Global Warming on Permafrost

The United Nations Environment Program has a new fear for us. It reports that human-caused climate change will lead to thawing of the permafrost with generation of "greenhouse gases" carbon dioxide and methane. That in turn will lead to more thawing and more generation of carbon dioxide and methane. The report couples this with the assertion that carbon dioxide and methane are the basic cause of global warming.

Let's look at this from a practical scientific point of view. First of all, temperature recordings show that the average Global temperature has increased over the past few decades, and this has been designated as Global Warming. There is also no doubt that in the combustion of fossil fuels, man has generated more heat. However, there has been no study of quantification, and the likelihood that increased heat from fossil fuel burning is insignificant compared to variations in heat supplied by the sun.

Methane and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases. That is, they inhibit the passage of heat from the year's surface to outer space. However, the other major gases of the atmosphere do the same thing, which is why we have relatively small differences between nighttime and daytime temperatures on Earth, as compared to non-atmospheric bodies, such as the Moon. The heat transmission through the various gases are respectively, 15 mW/(m.K) for carbon dioxide, 33 for methane, and 24 each for oxygen and nitrogen. Note that methane actually allows more heat to be lost from the Earth's surface than the other three. However, the actual effects of Earth's heat loss or gain by the presence of carbon dioxide and methane is insignificant, because of the very low concentrations in the atmosphere. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is only 0.05%. The methane concentration is only 0.0002%.

The bottom line is we have more hogwash from global warming enthusiasts. They have a slight basic position with Earth's temperatures, but lose sight of practicality when they attribute any measurable temperature rise to man-made activity of either direct heat generation or increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane.