Is global warming real? If so who is to blame?

By Arlen Comfort

I want us to stop adding greenhouse gasses to my atmosphere until they are proven harmless. Nature worked for billions of years to tweak the environment to the point that we prosper in it. Let's not mess around with it.

Global warming critics belittle the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yet I still haven't seen any critic PROVE or claim to PROVE that the IPCC warnings of global climate are incorrect. If they can't prove it's safe to continue to add greenhouse gasses to my atmosphere then we are playing a game of Russian Roulette with my planet's weather. The IPCC can't prove, nor should they have to prove, that we're changing the weather. They can only provide more and more evidence. He who is producing the greenhouse gasses is obligated to prove they are safe.

So far, the CO2 has increased about 30 percent. Can the critics prove it won't double, and if it does, it won't cause big trouble?

The following events plus many others have happened with only a 30 percent increase

Global Changes

1) The melting of glaciers.
2) Reduction in snow-cover extent.
3) North Pole Melts after 50 million-year Freeze
4) Heating of the oceans.
5) The changing timing of the seasons.
6) Break-up of Antarctic ice shelves.
7) Thawing of the tundra.
8) The warmest five years in the last 140 were 1999, 1998, 1997, 1995 and 1990. 2001 was expected to be the second warmest in 140 years.

Some events noted in 2001

9) Scientists noted that temperatures in the year 2000 in Canada were above normal for the eighth consecutive year.
10) Tuvalu, a small island nation in the Pacific, is quietly being erased from the surface of the earth. Ten thousand people, Tuvalu's entire population, are packing their bags as their homes among nine low-level atolls are being swallowed by the rising sea.
11) Areas of Morocco and Afghanistan now suffer from a four-year drought that has depleted water tables, browned the landscape and wreaked havoc on farmers.
12) Around the world, many penguin populations are declining and evidence is mounting that global warming is a prime cause.

I hope the following will give you a little more tolerance for the IPCC scientists and their message. If you conclude that global warming is real and is a threat, you face another question. WHY DO MANY SCIENTISTS THINK THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS HUMAN CAUSED? Here are some of the reasons that have been published in science magazines.

13) The pattern of warming, over land and water and warm and cold areas, produced a very specific pattern. That pattern matches the pattern projected by computer models of greenhouse gas.
14) The more intense rain and snowfalls, more droughts, floods and heat waves in the US are not consistent with natural warming, instead, resemble the changes that were projected for emissions from fossil fuels.
15) While some scientific skeptics have attributed this century's atmospheric warming to solar variations; summer and winter temperature data show greenhouse atmospheric warming overwhelmed the relatively weak effects of solar cycles on the climate.
16) Since the beginning of World War II, when accelerating industrialization led to a skyrocketing of carbon dioxide emissions, the timing of the seasons began to shift.
17) The night-time and winter-time low temperatures are rising nearly twice as fast as the daytime and summer-time high temperatures. If the warming were natural, the high and low temperatures would more nearly rise and fall in parallel.
18) In earlier centuries there was a correlation between temperature changes and volcanic activity and variations in the sun's brightness, but not during the 20th century.
19) There was a slight but steady cooling trend from 1000 to about
1880. That trend was abruptly reversed as temperatures began to rise rapidly in tandem with large-scale industrialization based on our use of coal and oil. The US is playing environmental Russian roulette. Our finger is on the trigger with the gun pointed at nations with fragile ecosystems.
20) The temperature changes over the 20th century cannot be explained by any combination of natural forces such as solar radiation and volcanic activity. This should end the idea that climate warming is a freak of nature.
21) Natural factors, like fluctuations in sunshine or volcanic activity, were powerful influences on temperatures in past centuries. But they account for only 25 percent of the warming since 1900.
22) The nuclei of carbon atoms in carbon dioxide emitted by burning coal, oil, and natural gas (fossil fuels) differ in their characteristics from the nuclei of carbon atoms in carbon dioxide emitted under natural conditions.
23) Since the late 1950s the levels of carbon dioxide have increased each year worldwide and these increases are consistent with other estimates of the rise of carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity over this period.
24) Because most of the human activities that produce carbon dioxide are in the north, there is slightly more carbon dioxide in the northern hemisphere than in the southern hemisphere.
25) Over 95% percent of greenhouse emissions are from natural sources but they are nearly balanced by physical and biological processes. As a result, carbon dioxide levels would have changed little if not for human activities.
26) Data for other human-produced greenhouse gases shows increasing concentrations of methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons.

Critics want proof of dire consequences from global warming before lowering our use of fossil fuels. However, this is my planet and my atmosphere too, and I want us to stop adding greenhouse gasses to it until they are proven harmless. Nature worked for billions of years to tweak the environment to the point that we prosper in it. Let's not mess around with it.

The end of the world has been proclaimed by many religious cults. Science has always been there to assure us that it wasn't going to happen. This time the roles have somewhat reversed. The majority of scientists are saying we could be doing great harm to our planet and the religious cults seem to be silent about an upcoming doomsday. There is ample precedent to go with the majority of scientists.

-Arlen Comfort-

References
1) http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climate.jsp?id=2286 4900
2) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/20 01/06/15/MN167979.DTL

3) The New York Times, Aug. 19, 2000
4) BBC Science News, April 11, 2001
5) http://books.nap.edu/html/climatechange/5.htm
6) http://futurenet.org/12Climatechange/gelbspan.html
7) Grist Magazine Sept.29, 2000
8) World Meteorological Organization (WMO). http://www.wmo.ch/web/Press/Press657.html

9) http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cf m?id=3594&method=full

10) Honolulu Star Bulletin, Aug. 19, 2001
11) The Associated Press, Nov. 8, 2001
11) http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cf m?id=3819&method=ful
11) http://www.un.org.pk/latest-dev/briefing010929.htm
12) The New York Times, June 26, 2001
13) "A search for human influences on the thermal structure of the atmosphere," Nature, Vol. 382, July 4, 1996, B.D. Santer, et al
14): Trends in U.S. Climate during the Twentieth Century, Consequences, Spring, 1995, Vol. 1, No. 1, Thomas Karl et al. Also: "The Coming Climate," by Thomas R. Karl, Neville Nicholls and Jonathan Gregory, Scientific American, May, 1997
15) "The Seasons, Global Temperature and Precession," by David J. Thomson, Science, Vol. 268, April 7, 1995
16) "The Seasons, Global Temperature and Precession," by David J. Thomson, Science, Vol. 268, April 7, 1995
17) "Temperature Range Narrows between Daytime Highs and Nighttime Lows," Science, July 18, 1997, David Easterling et al
19) "Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations" Geophysical Research Letters, March 15, 1999, Volume 26 Issue #6 Pages 759-762
20) Nature, Vol. 399, pp 569-572 10 June 1999
21) "Causes of Climate Change Over the Past 1000 Years," Dr. Thomas J. Crowley, Science, 14 July 2000, v. 289
22-26) United Nations Environment Programme World Meteorological Organization http://www.gcrio.org/ipcc/qa/05.html