Carbon dioxide is indeed the 'stuff of life', underpinning photosynthesis, boosting plant growth, enhancing agricultural yields, and enabling practical applications in industry. While discussions so often focus on its role in climate change, CO₂’s contributions to life in ecosystems is profound and undeniable, making it a cornerstone of biological and other planetary processes. CO₂ is […]
Before climate science became ‘settled science’, there were various theories suggesting that because the amount of carbon dissolved in the Earth’s oceans exceeds that in the atmosphere by about a factor of 60, the atmospheric CO₂ content must be dictated by the chemical state of the oceans. We don’t hear so much any more about […]
Picture this: it’s a hot day, and you grab a soda can that’s been in the sun. You crack it open—psssht—and CO₂ fizzes out, tickling your nose, maybe spraying your shirt if you’re slow. It’s a tiny chaos, a burst you can’t control. Now imagine that fizz across the ocean’s sun-warmed surface, covering 71% of […]
The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in June 1991 led to a significant cooling of the tropical ocean surface due to the cloud belt formed by the eruption. This cooling resulted in a temporary reduction in the rate of increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations. Despite ongoing human CO2 emissions and natural […]
It could be that all the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – the steady increase year on year, reported since 1958, despite all the airplanes grounded through covid it kept on increasing – is a consequence of the oceans breathing out a bit more, and nothing to do with you and me. The amount […]
After the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC)* conference finished in London, I caught a British Airlines flight to Seattle, to visit with my daughter. She has just recently moved there, to begin a PhD at the University of Washington. The view from BA53 was of snow covered tundra as we flew from Greenland, then over […]
When the Sun comes up on a cloudless day, everything is so clearly illuminated. I know this to be a consequence of incoming solar radiation. And when I sit in this sunlight, I know that it will warm me. Physicists who study heat transfer can explain how the incoming radiation in the visible spectrum becomes […]
I wonder how many of the approximately 30,000 ‘special’ people who are on their way to Glasgow for COP26 know that 78 per cent of the atmosphere is made-up of nitrogen. I asked this question of a group of retired professionals just yesterday and there was silence. My second question was about oxygen and a […]
THERE is nothing new under the sun according to both the Bible and Shakespeare; and One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts would not purport to be the first to claim the atmosphere cools the surface of the earth that is warmed by the sun. He stated this in his maiden speech in the Australian parliament on […]
