Man-made Climate Change is Easy to Believe

In my earlier post, Seven Reasons Why Taxing Carbon Won’t Fly (and shouldn’t), I promised a second installment describing a good carbon policy that is not a carbon tax. For the sake of keeping each article readable, the second installment has evolved into a second and a third installment. The second will be published soon. While working on these articles, I want to share one fundamental reason why I find anthropogenic climate change a totally believable concept.

While believers and deniers argue about such things as whether CO2 is really good for plant life and, therefore, good for the planet or whether increased temperature is self-regulated by increased radiation into space and, therefore, man-made climate change is fake news, I find arguments against anthropogeneity unconvincing in light of the following observations.

I and, I am sure, many who read this have been in a concert hall or rehearsal studio where a piano key is struck and a string tuned to the same pitch on a cello or double bass across the room vibrates in response. The physics here are easy to understand. The sound from the piano string is a pattern of sound waves or series of air molecule compressions traveling across the room, which we hear as a musical note. The pitch of that note is defined by the distance or time between each sound wave or compression. If the compressions reach a cello string, the length and tension of which match the sound wave, the string will absorb energy from the sound wave and vibrate in the same frequency or pitch as the piano string. This is called sympathetic vibration.

Rock music fans witness the same thing when the lead guitarist holds a guitar up to an amplifier and creates feedback. Sound from the amp is the same frequency as one or more guitar strings. The guitar strings vibrate sympathetically, and activate the guitar pickup. The same frequency sound is sent back to the amp to be blasted again onto the guitar strings and so on until the guitar is taken away.

The same concept applies to our microwave ovens. Instead of nylon or wire strings, however, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms in the sugar, fat and water molecules of our food have electromagnetic bonds just as real as piano and cello strings. These bonds hold hydrogen and oxygen together in a water molecule. Add a few carbon atoms here and there, and the molecules become sugar or fat. When electromagnetic microwaves of the right frequency or wave length strike these molecules, the electromagnetic bonds vibrate, stretch and bend, and energy is absorbed to cook our food.

Similarly, electromagnetic infrared radiation, created when sunlight is absorbed by the earth and then re-emitted as heat, is a Goldilocks match for the electromagnetic bonds in CO2, methane and other gases. Infrared radiation striking those molcules creates sympathetic bond vibration, stretching and bending, imparts energy to the gas molecules and raises their temperature. It’s that simple.

Cognitive dissonance cannot erase the truth of what one accepts every day without thought or question. If a person hears electric guitar feedback and trusts microwave ovens to cook food, that person also knows, perhaps without realizing, more greenhouse gases lead to more infrared heat absorbtion, and they change our climate.