sure. Things sure got cold when the sunspots went to zero in the Renaissance, so why wouldn’t they get hot when the sunspots came back with a vengeance?

Lastly, the temperature of this planet goes up and down all the time. It’s been very warm and very cold. We’re in the middle right now. Nothing that we are experiencing is outside of the normal range that Earth knows very well. Even the apparently rapid rate of change is not that different than the Younger Dryas, a period of time when tropical plants were frozen intact in glaciers because the climate changed so rapidly around them.

So if I advocate eliminating fossil fuels anyways, isn’t this just a bunch of academic hoo-hah? Well, yes, it is. But I think it’s important to know that while we’re probably not helping things by pumping carbon dioxide into the air, we also probably can’t make it any better. Change is just going to happen, and we have to live with it.

There’s another point that I find particularly fascinating in all of this, however. People actually seem to like the big story, and are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. I think it’s very comforting to people to believe that we are such a big important species that we really can screw up our planet completely. That may sound strange, but when I propose that we are actually a very small and insignificant species my readers invariably bristle. It seems to be an excuse for doing whatever we want, since small things can’t mess it up too badly, yes?

But consider for a moment the natives of the prairie. Imagine yourself spending the summer following the bison and pitching a tent for the evening. When you look out to an approaching storm off miles away, all you can do is wait for it. Standing there and watching it roll in, thick and black, makes one thing very clear to you: You are very small. You can’t help but feel that way out on the endless prairies.

The people whose culture and blood captured this feeling are the people that are often used as the model for those who revere Mother Earth as a nurturing spirit that must be preserved. They were the Dakota people of my home on the edge of the prairie, what would become the state of Minnesota. They understood that nurturing wasn’t always easy, and that those who received it must be grateful for what they got. They knew just how small they were.

We may indeed be adding to the climatic change that our planet is undergoing. But I see no reason to believe that we are particularly responsible, or indeed that our planet sees any of this as unusual in any way whatsoever. Not only do I see no reason to believe that we are some grand manipulator, glorious or malevolent, I think it makes a lot of sense for us to understand just how small we really are.

I have some very basic questions about the current theory that no one has bothered to answer. I am content to remain the small boy who says that the Emperor has no clothes, if that’s all I ever get. But hey, if it gets much hotter, naked may be the way to go!

That’s the end of the longest post I ever wrote. Perhaps I’ll finally get some hate mail out of it, and we’ll have something to talk about next week. Whether you like what I have to say or not, I still like to hear from you. Honestly, I have little other way of knowing that anyone is out there reading this stuff!

So send your letters to wabbitoid47(at)yahoo.com and I’ll be happy to chat with you!