Global Warming: Taking a Look at the Partisan Divide Over the Evidence

As far as ""Climate Change" goes, well of course there is climate change. It's not because we are doing something to cause it though. It's just a fact of nature. ========== You're undoubtedly right. I think only a fool would argue that pouring billions of tons of pollutants annually into the atmosphere and waterways would have a detrimental effect on the environment and climate.

Here is where the rubber meets the road. We fight the war on drugs as if it is a moral issue. It is clearly an economic issue and could easily be eradicated if it were addressed as such. Take the illicit profits out and much of it goes away. We are losing the moral war on drugs anyway. Now, we approach global warming and the whole question is whether or not we can reduce mankind's effects on the problem. Politicians choose to scare us and try to make this an economic issue. So using both examples of creating jobs and bureaucracies it is fairly certain to me that there is power and money at stake. They even use guilt and address global warming as a moral issue. I don't trust any of the so called experts and I prefer not to get my science from Al Gore even if he did invent the internet and was the hero in Love Story.

That data supports that it is warmer now - they are growing crops in Greenland that haven't been cultivated since the medieval warming period. From there we go to theory and people- including scientists - disagree. It’s unfortunate that it’s become more of a political issue that a technical one and is characterized by the same partisan crap - people more concerned about their side winning vice getting to the truth. If you look at a population chart over the last 1000 years and see the exponential spike since the industrial revolution, it would seem intuitively obvious that the volume of man’s activities could impact weather and climate. That doesn’t mean we do, but it seems that there’s a high probability that we do. The climate system as a whole operates with multiple equilibriums and we have definitely developed the means to impact some of those. Just look at land use; I’ve seen some articles that suggest that we’ve reduced the earth’s forest area by 50% over the last 500 years with most of that coming in the last 100 years. Certainly that has had some impact. We’ve replaced many of these areas with urban centers that not only generate more heat and pollution, but also absorb and hold more heat. There are so many ways we can impact our weather and climate but politics seems to have reduced it down to a single variable - CO2. I understand the model and don’t doubt that this is also a contributor, but the bigger picture seems to get missed. I believe we could reduce CO2 levels but not see any real change in the current trend. It’s a much a symptom of the problem as it is a cause.

Throughout earths paleo climate and geologic history climate has gone through cycles- warm to cool- but all of these cycles have been predicated on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. CO2 as a greenhouse gas is necessary to prevent an 'ice ball earth'- which did happen around 450-500 million years ago- However too much C02 in the atmosphere can create too much warmth- which has also happened in the past. Human civilization from the late Neolithic to the start of the industrial age had a C02 level of 280ppmv (parts per million volume) Over the last 100 years this has risen 100ppmv to about 390pppv- and now rising over 2ppmv a year- this is a very rapid rise in C02- it is causing the planet to warm- melting of ice in the arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica- and increasing extreme weather events because of the energy imbalances created by too much C02. The climate scientists have this pretty well covered- too little C02 can cause a colder earth- too much a warmer earth- the right amount of C02 for human civilization to thrive is around 300ppmv.

The real factor in the global warming debate is not whether it exists, it's whether man is causing it. There is NO SCEINTIFIC proof that man is causing it. Global warming and cooling has occurred throughout the history of the planet--this we know. Since the last ice age, the planet has been in a warming trend over an 11,000 year period, with lots of fluctuations. The said thing about this issue is that the seriousness of it has been hijacked by people like Al Gore who misstated facts and altered evidence to favor his opinion. He and those like him have politisized it for very selfish reasons. (Gore has made over $300 million on his green investment fund).

Reid Bryson was a professor of climate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He never said that global warming was caused by man, but there are so many areas of the globe that lack weather data collection sites that it would be impossible to say either way. That said, he offered several reasons to get off oil and other carbon-based fuels. 1. Oil will run out at some point, or will become prohibitively expensive to extract. 2. Burning any sort of carbon-based fuel emits pollution, no matter how sophisticated the system to trap or chemically treat the emissions. 3. Sending large amounts of dollars out of the U.S. has a bad effect on the economy. 4. Sending money to people who mean to do harm in some form to the U.S. and its allies is a bad idea.

Global warming is great. Longer growing seasons, more summer time weather,longer water ski season, yankees don't move to Florida,hurricane activity shifts farther north, lest heating oil burned, more plants growing to suck up co2,more plant and animal life all over and farther north, better deer hunting in Canada,etc,etc. Ever notice that life thrives in warm climates and there is scant life in the frozen north? Ever notice southerners don't die from heat without power, but plenty of people would die without heat.Heat is not a problem, cold is.

Sorry folks. Its conclusive. Carbon is an organic binder. This means it wants to attach itself to something else to make a molecule. Burn organic material and carbon is the byproduct. Carbon likes oxygen best,so voila,carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. That means that sunlight radiation after striking and warming the earth gets caught in the atmosphere due to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and bounces back and forth warming the earth further instead of escaping and returning to space. Now lets stop and think. The earth's population is about 6.8 Billion people. My guess is thats about 6 Billion people more than we had 100 years ago. Each of us is contributing to the extra greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. In addition, the rainforests which cleanse our atmosphere are diminishing. So think about it. The Billions of tons of greenhouse gases that we are now putting into our atmosphere should have a significant effect. Two of the last three years have the highest earth temperature in modern history. Glaciers are melting and the oceans are becoming warmer. Its happening right now and wishing that it wasn't will not help you. Denial is not science and no credible scientist denies global warming. Those that do remind me of the scientists hired by the tobacco companies that told us that tobacco does not cause cancer. Or how about the petrolium companies scientists who told us that lead wouldn't cause birth defects when in fact they wouldn't touch lead because they knew that it was poisonous. So, get with the program. You are a stand up guy/girl, aren't you. Speak out. Vote. Do the right thing. Digital electric grids. Medium sized nuclear plants with reusable fuel rods. Alternative energy sources. Also, these efforts would make new jobs, a better infrastucture and a better economy. We would be creating technology that we could export and become a leading high tech manufacturer.

If you average these opinions out, the conclusion is, no one really knows.

First of all, let's dispense with the term "global warming" because scientists around the world have discarded it in favor of "climate change". The two are VERY different. If people are told "The earth is warming", they naturally looks for evidence of same. Seeing only intermittent/inconsistent evidence of a warming trend, they doubt what they have been told. In the extreme, they deny it altogether, viewing it as just another example of gov't looking for an excuse to interfere with our lives. BUT, if people are told that "climate change" is taking place and that said change is expressing itself in weather extremes (e.g unseasonable warmth or cold, more violent hurricanes and tornados, abnormal rain and/or snowfall,), then the evidence is FAR more plentiful. It's past time for pollsters to stop asking questions about "global warming" and get focused on "climate change".