The traditional view or dogma holds that the source of heat in the earth’s core is residual heat retained from the origin of our solar system combined with the decay of radioactive elements embedded in the core from it’s very beginning. This view is unsatisfactory on a number of fronts. Even if the outer layers of the earth, such as the mantle and crust, are very good insulators, the time frame since creation of the solar system is so long that the residual heat from creation would have long since been conducted to the surface and radiated into space. The radioactive decay theory is equally problematic since the time frame is so long that any, originally present, radioactive elements would have long since decayed. There is also no evidence that appreciable amounts of radioactive decay products such as lead, which results from the decay of long half-life radioactive elements such as uranium, are present in the earth’s core.

Another explanation for the heating of the earth’s core, which may also explain the variation of the earth’s average temperature with solar sun-spot activity, is that the earth’s core is heated by the solar wind sweeping across the earth’s magnetic field. The interaction between the ionized particles in the solar wind and the earth’s magnetic field induces a “current” in space where electrons are caused to oscillate between the earth’s magnetic poles while at the same time spiraling around the magnetic lines of force. This is a tuned radio frequency oscillation which “broadcasts” a radio signal and these electrons, known as “whistlers,” can be clearly heard with a broad-band radio receiver. The tuned oscillations around the planet act as a gigantic induction furnace similar to the induction furnaces used to melt scrap steel in industry. The alternating current in the “global coil” induces a corresponding alternating current in the earth’s conductive molten metal core. The heat generated by resistance heating in the core keeps it molten and thermal conduction to the surface can change the ambient surface temperature by a few degrees. Heat conduction from the core to the surface is slow and is affected by the insulating capacity of the mantle and surface rocks. Just as whale blubber is a very good thermal insulator, so layers and pools of petroleum in the crust serve to impede thermal conduction to the surface. Pumping this liquid insulation out of the earth for use as fuels could increase the thermal conductivity of the crust and allow heat to reach the surface more easily. This induction heating mechanism does not exclude other possible mechanisms by which the solar-wind can affect climate such as interaction with molecular components of the upper atmosphere.

There is a demonstrated natural connection between the climate and the solar sun spot cycles.  See the following link for information on this natural phenomenon, which makes both short term and long term climate predictions:

Solar Cycle and Climate Change

Clearly there is a large natural component to climate change which is not influenced by human activities. While burning fossil fuels and other carbon sources may increase the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere, the origin of climate change is more complicated than the simple burning of carbon fuels. There are many contributors to climate change, some of which are caused by man and others that are natural, which can be more important than the burning of carbon based fuels. Some believe that nuclear and hydro power are solutions to global warming because these sources do not produce carbon dioxide during operation. However, here are some facts that are not often mentioned. The construction of a nuclear plant, together with its containment structures, fuel storage pools, reactor vessels, heat exchangers, casks and storage pads, etc. and their replacement every 50 years or so, requires prodigious amounts of steel and concrete. Steel production requires burning large amounts of coal or coke and concrete requires cement which is made by burning fossil fuels to heat limestone. Carbon dioxide is released both from the fuel combustion and the limestone decomposition. In short, the only energy source which releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, during the construction phase, than nuclear is hydro-power due to the massive amount of concrete and steel used in dams. Renewable power sources such as wind, solar and biomass have a much smaller carbon footprint than fossil, nuclear or hydro.

Another consideration is that thermal energy sources are only about 30% efficient in converting heat into electrical energy. The rest, 70%, of the energy produced must be discarded as waste heat which contributes to the heat load on the planet. Hydro sources, on the other, hand are around 90% efficient. Much of the incident radiation energy from the sun is reflected back into space because its visible wavelength remains unchanged on reflection. The waste heat from thermal sources of electricity such as nuclear and fossil fuels, on the other hand, is transmitted in the infra-red and so is mostly trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gasses, thus contributing to global warming. Also problematic is the fact that nuclear fuel continues to emit waste heat into the environment even centuries after the plant has ceased to produce electricity. Fossil fuel plants cease to produce waste heat immediately upon shutdown.  Thermal power plant cooling systems can contribute to global warming both by dumping waste heat into the environment and by killing the aquatic organisms which sequester the atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The operation of nuclear reactors and spent fuel storage pools have a deleterious effect on aquatic organisms. Reactors and spent fuel pools, as well as fossil fueled thermal plants continue to be cooled by external sources such as river, lake or ocean water using one-time pass through cooling systems or by recirculated pond water with atmospheric cooling towers. Aquatic organisms sometimes block the circulation and so are removed by the application of pesticides and chemicals. These organisms can also be affected by radioactive materials, such as tritium which contaminate the cooling water circuit or simply by heating during transit through the reactor piping. One unintended consequence of this destruction of aquatic organisms is that many of them are essential to carbon fixation as part of the global carbon cycle. Aquatic organisms with carbonaceous skeletons are required to complete the cycle and permanently sequester carbon dioxide by precipitation to the sea floor. These organisms produce an enzyme called carbonic anhydrase, which catalyzes the conversion of dissolved carbon dioxide into carbonate anions. Dissolved carbonate anions in equilibrium with carbonic acid then combine with calcium cations in the water to produce calcium carbonate which is incorporated into the organism’s skeleton, through biological mineralization, much like the process by which bones are formed in humans, shells in clams or egg shells in chickens. When the organism dies it sinks to the sea floor where the skeleton becomes incorporated into great limestone sheets and begins anew the earth’s crustal carbon cycle. Those limestone sheets forming the ocean plates are subducted beneath  the continental plates through the motion of plate tectonics.  There the limestone is subjected to heat and pressure and where the crust is weak this gives rise to volcanoes.  Those volcanoes release millions of tons of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere to begin the atmospheric phase of the carbon cycle again.  Eventually these limestone sheets are uncovered by erosion and lifted by geological forces back to the surface to become new land masses and parts of continents where they are subjected to acid rain which releases the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere again.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in both fresh and salt water. This solution process is reversible and depends on the temperature and pH of the water. At higher water temperatures and lower pH less carbon dioxide can remain dissolved unless it is converted to calcium carbonate and precipitated. The reversible solution of carbon dioxide in water creates a global buffering system which regulates the atmosphere concentration of carbon dioxide. The set-point for this buffering system is the equilibrium constant of the carbonic anhydrase enzyme in these aquatic organisms. Thus in a healthy ecosystem, not poisoned by chemical and radioactive toxins, the biology can process large amounts of carbon dioxide. Radioactive and chemical wastes produced by the nuclear industry can poison the biological systems for millennia and hamper the ability to recycle carbon dioxide. The nuclear industry is also too expensive and too slow in permitting and construction to be useful in combating climate change. The problem of safely disposing of radioactive waste and the poor public perception of safety following the reactor meltdowns and widespread radioactive contamination at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima make this option a non-starter in the climate argument.

Other methods for combating climate change are much more affordable and more sensible. One big problem for global warming can be found in the man-made changes to the albido (reflectivity) of the earth’s surface. It simply takes an awareness of the problem in human minds to change behavior such as using white shingles on roofs instead of dark or using concrete instead of asphalt on roadways to make a big difference on the reflectivity of the surface. Another huge problem contributing to global warming is deforestation. This is particularly problematic in Indonesia where slash and burn is used to clear forests for agriculture. More carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere during this activity and by forest fires, both man made and natural, than the entire burning of fossil fuels. Deforestation has a four-fold effect on climate; (1) It changes the surface albedo to make the earth less reflective; (2) It produces huge amounts of carbon dioxide during the burning of the felled trees; (3) It removes the future capacity of the now absent trees to sequester carbon dioxide into biomass and (4) It changes the humidity and cloud cover over the earth, Clouds act as a reflective shield to prevent the incident sunlight from reaching the surface where it can be absorbed and re-radiated in the infra-red which is then trapped by the greenhouse gas layer in the atmosphere.

The stigmatization or demonization of carbon dioxide as the agent primarily responsible for climate change is absurd. Greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere are essential to maintain a temperate climate and a surface temperature which can support life; and carbon dioxide is one of the best. Without greenhouse gasses, i.e. an atmosphere, the earth would be too cold to be habitable. Carbon dioxide is, in fact possibly the most important chemical compound on earth because it is “food” for all of the photosynthetic autotrophic organisms on the planet. “Green” organisms such as leafy plants use chlorophyll and sunlight to decompose carbon dioxide into reduced carbon and molecular oxygen. Reduced carbon is used to synthesize more complex organic molecules which become the source of all food and energy consumed by heterotrophic organisms such as ourselves and become the constituent organic chemical building blocks of our bodies.

Marine algae plumes, or blooms as they are called, can be the size of small continents and are sometimes called the lungs of the earth because they, together with photosynthetic plants, are responsible for all the breathable oxygen in the atmosphere. We have to remember that with every breath we take we are inhaling life-giving oxygen molecules that once were part of carbon dioxide molecules. Marine algae decomposition of carbon dioxide into reduced carbon and oxygen is also responsible for the synthesis of organic molecules which forms the basis of the ocean food chain and gives life to all the marine creatures. Thus, every carbon atom, in every organic molecule, in every living organism on earth was once carbon bound up in atmospheric carbon dioxide. I think that rather than demonizing carbon dioxide we should rather glorify it as the essential elixir of life. The real demon here, if we must find a demon, is the destruction of “green” photosynthetic plants and the poisoning of the marine algae which together are the source of all the food and breathable oxygen on earth. These autotrophic organisms recycle the atmospheric carbon dioxide into life-giving food and oxygen and create a global buffering system which keeps the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and oxygen in balance, creates our food and keeps the surface of the earth at a livable temperature.