Warm Air, Cold Commentary

The current politically plausible end of the world scenario involves weather. Will the world’s climate turn to extreme heat or to extreme cold? There is some evidence for both, simultaneously. There is also evidence against both. I’m not a follower of the “global climate change” idea. To get my view on it out it the open, it strikes me that both are wrong.

In the 1975, Newsweek ran a story entitled “The Cooling World” which suggested that we should cover the polar ice caps with soot. The soot would cause the ice caps to absorb more sun, and therefore melt slightly faster. The concern at the time was the climate cooling, causing shortages in food due to the lack of water (that water having been frozen in the polar ice caps). Thirty-one years later, we’re now facing a different crisis. According to the EPA the four warmest years in the 20^th century occurred in the 1990’s. The earth's temperature has risen 1 degree Farenheit in the past 100 years.

I’m not saying outright that either are completely wrong. Since I’m not one of these mythical scientists, I don’t have the expertise to declare that. There is still evidence of a coming ice age ([1] [2]). The threat of cold is considered gone and the threat of hot is presented ad nauseum. Either that or it is presented as a nebulous “global climate change” that will certainly devastate life as we know it. If the earth has been here for a billion years, then do we have the data set necessary for predicting what the weather of the earth will do next, regardless of the impact that humans have on it? Recorded data only goes back so far. There might be patterns that we are unable to see.

Even the affect that humans have can be balanced by nature. In 1883, Krakatau erupted. The ash from it fell as far as 6000km (approx. 3700 mi) away. The temperature dropped as much as 1.2C (32 times more intense a change than the EPA's declared change in the past 100 years) and stayed lowered for 5 years. Granted, such large eruptions only happen once ever 100 or so years, but there are eruptions more often (a weekly activity report is released by the Smithsonian). Do these natural occurances have a similar impact on the global climate?

I'll agree that the earth's climate is changing (it seems like the Earth is consistantly changing in some way or another). I do not think that humans are solely reponsible for that change. Conflicting predictions indicate that these mythical scientists don't really know what's going on. For all the press about scientists agreeing, they really don't. If it really is a problem, why use it for political gain rather than stepping up to stop the problem? For all the political talk about saving the environment, nothing really has been done to provide a solution. Sure, the "we should all stop doing this" (this being using freon, exploring for new oil sources, driving SUVs, etc...) is nice lip service, but I don't see it really meaning anything. All in all, it seems like just a lot of hot air.