Global warming isn't a fact, it is just a theory. There are facts to support that the Earth is, indeed, warming. The problem, for me, lies with a basic question: Is the warming trend outside of the normal range of warming and/or cooling trends that the Earth has already been through?
In other words, is the temperature change abnormal or normal? Frankly, I don't think there is enough information to say one way or the other.
How does a doctor know that a person is running a fever? Answer: over the years a baseline temperature of 98.6 has been established as the normal temperature of a human being. However, there is a delta, or a range, of variance from that temperature where doctors don't worry that the person is running a temperature. Having "too low" of a temperature is also a problem, but again, there is a delta where the doctor doesn't worry about it.
Why am I writing about this?
Well, Al Gore has a movie that screams "The global warming sky is falling" and I'm tired of people going off half-cocked without having "the other side" to it.
Here's a story: My daughter was telling me about global warming and what her teacher told her. I told her to ask her teacher these questions and report back to me:
For global warming to be true, there has to be a base temperature that is used for the comparison. What is that base temperature?
How many years did it take to come up with this base temperature?
Isn't a flucuation of a "global temperature" normal?
Her teacher didn't appreciate the questions my daughter was told to ask her.
Mr. Legates critiques the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment that proclaimed Arctic air temperature trends strongly indicate global warming, causing polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. However, Mr. Legates says, the Assessment ignored data that undermine these claims.
For example, coastal stations in Greenland are cooling and average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet have decreased by 4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since measurements began in 1987. In addition, records from Russian coastal stations show the extent and thickness of sea ice has varied greatly over 60- to 80-year periods during the last 125 years. Moreover, the maximum air temperature they report for the 20th century was in 1938, when it was nearly four-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than the air temperature in 2000.
Ice core data from Baffin Island and sea core sediments from the Chukchi Sea also show that even if there is warming, it has occurred before. In Alaska, the onset of a climatic shift -- a warming -- in 1976-1977 ended the multidecade cold trend in the mid-20th century returning temperatures to those of the early 20th century.
In addition, a study commissioned by Canada's Fisheries and Oceans Department examined the relationship between air temperature and sea ice coverage, concluding, "the possible impact of global warming appears to play a minor role in changes to Arctic sea ice."
More later...
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