Climate Change: Separating Fact from Fiction

Title Picture of the Presentation (Tianna Bogart)

Dr. Tianna Bogart of the Geography Department here at Frostburg State gave a lecture today titled, "Climate Change: Separating Fact from Fiction." She began her speech by asking the audience, "what is the big idea" and proceeded to discuss why climate change is important and scientists such as herself know that it is occurring. The primary source for this information comes from the IPCC which Bogart explained is "a consortium of scientists that collect data to identify climate fluctuations and what risks are associated with it." The date collected by these scientists is what Dr. Bogart's lecture focused on.

She started by looking at the three major determinates of global heating; These include volcanic activity, solar activity, and the Earth and Sun relationship in order to disprove the claims that these phenomena are what is causing average temperatures to rise. The average temperature increase in the last fifty years is universally accepted, as shown by the graph below.

This graph shows the average temperature increases over the past 100 years as collected by weather stations across the globe. The scientists who believe that climate change is merely an effect of the three natural causes of climate fluctuations cite these causes as the reason for the increase in temperature. However, Bogart covered all three of these effects and used the scientific research of those in her field to argue that the cause of this heating is in fact because of human activity.

First she attacked solar activity which is being heavily monitored by scientists and has, in the past, caused periods of climate change like the Mid-evil warming period. Bogart states, "We can discount the effects of the sun because we have clear data on the subject that says otherwise." Before moving on to attack the Earth-Sun relationship which is essentially the axial tilt and the orientation of the Earth in regards to the Sun. These changes are referred to as Milankovitch Cycles. Bogart went on to cover the various scientific names for these changes concluding that, "all of these [changes] can be accounted for and we can predict glacial and interglacial periods. However, based on these facts we should be in a glacial period not an interglacial one." Which means that the Earth should see glacial growth and not the decrease that we are seeing in the glacial ranges of the globe.

Bogart then covered the largest defense for anti-climate change scientists, volcanic activity. The scientists that Dr. Bogart is contending with cite the massive amounts of Carbon Dioxide that are pumped from volcanoes every year as the cause for increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the air and thus the temperature increase.
Dr. Bogart then proceeded to cover a fact most commonly overlooked by these scientists. Volcanoes also produce, as Dr. Bogart puts it, "Sulfur Dioxide which is heavily prevalent and is actually more abundant than CO2. Sulfur actually is known for its cooling effects not its warming."

Dr. Bogart ended with this graph that scientists at the IPCC have created using advanced super computers in which they compile all the data from the various research labs across the globe.

This graph shows the real average global temperature levels (black line), the supercomputer calculated temperature levels when only natural events are accounted for (blue line), and the levels when accounting for human activity and natural events (red line). The red line and the black line are very similar and with this Dr. Bogart stated, "if Volcanoes, Milankovitch Cycles, and Solar activity are not to blame... What else is there? Us."