GLOBAL WARMING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Four Questions for Global Warming Enthusiasts
August 17th, 2006 (The American Thinker)
- 1. Is global warming happening?
- 2. If warming is occurring, are human beings a significant causative factor?
- 3. Regardless of cause, would the net effect be good or bad?
- 4. If all of the above is satisfied and humans are contributing to warming Earth temperatures, and it would be harmful, can anyone do anything about it, at any cost?
- Don’t be misled by leftists who insist the scientific question is closed…Scientists agree the Earth is round, and it can be proven. Therefore, it’s a fact. Many competent scientists disagree on each of the elements in my four-part test. That makes it a political issue. We should not confuse science with politics or entertainment with reality.

Answers to "The American Thinker":
1. Facts rarely get more incontrovertible. Science is decidedly NOT murky on this: Global warming is happening.

"In the journal Science, an essay by Naomi Oreskes considered the abstracts of all 928 scientific articles in the ISI citation database identified with the keyword "global climate change". Dr. Oreskes concluded that none of these abstracts attempt to refute the position that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are a substantial contributor to recent warming." [Wikipedia]

For science—an intellectual activity dependent on give and take—this is ASTONISHING AGREEMENT! Scientists differ on anomalies like the "Little Ice Age" and when human activity began having a measurable effect but these things in no way controvert the pattern.

2. Human beings ARE a factor. Name something humans do that does NOT warm the earth. Animals warm the earth. Humans warm it more because they burn fossil fuels and spew carbon dioxide, causing a greenhouse effect, trapping the heat we and all life gives off. Ten years ago there was substantial debate on this but now there is just nitpicking by a small proportion of scientists, mostly representing vested interests. (Did you see the reports of the way the White House savaged beyond all reason their own EPA scientist's warnings on warming?)

Warming is now 0.6 +/- 0.2 degrees Celsius (1.1 +/- 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit). [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] And we are only at the beginning of the process, yet the polar ice caps are melting, with resultant rises in sea level and changes in weather.

3. If you don't think major portions of Manhattan and Washington and London and Singapore and Hong Kong and many other cities, not to mention portions of COUNTRIES, disappearing under water (along with the associated economic havoc and environmental refugees) is a net "bad" effect, how about the bulk of the world's farmlands turning to desert, causing global-sized hunger? How about devastation to the world's drinking water supply? How about skin cancer becoming epidemic? Did we get to "bad" yet?

4. Prompt conservation measures and changing as quickly as possible to lower carbon consumption transportation fuels in the next ten to twenty years could significantly alter the hundred-year pattern. If we start NOW (yesterday), we can prevent the temperature change from becoming 5 DEGREES C or more by the year 2100.

Last point: Competent scientists may debate the specifics, but not the PATTERN. The pattern is leading to the conclusion only a tiny minority of scientists dispute, fewer every month: The earth is getting hotter, humans contribute, it is not a good idea and we need to stop burning carbon. Those are as close to facts as you will ever get. The earth is not round, it is oval.

Changes in Earth's shape tied to climate
January 7, 2005 (Space and Earth Science)
- Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have found that significant changes in the shape of the Earth in the past 28 years may be linked to climate events such as the El Niño weather pattern...
- The Earth’s shape changes because the climate events shift where the mass of water is stored: in oceans, continents and the atmosphere...
- Dr. Minkang Cheng and Dr. Byron D. Tapley of the university’s Center for Space Research used nearly 30 years of NASA satellite laser ranging (SLR) data to examine how much the Earth flattens at the poles and widens at the equator…
- The scientists found that two large variations of increases in the Earth bulging at the equator were connected to the strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation events from 1986-1991 and 1996-2002…Although El Niño is normally associated with warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean, it also causes changes in weather patterns and the way the ocean circulates…