An Insightful Look at Global Warming

I'm concerned actually about all these polar bears, with nothing to stand on. I'm sure you've noticed. Daily, without fail, on television, photos, video clips, of desperate polar bears, who, because of global warming, the plague of the twenty-first century, are mere inches away from tumbling into the frozen ocean, the block of ice they had occupied, now shrinking, soon to nothing! Oh, the anguish! My grandchildren, 7 and 9 are bombarded daily with the polar bears' plight. My grandchildren are being implored to save the poor frightened beasts. My thought is that the bears would do well to move to the Arctic equivalent of higher ground... but what do I know? Global Warming...it it a fact, or a clever conspiracy on the part of a few, to extract more dollars from the weary taxpayer?

Til recently, naturalists have explained that the world changes, the environment changes. And with change, in this case, change in climate, the creatures and plants that occupy the world change. Old species die out, over time, with wonderful new species coming in to replace them. Ah, nature, a wonderful thing.

The dinosaurs I am told were the dominant inhabitants of our world for millions of years. The planet was a fine place for reptiles, insects, fish beyond comprehension. But, times change.

Man has dominated the earth for some 50,000 years. He wasn't even here to watch the glaciers pass through, those ice masses that formed our continents, and as it happens, the American mid-west. Now we have vast flatlands, perfect for growing wheat, and corn, and even soybeans, to feed the cattle, to feed the humans. The balance as philosophers have noted is an inspiration.

But today these same naturalists are telling us that we should immediately undertake to save the current species, maintain the current climate, and these naturalists are aiming their pleas at the young, which, dear reader, I must admit makes me very skeptical. This could get expensive! I'm still stricken by the expense of modern global expansion; now are we are to add to that the price of modern, perceived, global warming?

I've done some research. The Scientific American agrees, as does National Geographic Magazine, and the list goes on, that we are indeed facing a crisis; a crisis of green-house gasses.

The "greenhouse effect" is the warming that happens when gases in Earth's atmosphere trap heat. These gases let in light but prevent some of the heat from escaping. The more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the more heat getting trapped.
Levels of greenhouse gases have gone up and down over the Earth's history, but they have been fairly constant for the past few thousand years. Global average temperatures have stayed fairly constant over that time as well, until recently. Now we are told that, through the burning of fossil fuels and other emissions, humans are enhancing the greenhouse effect, and warming our Earth. The difference between average global temperatures today and during the ice ages is only about 9 degrees Fahrenheit, and these swings happen slowly, over hundreds of thousands of years. The problem is that now these "swings" are occuring at a much accelerated rate. The Earth's average temperature has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1880 and is now warmer than it has been in the past 400 years. Many prominent scientists predict that average global temperatures are likely to rise somewhere between 2 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

Scientists often use the term "climate change" instead of global warming. This is because as the Earth's average temperature climbs, winds and ocean currents move heat around the globe in ways that can cool some areas, warm others, and change the amount of rain and snow falling. As a result, the climate changes differently in different areas.

Everywhere I've looked, I've found agreement with these scientific principles. Yet there are those well respected scientists who take exception to the current thinking.

The September, 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's "Journal of Climate" reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."

And, this, from the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine: "...Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blow dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."

Al Gore, prominent Democrat, the leading proponent, alongside rock-legend Madonna, of climate crisis, claims global warming is causing more tornadoes. If you happen to live in a tornado-prone area, this is no small concern. Yet the United Nations Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change stated, in February,2007, that there has been "no scientific link established between global warming and tornadoes".

Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported, ".. Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, British scientists reported in the September, 2006, issue of the British Journal, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, that "satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003."

And the U.N. Climate Change Panel reported, in February, 2007, that "Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century".

From the BBC: "..So, as we enter the third millennium, we should preoccupy ourselves not with the silly question of whether at outrageous expense we could predictably influence the weather, least of all by focusing on just a single component. Instead, we should consider how to adapt ourselves to the inevitability of natural climate and sea-level change." The BBC goes on to say, " These (measures to consider) might include the abandonment of sub-sea level lands condemned to flooding (including the Netherlands), shifting to Mediterranean crops in northern Europe, the re-cultivation of cold terrains (eg Greenland), and aggressive reforestation, as a microclimate control strategy to rehabilitate dry lands. As for oil, it will almost certainly be too expensive to use as a mass energy source within 25 years. Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science. "

So, I have shared with you, my friend, my research into this thought provoking and important issue, of world wide climate change, or Global Warming. Now then, what shall become of those poor Polar bears...?

BigBadJohnny (John Lake)