Global Warming: Fact or Folly?

There are basically three ideas people have about our climate. One group believes that whatever changes that occur are all a part of a cycle as old as nature itself. They really can't see what all the fuss is about. Warming and cooling cycles have been around since the earth first formed, and that is simply the way things are. This group usually vehemently denies that they, or we Humans, have had any appreciable effect on the climate of the Earth.

There is another group, which somewhat believes this first group, but also detects that we Humans may be just a little responsible for any changes in the climate. After all, they point out, things seem to be changing, but how much we should blame ourselves has yet to be determined. They form the great majority of people in the world today. Ether they can't be bothered about these things, and therefore ignore them, or they are concerned but simply can't make up their minds.

The third group comes in two varieties of folk. The first are scientists who study the effects of pollution and carbon release into the atmosphere and draw conclusion based upon the evidence and facts they discover. This group is usually not extremely vocal, but works daily to sort fact from fiction.

The other part of this group, which is not a very larger part, although they seem so because they are the more vocal part, shouts and rants and raves like Chicken Little that the sky is falling and we had better do something about it, right now. To everybody else in each other group, these people look silly, sound shrill and are generally ignored or marginalized as kooks and gloom and doom fanatics. They are the voices in the wilderness that the great majority either has no time for, or ridicules as being somehow mentally deficient in their thinking processes.

So, just how is one to know who is correct? Who has the answers, and what will those answers show us?

The scientific community is not made up of people who are looking for fifteen minutes of fame. The data gathered is sound, and the science points to the fact that we Humans are having a profound effect on our environment. Most of the effect comes from the release of long-dormant carbon in the form of fossil fuels. It began long ago when people began to use buried coal and petroleum products to heat their homes and power their industries.

Long before coal and oil were widely used, however, people burned wood. Didn't that add to the problem? Well, not exactly. Wood was a source of carbon that was still above the soil, and was part of the balance the earth had achieved over the millennia. Wood that was burned gave off carbon dioxide, true, which was then taken back in by living plants, converted back onto carbon and oxygen. For every pound of CO2 that was released in burning wood, somewhere a plant was taking in that pound of CO2 and was actively converting it back to elemental carbon and oxygen. The carbon became part of the plant, while the oxygen was released back into the air. There was a balance.

However, when the long dormant fossil fuels were once again being introduced into the atmosphere the cycle became skewed. We began taking something that had not been seen on Earth since a very early age and starting pouring it back into our atmosphere at ever-increasing rates. We built up what is essentially an excess of carbon, and today that has added up year after year. There is currently no natural way this excess carbon could be returned to a dormant state far beneath the soil, so it simply stays either in the atmosphere, or becomes dissolved in the oceans.

There is only so much atmosphere to be found on the earth - it is not unlimited - it is quite finite. Whatever the balance once was, by pouring billions of cubic feet of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, it is bound to make a change. That is simply a fact.

But the obverse side of this is that when we burn carbon fuels, they need oxygen in order to combust. In effect, not only are we dumping excess carbon into the natural cycle, but we are also in effect taking oxygen out of the same cycle. For every ONE carbon atom reintroduced into the air, TWO oxygen atoms are taken out. We are not only adding more carbon, we are in effect stealing from ourselves the very air we need to breathe. For anyone who doubts this, just close yourself in an airtight room and see how long it takes before your air becomes unbreatheable. There are still atmospheric gasses there as you breathe, but the oxygen you need to survive quickly converts to CO2, which at only a 5% concentration will kill you.

Conversely, there is about 21% oxygen present in the atmosphere. Can we live when it reaches 19%, or 15%? What about 10%? The facts are that we are oxygen breathers. Without O2 we die. We exhale carbon dioxide. When CO2 reaches too high a concentration, we die. There are about 6 billion people on earth, plus countless billions of other creatures, all breathing oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.

Furthermore, we drive cars and fly in planes and use transportation and heating and cooling that uses energy that is derived from fossil fuels, and these power plants and transportation needs ALL exhale their own quota of carbon dioxide. If you take the sum total of all carbon-dormant gasses expelled into the atmosphere over the centuries, how long would it take to gather a significant amount? Science tells us we have already reached that point.

When and where does the balance tip so that we are using more oxygen than is being replenished? Where is the tipping point when there are not enough plants alive to convert CO2 back into oxygen for us to breathe? That we do not yet know. But as we continue to tear down the great rainforests that serve as the lungs of the planet, I am certain that we either have, or will reach a tipping point of no return.

Some pundits, those who disbelieve that we are experiencing global climate change, or global warming, remind us that water is a greenhouse gas. Also, methane, and many other atoms and compounds found in nature. They claim there is nothing to fear because of a little CO2 in the air. Unfortunately, they forget or fail to mention that if we were working with the same balance of carbon present in the atmosphere that we had 500 years ago, then maybe everything could be explained simply by natural cycles.

However, we have changed the equilibrium, we have changed the balance, and that is why scientists are finding that without doubt there is something going on in our climate which does not bode well for all oxygen-breathing creatures on the Earth.

After all is said and done, I really hope that the naysayers of negative human intervention in the balance of our atmospheric climate are correct. It would be comforting to think that there is no crisis, and that the voices in the wilderness really are just kooks and screwballs. I really would like for life to just go on as it has since I was a kid.

However, being a realist, and understanding science, I have come to the conclusion that it is the rest of us who are wrong. There is a crisis, and we are part of the problem. What we do about, or fail to do about it, will determine whether or not we continue to survive as a species, and in what shape the survivors of our foolishness will be in after we are gone.

Global Warming Websites

In order to better understand the data collected on global warming, you have to do a few things that many of us are not inclined to do. First of all, you need to learn to understand just what Scientific Theory is all about. Unlike the way we casually use the word theory in everyday speech, in science a Theory is based upon an overwhelming amount of evidence, proof and facts, if you will. It is not just an educated guess or best guess. It begins with a discovery, and then eventually becomes a hypothesis. Then it often takes millions of bits of data before a scientific hypothesis will be accepted by the mainstream of the scientific community and eventually becomes a Scientific Theory.

During this process the hypothesis will be tested, scrutinized over and over again for years until the both the evidence and proof stand the test of time, or are replaced by a better model, again formulated after painstaking research and data collection leading to a new hypothesis. However, once something becomes a Theory in science, it has stood the test of an overwhelming amount of testing in order to be proven true. And remember that in order to become a Scientific Law, the Theory must be reproducible. Since things like Evolution and Global Climate Change are not reproducible in a laboratory, they may never become Scientific Laws. That does not diminish the truth they offer, however.

The truth is that most of the people who decry global warming do not have a solid grasp of what it takes to create a Scientific Theory such as that which supports the facts about global warming. In lieu of necessary facts they use anecdotal evidence, which is not applicable in creating solid science, to base their arguments. Like most conspiracy theorists, they use a set of negatives to try to prove a positive, and that is not science, that is science fiction, and there is a difference in approach and outcome.

The Scientific Method leads to the truth, while the science fiction method leads to interesting story telling. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but the turth is that you don't get good, reliable science by using faulty methods and inaccurate information. Garbage in leads to garbage out. The truly dangerous part of all this is that it "sounds good" or "feels right", and therefore people want to believe it, but that doesn't make it true.

Look at the websites I have given you below, and then scout out some of your own. Look at opposing views, but educate yourself as to what is being said, and what proof, facts and evidence backs up every point of view. It is not a simple task, but until you learn how and why global warming has become the scientifically accepted theory it is today, you will not be able to easily discern someone who is blowing smoke to someone who is stating the facts.

I found another web site that gives a lot more information about carbon entering the atmosphere. I would like for you to see if you agree that we have a problem here. It may be greater than even I explained above!

http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Global-Warming-Forest?comments