One of the most beautiful sights to watch is the full plume of the peacock’s tail.
Peacock’s plume
Even Darwin had trouble explaining evolution when he saw the peacock’s tail. It is in strict violation of the “survival of the fittest”. The tail is so heavy that a peacock can barely fly, and it has underdeveloped wings and cannot climb more than about 50 feet, and must land on a tree limb or a roof to seek safety and wait out the threat. Darwin suggested “sexual preference”, meaning that peahens were attracted to the largest and most spectacular plumes, and only the most outstanding peacocks were allowed to breed. Then over millions of years and through random mutations these impressive tails developed. There are many reasons this is impossible, and I will concentrate on just one; the geometrical pattern of the “eyes” as seen from an observer. Every feather that has an eye has it in a mathematically correct place on the feather, and that is dependent on the order of the feather. The only way I can see this being possible is if there is a designer that encrypts the DNA correctly, so when it is time to form the yearly plume, the feathers form correctly and in its place. No element of random processes can produce that!
But God was not finished. He continued in Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, so that he may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the earth and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
The keywords here are God’s Image. Man contains the same building blocks as all mammals, similar DNA, RNA and all instructions are of the same kind as the mammals. It says God made them male and female (and only male and female), so He cannot mean a physical image. It must mean we are spiritually made in the image of God.
Continuing in Genesis1:28-31 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was VERY good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Yes, once God had created man, it was very good.
Continuing in Genesis 2:1-3Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.2 By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. 3 Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.
Up to this point the name of God is Elohim, which in Hebrew means ‘the strongest strong ones’, signifying the power of God in creation and life. Both animals and man have in them ‘the breath of life, and this signifies physical life.
The second account of creation of man is spiritual, not physical, and so the name of God changes from Elohim to JEHOVAH Elohim. Genesis 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.
Skipping to Genesis 2:7 Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
This was the second birth, first comes the physical birth, formed from the dust of the ground, followed by the spiritual birth. Skipping the garden of Eden story we move to verse 21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
“The rib” is from the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. The original Hebrew meaning is “took part of the man’s side“, but since the Septuagint was the most used version of the Scriptures for the early Christians, the rib won.
So in verse 23 The man said,
“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.”
And in verse24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and cleave unto his wife, and they become one flesh. They are united in their bodies through procreation, but also in spirit, united in the Holy Spirit.
25 Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame. These were ideal conditions, God and man had unhindered fellowship. All was perfect. But God had also created man with free will, so He had to put some boundaries on man. Genesis 2:15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”
Most of us know the story: Eve (Adam’s wife) was deceived by the tempter and ate, and Adam ate too, but willfully; so the guilt of the so called original sin fell on Adam, and they died that day. But Adam lived another 930 years, so he did die spiritual death, not physical.. The spiritual death is that the fellowship with God is severed, and God can no longer spiritually help us in all situations of life.
People took this in stride. “We can do all things well without God interfering.” In fact, when disaster struck they sad: “We will build back better.” (Paraphrased from Isaiah 9:10) And from a human point the brainpower we have to be able to think for ourselves is impressive!
We were created by God in his image with an expanded brain, capable of lifelong learning. This included a spiritual connection directly with God through His Spirit. This is the connection that died when Adam sinned and people decided they could function quite well without constant communication with God. Yet there remained a god-shaped void in their brains, a longing that wanted to be satisfied.
No more rough estimates. The average male human brain contains 86 billion neurons and 85 billion non-neuronal cells. Suzana Herculano-Houzel, CC BY-ND
With this brain you can store up to 2.5 million gigabytes of memory, which when stored fully compressed is equivalent to 3 million hours of watching standard resolution TV, but recalling memory is quite another thing. This starts to decline even before the brain is fully matured.
In addition we have about seven trillion nerve cells, close to twenty percent of all cells in our body. Their function is to send messages to and from all parts of the body, muscles, bones, ligaments, inner organs, the five senses and the brain.
We think of the nerves only as serving the sensory organs, but they are the chief messengers for just about everything concerning the body, so when we say: ‘Its only the nerves’ this is about as wrong as it gets. For a human body to function nearly everything has to function, it is good for us many organs are multiplied such as the lymph nodes, but many of the central organs such as heart, brain , stomach and so on are not duplicated. The nerves are the major communicators that makes it possible to develop from embryo to full maturity and help in the final decline in life.
But all mammals have the same or similar parts, so what is the difference between us and the animals?
We were created by God in his image with an expanded brain, capable of lifelong learning. This included a spiritual connection directly with God through His Spirit. This is the connection that died when Adam sinned and people decided they could function quite well without constant communication with God. Yet there remained a god-shaped void in their brains, a longing that wanted to be satisfied.
The next installment: Are we the way we are through nature or through nurture?
First now it was time to create the mammals. This is Genesis 1:24-25 And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. i25 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.
What the creation story has described so far is the creation of a functional ecosystem. It starts simple with water, ice and clouds, populating the atmosphere with water molecules. The earliest life forms are not preserved so we have no physical record of the order and how it occurred, but it started in the ocean (God’s spirit hovered over the waters). `then plant life with chlorophyll using sunlight was created, then fish and birds and finally mammals. Every step took place in order. Each step occurred after the conditions had been met to sustain the new life forms with food. The fossil records indicate there were long phases of stability, and suddenly the next level of ecosystem was generated. Our ecosystem is fragile and must operate within strict limits, not too warm, not too cold for life to flourish. In addition the Ph of the ocean must be within limits and land and sea must be reasonably free from poisons. Every now and then there are great extinctions of life, such as the dinosaurs and the woolly Mammoth. The cause for extinction was always that the Earth got too cold or too poisoned, never too warm. some extinctions occurred because a more efficient life form took over. All this speaks of evolution as I got taught in biology 70 years ago. Since then much have been learnt of what goes on in life, so let’s look at what goes on in the body of a mammal, let’s say, the Virginia Opossum.
Opossums come in 126 species, in 16 genres and has one of the most complicated DNA of any mammal. They are marsupials. I was taught that the evolutionary inferior marsupials were extinct except in Australia, but the opossum doesn’t know that, so it still thrives among all the other evolutionary superior mammals.
Let’s look at what is inside every cell in the Opossum (except the eggs or sperm cells)
The cell consists of many interesting parts, all of which have to be there for the cell to function. The control center is the nucleus, and it consists of among other things the DNA.
The DNA is formed as a double helix and could be seen as containing information code. There are 4 different states, C,G,A and T (see figure above); this is the basic encryption in the double helix. There are about 3 billion so called base pairs in the nucleus of every cell in the opossum. To grasp the size of the code, let’s say you are a court recorder, typing away the letters at a speed of 18.75 letters a second (the qualification speed for court recorders). You do it 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year (2 weeks vacation and 11 holidayWe were created by God in his image with an expanded brain, capable of lifelong learning. This included a spiritual connection directly with God through His Spirit. This is the connection that died when Adam sinned and people decided they could function quite well without constant communication with God. Yet there remained a god-shaped void in their brains, a longing that wanted to be satisfied.s), it would take over 23 years to transcribe the code. A court recorder has to have better than 95% accuracy, but we are dealing with genetic encryption, so it has to have been done with much better accuracy for it to be valid for reproduction. This code defines the species, in this case the opossum. It has all information necessary to reproduce the species. Sometimes cosmic radiation or strong ultra violet light can cause breaks in the DNA, but the resulting mutations tend to reinforce the species boundaries rather than cause evolution.
Of course, an encrypted message is totally worthless without a decrypter. The one that is successfully mapped is the RNA decrypter, called messenger RNA. It interprets 3 base pairs as a codon. This is a code that is optimally designed, but since there are only 20 amino acids, most are expressed more than once. In addition 3 of the codons tell when the decoding stops.
Messenger RNA (mRNA): Created during transcription, mRNA carries the genetic code from the cell’s DNA to the ribosome, where it is used as a template to build a protein. Below is a picture of the ribosome RNA (rRNA) as well as the transfer RNA (tRNA).
The properly decrypted mRNA with its proper length is transported to the ribosome units. With the help of the tRNA that transports and checks in the proper amino acid, the ribosome binds the one amino acid to form an amino acid chain. Here is a picture of hemoglobin:
What makes hemoglobin usable is the heme structure containing iron. It is very similar to the structure in Chlorophyll:
But back to the DNA, the super encrypted code that makes advanced mammalian life possible, from how to make an egg or a sperm, how to perform fertilization in the right environment, how to do cell multiplication and perform specialization in the cells, how to form part of an eye iris or an eyebrow, it is all there, how to make joints and nerves, how to make bone structure and place marrow inside it, cells that produce hemoglobin, which is somehow transported into blood that is pumped around in the body via the heart, and so on, It is all information encrypted in the DNA. But not only that, the DNA contains repair code that kicks in when damage occur, wounds, viruses, harmful bacteria, bad fungus, poisons and even cancer.
This was the first half of the sixth day, and God saw it, and it was good.
God was not finished with the sixth day, so next installment is the creation of man.
In Genesis 1:20-23:And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” 21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. It was now time for animal life to be created. There was plenty of carbohydrates in the form of algae and phytoplankton and enough oxygen generated by the plant life. One of the most important was the creation of krill.
It does not use hemoglobin for oxygen transport to metabolize but uses an open circulatory system. They do eat algae and most phytoplanktons. In fact a blue whale can eat up to 8000 pounds of krill a day in peak season. It is the major source of food for a variety of fish. Fish have hemoglobin that is similar to human hemoglobin but comes in different forms dependent on water conditions such as varying Ph and temperature. Some fishes are very sensitive to Ph changes, and during the period of acid rain and nearly unrestrained water pollution Lake Erie was unofficially declared dead. Mites, spiders and insects use venting air pockets inside their shells to provide the oxygen necessary for energy production. Birds have hemoglobin similar to human hemoglobin, but some is adapted for high altitudes. The Rüppell’s griffon vulture (Gyps rueppellii) holds the record for the highest-flying bird, having been documented at altitudes of up to 37.000 feet. The air pressure at that altitude is less than one sixth of sea level air pressure, which makes it hard to fly and breathe.
It has always puzzled me that God said “let there be light” on “day one” of creation, but did not associate it with the sun. This, in a strange way convinced me that the story of creation came from God and not from man. If it were from man they would of course have started with the sun to explain night and day as a 24 hour period.
In 1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian cosmologist and Catholic priest published a paper that provided a compelling solution to the equations of General Relativity for the case of an expanding universe. This was confirmed in 1931 by Edwin Hubble, and the expanding universe became widely accepted, and the Big Bang hypothesis, where the whole universe could be explained by having started by a singularity. Without being able to explain how a singularity could possibly happen, it was a convenient way to explain away God, And after the Hubble telescope was launched nearly all astronomers agreed it was so, and the universe was 13.88 Billion years old. This lasted until the Webb telescope was launched, and much of what had been accepted as true was not so, for instance they found galaxies that were over 14 billion years old. In addition they found that intergalactic water was found in mass earlier than the Big Bang theory had predicted that water could form. The earth and the Solar System were in a state of chaos until about 4.6 Billion years ago. This was in the middle of “day 3”. Our solar system is formed as a result of earlier supernovas having generated all the natural elements in the right proportions for life to be possible. The mixture of hydrogen and all elements finally formed a disc, and hydrogens got concentrated into a cloud, and the 10 planets, including earth making clouds at their proper distances from the center. The Earth got fully formed, but the Sun concentrated all its gasses as a protostar for another 10 to 50 million years until the core temperature reached 15 million degrees Celsius so fusion could really begin and stabilize. Therefore it states in Genesis 1:14-19:And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
The Moon was formed later. One theory is that about 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized protoplanet named Theia collided with the young Earth and separated from it.
With the Sun warming up fully, the algae and other plants really started growing, so God was then in a position to create something to consume the carbohydrates and all that plant life produced. It also helped that in the young earth the CO2 concentration was more than 10,000 ppm, or more than 50 times what it is today. It also happened that the Sun produced just the right amount of heat, and the Earth is just at the right distance from the sun to produce an ecosystem that produced the ideal temperature range to sustain organic life.
Let’s look what happens in Genesis 1: 9-13; And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good. So now water is organized and land has appeared, and the earth is fully formed. This completes the physical creation, and in the 1983 book The Intelligent Universe, the famous astronomer Fred Hoyle wrote, “The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large and impressive.” The “fine tuning” of the universe is specifically designed to make life possible.
God is producing an ecosystem for the earth, but there is yet no physical life. Here God is silent on what lifeforms He created first. Scientists are trying to reproduce the conditions which make spontaneous creation of life possible, using all their intelligence and having the right combination of amino acids and other chemical conditions come together to form life. One thing is for sure; they did not imagine random processes in “the primordial soup” but tried to fabricate the best estimate of the environment using every ounce of scientific knowledge available. Whenever an amino acid is formed via lightning or whatever, half are created of the left type and half of the right type. (When one drinks fresh squeezed orange juice the vitamin C is all left oriented, but if the vitamin C is taken in a manufactured tablet it is half left, half right oriented. Only the left oriented vitamin is useful, the right oriented is just acid and is not generated by life and cannot be used by life.) So they are not able to reproduce life or even be able to explain how it could have happened since so many left oriented processes have to come together at the same time without being interfered by the unusable right oriented molecules hindering the process. And this is the generation of the simplest life form! Rather than trying to explain the inexplicable apart from creation, I will jump right in with Phytoplankton. These are very primitive plants, living mostly in oceans, wetlands, rivers and lakes but can also be found on land providing there is enough water, Most phytoplankton contains chlorophyll and absorbs carbon and generates oxygen.
God omits all the discussion of how life on earth started and jumps right into explaining that plant life started first, and what follows is a list of all kinds of flora. It is found in Genesis 1:11-13
Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
In fact this is a step that evolutionists skip, because there is no plausible explanation how life could emerge out of dead matter. Some have suggested that life could have entered from outer space, and indeed the Webb telescope, when looking at the “empty” part of universe, have found that it is not totally empty but seems to have some rudimentary amino-acids and even metals, which are necessary but by no means sufficient building blocks for life.
Let us take a look at one of the simplest phytoplanktons, the cyanobacteria.
The cyanobacteria is the simplest form of reproducing organism that contains chlorophyll and produces its own food; carbohydrates:
To produce its own food, it needs additional nutrition, among them Aluminum and Nitrogen compounds. They have to be included for photosynthesis to function via RNA interpreters, proteins and sunlight. The main food is CO2 and the process exhausts O2. The one celled organism looks like this:
This is the simplest of the phytoplanktons. It has all the necessary functions to be able to duplicate itself. To do it it must have a nucleus contained inside a cell wall, and how to create the cell wall is programmed in the nucleus. This is a very simple nucleus and the smallest of the cyanobacteria has a nucleus of about 1.4 million base pairs. 3 base pairs form one codon and tells which amino aid to use to add one link in the protein to build. The rest of the DNA was thought to be evolutionary redundant “junk DNA,” but recent analyses have shown that they are start codes and stop codes to show where, when and how to build it, with processes not yet understood. All this is interpreted by RNAs and other compounds, and together they enable how to build and duplicate themselves. The information stored in the DNA is about the same as is contained in a large fiction novel. All this was prepared in creation “day 3” and led to all plant life. Nowadays phytoplanktons generate about half of all carbohydrates and release half of all Oxygen in the world.
The first origin of life can only have come to pass thru a creative act of God, since it involves a catch 22 conflict many times over. But the first live substance may not have been based on sunlight and photosynthesis, but could have been microbes known as methanotrophs that convert methane gas into carbon dioxide and biomass. Scientists are unsure how these microbes get all the nutrients they need to accomplish this task. But this we know: God did not give us the story of creation to be scientifically complete. The only thing He says about mildew is that it is bad and how to get rid of it. The grass and the trees were created by God when the environmental conditions were right for them to appear, nearly all of them after the sun was lit.
Next installment: The sun, moon and the stars were formed on “day 4.”
We find this in Genesis 1:6-8 (NIV) And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. But God did NOT say: “It was good” The creation story is interesting reading. God takes a whole day out His busy schedule of creation just to form an environment with water in all its forms in what we call the atmosphere or “sky”. He has yet to create life. Could it be, that water in all its forms are necessary to form and sustain life, so a sustainable ecosystem had to be prepared first?
God created the earth too be just heavy enough to hold on to water vapor, and water is unique because its melting point and boiling point is within the range of bring able to participate in sustaining life. It also has the second (after ammonia) highest specific heat capacity of all known substances. To melt 1 gram of ice takes 80 calories, to heat it takes 1 calorie per gram and to boil it at ground levels takes 539 calories. (The calories you eat are actually kilo-calories). This makes water the ideal substance to moderate and regulate climate. Water vapor evaporates from the ocean, cooling it down and water vapor, being lighter than air rises and condenses as clouds form. The clouds are the most important temperature regulator, much more important than all other greenhouse gases combined. Clouds transport heat from the equator to the temperate areas and to the poles. Without this the equator temperature would be in excess of 145 F. In addition clouds have a high reflection of incoming sunlight, reflecting incoming heat back into space. The earth has never been to warm to sustain complicated life, nor is there any danger of overheating unless clouds disappear. In fact, the next major climate change is the next ice age.
The picture above shows the friendly earth we are living in today. On the second “day” of creation situation was quite different. The sun was not fully created yet, and the earth was still in its chaotic state. All God did was to prepare the ecosystem. The earth was still cooling down from creation, and water evaporated and formed a cloud that covered the whole earth. This is why God did NOT say “it was good” on the second day, it was just the preparation.
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
What did God create? Continuing in Genesis 1:2; Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. The earth was formless, meaning chaotic and unorganized; and empty meant without any form of life. But there was water; yes, that is right; water existed in abundance way before the sun was formed. Water is necessary for life to exist, and its unique property of freezing at 0 C and boiling at 100C makes it ideal for organic life. The fact that ice is lighter than water makes ir possible for marine life to survive the winters even in shallow lakes since the ice sits on top of the lake and isolates for further freezing.. Here is introduced God’s Spirit moving over the waters, doing what?
Then in Genesis 1:3; And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. Light is very interesting. It is just a massless piece of energy traveling at the speed of light. Since it travels at the speed of light it has no time. It is created and extinguished at the same time but in different places. From our perspective we see it as traveling at the speed of light, but that is because we are stuck in place in time and space. Dead matter cannot do anything, but with the energy in form of light it might be possible. Therefore
in Genesis 1:4; God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.
So in Genesis 1:5: God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. At this time God just defined the term day and night. But notice that darkness comes before light.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. (2 Peter 3:8)
The normal state of the Earth is being in an ice age. If there were no greenhouse gasses at all, the temperature average for the earth would be about -20 C. But there are greenhouse gasses that increases the present world average temperature to about 15 C.
The earth every now and then warms up and enters an interglaciary period, and then slowly cools down again. People have noticed that for the last few ice ages the CO2 levels have closely tracked temperature, at least for Antarctica.
From this chart we can see that for an 18F (10 C) rise in temperature the CO2 level rose 85 PPM. Today;s CO2 level is 425 ppm, a rise of about 165 ppm from pre-industrial levels of about 260 ppm. If the relationship between CO2 levels and temperature still holds we should experience a temperature rise of about 9C for an average temperature on earth to rise to about 23 C (73F) in the near future.
This must be some of the information fed to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres when he pleaded for immediate radical action on climate change, saying that record-shattering July temperatures show Earth has passed from a warming phase into an “era of global boiling”.
In the book “An inconvenient truth” Al Gore used a very similar chart from the Vostok research site in Antartica, and he used the temperature scale in deviation from normal, hiding the fact that it showed temperatures in Antartica which are not very representative for average temperatures on earth. While the CO2 concentration is about the same everywhere on earth, 20,000 years ago it was about 180ppm. In Vostok, Antarctica the corresponding water vapor concentration was about 50 ppm in the Antarctic winter.
Al Gore chose the Antarctic to show the correlation between temperature and CO2 levels, but does that hold for the rest of the earth?
It was in Antarctica the last Ice age began to end; 19,000 years ago. Why did it end?
To answer that we must look at the
Right now the Earth is near its most circular path, nearing optimum,which is a very good place to be, minimizing yearly temperature cycles globally
Likewise the obliquity angle is about half way between minimum and maximum and is slowly decreasing.This is also good.
The most important of the cycles is the precession cycle. 19,000 years ago it gave most annular heat to the southern hemisphere. This does not normally trigger an end to the ice age, only every 16th cycle or so, when all cycles work together plus the influence of Jupiter and Saturn.One way to describe it is like the rotation in a tilt-a-whirl, popular in many county fairs. You sit peacefully in your car and go around and up and down and nothing happens, and suddenly the centrifugal forces pins you to the back of the car, the more the merrier. But for it to happen, all forces must come together. There could have been a large ice berg break-off, a volcanic eruption spewing ash over the southern hemisphere, an earthquake or a meteoric impact causing a tsunami that caused the start of the beginning of the end of the ice age. One thing is sure, there was no anthropogenic origin (rising CO2 didn’t start it), The question is:
Which came first, rising temperature or rising CO2 level?
The only way to answer that question is to measure what actually happened.
(from LiveScience By Wynne Parry published April 04, 2012.
This chart is very interesting. It shows the Antarctic temperature, starting to rise 19,000 years ago, global temperature and global CO2. The chart clearly shows that Antarctic temperature rose first, followed by rising CO2 levels for the first 4000 years. The CO2 level in the Northern Hemisphere follows the level in the Southern Hemisphere with only a 2 year time lag.
At about 14,000 years ago the Precession changed so solar radiation began to favor the Northern Hemisphere. At this time the CO2 levels had already increased to about 240 PPM but the ocean temperature was still lagging. In the Northern Hemisphere the CO2 rise came before the temperature rise. As we can see from the above picture temperature did lead CO2 levels by about 620 years +- 600 years in the Southern Hemisphere, whereas in the Northern Hemisphere CO2 leads Temperature by about 720+- 300 years for a global lead of CO2 rise over Temperature rise of 400 +- 340 years. But it is important to note that it was temperature that rose first, and as the oceans began to slowly warm up CO2 was released from the warming water hundreds of years later.
Then about 11,500 years ago CO2 levels leveled off at 265 PPM and began a slow decline to 260 PPM while global temperatures rose one degree C during the next 3,500 years. 8,000 years ago began a slow decrease in temperature. Then with no major change in CO2 levels temperatures declined by about 2,5 C until the end of the ‘little ice age’.
The chart above compares two temperature proxy reconstructions. The orange reconstruction is the Vinther (2009) elevation corrected Greenland temperature reconstruction from ice cores. The black reconstruction is from Rosenthal (2013) and is his 500-meter depth temperature reconstruction in the Makassar Strait, Indonesia. It is thought to represent sea surface temperatures in the North Pacific Ocean. The Greenland temperatures are taken from ice cores from Southeastern Greenland. These are all indirect measures derived from O2 isotopes in Greenland and from sea shells and other sources in the sea bottom of Makassar Strait
As the graph shows, temperatures follow each other very closely until the industrial revolution, when for the first time in 10,000 years the Greenland temperature start to increase, but the Makassar Strait temp doesn’t. One could argue that ocean temperature change lags atmospheric change by about 300 years.
Let us take a closer look at the temperature changes in the last 46.5 years, the only time we have good satellite records of global temperatures, and they are indeed rising.
Yes. in the last 46.5 years the global lower atmosphere average temperature has risen about 0.8C. The question is: How much of this is due to rising CO2, how mush to H2O in all its forms: vapor, clouds, liquid, ice; and how much is due to other factors, such as Methane, Nitrous oxide, and the greening of the earth?
When global temperature increases 0.8 degrees Celsius and relative humidity stays the same there will be 5.5% more water vapor in the air. How much of the temperature rise is attributable to a 5.5% increase in water vapor?
To answer that we must take a look at the greenhouse effect. Without it the earth would be an ice ball with an average temperature about 34C cooler than today. The earth can be considered a black body that obeys laws for black body radiation, the Stefan–Boltzmann law that states that the total energy radiation is proportional to the fourth power of the absolute temperature (Kelvin), so an increase in global temp from 14C to 14.8C results in an increase of 1.01% in the total greenhouse effect (a smaller increase in the atmospheric window).
To sum it up: Since water vapor is fundamental I will count it first, and the effect of all the other greenhouse gases will be additional, remembering that the total absorption in any frequency band can never exceed 100% of available energy. Water vapor absorbs all available black body energy in all wavelengths except in the atmospheric window (7 to 17 μm) The increase of absorption occurs in the atmospheric window, and in some bands of the incoming sunlight in the near infrared region. The bands are 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.1, 1.4 and 1.9 μm. Together, they make up 90% of the greenhouse gas temperature rise, or 29.9 degree C. When global temperatures increase by 0.8 C there will be 5.5% more water water vaporassuming relative humidity will stay constant, there will be an additional 0.17 C temperature rise.
Total greenhouse effect 33 C, Greenhouse effect from water vapor is 29.9C
Increased greenhouse effect from 5.5 % water vapor increase 0.17C. This is true only if relative humidity stayed constant. How much has the relative humidity changed?
From a temperature increase standpoint the change is too small to change the results. However relative humidity has a great influence in the formation of clouds. We now has the 46.5 years of satellite data of clouds, but I only have the cloud averages. We all know that clouds cool by day and warm by night. During night, what is under clouds will absorb all the black body radiation, but re-emit as a new black body above the clouds, but at a much lower absolute temperature, depending on the cloud height. This is the smaller night effect.
Much more important is the daytime reflection of incoming sunlight. The most important clouds are the low level cumulus clouds that forms from humid air rising in daytime sunshine and disappear in the evening, but all clouds reflect back the incoming sun. All I have is statistics of cloud averages, but not where and when they appear and dissolve, but I will make the assumption that averages prevail. This is recent statistics of world average cloud cover:
The cloud cover average (extrapolated) has decreased 3.45% in 46.5 years How much has temperature increased in the same time?
The total temperature rise due to less cloud cover over 46.5 years is 0.23C
Now it is time to see the effect of CO2 increase. In 1979 it was about 327 ppm, now it is about 427 ppm, a 27% rise in 46.5 years. If there was no water vapor in the atmosphere the greenhouse effect of CO2 would be 5.09C at 327 ppm and 5.28 C at 427 ppm. The reason it does not rise more as CO2 rises is that from 13 to 17 μm the temperature rise is limited because all available energy in that band is already fully absorbed. But it gets worse; the water vapor is already the dominant absorber, so the net addition from increased CO2 is only 30% of what would be if there was no water vapor, that is 1.527 C at 327 ppm and 1.584C at 427 ppm for a total CO2 rise of 0.057C.
Likewise Methane and N2O absorption both occur around the 8 μm wavelength, where water vapor already absorb about 80% of all available energy, so that means both Methane and N20 are attenuated by about a factor of five from what they would have been had there been no water vapor.
Methane concentration has increased from 1.6 ppm to 1.9 ppm, leading to a temperature increase of 0.03C in 46.5 years.
N2O concentration has increased from 300 ppb to 340 ppb, leading to a temperature increase of 0.006C in 46.5 years.
The Arctic has experienced a temperature rise due to increased cloud cover and snowfall. It is due to increased heat transfer from the American Gulf in the form of water vapor, clouds, rain, and snow. When water vapor condensates into clouds, over 500 calories per gram of energy is released, and when it condensates into snow, another 80 calories per gram gets released. As water vapor increases with temperature, the Arctic gets less cold but snowier. The snow acts as an insulator on the sea ice, allowing the ice to freeze slower in the winter, and melt faster from the underside. This lead to a global warming of 0.06C in the last 46.5 years.
No such heating has occurred as of yet in the Antarctic. It is still the largest desert in the world; a hostile ice desert. (I wonder why Al Gore chose this climate to represent the relation between CO2 and temperature).
Add up all temperature changes so far in the 46.5 years of satellite data
Increased greenhouse effect from 5 % water vapor increase: 0.17C.
Total temperature rise due to less cloud cover over 46.5 years is 0.23C
Total temperature rise due to increased CO2 levels in 46.5 years is 0.057C.
Total temperature rise due to increased Methane levels in 46.5 years is 0.03C.
Total temperature rise due to increased N2O levels in 46.5 years is 0.006C.
Warming in the Arctic (globalized) over 46.5 years: 0.06 C.
Warming due to increased Ozone over 46.5 years: 0.004 C.
Warming due to increased HFC gasses over 46.5 years: 0.0015 C.
The total temperature increase noticed so far: 0.5585C. CO2 is responsible for 10% of the found rise, and Methane for 6% of the experienced rise.
There is one very interesting side effect of rising CO2, and to a much less extent; rising Methane levels. It leads to a substantial greening of the earth. The leaf area has been steadily increasing in areas where the leaf area is not fully saturated:
This picture shows the Leaf Area Index increase over the last 46.5 years.As we can see there is no increase in the deserts and in the dense rain forests, but overall there has been between 15 and 20% increase in the LAI. More leafs, more area to absorb CO2.
The rise in CO2 concentration from 327 ppm to 427 ppm makes the effective growth rate of vegetation increase about 25% on average. There is a wide variation between plant sensitivity to increased CO2, but they all react favorably up to more than 1000 ppm concentration.
Using this information there should have been an increase in vegetation of 25 + 15% of CO2 uptake by vegetation worldwide without any other use of fertilizer. (Notice that the leaf area index did not increase much in the tropical rain forests since the leaf area is already fully optimized.
If one looks at the total greening of the earth the total leaf area did increase even in the rain forests, in some other areas by as much as 50%.
However, there are a few areas where the leaf areas decreased. these areas are where there is a deficit of water for optimal leaf growth. This is worrying, since the areas of water deficiency are areas where people want to live. An extreme example is today’s Iran, where the water reservoirs are running dry, and all water used in the hot summer is taken from aquifers that are also running dry. And it is getting worse:
The following picture shows the drying up of the earth between 2003 and 2013 in sea level equivalence from 0 to 2 mm
The areas most affected are the U.S. and Mexico Southwest, the South American Pampas, Southern Europe. Northern Africa, The Arabian Peninsula, The Middle East from Syria to Iraq, Iran Kazakhstan, Pakistan and North Western India, This is from 2014 to 2024 and it shows it is getting worse. The aquifers are getting consumed
To take water out of aquifers without replacing it leads to an inevitable desertification of the areas where people want to live. Desertification leads to disaster, the rivers dry up and the areas become uninhabitable.
Urban heat islands: The worlds urban areas are growing rapidly and are now housing more than half the world’s population. It is now occupying more than 1% of the land area and has grown 0.15 % of the total area of the world. People living in urban areas, especially in areas with air conditioning are experiencing ‘local global warming’ of about 7F in the U.S. It is still large in all urban areas, maybe 4F on global average. (This is why people living in a megalopolis are convinced in global warming, they are living it.) Total global warming effect in the last 46.5 years: 0.033C
Draining land for infrastructure. We are doing what we can now to preserve wetlands, but wherever a road or other structure such as an airport is being built, proper drainage and land improvement is being performed. In the last 46.5 years about 1% of the worlds land surface has been drained and made dry. This is another heat effect that I estimate to lead to about 2C in the affected areas leading to a world temperature increase of 0.04C
Temperature increase from greening of the earth (without taking into account a changing cloud cover that is accounted for separately 0.002C
Temperature decrease from desertification of the earth: 0.001C
Total estimated temperature rise: 0.6325C
Summary: Temperature change due toWhat to do
Loss of cloud cover: 0.23C or 36%
5% increase in absolute humidity: 0.17C or 27%
Warming in the Arctic: 0.06C 0r 9,5%
Increased CO2: 0.057% or 9%
Infrastructure land use change: 0.04C or 6.3%
Urban heat islands: 0.033C or 5.2%
Increased Methane levels: 4.7%
All 0ther causes: 2.3%
What to do.
To go carbon neutral and do nothing else will solve less than 10% of the perceived problem. Neutralize Methane increase will add less than 5% to the solution
No, the problem is all about water, clouds and desertification.
In the next 100 years or so we will experience a magnetic polar reversal, and this may lead to an unprecedented rash of volcanic activity since the magnetic force reversals will activate magma in ways that we cannot yet foresee. When volcanic ash reaches the stratosphere it stays there for years causing global cooling. The Milankovitch cycles points to a slow cooling down of the earth.
The current rise in CO2 is very good. It has helped us feed another 2 billion people, not to mention all the wild life and plant growth.
The CO2 increase will delay the onset of the next ice age by about 2000 years. Without it we would still be in the little ice age.
In addition he signed one Executive Order restoring Science to the Golden Standard: Free from politics!
In the presentation of the Executive Orders the CEO of Oklo, James DeWitte mentioned that we are restarting a technology that has been inactive for over 40 years. This can only mean he meant without saying so the Oak ridge Molten Salt Thorium reactor. It was going great, but President Nixon wanted to go with the fast breeder reactor and move nuclear development to California, so they started to badmouth the MSR. One false accusation was that it was unreliable and needed to be shutdown frequently. The real reason was it was routinely shut down on weekends to save money and personnel. The Molten Salt Reactor does not have a poison time after shutdown as does conventional power station but can be scaled up and down including small power stoppages. I see this as an advantage. Anyhow, this is what Mr. DeWitte said:
One of many new options
There are only a few fissionable options, Uranium 233, Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239. Uranium 233 is produced by bombarding Thorium 232 with neutrons. Plutonium 239 is produced by bombarding Uranium 238 with neutrons.
Right now only 0.5% of the mined uranium is used. The rest goes to nuclear waste. Molten Salt reactors can use the nuclear waste as raw material and use the other 99.5% of the available energy. Another exciting use of Plutonium is when we finally dismantle the nuclear arsenal and burn it for peaceful use. And there is four times as much Thorium as there is mine-able Uranium, enough for thousands of years!
This is the beginning!
Here are 30 reasons why Thorium is a superior source for nuclear power:
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 