Return to “How My Mind Changed.”

This essay is published here in full, unedited form (including the horrendous centered text alignment). I’ve excluded the short bibliography but, considering the poor quality of the sources and the fact that I can’t imagine a reader will find them necessary, I’m not sure it matters.

The Pure Fiction of Manmade Climate Shift

Global warming has been hotly debated for the past 20 years. The theory started as a speculation at the nature of the climate in the eighty’s and has grown into a monstrous debate over where it comes from or even if it exists at all. By now, the general idea is that global warming is in fact happening, but the debate is now if the earth is warming due to nature or if it is manmade. The theory is that either changes in the amount of radiation from the sun, or the emission of greenhouse gasses, will change the global average temperature. For the past 20 years, the general accepted premise is that man has been destroying the environment with its factories and cars. But now, despite what the liberal media is telling some people, the science is in fact leaning towards the other side which is that human activity and the release of greenhouse gasses, has not been sufficient to cause a global climate shift.

The Greenhouse effect is a theory that when the sun radiates heat and other radiation, some is absorbed into the earth and some is reflected back out into space. But some of that radiation gets trapped by Greenhouse gasses. Global Warming is another theory that very closely coincides with the Greenhouse effect. It states that the Earth’s average atmospheric temperature is rising and that it may be caused by the Greenhouse effect. (Bethell, 1) Many proponents of this theory argue that human activity and the emissions of Greenhouse gasses, especially Carbon Dioxide, raise the global temperature and believe that the increase will cause catastrophic damage to coastal cities, cause massive heat waves, and melt the polar ice caps. The Greenhouse gasses, Water vapor, CO2 or Carbon Dioxide, Ozone, methane, and nitrous oxide, are all both natural and manmade. Water vapor is just evaporated water created in a wide variety of ways from heat evaporating the oceans to emissions from nuclear power plants. CO2 is also created in a variety of ways. Most people, if asked how carbon dioxide got into the atmosphere, would say from cars and factories. But in fact, most “emissions” come from breathing. Every animal on this planet takes in air, which is composed of a large variety of gasses, absorbs the oxygen within it, and expels the remnants. The main gas that is expelled is CO2. CO2 is also only 4% of the atmosphere. Ozone is only found in the atmosphere in minute quantities and is created when electricity passes through oxygen or air. The others are so minute that they don’t have much if any effect on the earth. (Bethell and Avery and Singer)

The theory that the Greenhouse effect will cause warming has a large number of flaws. For example, once the earth warms up, more water will evaporate from the oceans. This disputes two of global warming proponent’s theories. One is that the sea will not rise as much as they say, up to three meters in the next century, due to the increased evaporation. Also, when the water evaporates, more clouds will form. This may seem insignificant, but in reality, clouds cause much of the heat from the sun to be much more easily deflected back into space. This will counteract the warming and therefore create a cycle of warming and cooling. The earth will warm and produce clouds which will then cool the earth and then stop forming and then the earth will warm again. This flaw alone already damages the theory of global warming. (Singer and Avery)

Back in the 1940’s to the 1970’s, we were in an age where extremely high amounts of fossil fuels are burnt, and the release of CO2 was at an all time high. But contrary to what most people think, the earth actually cooled slightly, about 1 degree to be exact. A chart, commonly called the hockey stick, shows a supposed path of the global temperature over the passed thousand years or so in correlation with supposed CO2 levels. It is so called because the temperature remains rather steady until about 100 years ago where it shoots up suddenly and forms the “blade” of the hockey stick. This chart which has become a fundamental part of proponents of manmade warming is incredibly flawed. First, it shows the steepest increase in temperature in the period from 1900 to 1940. Now this is flawed because during that time, there was virtually no fossil fuel burning until the end of that period, around 1925. This doesn’t make much sense because according to the “scientists” supporting this idea, fossil fuel burning increases CO2 output which in turn raises the temperature, but if the CO2 didn’t rise, then how did the temperature? This punches a large hole in the greenhouse effect because it relies on CO2 and if there is none than the theory has nothing that makes it correct. (Bethell, 5)

The second mistake with the chart is that even though the earth cooled slightly during the period from 1960 to 1980, the chart shows it still steadily climbing. This makes it blatantly obvious that the chart is false. The only reason the chart would do this is because it helps drive public opinion that the theory of global warming is true. The third mistake is the steady temperature “shaft” which covers the last thousand years or so, is actually very varied in its crests and troughs. There was a time called the medieval warm period from about 1000 AD to about 1400 AD was a time of great warming. In fact it warmed at an even steeper rate than it is today. Does the chart show this? The answer is an astonishing no. After that, starting from 1450 and going all through 1850, there was a time period called the little ice age. And once again, the chart does not show this. How can an extremely inaccurate chart be one of the fundamental pieces of the manmade warming argument? The answer is that by leaving out factors that may change the chart the environmentalists have the opportunity to sway public opinion because on average most of the public doesn’t know better and will trust the so called “scientists” (Bethell 6 and Singer and Avery)

The final mistake is in the manner in which the temperature was taken. In the last 20 years, when the theory was first started, temperature readings have become almost solely taken by weather stations and not tree rings and ice cores. Many of the stations that take temperature readings are in areas around cities and nearby roads. This may not seem like a major problem but in reality when around tarmac or asphalt the average temperature can rise as much as 5 degrees. Because the global temperature readings are based on averages, this will disrupt the entire supposed global temperature. Proof of this is that the global atmospheric temperature averages are significantly lower than the ground-based temperatures. This is because the weather balloons hover over the land just enough so that the asphalt and radiant heat cannot affect their temperature readings. Alas, most global warming predictions are based on ground measurements (Bethell, 4)

Some wonder how scientists can tell what the atmosphere was composed of thousands of years ago. Ice cores show what substances were in the air thousands of years ago because when the snow falls it takes some of those substances with it. Over the years the snow builds up pressure down deep and turns to ice which forms bubbles out of the gasses left behind from long ago. Because it never melts, these substances are never lost and can be seen by scientists. Ice cores taken by scientists in the Antarctic have shown that over the past few thousand years, CO2 levels have been varying drastically. Changes in the CO2 levels occur about every 400 years. Two of the most significant changes that can be seen are the medieval warm period and the little ice age. The medieval warm period was a time from about 800 AD to about 1250 AD. This time period was about 1-2 degrees warmer than it is today. During this time period, no one on the planet could even conceive the thought of an automobile or an airplane or even factories. Yet CO2 and temperature did rise. When there wasn’t a thought of CO2 emissions and the levels of the gas and the temperature still rise then there is a great problem with the theory. (Avery and Singer)

There is one great example of how nature can change itself without the help of man. During the medieval warm period, the Vikings thrived. They expanded their culture all across Europe and into the west including Greenland. They found that their farms grew fabulously and that they lived in a time where few would go hungry. But then gradually, leading up to about 1350 AD, it began to get cooler. The window of time to grow and harvest crops grew shorter and food became less plentiful. The Vikings began to die out as their current way of life could not be maintained as the little ice age struck. The little ice age was a period from about 1300 AD to 1850 AD. The average temperature dropped a full 4 degrees which caused the summers to be shorter and harvests became far less generous. People starved, and there whole civilization seemed to nearly vanish. This may not seem important at first glance, but if you read look closer, you will realize that back then there was no such thing as a car or a factory. There was no possible way the people of that time period could have caused such a climate shift. (Leidig and Nikkhah)

Volcanic eruptions can have a large affect on the climate also. During this century, there has been in fact a steeper warming trend than average, but also there have been far less major volcanic eruptions. On average, one single major volcanic eruption can cool the earth about .3 degrees over about 2 years. The reason this happens is when an eruption occurs, it injects over 26 million tones of Sulfur Dioxide. This substance is extremely reflective and reflects the suns direct radiation out into space. Because there have been no major volcanic eruptions, the warming trend has become steeper and it just so happened to be during the time when we have really started to emit CO2. (Gaspig)

The Sun has also been a major culprit in causing global temperature increase over the past 150 years. There has been an increased output of radiation and therefore heat. Scientists believe that there has been an increase in the number of sunspots, large dark spots on the suns surface that, although cooler, emit much higher amounts of radiation. The way scientists know that there has been more solar activity over the past 150 years than the past 1000 is a decrease in the substance, beryllium 10. Beryllium 10 is a substance that is produced by radiation from the sun. The reason the earth cooled slightly during the period from 1945 to 1980 was because of a drop in the amount of sunspots and as a result a decrease in the radiation output from the sun. This shows how much of an affect the sun can have on the environment. (Leidig and Nikkhah)

The current low amount of clouds decreased volcanic activity, and an increase in the suns radiation output have caused the earth to warm, not manmade emissions of CO2 or other greenhouse gasses causing the greenhouse effect. There is nothing human beings can do about it except wait out the “storm” and wear lots of sunscreen. Try as we might to reduce CO2 output and “save the environment,” all we will do is damage the economy and then realize in about 200 years that it was all for nothing as mother earth will begin its slow yet steady process of cooling itself off.