Global Warming is a known fact- Maybe

On the McLaughlin Group last night the main topic was Global Warming. I would think that only abortion is a more polarizing subject, with another scientific subject (Stem cell research) a very close third.

Stem cell research and abortion I can see as polarizing opinions; I don’t think I know anyone who does not feel strongly one way or another. But why is global warming so divisive?

That the earth is warming may be true. Proponents shout that we have raised the global temperature ONE DEGREE Fahrenheit in the last hundred years. (Another interesting point- we have been force fed the metric system for years; why Fahrenheit here? is it because in Celsius the change is only half a degree?) They claim all the evidence is there: Ice caps melting; glaciers retreating; equatorial areas are becoming uninhabitable.

And it is all because I burn fossil fuels in unconscionable amounts. I need to start using less fuel to heat my home, get back and forth to work and such. It’s the green house gases from me burning oil that has gotten this world in such terrible shape.

It would be easier for me to believe this was all my fault if it I hadn’t been alive in the late seventies. After two winters of sub-normal temperatures and excessive snowfall we were all warned that it was the burning of fossil fuels that was building up an insulating layer in the ozone and causing us to be cut off from the sun’s warmth and plunging us into another ice age.

When winters went back to normal the same scientists, using the same data, now suddenly tell us we are facing global warming, again because we are burning fossil fuels but now they are forming a layer to trap the sun’s heat. Which is it really?

Logically I look at it this way. Assume science is correct (and not fudged, smudged or just an outright fabrication), and the average temperature has gone up a degree. If this means the Polar Regions have suddenly gotten warm enough to melt, doesn’t that mean these areas have warmed by MORE than a degree? And doesn’t the law of averages say that is if one number goes up by, say 5 points, in order for the average to only go up 1 point, some other number must go down by 4 points? If the Polar Regions have warmed, where has it gotten cooler?

Or let’s assume the Polar Regions have warmed by the required one degree between frozen and melting. If that one degree was all it took, how cold could they have been in the first place? Did they warm from 32 degrees Fahrenheit to 33 degrees Fahrenheit?

The Earth is around 4 billion years old. Over those 4 billion years the climate has changed around thousands of times. Fossil evidence of tropical climates in Antarctica is well known. The fact that the eastern half or the United States was at one point under a 40 feet of warm water, and at another under 40 feet of ice is also well known and borne out by fossil evidence.

Why is this change any different?

I blame the Baby Boomers; not for the Greenhouse Gases but for the hype. Never have a group of people in the history of the world been so wrapped up in themselves, to the point that they believe if they choose to drive an SUV that gets 12 mpg, as opposed to a hybrid that gets 36 mpg they are dooming the whole world to a violent death by cooking us in our own air. What unmitigated hornswaggle!

From the website http://www.clearlight.com: “Geologists know great ice sheets once covered large portions of the continents. These glaciers have alternately retreated and advanced as the earth has warmed and cooled, in cycles spanning hundreds, thousands, and millions of years.”
So what then, if, according to Wikipedia,: “The Earth's average near-surface atmospheric temperature rose 0.6 ± 0.2 °Celsius (1.1 ± 0.4 °Fahrenheit) in the 20th century”. 100 years is well over the average human life span, yet only 0.0000025% of the suspected history of the Earth, and only 2.5% of the recorded history of man, assuming we have records 4000 years old.

The folks who aren’t worried yet, those asking for more time and data, are dismissed as tools of the oil industry, and told we need to ACT NOW- BEFORE ITS TO LATE!; akin to some late night TV infomercial. Don’t stop to think- knee jerk now!

I don’t buy it. Also according to Clearlight.com: Generally understood, but rarely publicized is the fact that 95% of the greenhouse effect is due solely to natural water vapor. Of the remaining 5%, only 0.2% to 0.3% of the greenhouse effect (depending on whose numbers you use) is due to emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases from human sources.

Why don’t we hear more about this? 2 reasons: the aforementioned Baby Boomers, focused on their own navels, as they have been for the last 40 years, intent on the notion that they are the most powerful life force in the history of the universe, believing that they have caused a climate change on the Earth that will lead to its imminent destruction (and given enough time will determine the entire Universe will cease to exist when the last Boomer gasps their last), and also believing they have enough power to stop it, if only everyone will listen to their end-all and be-all spouting.

Am I trying to convince you that Global Warming doesn’t exist? Nope.

Am I trying to convince you that mankind is not responsible? Nope.

All I’m trying to do is convince you to independently examine both sides and make up your own mind, unlike the proponents of human based global warming, intent on getting you sign on to a luddite- like change before you have the chance to see all of the facts.

Of course I know what I believe. Now its time to fire up the chain saw & cut down another tree for tonight’s fire.