High school students understand climate change science
John Shanahan
November 4, 2024
Occam’s Razor is an idea first postulated in the 14th Century. Many scientists quote it: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
KEY POINTS
High school students can understand climate change if they comprehend a few simple ideas.
1) We study everything that causes Earth’s climate to change, not just infrared radiation leaving Earth’s surfaces and interacting with CO2.
2) Energy is the ability to do work: Do you have a lot of energy? Are you on a school sports team or do you work for the school newspaper? Which takes more energy? Except for nuclear fission and fusion where matter is converted to energy, energy is always conserved. Energy can be converted from one form to another: from sunlight to chemical or electrical energy, from electrical energy to potential energy when an elevator goes up, from electrical energy to light when the stadium lights go on, from chemical energy to kinetic energy when you drive a car or ride a bike. Energy is very important in life.
3) Power is how fast energy can be delivered. A jet engine delivers more energy than air coming out of an open party balloon and does it faster. You need lots of power to pull a mile long freight train. You need very little power to operate your smartphone.
4) Work is the total use of energy. On your utility bill, work is shown as
kilowatt-hours. You pay so many cents per kilowatt-hour. For most of history people had to do work themselves. For the last two hundred years coal, oil and natural gas have done most of the work and provided thousands of by-products so we can have better lives. Nuclear power will have to do a lot of work in the future. What other major source of energy is there?
5) Once work is done, that energy is conserved but can’t do that same amount of work again. Only lower quality energy is available. There are no perpetual motion machines
6) Weather events are work. Sunshine is energy. Climate is an average of weather over a long time. To understand Earth’s climate change, you must understand how weather happens all over the globe and how it changes with time: hour by hour, with the seasons, over very long periods of time across ice ages and in between ice ages. You must explain all the systems: motion of the atmosphere and oceans, heat transfer from the equator to the poles and from the surface of the oceans and land to the top of the atmosphere, delivery of ocean water to the land and other things.
7) To understand all issues of climate change, it is necessary to study Radiative Transfer and Heat Transport. Climate change alarmists and some non-alarmists only study Radiative Transfer (infrared radiation from the surface of the land and oceans interacting with greenhouse gasses on the way to the Top of the Atmosphere). They don’t go into Heat Transport phenomena of air and ocean currents, water changes from ice to liquid to vapor and cloud formation, water transport to land, etc. They don’t explain Work related to weather. You need millions of large power plants to do the work the sun does for free. They don’t analyze those details.
8) In order to understand climate and climate change you must explain how energy, work and power are interrelated. Not just explain infrared radiation energy acting on greenhouse gasses and the scattering of infrared radiation. You would never buy a
car just knowing the size of the gas tank and not knowing the power of the engine to get up hills and pass slower cars and trucks.
Photos of real weather, not just graphics of sunlight and infrared radiation:
