CLIMATE CHANGE: Facts, details and opinions,

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Climate change is a study of the distribution of weather over periods of time that are more than a decade in length. Such things are important for increasing yields and insuring crops for modern day farmers, and were important in the ancient past because things like expected floods provided the fertilization ancient farmers needed to continue to grow food on the same lands decade after decade. Global warming only deals with the concept of the average temperature of the earth changing and increasing over the time of the 20th to 21st century. Such an increase (approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit) over the 20th century is what has some people worried about greenhouse gases warming the earths atmosphere.

The current warming trend some claim is because computer models show a warming. This is supposed to be because of a supposed greenhouse effect that exists because certain gasses that are naturally emitted by the environment seem to have he effect of holding in heat, just like occurs in a real greenhouse. Supposedly overproduction of these gasses will cause the environment to heat up and increase until many different doomsday scenarios occur: The ice caps will melt, the ocean water levels will rise, the environment will change so much that we will have new plants and some of what we depend on will die leaving us with food shortages. And more.

The main things thought to be affecting the atmosphere are carbon dioxide and methane, although other gases may also have an effect but no one actually understands the entire course of interactions enough to be positive. Among the other gases are carbon monoxide and water vapor. (Stanford Solar Center) These gasses are increasing in the

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atmosphere because many of the things that mankind does daily from production of electricity to driving to running any production plant produces these gasses in large quantities.

Current Carbon Dioxide readings are at about 370 parts per million in the atmosphere. (Angliss) The highest previous reading from history is about 800,000 years old at 300 parts per million. So currently, we have exceeded the amount in the air in all the history we can, and it is assumed that this must be from human sources. If so, the reason it has risen is the use of fossil fuels coal, and oil, mainly to drive the wheels of production since the machine age began.

Is global warming actually occurring? Moreover, how would we really know? Let us look at several things that scientists do not all agree on to see what might actually be happening. First, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that every major greenhouse computer model (there are over two dozen) shows a large increase due to human burning of fossil fuels as well as all the other greenhouse gases including water vapor in the atmosphere. The problem is every last model shows that warming in the tropics should register at increasingly high rates as you move up from the surface of the earth into the atmosphere. At about six miles, it should show an increase greater than at the surface by about a factor of three, according to all the computer models. (Singer)

In fact, the data from balloon-borne radiosondes show the exact opposite, a slight

CLIMATE CHANGE decrease in warming over the equator. (Singer)

The models show one thing and reality shows another. Which trumps which for publicity and airtime and press support? The models. After all, science HAS to be right, even when its estimates by models do not match what is actually occurring in the environment, right now. Even better, where is the error reported? In the actual IPCC Program Report that claims to show earth is warming.

What this proves is that we do not KNOW how all the greenhouse gasses affect the earth, whether or not hey have the ability to warm or cool. According to the models, every greenhouse gas feeds back and increases warming caused by Carbon Dioxide, but what if water vapor, for instance, offsets and decreases it? We do not know the answer. Yet.

In fact, the earth temperatures fluctuate on an average of about every 3000 years on a continuous cycle. No one was around 3000 years ago who was worried about the environment, nor would they have had a thermometer to measure it with, but we do have from science something that CAN give us a good estimate of temperature, Oxygen-18. The ratio of Oxygen-18 to the more common Oxygen-16 shows the change in temperature. Scientists have found a stalagmite in a cave in Oman that covers over 3000 years of time. It also shows Carbon-14 data, which is influenced by cosmic rays on the earths atmosphere. Since the stalagmite cannot affect the sun, the sun must affect the stalagmites information, and that shows that there is variability in the ultraviolet area of

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the spectrum, affecting the amount of ozone in the atmosphere. The stalagmite cannot tell us why climates change, but it can show us, almost year-by-year, that the climate fluctuates up and down, heating and cooling, on a 2000-3000 year cycle. (Neff, Burns, Mangini, Mudelsee, Fleitmann & Matter)

None of this argument says that we should not try to find ways to save, to conserve, to reduce and reuse. Nevertheless, there is a difference between having actual, hard science and creating hysteria. Someone needs to report the hard science in simple, easy-to-understand terms to stop those who desire hysteria. Because if we act on the concept of carbon trading you are about to see a massive shift in financial power from the producing countries to the non-producing countries, a dramatic payment in a pseudo-tax that would make the large nations of the world suddenly subsidize the small nations who have little carbon production to offset. In addition, since the IPCC is part of the United Nations, you can be assured there will be as much theft, loss, and corruption as there was from the Oil for Food fiasco in Iraq. (Singer)

What might we really see if the climate is changing? A northern passage over Canada and Alaska might open, making transportation easier. The northern climates of Russia and Canada that currently do support much plant growth could become the new breadbasket for the world. On the other hand, it could be the disasters the climate change model designers claim. The actual fact is no one knows enough about any of this no one even knows if the increase in carbon dioxide is because of natural events or if its because of mankind to be making these pleas and charging the population of the world with

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finding a solution. There is no way to know that the solution will be what really needs to be done.

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REFERENCES

Angliss, Brian. (2012.) Climate Science for Everyone: How scientists measure the carbon dioxide in 800,000 year old air. Scholars and Rogues website. Last updated 1/28/12. http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2012/01/28/csfe-co2-in800000-year-old-air/. Accessed 2/2/12.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Science Report 1.1. (2006) Published by the Federal Government and available at www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sapl-1/finalreport/default.htm.

Neff, U., Burns, S.J., Mangini, A., Mudelsee, M., Fleitmann, D. & Matter, A. (2001) Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago. Nature 411, 290-293 (17 May 2001) Retrieved 4/5/10. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v411/n6835/full/411290a0.html.

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Singer, S. Fred. (2007) Imprimus Volume 36, number 8. Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural? From a lecture on Economics and the Environment delivered at Hillsdale College in June 2007. Reprinted by permission from Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Stanford SOLAR Center. Global Warming. http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-onearth/glob-warm.html. Accessed 2/2/12.

Zhaorong, Wang, Daoxian, Yuan, Yushi, Lin, Meiliang, Zhang, Jie, Zhou and Weiguo, Liu. (2001) High-resolution dating of stalagmites and reconstruction of paleoenvironments Chinese Journal of Geochemistry, Volume 20, Number 3 / September, 2001 pp. 282-288.