May 1, 2019 – Yesterday while recovering from my latest trip to donate blood I got into a conversation with a person who declared that she was a climate change skeptic, and in any case if there was global warming it was being caused by existing cellphone radio frequency transmissions in the atmosphere. She went on to say her greatest concern was how 5G would intensify the problem. I thought this would be an interesting topic to tackle as an alternative theory to why climate change is happening. To my surprise, I found a site devoted to this subject describing how microwave radio frequencies are polluting the atmosphere to cause what it describes as “Global RF Heating and erratic weather patterns.”
So what is the theory?
It postulates that microwaves used by wireless, radar, mobile, and satellite systems create a constant wave bombardment that causes molecular friction leading to warming and erratic weather changes.
What produces these microwaves?
Cell towers, radar systems, GPS satellites and ground stations, weather stations, and secret military projects like the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program run by the U.S. Department of Defense. The coincidences are interesting between the rise in global temperatures and the proliferation of the use of these technologies beginning as early as the 1950s. Of course, the same coincidence exists in the rise of greenhouse gas emissions correlated to global warming.
So how would microwaves contribute to atmospheric heating and erratic weather?
The Earth’s magnetic field traps microwaves in the atmosphere. The vast majority of what we produce cannot escape into space. The concentration of microwaves interacts with molecules and atoms in the air causing ionization which frees an electron to interact with other molecules in the atmosphere producing heat much the way a microwave oven heats objects placed inside it. But please note, microwaves heat solid or liquid objects, not the air.
The fact that the rise of radio frequency transmission volumes coincides with the growth of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions adds confusion to the theory’s viability of course. As does the nature of the spectrum of radio frequencies used in cellular communication. The reality is that radio frequency (RF) used by radio, television, computer, and cellular networks is non-ionizing unlike x-rays, gamma rays, and high energy ultraviolet radiation.
RF radiation exists in nature as well as is manufactured by our technical civilization. Nature delivers it from space, in lightning strikes during thunderstorms, and emanating from the Earth in small amounts as well.
Human-created RF is ubiquitous coming from radio and television signals, radar, WiFi, Bluetooth, microwave ovens, medical procedures, diagnostic imaging, welding, and cell towers. The theory postulates that life and the atmosphere through repeated exposure is altered.
Does the science support this theory?
Those who postulate it have produced little in the way of scientific evidence to support the theory. So I did a little bit of background research to find scientific literature on radiation, correlating it to climate change, and global warming specifically. I typed in the following search request on Google:
“Show me scientific papers that have looked at radio frequency radiation and climate change or global warming and seen a correlation?”
The result, not a single peer-reviewed journal paper or experiment on the subject. Not one proof, statistical chart, or graph to show how the two are interlinked.
I did come across content from the American Cancer Society, however, where there is a summary of research into RF exposure and a potential causal link to cancer. But even here the research concluded there is no evidence to risk for those highly exposed to RF radiation in the workplace or from the use of cell phones. And frankly, if microwaves and other forms of RF radiation were to be a problem, one would think close proximity to the source would present the greatest risk. But once again, RF exposure doesn’t seem to have any consequential or unintended impact.
In looking for a graph to show RF usage growth correlated to global temperature rise I could find nothing, even on the one website that postulates the theory.
In contrast I found plenty of graphs to show the correlation between rising temperature and greenhouse gas emission growth.
So if someone reading this posting has access to research in this field I will be happy to publish it. But I am more than convinced that this hypothesis has no leg to stand on.
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Mr. Rosen, regarding your 5/1/19 “Could Micro and Radio Waves Be a Contributor to Global Warming?,” please take a look at “IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation,” 23(4); 595-597 and the climate science work of Dr. Tapio Schneider of Caltech if you truly are interested in reading papers on this subject. If, on the other hand, your interest really is helping some of your present/former corporate clients whose interests in wireless communications may make this an unpopular subject, you may not want to read this work of “scientists.”
I visited the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation site. Did a search on all issues for work done by Tapio Schneider and the search came back with no results. Was the article removed? Or could the reference you supplied be wrong?
https://climate-dynamics.org/people/tapio-schneider/
https://eas.caltech.edu/people/tapio
https://ethw.org/Archie_W._Straiton (IEEE paper — author)
Hi Robin, I have reviewed the literature describing artificial radio waves spectra and their influence on the atmosphere. The paper you refer to was published in 1975. It appears to have not been peer reviewed. And the spectrum it referenced is not that which is used by cellular networks which didn’t exist at the time of the paper’s publication.
Did you read physicist Arthur Straiton’s ethw.org bio Mr. Rosen? Peer review? (One wonders who this physicist’s “peers” in 1975 were, doesn’t “one”?)
I read in an “Atmosphere” review paper that “two of the most important parameters of global climate change — surface temperature and UTWV — can be monitored” and at Lumen Learning (https://lumenlearning.com/) that infrared light from the sun only accounts for 49% of the heating of the Earth and “electro-magnetic waves of any frequency will heat surfaces that absorb them,” with “[a]rtificially generated radio waves…used [now] for fixed and mobile radio communication, broadcasting, radar and other navigation systems, communications satellites, computer networks and innumerable other applications,” so I wonder why, in this reply, you reference only “cellular networks.” I also wonder if you have read Ramon Ryan’s writing here about satellites/their “non-regulation”: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/jetlaw/vol22/iss4/8/.
Ryan’s work is excellent in my opinion, and my graduate training was “law” (though on account of many things I no longer am in active practice here in California).
I can give you the “Atmosphere” cite if you want to read and cannot find this 2016 paper, but think focusing only on UTWV may not be “right.” (I am not any “expert,” but live near Caltech, so someday maybe Dr. Schneider will give me some of his time so I can learn quickly about lower atmosphere water vapor vs. UTWV, about feedback mechanisms etc. and decide if I agree with what J. Hansen et al. wrote in 1984 in “Climate Processes and Climate Sensitivity.”)
From reading extensively on the physics of atmospheric systems I think Hansen got it dead right.
Perhaps you’ve read the papers uploaded to https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aad5300 and https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL083978, and/or this 2019 work by Dr. Schneider et al. on “Possible climate transitions from breakup of stratocumulus decks under greenhouse warming,” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1?
These papers all seem to contain interesting (and “updated”) material on climate processes and “sensitivity.”
There is no doubt that clouds are the canary in the coal mine when talking about atmospheric change. I am aware of their complex interactions with atmospheric thermal characteristics. It is not surprising to read about clouds over ocean surfaces reacting differently from clouds over land. And as for their climate sensitivity to CO2 and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere, there is a growing body of research to link changes in cloud dynamics over time with rising GHG emissions from human activity.
I am inclined to believe Robin Schlinger.
Even if there is no net effect on air, can it not be said that the physical environment is not thermally affected by the RF radiation? Why get stuck on trying to disproved by the affects on air when there is plenty of evidence of RF induced warming on other materials in the environment.
If nothing else it warrants investigation.
Concentrated radio-frequency waves do have potential environmental consequences. But cell towers are intercepting highly diffused radio waves from phone users. That’s what makes Schlinger’s conclusions suspect.
You forgot one detail. When you look influence radiation on health you must have in mind that the sum of it influence on you and not only your mobile phone. The same is with temperature. We have only cell tower. We have microwave owens , some milliard mobile phones, modems, drones, smart counters, electric cars… and you must count all of this. I am observe that after put 5g in our community the temperature going up (we had very mild winter after it) and I am starting to thinking about it.
If 4G didn’t do it, why would 5G, or for that matter the forthcoming 6G contribute to COVIDd-19, global warming, or any other observable weather or climate event? Because two or three things happen in approximately the same time period, does not make them causal. They are not even correlated. The science and evidence doesn’t support your hypotheses.
It takes electrical power to create RF radiation. The generation of the electrical power requires far, far more energy from carbon-based fuels than the total resulting RF radiation energy. The direct heat as well as greenhouse gas effects from burning those fuels will cause a bunch of orders of magnitude greater heating than what is caused by the RF radiation itself. The relatively-miniscule heating from RF radiation is the least of our concerns.
[…] Wireless telecommunication which uses radiowaves has been blamed for so many current challenges. In 2019, one of the most read pieces I wrote for this site, discussed and debunked the link between new radio bandwidths and global warming. […]
Can you send me a link to this topic, please.
This is a real stretch in associative reasoning. The COVID-19 pandemic originated in Wuhan, China. The authorities were late to the mark in that country and tried to suppress information about it. They didn’t shut down transportation routes outside the affected area which a Toronto-based AI company spotted. I wrote about it at https://www.21stcentech.com/built-tools-spot-disease-outbreak-global-threat/. 5G spectrum radio waves cannot cause a virus to jump from an animal population to a human one.
Is anyone looking at the actual heat produce by the towers themselves or the energy that is lost as the signal moves through objects. All of this energy is going somewhere in a world where they blame everything except what makes them a buck.
Microwaves heat a bowl of soup, so naturally there is an effect. UV radiation is more energetic than microwave radiation so ultimately it’s about the total concentration of each
I have no scientific background. I’m very average. But every bit of my gut instinct tells me mobile phones, and what-ever type of microwaves they use, are heating up our planet. No one wants to hear it, I feel very few would give up their phone to save the planet. And most of all, if it was categorically proven, the phone companies wouldn’t want you to know and have the means to hide it. I have a very young daughter & I’m worried constantly! I’m turning my phone off while I sleep… give the atmosphere a tiny rest.
Hi Claire, It is an understandable gut feeling but the science doesn’t correlate the rise in cell phone use with global warming. Cell phones during material sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution do contribute to global warming through the greenhouse gasses emitted during these processes. But the operation of cellphones and the microwave spectra in which they send and receive signals produce little if nothing to atmospheric warming. Your microwave oven in your kitchen presents a greater threat to your child’s health than a cell phone. I compliment you on turning your phone off at night because the electricity it uses can come from a thermal power plant burning coal or gas.
The World Health Organization has published research looking at the other threat we have been told about cell phone use. That it can cause cancer. In the research it states, “radiofrequency waves are electromagnetic fields, and unlike ionizing radiation such as X-rays or gamma rays, can neither break chemical bonds nor cause ionization in the human body.” So we can’t disrupt our DNA from the cell phone traffic or even from holding a phone next to our head. You may find the background article the WHO has published to be a good read. Here is the link https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/electromagnetic-fields-and-public-health-mobile-phones.
the way a micro oven works it uses radio waves which in turn heats the food etc.and with the introduction of mobile phones and it appears most countries now possess them. also opening and closing cars to lock and unlock, using radio waves, all these methods have turned the earth into one big microwave oven
. i informed prime minister boris johnson of this theory and was totally ignored as no way would mobile phones and other uses of radio waves would be scrapped, therefor the planet will continue to heat up which will cause one of two disasters death by floods or fire
Hi Kenneth, I appreciate your effort to understand the science and impact of microwaves used in both ovens and for telecommunications. They are very different. There is no scientific evidence to link global atmospheric warming to radio spectrum signals used in cellular networks.
Yes, I have same theory after we have very mild winter when we have very mild winter in our community and they on 5g.
The 5G rollout does not factor into atmospheric warming. Radio frequency (RF) transmissions used by radio, television, computer, and cellular networks are non-ionizing unlike x-rays, gamma rays, and high energy ultraviolet radiation. The latter coming from outer space would far more dangerous if not for the ionosphere-blocking ozone that protects us. Our magnetosphere, the Van Allen Belt, further protects our atmosphere. If the ozone layer weren’t there and Earth’s magnetic field were to weaken then you would see global warming on a Venusian scale. The radio waves used by cellular companies are not causing the latest warm winter. Look to the El Nino in the mid-Pacific Ocean and the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere for this unusual warmth in the Northern Hemisphere.