The Myth of Global Warming

From Hollywood with its "The Day After Tomorrow" plot line to British Prime Minister Tony Blair's assertion that climate change is the biggest threat to civilization, we constantly hear that global warming is a fact of life. When also hear that Americans, with their gas guzzling SUVs and polluting power plants, are mostly to blame for the increase in the Earth's surface temperature over the last 50 or so years. But these dire warnings ignore simple scientific facts, for there is not a shred of persuasive evidence that humans have been responsible for increasing global temperatures.

Human induced global warming is simply a myth, pure and simple. Supporters of the global warming hypothesis contend that the carbon dioxide automobiles and power plants emit when they consume fossil fuels enters the atmosphere and prevents solar energy from escaping into space once it is reflected off the Earth's surface. This, in turn, warms the planet and will eventually result in the melting of the polar ice caps, a significant rise in sea levels, and catastrophic weather around the globe. The global-warming hypothesis makes sense on the surface and global warming supporters point to the rise in global temperatures over the past few decades as their primary evidence in support of their claim. However, scientists have been able to test the hypothesis carefully, and it does not hold up to scrutiny. During the past 50 years scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is unlikely ever to occur. The temperature of the atmosphere fluctuates over a wide range and is affected by many factors including, most significantly, solar activity.

During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average and many scientists explain this increase in temperature, especially in the last 50 years, to an increase in solar activity on the Sun's surface. However, green groups such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and Earth First use their money and public platform persuade people that an environmental disaster of historic proportions is just around the corner.

These groups have been very successful in getting their views on the environment widely accepted in the western world. They contend that humans are solely responsible for global warming. However, nature produces far more greenhouse gases than we do. For example, when the Mount Pinatubo volcano erupted in 1994, within just a few hours it had thrown into the atmosphere 30 million tons of sulphur dioxide. That is almost twice as much as all the factories, power plants and cars in the United States emit in a whole year. Oceans emit 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. Decaying plants throw up another 90 billion tons. One-hundred million years ago, there was six times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is now, yet the temperature then was marginally cooler than it is today. Many scientists have even concluded that carbon dioxide doesn't affect climate at all.

However, these facts haven't stopped environmentalists and political leaders from around the world declaring that increasing carbon dioxide emissions are the single biggest threat to mankind today. Why such hyperbole? Why do influential people push so hard for counterproductive environmental regulations that decrease economic growth and costs jobs? The simple explanation is that environmentalism is a backdoor way to implement socialism around the globe. More stringent environmental rules mean more government bureaucrats, bigger government, and higher taxes to pay for all of it.

The crown jewel of the global warming movement today is the Kyoto Treaty. It commits industrialized nations to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, by around 5.2% below their 1990 levels over the next decade. Drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, the agreement needs to be ratified by countries who were responsible for at least 55% of the world's carbon emissions in 1990 to come into force. The agreement was dealt a severe blow in March 2001 when President Bush announced that the United States would never sign it. Al Gore's (yes that Al Gore - remember him?) top climate adviser, Tom Wigley, estimated that Kyoto, if fully implemented, would avert just 0.07 Celsius of a degree of warming by 2050.

So how much will implementing the Kyoto Treaty here in the United States cost? One can't be sure but follow this link to find out how much Kyoto has already cost other nations in the world : (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm)

You make the determination on whether the billions of dollars of costs are worth the "benefits" of marginally decreasing the Earth's temperature.

In addition, follow this link for some visual graphs and charts to further illustrate the myth of global warming: http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Blair.htm

As a professor of political science at Berkeley, has quipped, "global warming" is the mother of all environmental scares. Global warming is a tempting issue for many very important groups to exploit and the left, with its unending quest to regulate the economy and increase the size of government, has seized on the global warming scare to convince us that we must address this issue now or face dire consequences. If only the facts backed this claim up.

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~ The Conservative Guy