The alarms about runaway global warming have been ringing for several decades now. According to eco-Liberals (modern-day Luddites to whom modern industry is a curse, though they gladly enjoy its benefits) and scientists who want to keep their grant money flowing, we humans are about to destroy the delicate balance of Nature. Our sin of emission consists of greenhouse gases -- mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and sulfur dioxide. Americans are usually cast as the worst offenders against Nature...or perhaps America's a safe target because we're one of the few countries that doesn't simply laugh off or imprison both scientists and Liberals. Curiously enough, America isn't even the top emitter of some greenhouse gases -- Australia and Canada are ahead of us in line for that distinction in the carbon dioxide category.

But is it serious science, or agenda-driven fear-mongering? The theory that global warming is running amuck is based on half a century of observation (taken out of context and exaggerated) which shows that the global mean temperature has risen by half a degree Fahrenheit during that time, and perhaps a whole degree over the last 150 years. At the moment, the Earth just happens to be in an interglacial period between ice ages. We're technically still emerging from the last one, which "ended" only about 10,000 years ago. In fact, during the last thousand years, the global mean temperature rose to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (during the late 12th century) and fell to 47 degrees (in the late 17th century) before rising to its 1998 peak of 58 degrees. Is that consistent with a slight fluctuation in the global mean temperature over the course of 150 years? You bet it is. Does it mean the temperature will necessarily continue to rise? Of course not. In fact, though succeeding years have still been warmer than average, they were less warm than 1998. Satellite data also indicates a slight cooling (especially in the southern hemisphere), if anything. Furthermore, an objective look at the global temperature data in context shows that the Earth is not, in fact, the warmest it has been in the last 2000 years. The global mean temperature has been even higher than it is today three times -- once just before and once after 700AD, and once just before 1000AD. Modern temperature averages only look unusual when scientists compare current instrument readings against reconstructed historical temperature data. If you "reconstruct" current data the same way as historical data, and look at today's temperatures in context, the entire case for global warming hysteria dries up.

The problem is that there is no "balance of nature," which implies a status quo that must be adhered to. The Earth has always been in a constant, if slow, state of flux. Weather cycles run in terms of centuries, if not millennia. Geological cycles run in terms of millions of years. The mean temperature of the Earth has risen and fallen in cycles for billions of years, almost all of it without being affected in the slightest by human beings. Nature occasionally dumps far more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than all of human industry could hope to equal in years. Volcanoes emit water vapor, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. Kilauea, the volcano on the main island of Hawaii, emits 700,000 tons of carbon dioxide and an average of 500,000 tons of sulfur dioxide every year. That's about the same amount of carbon dioxide as 132,000 SUVs in the same time period... and that's just one active volcano. The number of active volcanoes in the world is estimated to be between 1,500 and 3,000. You do the math. The amount of gases discharged increases dramatically when a volcano erupts. Mount Saint Helens erupted in May of 1980, ejecting over a million and a half tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere above Washington. More greenhouse gases in the atmosphere causes local warming, which causes more and heavier storms, which bring more cloud cover, which in turn causes an increased albedo effect (the amount of sunlight reflected back into space), which lowers the local temperature. The Earth is a self-correcting, self-regulating system. It's funny how the same people that tell us the Earth is "alive" don't understand that fact. 

The Day After Tomorrow was created specifically to scare its audience with a Hollywood look at runaway global warming destroying Civilization As We Know It. This is the movie Al Gore wants you to see, even though "[s]cientists and Gore agree that the movie is loose with the scientific facts." I won't say you shouldn't see the movie. Just keep in mind that the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies have as much hard science behind them.

Joe Mariani was born and raised in New Jersey. He lives in Pennsylvania, where the gun laws are less restrictive and taxes are lower.  His essays and links to articles are available at http://guardian.blogdrive.com.

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