The goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important, not trivia, and that are known to be true yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many.
Superfact 17: Fossil fuels kill a lot more birds per gigawatt hour than wind power does. Cats, windows, cars, poison and powerlines are examples of things that kill a lot more birds than wind power does. Wind power killing birds is not the huge environmental problem it is often made out to be.
Wind power killing birds is often mentioned as a slam dunk environmentally based argument against wind power and evidence for the hypocrisy of environmentalists. This is misguided. Wind power killing birds is a real problem and it should be addressed, and it is being addressed. No energy source comes without environmental problems. However, wind turbines account for only a small fraction of overall bird deaths compared to other human causes. It is not a good argument against wind power, and it does not demonstrate any hypocrisy by environmentalists. In fact, a study made in 2012 (overview here) concluded that fossil fuels killed 24 million birds per year in the US, which correspond to 35 times more birds per GWh than wind power kills according to this study. Even though this study and other similar studies are estimates based on assumptions that are far from perfect, they are good indicators that replacing fossil fuels with wind power likely saves birds rather than kills them.
In any case, as this Wikipedia article states, collisions with wind turbines are a minor source of bird mortality compared to other human causes. According to the graph below cats kill 5,600 times more birds than wind power and collisions with powerlines kills 99 times more birds than wind power, and yet we rarely discuss these problems. Even though these numbers are estimates they are mostly confirmed by other studies and analysis, as this overview from MIT and this analysis by Hannah Richie shows. The numbers aren’t the same, but they make the same point. FYI Hannah Richie is the deputy editor and lead researcher at Our World in Data. Our World in Data is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems. They are associated with Oxford University and is one of the most respected statistics, analysis and research organizations in the world.
From Wikipedia: Universiteit van Nederland, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsAn alternative graph taken from Hannah Richie / Our World in Data, using alternative sources essentially showing the same thing. Sources: Loss et al. (2015), (2013), US Fish and Wildlife Service; Subramnayan et al. (2012), American Bird Conservancy (2021).
Wind power has been on the receiving end of false claims, nonsense, and strange rumors for quite some time. It is not the only energy source maligned by false information, but it is an interesting case study in misinformation regarding energy sources. To read about nonsense and rumors about wind power click here.
The goal of this blog is to create a list of what I call Newstrade. Important facts that we know to be true and yet they are surprising, shocking or disputed among non-experts. Special facts that any well-informed person should know.
Paperback – $18.95 on Amazon – future release March 25, 2025.
Hardcover – Publisher : Princeton University Press; First Edition (September 12, 2023), ISBN-10 : 0691177295, ISBN-13 : 978-0691177298, 240 pages, item weight : 1 pounds, dimensions : 5.75 x 1 x 8.5 inches, it costs $18.95 on Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – Publisher : Princeton University Press (September 12, 2023), ASIN : B0C5SBB26C, 229 pages, it costs $15.37 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Audio – Publisher : Princeton University Press (September 19, 2023), ASIN : B0CF6WHBVX, listening length 7 hours, narrator : Christopher Ragland, it costs $0.99 on US Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Front cover of Elemental. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the hardcover version of the book.
Amazon’s description of the book
It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future.
Taking readers from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. He describes how single-celled cyanobacteria and plants harnessed them to wildly proliferate across the oceans and the land, only to eventually precipitate environmental catastrophes.
He then brings us to the present, and shows how these elements underpin the success of human civilization, and how their mismanagement threatens similarly catastrophic unintended consequences. But, Porder argues, if we can learn from our world-changing predecessors, we can construct a more sustainable future.
Blending conversational storytelling with the latest science, Porder takes us deep into the Amazon, across fresh lava flows in Hawaii, and to the cornfields of the American Midwest to illuminate a potential path to sustainability, informed by the constraints imposed by life’s essential elements and the four-billion-year history of life on Earth.
The Story of HOCNP the Five Elements Essential to all Life
The author, a biogeochemist, explains why five elements, hydrogen (H), oxygen (O), carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) are essential to all life. As an example, in the sunlit waters of the central equatorial Pacific Ocean, a lack of Nitrogen creates a water desert with no life. Lifeforms that are able extract more of these elements have a competitive advantage.
This book focuses on three world-changing organisms that were able to extract unprecedented amounts of these elements from the environment also resulting in success and huge increases in the total mass of lifeforms, as well as consequences causing mass extinction eventually followed by an entirely new planet. Note this book is not about mass extinctions, which have happened at least five times, but something more profound. It is about planet-changing events.
During the first two billion years of earth’s history there had been no oxygen in the environment; oxygen was always bound to some other atom, such as hydrogen in water. There was life back then but in the form of primitive bacteria using a primitive form of photosynthesis involving sulfur. Then came cyanobacteria which had invented a more effective form of photosynthesis, as well as a way of extracting nitrogen using a process called nitrogen fixation. The two-atom nitrogen in the air is nearly inert and very difficult to use. This made cyanobacteria extremely successful.
However, one consequence was that the carbon dioxide was largely removed from the atmosphere, while the atmosphere was filled up by oxygen, which is a byproduct of the new form of photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that warms the planet, something scientists had already figured out in the 1850’s. With much less carbon dioxide, the earth got very cold, and a snowball earth disaster followed. However, in the long run the oxygen paved the way for the existence of multicellular life and animals. The planet changed.
About 400 million years ago plants was a new type organism that was able to extract water (hydrogen and oxygen) from land as well as phosphorus. Their success led to another depletion of carbon dioxide causing another ice period, but they paved the way for life on land. The planet changed again. Now humans, the third type of organism, are extracting all five elements in unprecedented amounts causing global warming and other unintended consequences.
Unlike cyanobacteria and plants, we are not doing this to primarily extract nutrients but for transportation, heating and consumer products and we can control and predict the consequences of our actions.
As evidence for global warming / climate change the author discusses the temperature measurement records of various organizations (NOAA etc.). That is the smoking gun.
However, he also mentions things like the fact that the vast majority of glaciers in the world are retreating or disappearing and the fact that anyone above the age of 50 who comes from a northern climate (that would be me) can attest to the fact that winters have gotten noticeably shorter snow seasons and warmer summers. That is true and it is a good thing to mention because there are those who are quick to dismiss temperature records as big hoaxes.
The second part of his global warming discussion, the evidence that we humans are the cause of the current warming, leaves something out in my opinion. He explains why the various climate models provide incontrovertible evidence that the chief cause for the current global warming is our burning of fossil fuels, despite the models being far from perfect. I totally agree with that, but once again there are those who are not willing to accept climate models as solid evidence, and therefore you should mention other evidence as well, which he does not do.
Examples of evidence that we are the cause and that does not involve complex models would be, no known natural cause can explain the current warming, the upper troposphere is cooling while the lower troposphere is warming, the arctic is warming much faster than average, nights are warming much faster than days, etc. Those are things that would not happen if the cause was a hotter sun (which we also kept a record of) or an orbital cycle.
In addition, spectral analysis shows the cause to be the adding of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and various isotope studies show that the carbon emissions come from the burning of hundreds of millions of years old carbon. Why not mention that as well? I know all this is baked into the models, but simple explanations appear more convincing to many. I am not taking off a star for it, but I felt it was a missed opportunity.
One environmental threat that you don’t hear much about is the depletion of phosphorus. This is something that may be far into the future but something that seems impossible to solve once it arrives and could evolve into an enormous food crisis. This was certainly a unpleasant surprise to me.
The book explains many processes and concepts, biogeochemistry, primitive photosynthesis using sulfur, photosynthesis using water (cyanobacteria) and releasing oxygen, nitrogen fixation, endosymbiosis, how plants extract phosphorus from the ground, the evolution of plants, the slow carbon cycles, the fast carbon cycle, the effect of volcanoes on climate, respiration, why can trust certain aspects of climate models, nitrogen fixation, nitrogenase, the immense effect fertilizers have had on food production, the Haber-Bosch process, earth’s climate history, why phosphorus is both finite and irreplaceable, the danger to aquifers, how we have changed ecosystems, and more.
Despite that the author makes himself understood. He explains complex concepts, so they are easy to understand and connects them all in a logical way that makes a lot of sense. So don’t be afraid that the book will be difficult to read. You may just learn a lot.
The author considers climate change / global warming to be our most serious environmental challenge, but he offers a lot of suggestions for a way forward. He discusses a lot of interesting technological solutions. I think he may be a bit gloomier than necessary but overall, what he says is very insightful and somewhat hopeful.
Again, I was very impressed by the organization of the book. It is easy to create a mess when you try to connect a lot of different concepts and complex science into a logical narrative, but he was very successful. It was a delight to read this book, it was interesting and full of facts, which were new to me, and I think are very important. I learned a lot and I think it is a very well written page turner.
Back cover of Elemental. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the kindle version of the book.
This is not one of the super fact posts. It is just a post related to an interest of mine that is informational. I volunteer for an organization called Citizens Climate Lobby, or CCL. CCL is a bipartisan organization that works with both Democrats and Republicans to create the political will for climate solutions. During the month of August CCL is promoting what is called electrification. Clean energy is taking the world with storm, but energy / electric power is not the only source of carbon emissions / greenhouse gases.
Take for example, transportation. Most cars still use gasoline and to move towards a fossil fuel free future we must move towards using transportation that uses less fossil fuels such as EV cars. We need to electrify transportation. Another aspect of electrification is replacing gas stoves with induction stoves, installing solar panels, as well as lowering the energy use of your house.
Lowering the energy consumption of your house lowers your emissions. Photo by Frans van Heerden on Pexels.com
EV Cars
At least here in Texas it is quite common to believe that EV cars do not reduce emissions. After all EV cars use electricity from the dirty grid, right? Often this is said to environmentalists and people who care about fossil fuels emissions as if they don’t understand that the electricity for EV cars typically comes from the dirty grid. However, they do know that. In fact, they know a little bit more. EV cars are much more efficient than Internal Combustion Engine cars , or ICE, and therefore the emissions caused by EVs via the electrical grid, even a coal powered grid, is significantly less per mile. In fact, replacing gasoline-powered cars with EVs saves energy, regardless of the energy source used to recharge the EVs. For an ICE 16-25% of the original energy goes to the wheels whereas for an EV 87-91% of the original energy goes to the wheels.
16-25% of original energy goes to the wheels. Data from FuelEconomy.gov, Image by Karin Kirk for Yale Connections.87-91% of original energy goes to the wheels. Data from FuelEconomy.gov, Image by Karin Kirk for Yale Connections.
On the other hand, it takes more energy to manufacture an EV battery for an EV car than it does to produce a combustion engine. So, the production of an electric vehicle does emit more carbon than a petrol car. However, the lower emissions resulting from driving an EV means that an electric car quickly pays back its debt, so to speak. It is typically paid back within two years.
According to Hannah Richie at Our World in Data the statistics show that switching from an average ICE to an equally sized EV will save 1.2 tons of carbon emissions per person and year. That is a lot considering that the average carbon footprint per year is 4 tons worldwide and 14.4 tons per year for an American. Hannah Richie at Our World in Data also states that other environmental damages related to EVs such as mining for minerals are less than mining and extraction for fossil fuel cars, and she claims that the price of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 98% over the last three decades.
EVs are becoming increasingly common. According to Our World in Data in 2022, 88% of all cars sold in Norway were EVs and 54% of all cars in Sweden were EVs. The United States is lagging a bit at 7.5% but there is a tax credit $7,000.00 for new EVs and a $4,000.00 tax credit for buying used EVs. I should add that we have not yet bought an EV because after I took early retirement, I did not need a car. We just share my wife’s hybrid, which we hardly ever drive.
Induction Stoves
We bought an electric stove, an induction stove, a couple of years ago when our previous stove stopped working. They come with an $840.00 rebate. I’ve read that professional chefs prefer gas stoves. However, our induction stove provides everything we need for our cooking needs and my beer brewing needs and it is easier to clean. If you are a professional chef you may want to be able switch the high heat on and off quicker, but we are not professional chefs even though the food we cook is delicious.
Another downside of an induction stove is that if the power goes out you can’t cook, but that has not been a problem for us. Considering that we get our electricity from a power company, Green Mountain Energy, that utilizes renewable energy, wind and solar, you can claim that our stove is 100% fossil fuel free.
Our induction stove with the lights in the kitchen turned off.
Heat Pumps
Air source heat pumps, which are the most common type of heat pumps, are a great, energy efficient choice for heating your home and water and as well as being low maintenance, they can help to cut your heating costs and lower your carbon footprint. An air source heat pump absorbs heat from the air outside a building and releases it inside. It uses the same vapor-compression refrigeration process and much the same equipment as an air conditioner, but in the opposite direction.
Air-to-air heat pumps provide hot or cold air directly to rooms. Heat pumps are the main way to phase furnaces but are also typically more efficient than other types of heaters and air conditioners and thus they reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There is an up to $8,000.00 upfront discount for heat pumps and a 30% tax credit up to $2,000.00. I should say we do not have a heat pump.
Air heat pump installed on the exterior facade of the old house. Sustainable heating solutions for old construction. Stock Photo ID: 2349325553 by Snapshot freddy.
Rooftop solar
Another great thing that we have been thinking about but do not have yet is rooftop solar. Rooftop solar power system, or rooftop photo voltaic systems, consist of electricity-generating solar panels mounted on the rooftop of a residential or commercial building or structure. Residential rooftop solar power systems typically feature a capacity of about 5–20 kilowatts.
The average American household uses 1.2 kilowatts on average. Most rooftop solar systems are connected to the grid and can feed the extra power into the grid for compensation. I should add this is not entirely without difficulty. There are also hybrid systems which include any combination of wind turbines, diesel generators, and batteries for electricity on demand. There is a 30% tax credit for rooftop solar.
Saving energy is not exactly the same thing as electrification but it is a related topic. If you electrify your home and also reduce your energy needs, you are reducing emissions.
A few years ago, we changed the insulation in our house to reduce our energy needs and our electric bill. It made a difference. We also did weatherstripping, installed three pane windows and high security doors, that were well-insulated and reduced heat-loss. We received significant tax credits for doing this. I don’t remember how much, but it was several thousand dollars. I can add that you get a $150 tax credit for a home energy audit.
What do you think about electrification and energy savings?
Do you have additional ideas for electrification and energy savings?
Bamboozlement Misunderstandings Big Surprises and My Journey
“Bamboozlement Misunderstandings Big Surprises and My Journey” is the first post of my super-factful blog. The goal of this blog is to create a long list of facts that are important and known to be true yet are either disputed by large segments of the public or highly surprising or misunderstood by many.
These facts are not trivia, they are accepted as true by the experts in the relevant fields, the evidence that the fact is true is impressive, and they are important to the way we view the world and to what we believe, and despite being known to be true they are hard pills to swallow for many. They are not scientific theories or complicated insights but facts that can be stated simply. In a paragraph or less. They may need more explanation than what you can fit in one paragraph, but they can be stated, perhaps with a brief explanation in just one paragraph.
Some important facts that are known to be true may still be hard pills to swallow. Photo by JESHOOTS.com on Pexels.com
In lack of a better term, I am referring to these facts as “Newstrade” and so far, I’ve made a list of more than a hundred. In addition to just stating the fact I will explain why we know that the fact is true and discuss the evidence, give background information and provide links. My posts will not be deep dives into the topics in question. However, I will try to remember to provide links for further study.
Why I Created This Blog
The reason for wanting to create this blog is not to prove anyone wrong, but because I think a list of important and true but often disputed, misunderstood or surprising facts would be a very interesting list. I am hoping that you my readers as well as I will learn from it. I am hoping it will be a growth opportunity for all of us. If we learn that something we used to believe is wrong, well that’s progress, that’s growth.
I am hoping to make the site interactive. I am open to suggestions for super-facts as well as challenges to super-facts that I’ve posted, or other things I have written that someone may disagree with. In fact, I would find that helpful, as long as we can discuss the issue in good faith and keep it friendly. I should say I would like to avoid politics.
I will certainly be open to counter arguments but let’s keep it friendly. Photo by Vera Arsic on Pexels.com
My Journey
One thing I would like to make clear in this post is that I have been bamboozled, misled, and I have misunderstood facts and information, and I have disputed information that turned out to be true. I have also seen others stubbornly insist on things that were obviously false. As time as passed, I have come to realize that it is very common that people believe what is known to be false, and conversely reject facts that are known to be true, and I am including myself in that. We are all guilty but naturally we are not aware of this and being told you are wrong can sometimes be unpleasant.
It is not just about being misinformed or ignorant about the topic in question. It is very much about arrogance, thinking you know when you don’t. I have often heard people say the darndest and strangest things about topics they obviously know almost nothing about and with total confidence on top of it (that includes myself). I have seen people with not even a paragraph worth of knowledge on a topic (and that little piece was wrong) lecture experts and professors on the topic, completely unaware of how silly that is.
However, it is also about a lack of curiosity and protecting your belief system or political viewpoint or tribal belonging. But I think it mostly is about arrogance. Do you think you know better than the scientific consensus even though you don’t even have a degree in the field? Do you think you know better than the community of experts? How much do you know about the evidence? Are you really interested in the evidence? Learning and growth requires humility, open mindedness and consideration for the evidence.
Consider the evidence, respect expertise and be humble. Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
First Super Fact
My first super fact, which is discussed in my next post, is “We Know That the Earth is Billions of Years Old”. The scientific community states that Earth is 4.5 billion years old and that humans evolved over millions of years. This is not in dispute among the scientists / experts in the relevant fields, and yet a lot of non-scientists do not believe this.
A 2019 Gallup poll showed that 40% of US adults believe that God created humans in their current form within the last 10,000 years. I think this is a good example of a super fact because it is widely disputed and yet so accepted as true amongst the relevant scientists, and you will understand why it is accepted as true if you know something about the evidence. I will provide an introduction to the evidence in my next post.
Is Earth 4.5 billion years old or 6,000 years old? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
As a teenager I believed that Earth and the Universe was 6,000 years old, and that evolution was a hoax. That was before I knew much about science. I had read agenda driven books that left out, or wrongfully dismissed the evidence for an old earth while presenting faulty arguments for a young earth. My religious background had something to do with me believing these books as well, but I also thought that I had the scientific facts on my side. The books and the so-called evidence presented in these books appeared scientific to me at the time.
Eventually I came to realize that this belief was unsupportable by science and untenable. Not by reading counter arguments, or books disputing the creationist books I had read, but just by learning about the relevant science. I was interested in science, and I got accepted to “Naturvetenskaplig linje”, a Swedish high school program for students with good grades and who showed aptitude for science. This program was like taking lots of AP classes in math/calculus, physics, biology, and chemistry, and it prepared me well for my university level studies in engineering physics and electrical engineering, which eventually led to my PhD.
A learned some interesting physics at “Naturvetenskaplig linje” and a lot more at the University. I loved physics, especially modern physics. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
In physics I learned about radiometric dating. That topic had been mentioned in the young creationist books as well, but they had insisted that radiometric dating was unreliable, they typically only talked about one radiometric dating method (carbon-14), not the several dozen other ones, they did not mention other types of dating methods, and they stated that radioactive decay rates very well could have changed. They also stated that the reason we could see galaxies billions of light years away was because the speed of light had drastically slowed. It was not an honest picture.
Radiometric dating uses the rate of radioactive decay and knowledge of initial relative abundances to establish age. Earth comes out to be billions of years old, not 6,000. Stock Vector ID: 2417370135 by grayjay
Now I learned why radiometric dating was very reliable if done correctly, and why radioactive decay rates must have remained constant. I learned about the physical laws involved, and I came to realize that highly sped up decays would have fried Adam and Eve. I learned why the speed of light could not have changed, and I encountered a large amount of other evidence for an old earth and an old universe that the creationist books did not say anything about. I realized that I had been bamboozled.
Creationism Vs Evolution
However, there was more. I also had to give up my view of creationism versus evolution. The evidence for evolution, including what creationists like to refer to as “macro-evolution” was overwhelming. From my biology classes at “Naturvetenskaplig linje” I came to realize that the fossil record and the strata as depicted in creationist books was misrepresented. For example, the talk about missing links was misleading. I came to realize that the evidence for evolution came from dozens of other scientific fields and that it all came together to form a very solid and compelling body of evidence.
The fossil record is a lot more solid and much less problematic than the creationist books I had read claimed. Shutter Stock Photo ID: 1323000239 by Alizada Studios
The creationist books I had read claimed that there was a contradiction between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics. As I studied entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, I came to realize that was just a very simple and silly misunderstanding. It eventually became clear to me that I had been misled on this topic as well. I am planning to make one, or a few, super-facts around this topic.
Second law of thermodynamics Shutter Stock Vector ID: 2342031619 by Sasha701
Back in high school (“Naturvetenskaplig linje”) I became very interested in modern physics, quantum physics and relativity, and I was in for more shocks. The second postulate of special relativity states that “the speed of light in free space has the same value c in all inertial frames of reference.” What that means is that no matter what your velocity is and no matter what the velocity of the emitting light source is, all observers, even if moving at different speeds and in different directions, will measure the light to have the same exact speed c = 299,792,458 meters per second or approximately 186,000 miles per second or 671 million miles per hour. This isn’t possible unless the different observers measure time and space differently.
In this picture Amy is traveling past Alan in a rocket. Both have a laser. Both measure the speed of both laser beams to be c = 299,792,458 meters per second.
However, as I began to learn more in depth about what this meant for space and time I started seeing contradictions of various kinds. It turned out to be a lot stranger and counter intuitive than I had imagined, and I got angry. It felt like the whole thing was impossible, illogical, and a sham. It seemed like Einstein was wrong and all the physicists were wrong and all the Nobel prize winners in physics were wrong.
Well, I was humble enough to realize that I was not smarter than all of them. It must be something I had not figured out, and finally I understood what that was. I learned to let go of thinking in terms of “absolute time” and instead thinking of time as relative. It was the depiction of time as a fourth dimension that helped me with that.
Like most people I had been preconditioned to think in terms of absolute time. The whole thing became clear to me very quickly and now it seemed perfectly logical. I was able to understand and enjoy all the amazing discoveries that this new way of looking at time and space led to. I think this is a super fact because it is an important insight into time that is highly surprising and in general poorly understood.
Time is going to be different for me and you in many ways including the order of events. From shutterstock Illustration ID: 1055076638 by andrey_l
That’s when I encountered two books that claimed that special relativity was illogical and a sham. They were written by a self-proclaimed philosopher of time, who had declared war on relativity. He really thought that Einstein was wrong, and that all the physicists were wrong and all the Nobel prize winners in physics were wrong about this. He believed he had figured something out that they hadn’t.
I saw quite easily where he was wrong. First of all, just like me had made unstated assumptions about time and space that were incorrect. Unlike me he could not even use the related physics formulas correctly.
Soon I came to realize that he was far from alone. Once upon a time there were a lot of people who like him had attacked relativity. They not only attacked the theory, but they also went after Einstein himself. In retrospect this looks pathetic, but it is arrogance again. If you have a hard time understanding something, don’t assume that you are correct and that the experts must be wrong.
One thing these failed critics all had in common was that they did not go after the General Theory of Relativity, which is even more abstract, complicated and counterintuitive. Why? Probably because it was so abstract and mathematical that they couldn’t even get started, and that should have been hint for them.
The understanding of black holes requires the General Theory of Relativity. Stock Photo ID: 2024419973 by Elena11
Rethinking My Beliefs
Well, when it is about bamboozlement, being surprised, and learning to understand what at first seems strange, I was far from done. About 15 years ago, I became increasingly skeptical and doubtful of global warming or climate change as it is more commonly called now a day. The reason was that I almost exclusively read and watched rightwing news media such as world-net-daily (tended to push conspiracy theories), Newsmax and Fox News.
I believed in the concept of global warming, it is basic science after all, but I thought that it was exaggerated and that it was promoted and distorted by left-wing agendas, and I incorrectly believed that there was no scientific consensus on the issue. I believed that whatever warming that existed could be explained more by natural cycles than our fossil fuels.
I also bought into the false narrative that this was about environmentalist ideology, politics, or even a sort of environmentalist religion, and not a real and serious problem. My disdain for environmentalists, and my gut feelings certainly aided the propaganda in misleading me. In addition, I read a lot by Björn Lomborg and Patrick J. Michaels and I believed them. To clarify, I did not know it at the time, but I was wrong, very wrong. Below is a video from NASA showing the annual shrinkage of the arctic sea ice.
To see the NASA web page from where the YouTube video of the shrinking arctic ice is taken click here.
I should say that I had some lingering doubts about my own “climate skepticism”. During my travels to national parks, the great barrier reef, and other places, I encountered guides who were scientists, as well as others, and they told me about coral bleaching, ocean acidification, receding and disappearing glaciers, the pine beetle problem, white pine blister rust, the destruction of forests due to global warming, and I could see some of the effects with my own eyes in northern Sweden, which is close to the arctic and therefore the effects of global warming are more visible.
Temperature anomaly graphs from NASA, Hedley Center, Japan Meteorological Agency, NOAA, and Berkley.
It also bothered me that my physics hero Stephen Hawing was a global warming alarmist and that other leading physicists and astrophysicists whom I admired, such as Michio Kaku, promoted and warned us about human caused global warming. Add that popular science magazines I subscribed to, such as Discover and Scientific American frequently wrote about global warming. I should say that I tended to skip those articles and I believed those magazines had a left leaning bias.
The carbon dioxide concentration measurements began in 1958 at the Mauna Loa Observatory on the island of Hawaii. Since then, several other ways of measuring carbon dioxide concentration have been added.
However, there were too many red flags regarding my “climate skepticism”. It seemed like a lot of people knew and understood something I didn’t. This prompted me to take a deep dive into the matter. I had a decent scientific background and that helped. I learned that global warming is not caused by natural cycles, something the experts on natural climate cycles repeatedly stressed. It is not the sun, or volcanoes and it isn’t a normal cycle, and the recent increase in temperature is disturbingly quick.
I also learned that warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions have a certain fingerprint; the arctic will warm faster, nights will warm faster, the tropopause would be pushing up the boundary with the stratosphere, the mesosphere would be cooling and contracting (think the troposphere as being a blanket). All of that has been observed. Long story short, I had been bamboozled. We not only know that Global Warming is real, but we also know that we are the cause, primarily because of our greenhouse gas emissions. That is yet another super fact. It has many doubters and yet the evidence and the experts are clear on the fact.
Natural causes for global warming / climate change would have cooled the planet, not warm it.
Newstrade