Climate in Context

The blue line in the graph above is a reconstruction of global temperatures for the past 450,000 years taken from ice cores from the Vostock glacier in Antarctica. The green line in the graph above shows how closely changes in carbon dioxide and temperature correlate. But as you can see, the man made increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (in red) nearly sky-rockets off this chart, but the temperature does not follow.

Also, some have tried to say that CO2 has caused temperature changes during this time; not true. "... new high-resolution studies show that at times of cold to warm transitions, temperature changes come first, leading CO2 changes by several centuries (Mudelsee, 2001; Clark, 2003; Vakulenko et al., 2004). If so, the CO2 levels would be response to, and not a cause of, the change in temperature (climate). CO2 may then serve as a temperature amplifier, but not as the climate driver." (C6)

It is generally understood that periods of glaciation and interglaciation are caused by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun, not by changes in atmospheric CO2 as some have recently tried to suggest.

The graphics above represent the changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. There are also changes in the Earth's angle and wobble as it moves through space that contribute to major climate changes. Taken together they are known as the "Milankovitch Cycles." As the Earth goes farther away from the sun, or as the angle of the Earth changes, climate changes.

The Spectrum

Photons are the basic unit of light, they are particles that have no charge or mass. They are also called electromagnetic radiation. The photon is always the same thing, but oscillates at different speeds. The spectrum is how light is organized from the fastest oscillation to the slowest. There are six types of light in the spectrum; radio waves, infrared, visible light, UV light, X-ray, and gamma rays. Each part of the spectrum has its own frequency (number of oscillations in a second) and wavelength (the distance in which a photon travels at the speed of light in one oscillation). The photons with the highest frequency and the shortest wavelengths have very high energy (the gamma rays). The low frequency photon with the longest wavelength has low energy (radio waves).