RSS
Home
G8 Nations are determined to control weather
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
G8 leaders meet in L'Aquila, Italy (AP Photo)
Meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations (G8) have evidently determined that weather control is within their grasp. As reported by the AP, the G8 nations have agreed to keeping the world's average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
What if the planet choses not to cooperate? It has a history of not cooperating.
There are some things we know from basic elementary and secondary education that we don't need advanced degrees and years of study to determine. We know, for instance, that around 10,000 years ago the planet was much colder than it is today. How do we know that? Anthropologists tell us that a land bridge existed at that time between Asia and North America. For a land bridge to exist, the ice caps had to be thicker then than they are today so it had to be colder then – lots colder.
Ancestors of today's native Americans walked across that strip of land to populate both North and South America. 10,000 years is a long time from a human being's perspective but, considering that the earth is upwards of four billion years old, it's a mere eye blink in geological time.
800 to 1,200 years ago the planet was warmer than it is today. How do we know that? Vikings sailed west from Iceland and colonized Greenland around the 10th century AD. At the time, Greenland was an appropriate name for the place – not so today. From Wikipedia: “[I]t (is) possible to state that areas of Greenland may have been much warmer during the medieval period than it is now ”. Viking settlements thrived in Greenland for 500 years, then the world grew colder with the Little Ice Age and the Vikings left Greenland.
Without question the average temperature of the planet rose by a whopping six tenths of a degree Celsius (one degree Fahrenheit) in the 20th century. This is attributed to post World War II industrialization and increased emissions of carbon dioxide. But hold on, the 10 warmest years in the century – in order: 1934, 1998, 1921, 1906, 1931, 1999, 1953, 1990, 1938 and 1939 – don't seem to back that assertion up. Notice that six out of the ten occur prior to WW II. Doggone planet, doesn't it know that it's supposed to heat up with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere.
Since 1998, the average temperature of the planet has actually gone down, and much of the 20th century's warming has already been reversed. (As I write this article, Thursday morning July 9th, the temperature outside is 68 degrees - definately not usual for July in Washington County.) Meanwhile we continue to emit more and more CO2 into the atmosphere. Where is the correlation?
The truth of the matter is nobody knows what the average global temperature was in 1864, or 1056, or 1776, or anytime much before the 1880 - and even so, average global temperature is conjecture due to the spotty nature of temperature observations prior to satellite observation. You see we only have reliable temperature records from sometime in the 1880s. So we are basing our notion of normal global temperature on less than 130 years of solid data. This is folly.
In all likelihood the planet will continue to surprise us as the years go by. The climate is an immensely complicated thing. Look how much North America's climate is affected by the El Niño effect thousands of miles away, and that's just one of many ocean currents that impact our daily weather. The sun is currently misbehaving as well and may be on it's way to another Maunder Minimum – only time will tell whether this is a short term quirk or a long term problem.
We simply do not know enough to state with certainty that humanity is on the verge of causing catastrophic global climate disaster. There is no scientific consensus about human caused global warming, and we certainly do not know enough to believe that through our action or inaction we can change the weather globally. This is nuts.
Want to read more articles by the Washington County Independent examiner?
Subscribe at the top of this column to receive e-mail updates.
Make a comment and add to the discussion.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
.jpg)
