Another inconvenient truth

Let’s do a simple mental exercise before we get to the point. Visualize a sphere of solid matter and then subtract fourteen hundredths of one percent. Is the reduced sphere any different in appearance? Of course not; shaving off the 14 hundredths evenly will be unnoticeable to the naked eye. On to the point.

The sphere we just visualized is a replica of our entire solar system compacted into a solid mass. 99.86 percent of the total mass of the solar system is the sun itself. What remains is the total mass material that orbits the sun. These 14 hundredths are composed of planets, moons, asteroids and meteors. Our planet accounts for a barely discernable speck of this other-than-solar matter.

This barely discernable speck is surrounded by a flimsy envelope of atmosphere that supports life on the planet and accounts for the ever-changing climate on the surface. The solar energy from the 99.86 of active solar matter that bombards our atmosphere is the engine of all climate change and has been since the beginning of time.

The energy emitted by all of man’s fossil fuel combustion has no statistical significance as a driver of climate change when viewed as a portion of the overall radiation received from the sun. The sheer difference in scale ought to be enough to make anyone with a shred of common-sense wonder what all the fuss about man made climate change is about.

Let’s do a simple mental exercise before we get to the point. Visualize a sphere of solid matter and then subtract fourteen hundredths of one percent. Is the reduced sphere any different in appearance? Of course not; shaving off the 14 hundredths evenly will be unnoticeable to the naked eye. On to the point.

The sphere we just visualized is a replica of our entire solar system compacted into a solid mass. 99.86 percent of the total mass of the solar system is the sun itself. What remains is the total mass material that orbits the sun. These 14 hundredths are composed of planets, moons, asteroids and meteors. Our planet accounts for a barely discernable speck of this other-than-solar matter.

This barely discernable speck is surrounded by a flimsy envelope of atmosphere that supports life on the planet and accounts for the ever-changing climate on the surface. The solar energy from the 99.86 of active solar matter that bombards our atmosphere is the engine of all climate change and has been since the beginning of time.

The energy emitted by all of man’s fossil fuel combustion has no statistical significance as a driver of climate change when viewed as a portion of the overall radiation received from the sun. The sheer difference in scale ought to be enough to make anyone with a shred of common-sense wonder what all the fuss about man made climate change is about.