Len Lisenbee's Outdoor World

    Len Lisenbee is the Outdoor Columnist for the Canadaigua Daily Messenger, Shooting Editor of the former New York Sportsman, retired Special Agent with the US Fish and Wildlife Service and book author of "TALES FROM THE MARSH AND OTHER DRIVEL" a unique look with fact and fiction of his years as a federal game warden.
 

Len's Note: This article was published on October 12, 1997. It still holds true today, despite the change in administrations.

Boy, it seems everyone is climbing on the global warming bandwagon these days. President Clinton, Vice President Gore and a host of other liberals are falling in behind the international effort to reduce the amount of gases being ejected into the atmosphere. At the same time conservatives are claiming all this hype is a liberal-conceived hoax to drive up the price of gasoline and destroy the American way of life. And the bottom line is that no scientist in the world can prove, or disprove, the actual act of a generally warming earth.

Before anyone can make heads or tails out of this mess we need to look at some cold, hard facts. The so-called experts are blaming excessive carbon dioxide emissions and an ever-increasing "greenhouse effect" for global warming. Increased numbers of internal combustion engines are emitting increasing amounts of carbon dioxide, and that gas is getting trapped in the atmosphere to create the greenhouse effect, a general warming of the earth's surface.

Carbon dioxide is one of our most common atmospheric gasses. In fact it is third behind nitrogen and oxygen. And it is the primary reason for life on this planet as we know it. You see the original single-celled plants that resulted from whatever spark that actually created life lived on carbon dioxide. Those plants gave off a toxic (to them) waste gas, oxygen, that soon filled most of the atmosphere.

Other plants and single-celled animals evolved that utilized oxygen instead of carbon dioxide. And those plants, primarily ferns, ruled the earth during the Carboniferous period, which ended approximately 400 million years ago. Animal life forms and other plants continue to evolve, and they all relied on oxygen for sustaining life. Carbon dioxide was utilized during the food production process, and oxygen was expelled as an unneeded by-product.

Today's plants operate in exactly the same way. To make a complicated situation easier to understand, the energy from sunlight combines with chlorophyll within a leaf's structure and carbon dioxide from the air to produce a form of glucose, or sugar. The carbon atom is removed from the CO2 molecule, and the remaining (unneeded) oxygen atom is expelled. Water, brought up from the roots through the plant's vascular system, supplies both hydrogen and oxygen for the chemical process. This is all a part of the photosynthesis process.

Now that we have digested all that, here is the principle question. Is the increased quantity of carbon dioxide being emitted from man's inventions today enough to cause the earth to warm in any significant manner? Experts claim that, during the past 100 years or so, the average temperature of the earth has increased approximately one degree Centigrade (C), which is probably true. Then, many of them go on to claim that, if left unchecked, that average temperature will increase by two or three degrees C during the next 100 years. And that, I'm afraid, is where I have a differing opinion.

During the past 200,000 years the earth's average temperature has fluctuated greatly. And as a direct result we have had at least three and possibly four "ice ages", or periods when glaciers and great ice sheets formed over much of the northern and southern hemispheres. The most recent ice age, which ended approximately 12,000 years ago, sent great sheets of ice southward to gouge the land and form such things as the Finger Lakes and the lower Great Lakes.

We are currently in what many experts agree is an "inter-glacial" period. There will most likely be another ice age, and it is just around the corner, geologically speaking. It should begin in ernest in another 10,000 to 20,000 years when the earth's average temperature will drop five to ten degrees. And, there isn't a darn thing we can do about it, either!

Fluctuations of one, two or even three degrees over an extended period such as a century is anything but uncommon. In fact, it should be expected. Ask any long-time resident of this area who is 60 years or older and they will most likely describe snowstorms during their childhood that piled snowdrifts as high as the telegraph poles that lined those old country roads. Why don't we have winters like that now?

Another fact to keep in mind is that most of the land that was farm fields at the turn of this century are now forests and woodlands. In fact most of this nation is now covered by green plants, including lawns and farm crops as well as trees and other wild shrubs. All of them are giving off tremendous quantities of oxygen while taking in equally copious quantities of carbon dioxide. Man's inventions would have to work overtime to offset that kind of natural oxygen production and carbon dioxide reduction.

What about the greenhouse effect? Is our increased output of carbon dioxide causing more of the sun's heat to be retained near the earth's surface? There may be a slight increase in the total quantities of greenhouse gasses, but I believe the primary culprits causing increased heat energy retention are the tiny particles of pollution resulting from unscrubbed smoke stacks, volcanos, forest fires, and other smoke and ash-producing sources. And an overall increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is, in reality, too small to cause any problems by itself.

Are the polar ice caps melting, and will low-lying shore areas be flooded anytime soon? Scientists who have studied the arctic and antarctic ice caps claim that some losses of ice mass have occurred in recent decades, but that loss is relatively negligible. In fact the total loss has reportedly caused the level of the oceans to rise only one-half inch. And such losses in the polar ice caps is completely within the acceptable range for normal temperature fluctuations of one or two degrees C in the average earth temperature.

Still, we should continue to monitor both ice caps to insure the rate of melting does not suddenly or dramatically increase. Approximately 20 percent of all the water on earth is locked up as ice in those polar caps, and most of that is above sea level. Should it all melt the ocean levels would rise an estimated 120 feet. And Albany and Harrisburg would become ocean front property.

Realistically, that could not happen. The earth's tilt and orbit around the sun do not allow enough of the sun's energy to strike the north or south poles for a long enough period of time to cause torrential ice melts. And if the atmosphere were "dirty" enough to retain enough heat from the sun to cause severe secondary polar ice melting, then all life, at least as we know it, would cease to exist long before a high tide lapped at the doors of the White House.

Len Lisenbee