Climate Change

Overheard while watching an advert for Simply Cremations on PBS America, which seems to have mistakenly profiled us as old people with an interest in adverts for funerals, cruises, expensive, rip-off gold coins for our children and over 50s insurance plans:

Announcer: "Simply Cremations are experts."

Hay: "What does a non-expert cremation involve?"

Chairman: "Bonfire in the back yard, I expect."

I've thought of a way of explaining Climate Change that's easily understandable for those who don't understand - although their lack of understanding is more with a wilful refusal to understand and a denial of evidence, an affliction that's increasingly affecting large swathes of the population.

It first has to be taken as read that CO2 is building up, but it doesn't take a leap of faith to realise that fossil fuels, that have taken millions of years to lay down by capturing carbon from the atmosphere, being burned within the space of 300 years, is bound to result in a spike in atmospheric CO2. It's an undeniable, scientific fact. Refuse to acknowledge that and you're a no-hoper denialist.

Another thing that has to be accepted is that any particle larger than the wavelength of infrared light will heat up under sunlight - but that's not a belief, it's just physics. Carbon dioxide strongly absorbs energy with a wavelength of 15 μm (micrometers), which happens to be in the infrared part of the spectrum (780 nanometers to 1mm).

Now, if CO2 in the atmosphere heats up under sunlight, it has the effect of increasing the total surface area that's heated - a bit like expanding the radius of the earth, but without it actually expanding. The greater the area, the higher the absorption of sunlight and the greater the heat generated. A simple analogy is the solar panel - the greater the surface area, the greater the power generated.

It also reradiates that energy in all directions, including down, and therefore forms an insulating blanket - hence the greenhouse analogy.

Nah, they won't understand that, it's too complicated for them.