Committee For Community Involvement

Despite that, like most conservatives, I'm open minded and could be convinced that mankind is responsible for causing global warming -- but with science, not scaremongering. If the proponents of the manmade global warming theory can come up with good answers to questions like these, you can expect everyone, including me, to accept their theory:

1) The earth has warmed and cooled numerous times in the past and many of those temperature swings have been much greater than anything we've experienced so far. So, since we human beings don't really understand why those temperature swings occurred, how can we be sure that the very mild warming we've seen so far hasn't been caused by normal changes in our climate?

2) If greenhouse gasses produced by mankind are behind the roughly one degree increase in temperature over the last century, then why did the global temperature go down from roughly 1940 to 1975 even though mankind's production of greenhouse gasses was skyrocketing during that same time period?

3) We can't accurately predict whether it's going to rain or not a week from now. We can't accurately predict what the weather will look like next year (Remember that in 2005, they were predicting we'd be hammered with non-stop hurricanes in 2006 because of global warming. It didn't happen). Since that's the case, how can we possibly have any confidence in predictions of what the weather will be like in 50-100 years?

4) Mars has also been experiencing global warming. Since man can't be a factor on that planet, doesn't it suggest that perhaps a factor other than man, i.e. the sun, is responsible for the warming on both planets?

5) Back in the early seventies, the in-vogue scientific theory was that we were in the midst of global cooling that was caused by man. Now, it turns out that there was nothing much behind that except that the global temperature was getting cooler. So, where did they go wrong back in the early seventies and how do we know that we're not making the same type of mistake today in forecasting global warming?

6) Global warming alarmists will tell you that there is "scientific consensus" that mankind is causing global warming and that only a few scientists disagree. But, there are more than 17,200 scientists who say that, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." Since that's the case, how can anyone credibly claim that there is "scientific consensus" on the issue?

7) Even if mankind was responsible for global warming, how would the solutions that are being offered, like Kyoto or carbon credit trading schemes, fix the problem? Big developing countries like India and China are exempt from Kyoto and unlikely to sign on to any deal that hurts their economy, Europe isn't meeting its Kyoto goals, and environmentalists say Kyoto wouldn't fix the problem even if all of its targets are met.

8) In Bill Bryson's book on science, "A Short History Of Nearly Everything," (and yes, Bryson does appear to be a believer in manmade global warming), he notes that,

"For most of its history until fairly recent times, the general pattern was for earth to be hot with no permanent ice anywhere." -- P.427

That would seem to suggest that despite everything we hear about the "hottest temperatures on record," the global temperature is significantly cooler than it has been throughout much of earth's history. Since that's the case, is the small change in global temperature we've seen so far really out of the ordinary or anything to be alarmed about?

9) As Carl Zimmer has noted in Discover, at times in the earth's past, we've had considerably more carbon dioxide in the air that we do today, and yet it's debatable whether the temperature was significantly warmer,

"During the Ordovician Period, 440 million years ago, there seems to have been 16 times as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is today--and yet, judging from the gravelly deposits it left behind, there was also an ice sheet near the South Pole that was four-fifths the size of present-day Antarctica. The second exception is even more troubling. The Cretaceous Period, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth and CO2 levels were about eight times what they are today, has been one of the most popular case studies for global warming forecasters. And everyone knows what the climate was like during the dinosaurs’ heyday: steamy. Or was it? The latest evidence, reported just this past summer by British researchers, suggests that temperatures in the tropics 95 million years ago were no higher than they are now; and while it was a lot warmer at the poles than it is today, it was still freezing cold."

Doesn't this suggest that there isn't anywhere near as much of a close relationship between greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and the temperature as many people seem to believe?

10) Skeptics of manmade global warming have often pointed out that the rise in global temperature seems to track much more closely to increased solar activity than it does to an increase in manmade greenhouse gasses. Doesn't that seem to strongly suggest that the sun, not mankind, is more likely to be responsible for global warming?

Bonus Question) If people like Al Gore believe their own hype and think it's necessary for us to cut back our energy consumption, why aren't they practicing what they preach? If a global warming fanatic like Al Gore can’t get by on less than 20 times the amount of energy that a regular family uses, how can we reasonably expect the average family to dramatically cut their energy usage?

Quite frankly, if you buy into manmade global warming, you should have good answers for these questions or, if you don't, admit that your opinion is based more on faith and guesswork than it is on science.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2007/03/30/10_questions_for_al_gore_and_the_global_warming_crowd

Dec 11, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson

The so-called scientific consensus that global warming is man-made has been shattered with the release of a major new study backed by three universities which concludes that climate change over the past thirty years is explained by natural factors and that attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions are irrelevant.

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that temperature fluctuations over the past three decades are not consistent with greenhouse model predictions and more closely correlate with solar activity.

The report dismisses attempts to reverse global warming by reducing carbon emissions as ineffective and pointless.

Authored by Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia), the study appears in this month's International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society .

The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming," said lead author David H. Douglass.

Co-author John Christy said: Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.

Co-author S. Fred Singer said: The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth's atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface and thus the climate. Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change. We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless  but very costly."

The findings of the report help to explain why we are witnessing climate change in almost every corner of our solar system , from Mars to Pluto, to Jupiter and to the moons of Neptune - and clearly identify the sun as the main culprit and not CO2 emissions - which are being used as a pretext for control freaks to completely dominate every aspect of our lives.

Man-made global warming advocates have often made their case by claiming that the scientific consensus is fully behind CO2 emissions as the main driver of climate change, when in fact the UN's own IPCC report was disputed by the very scientists that the UN claimed were behind it.

In reality, a significant number of prominent experts dispute the global warming mantra , but many have been intimidated into silence and had their careers threatened simply for stating an opposing view.

HAT TIP: Canadian Free Press