Global Warming

Debunking hot hysteria
Political agendas, massive misinformation fuelling climate debateBy LORRIE GOLDSTEIN
Here are some things you probably haven't heard in all the recent hysteria being spouted about global warming by too many politicians, media and environmental activists. To keep this controversy in perspective:
1. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has experienced many protracted periods of global warming and cooling that had nothing to do with human beings because we weren't yet alive.
Glaciers melted and ice ages locked the Earth in their grip long before we existed.
Scientists say there have been near-extinctions of life on Earth five times because of climate change and other factors, the last one occurring about 65 million years ago.
FOREST FIRES
None of them had anything to do with post-industrial man putting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels like oil and coal. Erupting volcanoes unleash huge amounts of greenhouse gas. So do forest fires and decomposing plant life.
2. Claims by some environmental activists and media that this year's mild winter or hurricane Katrina were caused by man-made global warming are simply irresponsible.
Serious researchers stress that while climate change obviously affects weather, no single weather episode can be blamed solely or conclusively on global warming caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists know that if they start to make this claim, they'll be asked how, since they can't predict the weather two weeks from now, they can predict it decades or centuries into the future.
In fact, predicting climate change and forecasting weather are different issues. Unfortunately, too many politicians, environmental activists and media who often have a political agenda to ram through the Kyoto accord, are deliberately blurring this important distinction.
This is understandable because the UN treaty is highly controversial.
Many Kyoto critics charge it is more concerned with transferring wealth from the First World to the Third World than seriously reducing man-made greenhouse gases.
3. While there is widespread agreement the world is going through a sustained period of warming, from the 1940s to the 1970s we experienced a period of global cooling, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. Back then, Time, Newsweek and others ran stories predicting a possible new ice age. Oops.
Many scientists believe this cooling period was partially the result of post-industrial man injecting pollutants into the air. These pollutants reflect the sun's rays back into space, unlike greenhouse gases which trap heat.
Ironically, as we continue to clean up these pollutants, as we should, some think this will contribute to global warming.
4. The real debate on global warming is about whether man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing it to happen at an accelerated rate that risks, over time, cataclysmic climate change. Most climate change scientists believe this. A minority don't or argue the man-made effect is not significant. Serious researchers do not hysterically shout down as "global warming deniers" anyone who disagrees with them.
Rather, they argue, there is very strong evidence -- many say it's conclusive -- based on both scientific observation and computer modelling that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing a rapid increase in global warming that cannot be explained by any natural causes.
They say it is prudent to err on the side of caution and reduce these emissions now because of the possible catastrophic climate changes that may result over the coming decades and centuries.
5. One can be skeptical about all this, and Kyoto, and still agree with the argument it makes sense to conserve non-renewable fossil fuels like oil and coal and reduce our reliance on them. But the Cassandras, who claim that every time there's a hurricane, tsunami or heat wave, the direct and sole cause is man-made global warming, usually have a political agenda or don't know what they're talking about, or both.
By the way, without greenhouse gases like water vapour and carbon dioxide, we'd all freeze to death.
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