Proponents of the Greenhouse theory cite a 1.5°F temperature increase since 1850 as evidence that man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are dangerously heating up the planet. A careful examination of the Earth's climate history, however, shows that this warming is the result of a natural fluctuation in temperature and poses no threat to humanity.

The Earth's temperature is constantly rising and falling. Since the last ice age ended 10,700 years ago, there have been seven major warming and cooling trends. Of the six trends preceding the current period of warming, three produced temperatures warmer than the present average of 59°F while three produced temperatures that were cooler.

The two centuries preceding the current era of global warming were the coldest in nearly 11,000 years. In the year 1650, the temperature plunged to a low of 57°F, the coldest point since the ice age. That is why the era between 1650 and 1850 is known as the Little Ice Age.

The two periods in history in which the planet was significantly warmer than today were characterized by bountiful harvests and economic prosperity. Between 6500 B.C. and 3500 B.C., the temperature rose to 62°F, three degrees warmer than today. This is the temperature that Greenhouse theory proponents claim will be the temperature by 2100 and which will supposedly wreak havoc on the environment. However, it was precisely during this time that the Agricultural Revolution began, laying the foundation for civilization. Between 900 A.D. and 1100 A.D., when the temperature rose to 61°F, Europe experienced record harvests and economic prosperity.

Global warming is a recovery from the Little Ice Age. The 1.5°F temperature increase since 1850 represents a return to normal following four centuries of unusually cold weather. Even the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a proponent of regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, concludes that " . . . some of the global warming since 1850 could be a recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than as a direct result of human activities."

Information from: The National Center For Public Policy Research's National Policy Analysis Paper #194.

Article by Climate scientist James Nash

"It is very important to address the fact that Earth is not the only planet to be experiencing climate change in our solar system currently. In fact, many astronomers have announced that Pluto has been experiencing global warming, and suggested that it is a seasonal event, just like how Earth 's seasons change as the various hemispheres alter their inclination to the Sun. We must remember that it is the Sun that determines our seasons, and thusly has a greater impact upon the climate than we could ever even try to achieve.

In May of 2006, a report came forward revealing that a massive hurricane-like storm that occurred on Jupiter may be caused by climate change occurring on the planet, which is expected to raise its temperatures by 10 degrees. National Geographic News reported that a simultaneous rising in temperature on both Mars and Earth suggest that climate change is indeed a natural phenomenon as opposed to being man-made.

The report further explains how NASA has reported that Mars' carbon dioxide ice caps have been melting for a few years now. Sound familiar? An astronomical observatory in Russia declared that, 'the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun'. They further point out that both Mars and Earth have, throughout their histories, experienced periodic ice ages as climate changes in a continuous fashion. NASA has also been observing massive storms on Saturn, which indicate a climate change occurring on that planet as well.

NASA 's Hubble Space Telescope has also been recording massive climate changes on Neptune 's largest moon, Triton. Triton, whose surface was once made up of frozen nitrogen, is now turning into gas. The Associated Press has reported that satellites that measure the temperature of sunlight have been recording an increase in the sun 's temperature, meaning that the sun itself is warming up.

Even the London Telegraph reported in 2004 that global warming was due to the sun being hotter than it has ever been in the past 1,000 years. They cited this information from research conducted by German and Swiss scientists who claim that it is increasing radiation from the sun that is resulting in our current climate change.

Olivier Chenet, a leading French scientist, who was among the first scientists to try to warn people of the dangers of global warming 20 years ago, now believes that 'increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena'. Allegre said, "There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

He is convinced that global warming is a natural change and sees the threat of the 'great dangers' that it supposedly poses as being bloated and highly exaggerated. Also recently, the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus said, when discussing the recent ruling by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that global warming is man-made, '"Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so".

So if the above is to be believed why are the worlds powers so keen to persuade us that this problem is man made?

To answer this question let us look at what the worlds super powers are doing to reduce carbon emissions so that we can avert this man made global warming disaster.

Ok, so we pay more for fuel and flights but we aren't actually reducing our usage, we are using as much as we ever did in ever increasing quantities. So how do the powers-that-be expect to solve the problem through raising taxes?

Could it be that creating taxes is a convenient way of making money in the full knowledge that the disaster (if indeed one will occur) cannot be averted but safe in the knowledge that when disaster does strike, we will only have ourselves to blame. After all, we as individuals haven't reduced our carbon emissions despite the high taxes have we?

I guess we'll never know.

Global warming: What's the real truth?

http://www.helium.com/items/540228-global-warming-whats-the-real-truth

http://science.howstuffworks.com/global-warming7.htm

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_global_warming_real

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/made+global+warming+real/1623981/story.html

http://logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm

http://help.com/post/231469-is-global-warming-real

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoWnB13pXtk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUQAHVQ1Psc

Experts: Global Warming Is Real
Reuters 02.18.05

A parcel of studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer, climate experts said on Thursday.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well underway, said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

"The real place to look is in the ocean," Barnett told a news conference.

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate steady ocean warming.

"The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people," he said.

The report was published one day after the United Nations Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

Barnett urged U.S. officials to reconsider.

"Could a climate system simply do this on its own? The answer is clearly no," Barnett said.

His team used U.S. government models of solar warming and volcanic warming, just to see if they could account for the measurements they made. "Not a chance," he said. And the effects will be felt far and wide. "Anywhere that the major water source is fed by snow ... or glacial melt," he said. "The debate is what are we going to do about it."

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals.

Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.

"As the Earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter," she said. "Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet."

A circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt is in danger of shutting down, she said. The last time that happened, northern Europe suffered extremely cold winters.

She said the changes were already causing droughts in the western United States.

Greenland's ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by 23 feet, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly, Curry said. Already freshwater is percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable.

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals.

And the disappearing ice shelves meant big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals were losing their homes.

"In 1997 there was a mass die-off of a bird called the short-tailed shearwater in the Bering Sea," Smith told the news conference. The birds, which migrate from Australia, starved to death when warmer waters caused a plankton called a coccolithophore to bloom in huge numbers, turning the water an opaque turquoise color.

"The short-tailed shearwater couldn't see its prey," Smith said.

Do you believe in aliens? That life from another planet far away came to Earth to begin life anew. For some this is an explanation of global warming. Beings from another world found themselves faced with the global catastrophe of global warming and their environment began to fail. They packed their bags and traveled to our planet. Is this fact or is it fiction? No one knows for sure. The global warming debate is present in our news and media but whether or not it has something to do with planet-traveling aliens may be something for the Sci-Fi Channel.

It is all around us. It is on the weather stations. It faces us when we decide to purchase a new car or even a cleaning product. The real issues come when trying to learn about global warming. There is a lot of conflicting information on the internet and there is not one group that can agree on all aspects of the global warming debate.

Over the past century, with out a doubt, global temperatures have risen. While the rise in temperature has been only a degree or so, the concern is whether the Earth's temperatures will continue to rise and what impact that will have on the environment. The controversy about the warming of the earth is a result of conflicting evidence.

The fact that global warming also occurred in the prehistoric era is a scientific point. Some think a large meteor hitting the planet caused an big change in the earth's temperature. Is that what killed the dinosaurs? Science cannot prove this conclusively yet. The political and industrial lobbies further complicate conversations about global warming. The contention of these groups is that, we currently do not know enough about the effects of global warming to limit industrial emissions.

The facts about global warming differ according to which group is publishing the information. Unfortunately this translates into a myriad of confusing ideas and theories that the average citizen must muck through in order to determine the truth. Scientists continue to perform studies and monitor global temperatures but until there is a published analysis of the results that is completely definitive, then there will be doubt.

As a Santa Monica architect specializing in green architecture, James Heimler knows the importance of protecting our environment and its resources. James does his part to slow the threat of global warming by practicing architecture sustainable design within his firm.

By Rob Tendick
Published: 12/1/2007

from http://www.samizdata.net

This is interesting. Excerpt:

The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.

However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet".

Well, they will be now.

I have for a long time wanted to know not just about global warming itself, but about the alleged expert consensus concerning its man-madeness. This should stir up a good discussion.

There is a tendency among free marketeers to say that global warming is all nonsense, not for the good reason that they actually think it all nonsense, but because they see it being used to establish a world government, which they oppose for other reasons. And I am sure that many who insist on the reality of global warming and of its man-madeness do so because they want a world government, which they favour for other reasons.

Yet there is no logical reason why one should not be a free marketeer who believes in the reality of man-made global warming, or a world governor who thinks it is all hooey.

Personally I am a free marketeer, and a sceptic on global warming, in the sense of not being persuaded that it is happening catastrophically, or that it is man-made. Note: a sceptic, rather than a disbeliever. I am a global warming agnostic rather than a global warming atheist. (And I think the religious vibes of this debate are all too real. The Environment seems to have replaced God for a lot of people.) I genuinely want to learn more about this alleged horror, on the off chance that I might be able to climb down off the fence, in one direction or another.

Question, what measures should a free marketeer who believes for sure that global warming is taking us all to catastrophe, is man-made, and is reversible, favour?

I say: develop technology more. Let us all get a lot richer. Meanwhile, devise a technical fix for the damn thing. And then rattle a big tin and do it. All the while arguing about it in forums like this one, and on the internet generally. (Interesting how the internet is undermining unacknowledged bias in the specialist science media as well as in things like CBS.)

But then, I favour most of that anyway, even if global warming and its man-madeness are hooey.

from http://mhutch.blogspot.com

For many years now, liberal politicians and their cohorts in the major U.S. news media have tried to convince us that global warming is not only real - but in a few short years it could cause the death of us all. While it is tough to argue that the Earth is not warming, to automatically assume that mankind and our pollution is solely responsible for the rise in temperatures is part of the reason why so many people believe that global warming is not real.

I believe that most Americans would believe global warming is real except for the actions of former Vice-President Al Gore. What Gore did was turn the whole global warming movement into a political hot potato between liberals and conservatives. In my opinion, science should be left to the scientist and controversial scientific opinions like global warming should not be grabbed onto by Al Gore or anyone else for that matter for political advantage or in an attempt to win a Nobel Peace prize for his work in promoting global warming as real science.

I believe that global warming is real and to a certain extend the dirty ways of mankind are making it worse. However, President Obama will soon learn that Americans will say one thing when asked about global warming in public opinion polls and react entirely different when the changes necessary to correct it start to cost them money. While I believe that global warming is real, I do not believe that it will be the certain cause of destruction of the planet as so many true believers do.

Let's face it, if global warming is real - then we need to clean up our ways so our children have a decent planet to call home. However, if global warming is not real - then what will it really hurt to better clean up after ourselves? I know real global warming deniers would argue about how much it will cost us to solve a problem that does not exist. To that I say, yes it will cost money to clean up the environment - but with so much waste already going into pork projects in Washington that the public will never see benefit from, cleaning up this planet is something both rich and poor alike will appreciate equally.

Written by Monte Heib, P.E.

"Global Warming" is something that has been happening for a long time. The temperature of the earth has been increasing more or less continuously since the time of the cave man.

Approximately 18,000 years ago the earth began a gradual process of warming up after more than 100,000 years of Ice Ages. Much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.

By about 15,000 years ago the earth had warmed sufficiently to halt the advance of glaciers, and sea levels worldwide began to rise.

By 8,000 years ago the land bridge across the Bering Strait was drowned, cutting off the migration of men and animals to North America.

Since the end of the Ice Age, Earth's temperature has risen approximately 16 degrees F and sea levels have risen a total of 300 feet! Forests have returned where once there was only ice.

From a geological perspective, global warming is the normal state of our accustomed natural world. Technically, we are in an "interglacial phase," or between ice ages. The question is not really if an ice age will return, but when.

Don't panic when you hear global alarmists warning the earth may have warmed almost 1 degree in the last 200 years. Although this still hasn't yet been proven, it is in fact exactly what should be happening if everything is normal.

If Global Warming stops, then you can start worrying! It means our warm interglacial phase is over and we may be heading into another Ice Age!

by Michael A. Weber
Published August 25, 2009

Note: Michael submitted this post in response to a recent post and discussion at the Stop Global Warming blog. As I've noted on this blog before, global warming/climate change is an animal rights issue. Animal advocates oppose animal agriculture for ethical reasons, but it is also a major contributor to greenhouse gases, deforestation, habitat loss, pollution, and more--all of which endangers, harms, and kills even more animals. Free-living animals (aka wildlife) are, and will continue, dying off at alarming rates because of climate change and other environmental problems to which animal ag contributes significantly. Killing animals is killing more animals. Finally, I find Michael's arguments (including his numbers) compelling and am glad to present them here. -S. Ernst

Between the deliberate misinformation spread by folks like David Martosko of the Center for Consumer Freedom and the well-intentioned but incorrect claims made by some environmentalists, there is a lot of confusion about something that, frankly, there is no valid debate about.

The worst effects of global warming will not be effectively prevented without a significant reduction in animal product consumption. Period.

I will counter the two most common arguments I hear about this, and I hope the numbers and statistics are not overwhelming. If you are unfamiliar with the concepts of greenhouse gases, climate change, and CO2/CO2 equivalent, please read the Wikipedia article on global warming.

Argument #1: US agriculture contributes a relatively small amount of greenhouse gases, so reducing the environmental impact of our diets is not a priority.

The boldest claim along these lines that I can recall comes from the Center for Consumer Freedom, who used the EPA’s estimate that agriculture accounts for 6% of the US’s carbon footprint (as opposed to the UN’s estimate that animal agriculture is responsible for 18% of emissions worldwide, which may itself be conservative). They further extrapolated that animals account for less than half of that 6%, concluding that animal farming is only responsible for 2.5% of the US’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Martosko says, “U.S. meat production contributes a laughably tiny amount of carbon emissions to the climate-change picture … our domestic livestock operations are far more efficient and environmentally friendly [than other countries’].”

That statement is false on many levels. Martosko’s math included only the methane released by livestock and didn't include the energy used in different areas of meat production and transport, the environmental impact from the livestock’s feed, or the land cleared for pasture. Additionally, he used statistics from the Bush-era, when global warming information was being edited and censored to meet a political agenda. The actual amount of greenhouse gases caused by animal agriculture in the US is disputable, but the figure I find most accurate is that animals account for at least two tons of CO2 equivalent per person per year, which is about 10% of our carbon footprint.

But what’s more important to realize is that regardless of the exact percentage, the number appears small only because of how unfathomably big our country’s impact on the climate is in all sectors--transportation, home utilities, industrial power, and food. Each US citizen is responsible for about 5 times as much CO2 as the average person in the world. Our livestock methods aren’t in any way more environmentally friendly than other countries’--we just have such a grotesquely high impact on the climate in all other sectors that our tremendous impact from animal agriculture appears small in comparison.

The reality is that by year 2050, the world will have to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 90%. With the expected population increase, this will allow only 0.3 tons of CO2 per person per year, while we currently we emit almost 20 tons per person in the US. This amounts to needing nearly a 99% decrease of greenhouse gas emissions in the US, to be equitable to the rest of the world. When the numbers are laid out this way, it is clear that whether animal agriculture is responsible for half a ton or two tons of CO2 per year (and it may be much more than that), it is far too much.

Argument #2: “Not all meats are produced equally.” Animals can be raised in a way that is eco-friendly, and people can buy local meat to reduce transportation emissions.

Animal agriculture doesn’t have to be as horrible for the earth as it currently is--but it will never be as sustainable as vegan organic farming. It takes far more land and resources to feed people with animals than it does to feed people with the plants directly. In the average American diet, transportation of food from producer to retailer has been shown to account for a mere 4% of a food’s carbon footprint, while over 80% of the impact from food comes from the production itself--primarily from meat and milk. Eating vegan food from anywhere across the world would be less harmful to the earth than eating beef from an animal raised in one's own backyard.

Typical cows (whether for dairy or meat) and pigs are fed huge amounts of grain and soy, and on top of the resources wasted and the resulting greenhouse emissions, the animals produce methane, which is a much stronger greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Proponents of sustainable animal farming argue that raising animals on pasture allows them to live natural lives, eating grass and fertilizing the area. They even argue that the plants that grow from animal manure will sequester carbon, resulting in an environmental benefit. Unfortunately, there are mixed conclusions from experts about this, with scientists saying that grass-fed cows actually emit more methane--up to 50% more--than their grain-fed counterparts.

Additionally, with so many cows being raised in cold climates that freeze over in the winter, grass-feeding is not a year-round option. Most cows need to be fed grain at certain times of the year, or "grain-finished" at the end of their (brief) lives, resulting in some of the same environmental problems of modern farming methods. Chickens and turkeys have a smaller impact than land mammals, but calorie for calorie, it is better to eat vegetarian.

The question posed by Emily at Change.org wasn’t whether we need to go completely vegan for the environment (though I think we probably do), but whether we need to reduce meat consumption. There is not even a question about it. Even if Martosko’s numbers were true (they aren’t), and even if the best hopes of the sustainable animal agriculture proponents were feasible (they aren’t), we could still not go on eating animal products at the rate that we do.

Raising animals in a supposedly sustainable way would require many times the amount of land than is currently needed. This itself would curb meat consumption considerably, though given the issues with meat from pasture-raised animals, additional deep cuts in animal product consumption would still be needed to have the necessary benefits for the environment. Without cutting our intake of animals, and their milk and eggs, by a good 90% or so, the reduction of greenhouse gases that this earth so desperately needs will not be realized.

I find myself unable to conclude without making a case for veganism. A typical vegan diet emits only 0.14 tons of CO2 per year, compared with 2.19 from an omnivorous diet. Our agriculture system will need to be restructured no matter what we do, so that we can eat organically, seasonally, and locally, but why put more effort and money into changes that will yield smaller results? A vegan diet meets human needs, has only about 10% of the environmental impact of a typical omnivorous diet, and is unquestionably more ethical from the perspective of animal rights.