Climate Change Facts. The Debate Lives
If you read a newspaper or watch network news, you will hear that global warming is doing this or that. Some times it is claimed that human produced green house gas is causing this to occur. Climate change is a fact of our planet and it is a very complex climate system. The earth has gone from almost completely glaciated to almost ice free. During the time that the dinosaurs roamed the earth the CO2 levels were 18 times higher than now and I would suppose quite warmer than now as well.
As to the debate. It is not what you have been led to believe. The debate is about whether humans, producing green house gas, are causing climate change to occur. The climate change deniers are simply saying that the science and data does not prove that humans drive climate change. The climate change alarmists are simply saying humans have broken the planet with green house gas production and must almost reverse course on energy usage to prevent climate change. It is that part that burns my gizzard.
1. If the climate has always changed, even before humans, how can we prevent climate change?
2. If the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is not getting hotter, how can it be causing the slight blip in surface temperature?
3. If they are heat trapping gasses, then where is the heat held to warm the surface?
4. With humans producing 0.28% of all green house gas, and 99.72% produced naturally, it boggles the mind that such a small contribution could cause the catastrophic effects attributed to climate change?
I am not saying that the long term climate change effects might not be as described, I am saying we did not cause it and that our contribution is negligable to non-existant. At the same time, we should keep pollution down to a minimum and conserve energy whenever possible. If we cut it all tomorrow and turned off our cars and power plants, the climate will still change at approximately the same rate as it has before humans existed.
Please check out the Global Warming Primer from the National Center for Policy Analysis