It's happening, and it isn't our fault

[piolenc]

Yes, climate change is happening - climate is always changing. But it's not our fault, and there's nothing we can do to alter global climate. Carbon dioxide does not drive global temperatures on Earth. That should be obvious because in the distant past Earth had as much as four to eight times more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere than it does now, and it did not go into runaway heat death. Instead, photosynthetic life appeared, which released free oxygen and gave us more or less the atmosphere we have now. Further, the ice core data clearly show that the CO2 curve lags BEHIND the temperature curve, by 800 to a thousand years, so if there is a cause-and-effect relationship (not proven) then temperature is the cause and atmospheric CO2 level the effect. (A friend has proposed an explanation in terms of the temperature dependency of CO2 solubility in seawater - not proven, but plausible.)

Sadly, the CO2 scare provides a ready-made excuse for government to expand its power, especially its power to tax. Who, after all, would dare refuse to pay a carbon tax - "it's for the planet" is even more powerful than "it's for the children!"

See "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

[Frank Woolf]

I see where you are coming from and it makes sense but if, as you say, photosynthetic life was the solution last time what will happen this time?

There were not billions of people before, there were no cities and dense jungles could grow everywhere. Now a large percentage of the ground is covered with concrete. Much of the countryside has no more trees and the Amazon Rain Forest is being destroyed at the rate of thousands of acres a day.

[pinaylover]

CO2 as the cause for global warming is just plain poor science.

First off CO2 is a gas. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere, the higher it goes the more it dissipates. The CO2 continue to drift apart until the bonds that hold them together break. By the time it gets to the upper atmosphere nothing is left of it.

Second, there are three things that can cause global warming. They are H2O in the atmosphere, the amount of cloud cover, and solar radiation. H2O in the atmosphere acts like a tiny prism and reflect of the ascending back to the ground. The same thing also happens with clouds, too. Also the correlation between sunspots and solar radiation has long been know. The lesser number of sunspots the quieter the sun, and therefore a cooler Earth. The greater amount of sunspots, the more turbulent the sun. The means more solar radiation is sent in the for of giant solar flares, therefore a warmer Earth.

And finally, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has not changed. During the last century samples shown that there was .0346% CO2 in our atmosphere. Today the amount is still the same.

Global warming is a political/economical fraud used on people to get more tax from them and make the wealthy more wealthy, like Al Gore.

[Frank Woolf]

If it is not CO2 then it is something else but I don't think anyone can seriously doubt the the climate is changing fast. The ice caps are melting multiple times faster than they have ever done for many thousands of years and the melt is accelerating. The sea water level is rising and the weather patterns are changing.

The way I see it, the cause is probably not the biggest problem. The big problem that we should be concentrating on is what are we going to do about it.

[tsarge1985]

In case you haven't seen this..I thought it was quite interesting..
Global warming

SANTA FE, N.M. — Former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, who walked on the moon and once served New Mexico in the U.S. Senate, doesn't believe that humans are causing global warming.
"I don't think the human effect is significant compared to the natural effect," said Schmitt, who is among 70 skeptics scheduled to speak next month at the International Conference on Climate Change in New York.
Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.
"They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven't gone along with the so-called political consensus that we're in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.
Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.
Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity.
In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision-making."
Williams said Heartland is skeptical about the crisis that people are proclaiming in global warming.
"Not that the planet hasn't warmed. We know it has or we'd all still be in the Ice Age," he said. "But it has not reached a crisis proportion and, even among us skeptics, there's disagreement about how much man has been responsible for that warming."
Schmitt said historical documents indicate average temperatures have risen by 1 degree per century since around 1400 A.D., and the rise in carbon dioxide is because of the temperature rise.
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Schmitt also said geological evidence indicates changes in sea level have been going on for thousands of years. He said smaller changes are related to changes in the elevation of land masses — for example, the Great Lakes are rising because the earth's crust is rebounding from being depressed by glaciers.
Schmitt, who grew up in Silver City and now lives in Albuquerque, has a science degree from the California Institute of Technology. He also studied geology at the University of Oslo in Norway and took a doctorate in geology from Harvard University in 1964.
In 1972, he was one of the last men to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 17 mission.
Schmitt said he's heartened that the upcoming conference is made up of scientists who haven't been manipulated by politics.
Of the global warming debate, he said: "It's one of the few times you've seen a sizable portion of scientists who ought to be objective take a political position and it's coloring their objectivity.

[Frank Woolf]

What bugs me is people who say "Its not our fault" meaning that we should just carry on with no concern for what is happening.

I only wish more people were concentrating on what we can do about it and prepare for the problems that obviously will arise in the future. If that includes reducing carbon emissions, stopping the destruction of the rain forests etc then so be it.

We should be investigating the changes in climate in different areas and research what crops will grow and what will not. We need to be looking at the future of water supplies in some areas and flood control or evacuation in others. There are probably a thousand other things that we could be looking at to help the world handle the change but it seems so many of those who should be doing it are only interested in who's fault it is. Of course if it does turn out it is our fault then we stand a better chance of handling it or reversing it.