This article takes the position that the planet is in a general warming trend after the last ice age, mostly for natural causes, but significantly enhanced by the historically recent economic activity of an exploding human population, which can dangerously exacerbate the trend results and dangerously alter the natural outcomes of the cycle. 

One of the problems with the junk science feed to the non scientist general public is that for an untrained eye it will look real. The statistics, modeling and graphics can be spin in any direction the junk science promoter wants and for most people may look real and scientific.

Hopefully, the reader may have a better idea about why the seemly contradictory data presented by junk science promoters is actually consistent with the trends the growing body of empirical evidence is showing and why now that we took advantage of fossil fuel produced energy to the extent of growing an enough technologically advanced civilization, is time to depart into other ways of producing energy.

Not all the junk science is on the side of the anti global warming camp, some is also in the pro global warming camp. The later, usually promoting doom and fear for reasons exogenous to real science and more related to ideology and actual politics, some to business interests competing with the traditional energy industry.

Sometimes an opposite camp may put moles in the other side faking they support an opposite idea of that of their background supporters. Then, use bad data that is then debunked by the background supporters to the discredit of their opposition. Is very Machiavellian (Rove-ian if you like...) 

Now to the explanations.

First of all, is good to distinguish temperature from actual heat content. Temperatures, measure how fast atoms and molecules move or vibrate (their kinetic energy). The actual heat content is the total amount of energy for a given volume of mass (the net sum of the kinetic energy of its components).

In example, you can have a several million degrees F plasma and if it goes into your skin, you may feel nothing, because the plasma had a lot of energy but little density, therefore total mass, and the total amount of heat in relation to your body is negligible. Probably, a block of ice will have more heat content than the same volume of an almost-like-a-vacuum plasma with a temperature of a million degrees (usually measured in degrees K or Kelvin, after Lord Kelvin). Is like trying to hammer a nail with a feather, energy wise, you maybe able to nail it, if you reach extreme velocities (and if the feather structure does not fall apart first).

The effects of changes in global temperatures are not linear. The effects of a uniform change in temperature across the globe are not the same for all regions. Adding or subtracting numbers in the temperature scale does not produce an easy to predict effect on our overall environment.  You may have an area with raising temperature and another adjacent to it cooling down. The average temperature might be going up (or down) as well as the total heat content.

To talk about the overall effects, we talk better as climate change, which, within an overall trend, have region-specific thermodynamic properties, effects and manifestations and specifics about how the region deals with heat content.

Different regions have different configurations and different properties, one might be a sea, a lake, a mountain, a valley, may be in the tropics, or have ice, or is a low or high altitude plateau, a large continental land mass, a peninsula, a big island, a small island, have a warm or cold ocean current passing nearby. The geographic and topographic possibilities are many, and, therefore, the possibilities of climate variations related to changes in temperature and the ability of the area to absorb, retain and release heat content..

Aside from physics and semantics, let’s review, briefly, the many things and cycles involved and try to wade through the ideological fog thrown at the general public by the many factions contending about this matter, some legitimate as part of the scientific debate in the backdrop of changing empirical evidence and the efforts from interests affected by the potential actions of the stakeholders on this very important issue.

There are many overlapping cycles that can affect the global average temperature (like the sun cycles, variations on the sun and earth magnetic fields, orbital variations on the planetary system, including our moon, the precession of the equinoxes, and others).

There are many overlapping cycles and sets of local and global environmental conditions that, over time, in a dynamic way, can result in climate change, this not counting the static effects, viewed on a specific point in time.

Some of these overlapping cycles and their resulting conditions reflect changes in the planet rotation, slowly but ever changing land mass distribution, random comet and asteroid impacts, ocean current allocation, albedo  (light reflectivity around the planet, which had in the past contributed to make the planet a ball of ice during a runaway planet cool down), variations in solar radiation, induced changes in atmospheric composition and it resulting change in mechanics, geological activity (like volcanism and plate tectonic movements), land and oceanic water salinity and general composition, the actions of life organisms (or the lack thereof, including mass extinctions) and the emergence of new life forms, and the different element and composite chemical cycles.

Of course, there is the normal planetary evolution, from a primal gas disk coalescing into small bodies sticking by gravity to each other into a chaotic environment, through collisions with other large bodies, changes in the internal fluid dynamics and the resulting changes in the planet magnetosphere and more.

Statistically unfiltered data will show disparities and inconsistencies between the long term trends, both global and local, the local state of things at a given time and the adjacent results for the same measurements, sort and long term.

Many times, within a long term trend, one will see many short terms variations contradicting or enhancing the trend.

Is like watching a stock market graph, the long term trend might be upward, reflecting the size of the market, technological change and increasing productivity, but there are economic cycles that may perturb the trend, causing significant drawdowns in the market or, in the other side, market bubbles.

Any one who trades, will tell you that watching a trend through different time frames may yield different tendencies specific to the time frame. A ten year long trend may be up, a two year trend may be down, a one month may be flat and day long trend may be up, an hour long time frame may have an up trend , a fifteen minute time frame may be down, a five minute time frame might be up, a minute time frame my be down and a tick by tick graph would be random, only possible to trade by the presence of buyers and sellers constantly moving the bid and the ask.

Also, there is the statistical noise caused by the different overlapping cycles and random events and their weight in the statistics.

Junk science promoters will not take out the statistical noise and will use the time frame that better fits their idea.

Weather in a trend, may not be linear or consistent to what could be expected. In example, a warming trend, may melt enough ice near the end point of an ocean current and the resulting change in salinity may literally stop the current, very fast, thus, will stop the current's effect on the regions which weather it influences.

This happened before probably many times. During the long term warming trend after the end of the last ice age, a warming spike, probably of thermohalinic origin, drastically reduced the salinity of the Gulf Stream current near Greenland and shut down the current, bringing the little ice age to Europe and parts of North America. This happened in the middle of a global warming trend. The little ice age ended about the time of the beginning of the industrial revolution, mostly by natural causes as the salinity level came back to what we now see as normal.

This could happen again, very soon, and very fast, if the current multi decadal cycle in the Atlantic thermohaline conveyor belt, which transports warm water over the ocean surface from the tropics to the temperate latitudes, continue to be enhanced and in its warm water advance to the north from the tropics, produces a rapid melting of Greenland ice cap and lots of fresh water influx to the end point of the Gulf Stream Current that, after altering water salinity and thus, its buoyancy, preclude the water from sinking at that point, therefore, interrupting its back travel to the tropics via the ocean floor (the reason it operates, figuratively, as a conveyor belt). 

Natural causes, like the several multi decade atmospheric and oceanic oscillations discovered during the past hundred years, could be the cause of the shutting down of the Gulf Stream current, as well as others. However, measurable enhancements to the heat inputs to these phenomena can not be ignored as any unit of input could produce unpredictable and even very large effects on the results, even causing this event to come faster.

It seems that something similar happened at the beginning of the Mayan Calendar, a little over five thousand years ago, where some parts of the planet had rapid cooling and others droughts and others heavy rains. Other oceanic current systems could be also affected.

Another example of non-linearity in the expression of a warming trend is the hurricane occurrence. Hurricanes are one of the ways the atmosphere redistribute heat.  The tropics receive far more solar radiation than the polar regions. This horizontal temperature differential is partly taken to equilibrium by much of the large scale weather and jet streams. One of such mechanism are the hurricanes. 

Dr. Kerry Emanuel pointed to the possibility of less but more intense cyclones caused by an increase in global temperatures.

The general popular logic is that the more heat, the more hurricanes and general bad weather. 

It has been observed that during very strong heat waves, like the one during 2010, which in, western Asia contributed to dislocate southward low pressure systems and enhanced monsoon activity over Pakistan, where it produced disastrous flooding, the tropics were relatively quiet.

There is a good chance that the hot air raising from the continental masses, sank over the relatively cooler oceans. This subsidence, created a very stable atmosphere that precluded the formation of large clusters of thunderstorms and inhibited the formation of tropical storms, even though the ocean content was at record levels, the evaporation related cooling was low due weak trade winds, it was a la Niña year, and the wind shear was low. Once the heat wave ended, a string of cyclones formed in rapid succession in the Atlantic.

As one can see, global warming can lead to unexpected results and to isolated or even regional cooling that, to those manipulating and bending the statistics to fit their own purposes, may give credence to their positions, scientific and/or political, even if illusory.

During the course of the scientific debate, there has been a tendency for more traditional meteorologists to explain climate change in terms of the cycles mentioned earlier in this article, the other camp has being pointing out to the growing evidence of being the economic activity of an exploding human population an important cause of climate change and the current global warming trend.

These scientists point to what is called ‘the hook,’ a violent spike upwards in the temperature trend starting during the mid of the industrial revolution, shortly after the end of the mini ice age. The 'hook' is a very abnormal spike that breaks abruptly with all the statistical temperature historical trends across most moving average and seasonally adjusted  measurement spectra.

After filtering out the statistical noise and the effects of the overlapping natural cycles, the ‘hook’ still persists and coincides with the increasing volume of gases that can create a greenhouse effect. The main gases are, in the order of greenhouse effect production, water vapor, methane and carbon dioxide. The most marked increase has been in the carbon dioxide.

An increase in carbon dioxide can contribute to enhance plant life for some time, until the acidity of rain and eventually ground water, put a top to plant life enhancement. Too much of it, could increase temperature to the extreme of affecting atmospheric mechanics and in some areas, increasing desertification, also to contribute to sea raise level.

Interestingly, some level of greenhouse effect is needed to support life on earth. Without our current atmospheric composition and mass, our median temperature could be around zero degrees Celsius. Another run away ice age like the one that appears to have happened five hundred million years ago and killed almost all life on earth could happen again.

It seems that the weight of some of the massive ice shell helped to dislocate some tectonic boundaries and reignited volcanic activity, which helped to unload into the atmosphere, a large quantity of greenhouse gases, which helped to raise temperatures and melt the ice.

A big danger of having increasing levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is that the occurrence of greenhouse gasses producing natural events, like in example, volcanoes, can exacerbate the effects of the current trends.

Another effect of climate change in the direction of global warming, as the mounting evidence seems to point, is that the weather, at some point could become more violent as the amount of heat to be redistributed could be more and horizontal temperature differences could be exacerbated.

Of course, one of the most feared effects could be a rapid seas levels raise, although is expected that this will happen slowly, especially at first, unless a catastrophic polar caps melting occurs.

A well-funded effort to discredit scientists stating that a significant amount of the global warming trend is human made has been on the way for quite a time. This is not new and it happened to every other current of thinking pointing to a misalignment of the special interest activities in relation to the public interest.

Recently the Oil Industry funded several scientists to make a well produced movie trying to discredit climate change. Many of the scientists who participated later sued the movie producers as, according to the scientists, they were quoted out of context.

Other groups were funded to hack the e mails of scientists discussing among themselves in technical terms how to deal with statistical data in their findings. Parts of e mails were selected and put out of context in an effort to discredit the scientists. Eventually the emails were reviewed and nothing unethical was found and the matter was quickly dismissed and the interests behind this were exposed.

Dr. Jeff Masters have several blog articles in this respect and there are several well researched publications tracing all these attempts from special interests to block legislation, and miss inform the general public,  after hijacking ideologies to this end. A couple of interesting books are Climate Cover-up and Doubt is their Product.

Dr. Masters have a blog article on these books.

As the thinking about these environmental challenges is taking root in society, the industry and government has been responding by shifting their policies and resources to more environmentally friendlier strategies.

We cannot fight the very powerful forces of nature in the long term, but can adapt and protect ourselves while the moment of the big decisions and actions accompany the reality of our evolutionary path through the universe.

As a final note, there is a chance that some groups sponsored by the anti global warming campaign will be advertising their sites in this article, following the recipe described inClimate Cover-up and  Doubt is their Product.  There are several Web Sites that track who is behind many shadowy groups and sites, one is Open Secrets. Another popular site isExxon Secrets, which shows how the largest oil company in the world is still funding Junk Science to manipulate public opinion.

A site with revealing information about how the social media is manipulated by industry interests is at Climate Progress. A new way of tracking disinformation campaigns explained here. There is a chance that a special interest funded site named 'isthereglobalwarming' and/or others, like 'isthereglobalcololing,' will try to spam with ads this article and others.