Understanding Climate Change

If you've ever spoken about climate change anywhere on the internet, you've probably heard something along the lines of "Smarty Pants" like this. Changes in the climate are inevitable. Do you know what an Ice-Age is? I was told once that Antarctica had palm trees. Climate change caused by humans has been proven false. Presently assuming you're like me, this remark makes your eye jerk in that specific manner that possibly appears to happen while you're thinking about exactly the way in which hard you can smack your own brow without giving yourself a blackout.

But then you remember that you are an educator just before you do that. Moreover, that there was a time in your life when you, too, did not fully comprehend this particular concept. You should then keep in mind that each of us has a different level of education and experience, and that the boundaries and limitations of complex ideas like this one are often caused by much bigger problems like access or luck that are out of our control. Misunderstandings and failures to understand are also often caused by circumstances, not a lack of desire to learn.

With this acknowledgment close by, it occurs to you that for each thought we might see today as presence of mind, or even self-evident, we were all uninformed once. Moreover, these people aren't just making fun of the rest of us by blatantly denouncing climate change. So in that soul, let us embrace the valuable chance to involve this as a showing second, an opportunity to lessen our obliviousness, grow our edification, so we may all rise up out of this chrysalis of freshness grasping something that we didn't previously, and maybe, together, we can restrict this to the dustbin. We will expose this, alright? What I'm saying is that.

So here's how things are. Normal powers impact environmental change. This has been valid over Earth's time, today's actually evident. This is known to climate scientists. In point of fact, the majority of what we do know about human-caused climate change can be explained by studying these natural forces that alter the climate. So not exclusively are environment researchers mindful of these regular cycles, they found the greater part of them. Therefore, the effects of these natural forces are taken into account in every climate model that climate scientists use today. This is significant because, despite including all of these natural means by which the climate can be altered, the only method by which climate models can even come close to reflecting the actual situation is to include all of the things that people are doing to the climate as well.

To put it another way, the speed and scale of climate change since the beginning of the industrial revolution, particularly in the second half of the 20th century to the present day, cannot be explained by natural forces. We need to add one more thing to the equation—us—to explain that. So this is the very thing that we will do in this video, we will discuss the higher perspective of Earth's environment and how, when certain things escape balance, Earth's environment heat up, or chills. After that, we'll discuss a number of the natural forces that, once more, scientists are well-versed in and influence Earth's climate. Last but not least, we'll go over exactly how we know that the climate changes on Earth right now and in the near future are not caused by those natural forces but rather by our actions.

So, how does Earth's climate work? Well, it's difficult. A full university-level course that covers the entire thermodynamic Rube Goldberg machine that is The Climate is more appropriate. However, the piece of Earth's environment we're most intrigued by is temperature. Temperature is essentially nothing more than the rate at which an object's atoms move. If there is more jiggliness, the temperature will be higher, whereas there will be less jiggliness. You may also be aware that objects that move a lot have more kinetic energy than objects that move less.

You have to understand that something has energy rather than heat. Heat can be compared to energy traveling from one location to another more closely. Therefore, when we talk about heating something, what we really mean is that we have transferred some energy into that system, which can cause its components to jiggle even more, thereby raising its temperature.

Additionally, the heated object may occasionally transfer its energy to another object, causing it to heat up, etc. Congratulations! You now understand enough about thermodynamics to identify global warming. Thus, the temperature of the Earth begins here. The sun is a huge ball of jiggly stuff. Sunlight, or energy from the sun, travels to Earth in about eight minutes, where bright objects like clouds and ice immediately reflect about a third of it back into space.

The land and ocean absorb the majority of the remaining amount, while atmospheric molecules absorb a small portion directly. Our land, water, and air are heated by the energy that has been absorbed. It basically makes the atomic material on Earth more jiggly. However, as everything warms up—oceans, air, rocks—they can transfer their heat to other things in the form of thermal infrared radiation energy, which The Predator can see. As a result, when land releases sunlight-derived energy, it enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by water vapor and other gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

But because these are the greenhouse gases about which you've heard so much, this is also where things really start to get warm. What's more, they're unique, since when any of that energy that Earth ingests and afterward re-discharges hits an ozone harming substance particle, it can suck it straight up and once again transmit it, warming the climate and the land and the sea and all the other things. It's similar to how the bricks in a pizza oven hold on to heat and slowly release it so that the delicious bubbly cheese you're going to burn your mouth on absorbs it, no matter how many times you tell yourself you've learned your lesson before. The greenhouse effect is caused by the atmosphere absorbing and re-radiating heat. Just like your favorite dab on Hot Ones, the greenhouse effect can actually be beneficial as long as there isn't too much of it. Because the average temperature on Earth would be closer to -18 degrees Celsius instead of the comfortable 15 degrees Celsius that it is today if the greenhouse effect did not exist.

In other words, we would live on a planet covered in ice. Or then again not live, more like it. Obviously, then again, in the event that there's additional nursery impact, similar to say, from the option of a pack more Ozone harming substances to the climate, then, at that point, you get, indeed, what's going on today. The planet gets more sultry, the air, the land, the water, every last bit of it. Furthermore, similar to the little domino in that one image, seemingly a minuscule change here to Earth's temperature, down the line can screw up a few quite enormous things, wind, sea flows, precipitation, and so on. This at long last carries us to that title card we set up toward the start of this entire part of the video. Higher perspective, you can imagine this energy move, from sun to land and sea to climate, back to land and sea, and all the little energy trades

in the middle between, well it's similar to stream down financial aspects, just it really works.

At the point when you consider it, Earth's environment works similar to a business. Budgets and stocks are available to you. Very much like with cash, Earth's energy financial plan is the equilibrium of what roll in from the sun and what goes out into space throughout a specific measure of time. Gaining or losing energy has an effect on the total energy stock on Earth, regardless of whether that budget is positive or negative. Fundamentally, in the event that World's not selling sufficient energy back into space, it will wind up with overabundance stock. However, instead of a warehouse full of rubber duckies or pandemic Pelotons, energy is significantly warming land, air, and ocean in this instance.

What defines a lot? The Joule is the term we use to measure energy. Totally unrelated to Gem or Juul. One Joule is roughly equivalent to the amount of energy required to heat a thimbleful of water by one degree Celsius. Every square meter of the Earth's surface has absorbed approximately 0.57 Joules of energy every second since 1971, according to the IPCC, those liars who continue to frighten the living daylights out of everyone with their dreadful climate reports. Doesn't sound all that bad, does it? The problem is that this planet has a lot of square meters. Probably about this many of them.

By and large, that is 291 trillion additional Joules of intensity, or what could be compared to exploding 4.5 Hiroshima nuclear bombs or on the other hand exploding 10 Major Bens brimming with explosive consistently, for Elon Musk's whole life. So presently you have the fundamental comprehension of how Earth's environment energy financial plan functions, and why it's so loaded with additional intensity energy.

But hey, nobody seriously challenges the assertion that the Earth is not warming. Since we as a whole have thermometers. The reason is what we are here to discuss. Specifically, whether or not all of this could be attributed to natural cycles and forces rather than to humans. Climate forcing, or more commonly known as radiative forcing, is the term used to describe the difference between the energy entering and leaving the system. The planet becomes cooler when that number is negative. Assuming that number is positive, it's getting hot in hur...

There're numerous things that can drive Earth's environment to take in or put out pretty much energy from the sun. Furthermore, large numbers of them happen absolutely normally, and have either happened commonly from quite a while ago, or are as yet happening today. So we should go through a few of these, figure out how they work, and what impact they have on Earth's comfortable warm cover of a climate. Because there really isn't a better way to do this and lists are fun.

We talked about how the sun provides the majority of the energy that enters the Earth's system. However, the fact that the sun does not always shine at the same angle might surprise you. And I'm not referring to the fact that it vanishes without a trace each night, leaving everything dark, frightening, and filled with strange noises that make me want to hide under a blanket until the safety of dawn. No, I'm referring to the natural cycles of the sun's brightness and dimming. Now, the sun has been gradually getting brighter over long periods of time, like its entire four billion years of existence, by about 0.009 percent every mega-year, which is a fancy way to say one million years because it sounds cool. And keeping in mind that this very, and I should stress extremely, slow lighting up is significant while you're thinking about, say, the circumstances during the beginning of life on Earth versus today, it essentially isn't going on quickly enough to represent late fast a worldwide temperature alteration.

However, on much shorter time scales, the sun does go through cycles of brightening and dimming. All of our spacecraft have been able to accurately measure the sun's intensity for about half a century. Before that, we knew that the sun's intensity fluctuated by about 1% every 11 years, thanks to astronomers counting sunspots—which, by the way, you should never do. So hey! Sometimes the sun gets brighter! That could cause problems. Tragically, when you normal out the splendor of the sun throughout recent many years, it's been strikingly consistent, even perhaps showing a slight darkening pattern. Throughout all of this, the average temperature of the Earth has risen, as you are probably sick of hearing by now.

On longer time scales, the sun in all actuality does in some cases enter longer times of below the norm or higher-than-normal splendor that can influence warming or cooling over many years, and keeping in mind that these have happened commonly in mankind's set of experiences, we realize this isn't occurring now, in light of the fact that, once more, science individuals have been taking a gander at the sun, which, I should underscore once more, you ought to never under any circumstance do, Moving past the sun, there is one rough element that can cause tremendous swings in Earth's energy balance, volcanoes, and all their large sweltering gassy burps. Presently, other than magma, which we'll get to, an emitting well of lava delivers bunches of stuff that can influence how much energy Earth clutches or ships off into space.

Presently, when Vulcan, the divine force of fire, flies off the handle and sends one of his liquid mountains heaving into the environment, not how it works, alongside that comes heaps of debris and sulfur, the good old brimstone to oblige all that fire. Seeding clouds, which are basically bright sunlight reflectors, or directly reflecting that sunlight off of tiny aerosols of ash or sulfur compounds can both increase the amount of solar radiation that bounces back into space. In essence, sulfur and ash from volcanoes cause Earth to absorb less energy than it expends, resulting in a cooling effect that can last for decades.

However, this is a climate process that is fairly well understood, and volcanoes are still erupting at roughly the same rate as they have for the majority of human history. So we can't pin this warming on some spring of gushing lava dry season or something like that. However, dear friends, that is not the only effect that volcanoes can have on the climate. No, we are only just beginning this lava-fest. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is also released by volcanoes and other large leaks of melty stuff from the Earth. That the majority of CO2 originates from rocks that, as a result of plate tectonics, are recycled back into melty stuff, releasing their carbon into the magma that eventually spews out during an eruption.

Additionally, eruptions may release a lot of CO2. Like, this one time around quite a while back, ejections in cutting edge Siberia covered 2 million square kilometers of land with magma, and en route set all the covered coal nearby ablaze, delivering only gobs of CO2 into the climate, warming the planet enough to kill over 90% of life on The planet. It was the largest mass extinction ever, and it was all caused by warming brought on by an eruption that covered 2 million square kilometers. So, oh no! Volcanoes can truly get things hot and sweat-soaked! The problem is that that isn't happening now. For instance, the number of Earth-wide eruptions is known. They are visible from space. They are measurable. Dislike there's some mystery heap of volcanoes going off that no one knows about.

Memes such as "In one eruption, Italy's Mount Etna releases more than 10,000 times the CO2 that humans have in our entire existence" circulate, but this is simply not the case. Every year, humans release at least 60 times as much carbon dioxide as volcanoes do. For a few hours, a large eruption might match human emissions, but they don't last long enough or happen often enough to match us. In point of fact, the annual emissions from a small number of states in the United States exceed those from all of the planet's volcanoes taken together. Furthermore, those huge ejection occasions that have enormously messed up Earth's energy financial plan in those old before-the-dinosaurs times, they occurred more than tens to countless years. Modern warming cannot be explained by volcanic CO2.

All in all, during all that discussion of mass extinctions and eruptions sufficiently large to cover a whole nation, perhaps you've been asking yourself "For what reason isn't CO2 that high any longer? What cut it back down?" You are pondering. That suits me. Global CO2 levels reached at least 2000 parts per million during the Great Dying. That is a far cry from our current meager 415 parts per million. I mean, what, did plants consume everything? Plants did not consume everything. It's just plain obvious, Earth has this cool stunt that keeps CO2 levels adjusted in the climate. Thing is, similar to a sloth entertainer, it's a stunt that requires a truly lengthy investment to pull off.

I'm the kind of magician who doesn't mind explaining how the trick works, kucky for you. After an emission, there's a lot of new stone on a superficial level and a lot of additional CO2 in the air. A weak acid is produced when carbon and water in the atmosphere combine to form rain, which rises to the surface. In a process known as chemical weathering that acid breaks down the brand-new rocks and releases ions that end up in the ocean.

There, calcium ions combine with dissolved carbon dioxide pulled from the air to form calcium carbonate. This calcium carbonate is used by corals, plankton, and other organisms to make their shells until they die, at which point it falls to the ocean floor and becomes limestone rock.

Therefore, in the event that, for instance, a number of volcanoes burp CO2 and lava onto the Earth, it will take several hundred thousand years for all of that carbon to reappear buried at the ocean's bottom. As long as you are not in a hurry, it is a pretty cool way to keep everything perfectly balanced, as it should be. The invisible hand that keeps Earth's natural thermostat from getting too hot is basically this slow magic trick. However, since it cools Earth overall, it cannot account for recent warming either. What about bizarre climate cycles that last a short time and have catchy names like the El Nino-Southern Oscillation?

They can alter ocean temperatures, weather patterns, and other variables, according to Wikipedia. Could that be why the climate has changed so quickly recently? In point of fact, a few decades ago, it was difficult to demonstrate that human-caused global warming was statistically significant over these natural cycles. However, we've blown far beyond those mistake bars, in spite of the fact that researchers actually don't impeccably comprehend these cycles; their greatness is simply excessively little to make sense of the outrageous warming we are seeing today. And while we're on the subject of the oceans, it's about time we acknowledged their role in saving our... Because of all the dynamite-filled Big Bens we've been blowing up every second, we've added 435 zettajoules of extra energy to Earth's budget.

The oceans have absorbed 91% of that extra heat energy, which is bad for the oceans, but that big wet heat battery has slowed down everything else's heating. For instance, if all of the additional heat energy that oceans have absorbed on our behalf were suddenly released into the atmosphere, it would be more than 60 degrees hotter everywhere, which is insane and would cause every living thing on this planet larger than a microbe to die.

So oceans, thank you. Also, we're heartbroken. There really isn't a single process in Earth's history that could have a significant impact on CO2 levels in the atmosphere or on the energy budget in either direction, other than an impact from an asteroid or, I don't know, the evolution of photosynthesis. However, wobbly orbits are a process that is larger than Earth that we have not discussed. Changes in Earth's position in relation to the sun can have significant effects on Earth's long-term climate because the amount and intensity of radiation energy reaching Earth from the sun affects Earth's energy budget. The beginning and end of the most recent ice ages are thought to have been triggered by minor adjustments to the Earth's orbit.

The shape of Earth's orbit, also known as eccentricity, is one of the major wobbles you should be aware of. Essentially how elliptical or circular our path around the sun is, as Earth is pulled around by all those other planets whose inhabitants nobody even knows about. The present moment, Earth is nearest to the sun toward the beginning of January, and at its farthest toward the beginning of July. This indicates that the Earth receives approximately 6.8% more solar radiation in January than in July. However, the difference in solar radiation between Earth's closest and farthest approaches to the sun will be approximately 23% over the next 100,000 years. There's additionally the point Earth's hub is shifted, known as obliquity. While the axis of the Earth is currently approximately 23.5 degrees off vertical, it has varied between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees over the past million years. Furthermore, since this slant can influence how serious daylight is on a given region of Earth's surface, this can influence Earth's general environment, particularly the degree of ice at the shafts. Last but not least, there is the precession of the Earth's axis, which is analogous to the rotation of a spinning top.

This not only indicates that the North Star will no longer be the North Star in the future, but it can also exacerbate the difference between winter and summer in each hemisphere when combined with the other orbital wobbles. On the whole, these orbital developments are known as Milankovitch cycles, named in honor

of somewhat messed up Hollywood entertainer John Milankovitch.

Wait. I'm being informed that they are truth be told named for Serbian researcher Milutin Milankovitch.

The amount of solar radiation that reaches Earth's mid-latitudes can be affected by up to 25% depending on how the Milankovitch cycles' peaks and valleys line up or don't. That could deplete Earth's energy supply to the point where massive ice sheets cover the planet and global sea levels drop, similar to when people could simply walk across North America. These are known as ice ages. In order to bring Earth's temperature back up, Milankovitch cycles can also add a lot of extra energy to its budget. Which is why I am unable to walk today to Siberia?

Naturally, by this point, you won't be surprised to learn that scientists now have these patterns well-calculated, and that they are insufficient to explain the recent warming of the planet either. The natural forces that have the potential to affect the climate are not all included in this list. There are a few different elements that researchers consider while attempting to sort out the reason for all of this, similar to how dim or light land and sea are, and subsequently how much sunlight based energy they ingest or reflect. Take, for instance, the ice caps. That ice gets slightly darker and takes in more heat as it is smeared with ash and soot from nearby fires and smokestacks. Or on the other hand when forested regions are cleared, some of the time land gets lighter in variety, and retains less intensity.

So, what does all of this mean? You're thinking, "I've made it this far into the article." Give me my reward! Well, it's here. Researchers are extremely mindful of these regular cycles and normal factors that impact the environment. Because climate scientists discovered these things, they are aware of them. They didn't just decide to stop paying attention to them one day. Because these natural effects are already taken into account by our climate models, you shouldn't think that random warm periods in northern Europe or palm trees in Antarctica are enough to put a four-dimensional stop to climate scientists.

Each and every one of these variables, and significantly more, is remembered for current environment models. Furthermore, including human activities is the only way to ensure that these models correspond to the warming we are actually experiencing.

Additionally, when human activities are taken into account, the sum of all known warming and cooling effects demonstrates that the Earth's energy budget is significantly positive. People, this place is overflowing with extra Peloton stock. The planet will become uninhabitable for your children and grandchildren only thanks to these Pelotons. We can improve! Human activity, particularly our insatiable desire to release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is the primary cause of modern climate change.

Due to the ratios of various isotopes of carbon in the CO2 in the atmosphere, there are methods by which we can determine that the additional CO2 that has entered the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution came from fossil fuels rather than volcanoes or other sources.

Americans who believe that global warming is taking place outnumber those who believe that it is not taking place by a ratio of six to one, according to Yale researchers who track beliefs and attitudes regarding climate change over time. Furthermore, over half of Americans are aware that human activity is primarily to blame for global warming.

If you ask me, comments like this are really just a new kind of climate denial designed to make you believe that climate change has happened before! It has been humid! It's been cold! This large number of different times it worked out, it wasn't our shortcoming! Therefore, there is no need to worry or take any action!" Except that they always overlook one crucial point. Almost all of those other times did not see humans. Well, Neo, guess what? You are real. This is genuine. It's taking place. Don't let them fool you into thinking that everything is fine as we sip our coffee in the midst of a raging world and accept the status quo. Because it's not right. And it's not typical.

They really want you to forget that even if we are the cause of everything, we can also be the solution. Don't you fail to remember that? I actually hope that one day I or my grandchildren will be able to say, "Yeah, climate change actually is completely caused by natural cycles," and that it will be true. If that happens, it will mean that we have done what needs to be done and fixed the problem. Remain inquisitive.