Letter: Climate change is a natural occurrence - Fargo - INFORUM

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Letter: Climate change is a natural occurrence

"Naturally occurring climate change has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen," writes Ron Runsvold of West Fargo.

Is our climate changing? In a word, yes. The climate of Earth has been changing since it was formed. It has alternated between periods of extreme glaciation and what are called interglacial periods, roughly following cyclical changes in the orbit of the Earth around the sun, altering the amount of solar heating experienced, thereby melting glacial ice, raising sea levels, warming ocean water, and increasing evaporation and release of carbon from the sea waters.

The increased greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere, mainly water vapor along with carbon and others also caused increasing temperatures by a means called “positive feedback,” like a vicious cycle. Eventually, an equilibrium was achieved which then reversed the process, thereby allowing the temperature to cool, eventually plunging the planet back into a period of extreme glaciation.

These climate cycles have been happening approximately every 110,000 years with interglacials lasting from 12,000 to 50,000 years and extreme glaciation periods lasting from 60,000 to 100,000 years. The last two interglacials lasted 15,000 and 12,000 years respectively, and the current interglacial began about 12,000 years ago.

The more favorable climate seems to have been instrumental in the advance in civilization including cultivation of crops, domestication of animals, written language, creation of cities, the Bronze age, Chinese dynasties, the pyramids of Giza, etc.

Some facts about the previous four interglacials: Sea levels were up to 40 feet higher than they are today. Temperatures were up to 6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are today. Atmospheric carbon levels were nearly as high as they are today. The temperature 7,000 years ago was about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it is today. All of this happened without the burning of fossil fuels.

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Some climate researchers believe there is what they call a “hard stop” to increasing temperatures when the amount of water vapor increases the amount of low cloud cover causing a transition to a cooling effect rather than warming as more solar radiation is blocked from the surface and reflected into space.

Ask yourself, “How many taxpayer dollars have been spent on research grants trying to prove human activity has caused and is causing global warming?” and “How much money has been spent and will be spent on tax credits for so-called green product development and usage?”

For whatever reason, we have had a relatively stable climate for the past 8,000 years with temperatures remaining generally within a degree of the average. That is unusual, in that previous interglacials experienced a rapid temperature rise to a peak then a nearly as rapid temperature decline. If we had followed a similar cycle, we would have hit a peak temperature about 3.5 degrees warmer than we are now perhaps around 4,000 years ago and have been experiencing a rapid temperature decline now. We have indeed been lucky.

Naturally occurring climate change has happened, is happening, and will continue to happen. Human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change has probably been a factor and while industrialized nations have reduced carbon emissions, the densely populated Asian nations and the Third World countries have emerging economies that cannot be expected to abandon their development to follow suit. That, along with the initial environmental damage from mining and the problematic end-of-life disposal of rare-earth metals required for production and storage of energy seems to indicate that expenditures should be diverted to mitigation of the problems caused by warming as well as the production of nuclear energy, which is both dependable, available on-demand, and renewable.

Ron Runsvold lives in West Fargo.

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