Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Industries, but not necessarily for his un-
derstanding of climate science) posted this
statement to his website: “An article in
Sci-
ence
illustrated that a rise in carbon dioxide
did not precede a rise in temperatures, but
actually lagged behind temperature rises by
two hundred to a thousand years. A rise in
carbon dioxide levels could not have caused
a rise in temperature if it followed the tem-
perature.” In the past, when temperature
changes were due to variations in solar ra-
diation and other factors (and not due to
human activity), the statement may have
been accurate. Past warming of the oceans
may have been initially started by some-
thing other than CO
2
,
and since warmer
waters hold less gas, CO
2
was released and
amplified the warming through the green-
house effect, thus adding to global warm-
ing. In the last few decades of the twentieth
century, however, CO
2
and temperature in-
creases occurred together.
myth
: Water is far more abundant and a far
more important greenhouse gas and there-
fore accounts for most of the greenhouse ef-
fect.
Water in the atmosphere, as discussed
above, varies widely from place to place
and from time to time but can be consid-
ered a constant as far as global warming is
concerned. It is not one of the major fac-
tors driving global warming. Seasonal or
weather changes in water concentration in
the atmosphere are short-lived. If there's
too much water, rain will reduce it. If there
is not enough water, evaporation from the
ocean will bring it back up.
myth
: CO
2
makes up 0.0387% of the volume
of the atmosphere and therefore must be in-
significant.
Even at its small level of con-
centration in the atmosphere, theoretical
considerations, lab studies, and field obser-
vations all show that CO
2
is an important
cause of global warming.
