Global warming

See also Counterexamples to global warming

A composite map of Antarctica showing areas of greatest warming in red. The Wilkins Ice Shelf lies off the peninsula in the top left corner, and shows extensive warming. Overall, Antarctica shows little warming, and many areas to the East (right) are almost cooling.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a theory that suggests that human activity is causing the Earth to warm. The theory posits that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and water vapor, trap solar warmth on the planet. Industrial and vehicular emissions could therefore lead to catastrophic warming in the near future. Environmentalists use this theory as a basis to propose cuts in energy production and consumption.

Global temperatures are tracked by three different methods: satellites, weather balloons, and weather station data. All three methods confirm a modest amount of warming in recent decades. This trend can be explained by the interaction of several natural cycles, including the 11-year-sunspot cycle, the Pacific decadal oscillation, and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Although the recent warming trend is much discussed in the media, it is not what the AGW theory is about. AGW posits, based on computer modelling, that a period of rapid warming is imminent.

Difficulties with the theory:

• Carbon dioxide is insignificant as a greenhouse gas. The level of CO₂ in the Earth's atmosphere is only 400 parts per million. Ninety to 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor. There are humidity measurements going back to 1948, and no upward trend -- as there would be if water vapor was in fact a "positive feedback."
• The Earth has warmed or cooled many times. Historically, warm periods are associated with favorable climate. The Roman Warm Period of ancient times was followed by the Dark Ages Cold Period of the Early Middle Ages. The Medieval Warm Period lasted from 900 to 1300. From the 14th century to the early 19th century, there was a Little Ice Age.
• The attraction of the theory is that it supports a political agenda. The environmentalist agenda of renewables, solar energy, conservation, and world government was put together in the 1970s in response to the energy crisis and to the overpopulation scare. At that time, most scientists thought the Earth was cooling. Steven Schneider, godfather of the AGW movement, was a global cooling believer in the early 1970s. If the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is too high, this can be addressed by promoting plant growth in the oceans. Such technical fixes lack appeal because AGW is less about carbon dioxide than about creating an additional set of justifications for the anti-energy cause. Scratch an AGW believer and there is an overpopulationist or a world government socialist underneath.

Natural periods of global warming and global cooling are expected to occur regardless of human activity, and not long ago liberals were demanding more government control to combat an alleged cooling in temperatures, with some scientists warning of a possible ice age. Global cooling, a theory that predates global warming, obviously occurs naturally many times throughout Earth's geological history. The ease of refutation of anthropogenic global cooling claims foretells the eventual fate of the current global warming hysteria.

Many political activists use the term "global warming" to refer to anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW), which asserts that human activity such as spewing "greenhouse gases" is causing an increase in temperature and is more significant than natural causes. The AGW theory is supported by left-leaning political parties, as well as a majority of sovereign states, national agencies, and an intergovernmental panel (see IPCC). The reality is that there is no immediate global crisis, and even dire warnings by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) admit that significant effects will not be manifested for at least 100 years. Predictions made by climate models publicized by the IPCC have not come to pass in recent years. Many scientists, such as Hal Lewis, have decried global warming as a conspiracy for the purpose of securing trillions of dollars in grant money.

In November 2009, emails were disclosed that implicated a wrongful manipulation and concealment of data by scientists who have insisted that there is dangerous man-made global warming. Prior to ClimateGate, both the Republican and Democratic party Platforms in 2008 suggested that global warming is happening, that it is caused by human activity, and that it should be counteracted. For example, in 2007, the Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain called global warming "an issue we can no longer afford to ignore". In 2010, an independent analysis cleared the scientists involved of any wrongdoing as scientists, but remarked upon their omissions as data-presenters. Accordingly, the effects of the scandal still linger.

Former vice president Al Gore, won a Nobel Prize in 2007 for claiming that there is a dangerous man-made global warming that threatens the world. However, it has since been revealed that he convinced many people through inaccurate information in his "documentary," i.e., he only won the Nobel Prize by lying. [See Al Gore's claims below.]

Summary of arguments against anthropogenic global warming

The following facts can help dissuade even the most illogical of liberals from believing in the flawed theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Temperature flat

The overall temperature has been flat for about 16 years.

Data manipulation

Climate data stating otherwise has been proven to be manipulated.

Alternate causation

Even if global warming did actually exist, the overall effect of human activities on global warming are minimal, if not nonexistent.

Science of global warming

Presence of CO₂

One of the primary concerns of Global Warming research is the increased presence of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Original claims stated that the increase in carbon dioxide—which is a greenhouse gas—were caused primarily through the burning of fossil fuels, and that such increases were the foremost cause of global temperatures rising. Historically, Global temperature changes precede changes in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

The most obvious way that this would occur would be through the heating of ocean water. The oceans are the single largest storage unit for carbon dioxide gas on the planet, containing about 93% of the Earth's carbon dioxide. As the temperature rises, the solubility of carbon dioxide in ocean water is reduced, causing the dissolved carbon dioxide gas to enter the atmosphere, and begin trapping radiation from the sun. Scientists now believe that this cycle causes a sort of chain effect, where increased temperature causes more carbon dioxide to enter the atmosphere, which in turn causes more temperature rise.

It is also noteworthy to point out that carbon dioxide, while not as abundant in the atmosphere, has a more significant effect on global warming than water vapor does. Carbon dioxide cannot form clouds, as water vapor does. When water vapor forms clouds, those clouds actually block some of the sun's radiation from reaching the Earth, causing water vapor to both contribute positively and negatively to global temperature rise. Carbon dioxide can only act as a greenhouse gas, causing the above-mentioned cyclic effect. According to the IPCC and others, the current concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is about 392 ppm, which is the highest it has been in at about 800,000 years.

But other scientists have disputed this claim of modern-day record-high carbon dioxide readings:

Take Warsaw-based Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, famous for his critiques of ice-core data. He’s devastating on the IPCC rallying cry that CO₂ is higher now than it has ever been over the past 650,000 years. In his 1997 paper in the Spring 21st Century Science and Technology, he demolishes this proposition. In particular, he’s very good on pointing out the enormous inaccuracies in the ice-core data and the ease with which a CO₂ reading from any given year is contaminated by the CO₂ from entirely different eras. He also points out that from 1985 on there’s been some highly suspect editing of the CO₂ data, presumably to reinforce the case for the "unprecedented levels" of modern CO₂. In fact, in numerous papers prior to 1985, there were plenty of instances of CO₂ levels much higher than current CO₂ measurements, some even six times higher. He also points out that it is highly unscientific to merge ice-core temperature measurements with modern temperature measurements.

The Modern Warm Period

The average Earth surface air temperature has risen about 1 °F since 1970. Studies have ruled out the possibility that errors in the measurements and sampling significantly affect the temperature trends detected over the past century. This accounts for spatial errors in the sampling and thus also incorporates errors associated with the urban-heating effect. According to Karl et al. (1994) "Results imply that the errors associated with century-scale trends of temperature are probably an order of magnitude smaller than the observed global warming of nearly 0.5°C per 100 years since the late nineteenth century"

According to temperature reconstruction made within an Old Earth paradigm, there have been many cycles of naturally-caused global warming and cooling over many millions of years (see climate cycles). Some scientists, including Richard Lindzen of MIT, Sallie Baliunas of Harvard and Fred Singer (independent), say that the recent warming could be part of another natural cycle or random fluctuations in the atmosphere. However, many scientists also think that human activities were most likely the cause of the planet's recent warming.

Recent studies of the Milankovitch Cycles, which predict Earth's climate by studying changes in its orbit and axial tilt, suggest that we are currently 18,000 years into a 150,000 year period between ice ages. This would imply that we should expect the temperature to be rising anyway. A 2002 study by Berger and Loutre suggests 50,000 years of warmer weather before Earth begins to cool again, but that model incorporated anthropogenic forces and concluded:

While combinations of natural forcings produce a gradual warming up to about 1960, none of them leads to a warming over the last 30 years (this period