Understanding The Cause Of Global Warming

Stress. We all need less of it and understanding what's going on with global warming is one way to reduce some of that stress. Reduce it? That's right. Which is why this article is on an alternative health site, it's the alternative view. Most of what passes for info on global warming has no basis in fact. So here we go. By the way, no oil company funded this article.

First and foremost: People assume that global warming is a bad thing. Why? On what basis can anyone possibly make that assertion? By all of our measures of climate, over many millions of years, the Earth has usually been 5 to 10 degrees warmer that it is now. Life thrived.

Another thought - People worry about global warming driving creatures to extinction. However, since every species existing today has been around for millions of years while the Earth has alternately been sometimes a little cooler an often much warmer than now throughout those millions of years, it stands to reason that warming is not something that drives extinctions.

From about 1880 or so, when we first started keeping decent records, to about 1945 the global temps rose an estimated 1 degree F. The newspapers of that time were warning of the terrifying warming to come.

Then the Earth cooled a bit. Around the early 1970s the newspapers, including Science News, were warning of the upcoming ice age and how awful it was going to be. Oh, by the way, in the early 1900s the papers were warning of ice ages, too...  Note the pattern here.

So what causes Global Warming? That really isn't known for sure. Cyclic Solar patterns probably drive some of it. Cyclic weather patterns, certainly. Obviously the Earth as a whole has warmed over the last 15,000 years. Proof? We're not under a mile of ice. CO2 might play some small part, but the historical records that we have don't show it playing a part and the modern records show little connection.

Concept #1: Although the effects of global warming are nowadays felt everywhere, there is still some uncertainty about the cause. Many of the main culprits are well understood. Burning fossil fuels (generating CO2,) cutting down forests, increasing methane production through breeding too many cattle – all of these contribute to global climate change. Nonetheless, the verdict is still not in as to what is the main cause and how much of a role each factor plays.

Debunking #1:

• Are the "effects of global warming" felt everywhere? Really? Even though NASA says that the de-icing of the Artic is due to cyclic weather patterns? Even though sea levels are not rising? Even though the Antarctic (and Greenland) ice is getting thicker?
  
• CO2 - Using the same chart that Mr. Gore presented in his Inconvenient Truth fantasy, we see that temperature increases preceeded CO2 increases by 800-1200 years. CO2 also has one inconvenient property, that of diminishing returns. That means that any greenhouse effect does not rise in step with increasing CO2. Doubling CO2 does not double greenhouse effects. In fact, those effects fall off rapidly with increasing CO2. Think of it like painting over a window. Once you have painted the over the window there isn't much point to putting on another coat. Most of the light is already blocked. CO2 works the same way. Additional units of CO2 added to the atmosphere have a smaller and smaller effect. This is why all the graphs which show rapidly rising CO2 don't account for observed temperature changes.  

Concept #2: Whatever the cause of global warming, it is about time to do something about it. (Why?) The problem is that there are so many problems that individual actions can seem ineffective. There are a lot of small things you can do to counteract the causes of global warming. You can cut down on your consumption, turn off the lights when you leave your room, turn down the heat, weatherproof your house better, and drive less. Still, there is considerable debate about whether we can do enough as individuals. How much do these small changes really add up to?

Comments:

• Why do we need to do anything about it? Can anyone point to any real evidence that global warming, the little that we've had, is bad? Historically it's actually been quite good for people and for critters. The dinosaurs certainly seemed happier when the temps were 10 or so degrees higher than now.
• Conserving energy is a good thing to do for reasons that have nothing to do with global warming.
• So how do we do something about it? Give lots more of our money to the Gov to spend on... what? How about if we give the energy companies subsidies to develop viable fusion power? As well as solar and the other alternatives? Besides, oil is too valuable to the chemical industry to burn for fuel.

#3: Nowadays, more and more people believe that we have to address the cause of global warming as a culture and as a world. Our global environment affects all of us, and together we have to make the decision to act in a way that will safeguard it for future generations. More and more people are joining political action groups, organizing with other activists to help defeat environmental climate change. It is not too late to do something about it, but it is getting to that crucial hour. If we don't all work together to fight the causes of global warming, who knows how things will look a decade down the line.

Comments:

• More and more people are also realizing that most of what passes for info on warming is garbage. While it is important to take care of our environment (I don't want to live in a dump, either) Global Warming is way down the list of things that need to be worried about. Any monies and efforts spent to combat warming will be a hundred times more effective if spent on feeding children, developing certain technologies (eg: clean water supplies) is certain areas of the world, combating disease,and so on.

So what does this statement really mean => There are many different things you can do in your community to battle the cause of global warming. You can organize for better community recycling programs, better public transportation, and incentives to encourage businesses and consumers to use more environmentally friendly practices. Writing letters on your own can do a little bit, but organizing with other people to express a coherent political platform can do much more. It is the best way, in fact, to really get your voice heard by local, state, and national politicians. If you show them that the cause of global warming is of concern to you, they will listen and they will do something about it. Together, we can all do something to avert the coming environmental catastrophe.

Comments:

• There is no coming environmental catastrophe that has anything to do with warming. We're far more likely to see problems with a coming ice age than we are to see problems from warming. We're far more likely to see a nuke detonated in some city somewhere, or another tsunami hitting a major city, than to see problems caused by warming.
• Statements like the above lead me to belive that the only reason that the warming bandwagon is being pushed is to get people to follow along with an environmentally friendly agenda. While following such isn't necessarily bad, it is if it stifles our ability to compete internationally or takes resources from far more important issues. Using a fantasy (catastrophic warming) to build support for an otherwise worthy cause is just wrong.

Some inconvenient facts:

1. The Earth is not warmer now that it was in the early 40s. It's about the same. Many scientists believe that we're entering a cooling trend. No, they're not Oil Co scientists.
2. Solar cycles are cyclic. The Earth's orbit does vary over the course of thousands of years. The Earth's tilt does vary over the course of thousands of years.
3. Water vapor is a far more important greenhouse gas than CO2. No one has any idea of how to measure precipitation, cloud cover, and the effects of clouds, water, and vapor on whatever warming there may be.
4. There have been periods in recorded history where the Earth was warmer than today. Roman times and the Medieval Warming Period, for two. Both periods were boom times for people. Also, there are theories that the dark ages really were darker and that it was abit cooler then.
5. The sea levels aren't rising. At all. Since the Antarctic ice pack is increasing and since that same ice pack holds about 90% of the fresh water on Earth it seems reasonable the we will some some receeding of water levels.
6. Cold weather kills more people than warm weather, by far. So we want the cold weather back, because...?
7. Pretty much every climate "fact" in An Inconvenient Truth has been discredited. Especially the infamous Hockey Stick graph. Even the UN IPCC report, while still widly exagerated, is far more cautious in its claims that Gore's fantasy.
8. Scientific Consensus: It isn't what you think it is. The consensus is along these lines: The earth has warmed a bit over the last 150 years, all of it in the first half of the 1900s, catastrophic warming isn't happenings, and Gore knows nothing about climate.
9. All climate models are functionally broken. They can't even predict past or present climate and they certainly shouldn't be relied on for any future claims. We know very little about how precipitation and cloud cover affects climate, so the models can't model it. CO2 is just something that sounds sreasonable at first guess, then falls apart when looked at closely.
10. Those polar bears that have some people so worried? Their population has increased by a factor of 5 since the 60s, as the artic "de-iced," probalby due to increased availability to food.

So what can we really do about the climate? Nothing really. (And that's not the same thing as keeping the world clean.) Climate is driven by cyclic systems that we don't understand, and that includes solar cycles.

But Greg, the debate is already over...  Don't be silly. That claim isn't made in any real field of science. The only reason it's used in this area is that the pro-warming site doesn't have a solid argument. They must claim that the debate is over or they lose it all. Rants from Al Gore don't count as science and the science disputes everything Mr. Gore says.