Global Warming v. Carbon Dating

May 17, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

If global warming is so critical an issue today, why is not
more effort put into explaining it to people? I find little disagreement that
there is a warming trend world-wide or that it relates to the amount of CO₂
in the atmosphere. The debate seems to be over (#1) the cause, and (#2) should
we do something about it. Some would say, “Of course we should do something
about it! The ice caps are melting! The sea is rising! The
ocean conveyor belts might turn off!” Yes, the oceans have risen by about
0.6 inches recently, but we also know that the oceans were once much, much
lower, because we find
stalactites in underwater caverns, and stalactites only form in air, as
water evaporates from the ends of the columns. We also know that as CO₂
increases in the atmosphere, plant growth is stimulated. One of the “alarming”
signs of global warming is that
crops are growing in Greenland where they never grew before. Is that a
problem? Plants consumes CO₂ in the production of food for itself and
oxygen for us.

Maybe we should do something, but I’m still at Square 1:
What is causing it? One position is that we are. I see data online that our
fossil fuel consumption contributes to the total, but I would like to see a
comparison of our contribution with the total CO₂ that is out there.
What percentage of the whole do we contribute?

There is also a case that CO₂ content
follows warming, not the other way around. If that is the case, we can’t say
that CO₂ content causes the warming. If you watch that trailer it is
obvious that the producers have a political agenda behind presenting the data,
but don’t all presenters? Doesn’t the
CDIAC benefit with funding, if a “problem” must be monitored? (Financial
benefit to selective data is a subject I will probably write about later.)

Regardless of #1 or #2, CO₂ content in the air has
increased substantially in recent centuries. Has anybody put that fact
together with the concept of carbon-14 dating? Carbon-14 is a heavy form of
carbon (two extra neutrons in the nucleus), resulting from a reaction to cosmic
radiation in the upper atmosphere. Animals and plants take it in as air is
circulated down from the upper atmosphere, and the amount remains pretty much
stable until the organism dies. The molecule is unstable, and tends to
degenerate back to normal carbon(-12), so once the organism dies, the level
deteriorates at a predictable rate, suggesting that we can calculate how long
the organism has been dead. This would be valuable for computing dates for
bones, artifacts, etc. that defy written history, except that the ratio of
carbon-14 taken in depends on the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, and the
amount used to be substantially less than when the dating
rubrics were computed. That means all calculations based on carbon-14 are
suspect.

Global warming may or may not be our fault, and we may or
may not be able to do anything about it, but I am confident that we know less
about dating antiquity without the written word than most people think we know.

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