Replies

Global warming is, as a matter of scientific fact, occurring. It's a controversy what causes it. It's a controversy what to do about it. But that it exists, that's just a scientific issue, not a political one. I'm a big fan of not mixing the two. Personally, I think the scientific literature on global warming does establish a strong likelihood that carbon dioxide omissions are strongly contributing to the warming trend. Whether there may be other contributors (such as naturally occuring cycles that occur on the decade or century scale) is unknown. But none of that answers the question of how serious the warming is or what we should do about it. That is, surely, a political issue.

Global warming is, as a matter of scientific fact, occurring.

Depends on what you mean. Its warmer than it was 600 years ago, but still several degrees cooler than it was 1000 years ago. The current trend is for a slightly warmer northern hemisphere, but a slightly colder southern hemisphere. But the trends are highly dependent on which data you choose. The NOAA has been funded to find data to support the global warmers and did exactly that. If you choose the data from weather stations in the US that are not near large urban centers, we are in a cooling trend.

Carbon dioxide is not an important factor in driving global temperature because any affects it might have are swamped by water vapor. Its been recognized as a secondary secondary greenhouse gas for over 40 years. That means when the temperature goes up, there's more carbon dioxide. When the temperature goes down, there's less carbon dioxide. But most gases behave this way.

One simple weather model that helps explain why the earth's temperature has been so stable over the last couple billion years is the water cycle. If the earth heats up, more water vapor is stored in the atmosphere. At some point the cloud cover becomes sufficient to reflect enough sunlight into space to cool the planet. The earth cools. Water vapor rains (or snows) out of the atmosphere. The earth heats up again, etc., etc.

And one last tidbit - industrial nations on this planet are carbon dioxide absorbers, not emitters. The US removes one third of the carbon dioxide from the air that passes over it from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The study that established this was published in the November Science in 1998. Don't hold your breath waiting to see this info on the evening TV news.