Global Warming – Man Made or Normal Cycle?

First, let me start by saying that there is no doubt that the Earth changes average temperature and has done so for a long time.  You can measure growth cycles in ancient trees, read descriptions in old texts, look at water levels, measure layers of dirt for moisture deposits, and so on.  I also know that in the last twenty years or so, the Earth has slightly increased its overall average temperature.  Second, pollution is bad and should be limited and reduced whether or not it causes global warming.

The question is – has man-kind reached a level where we are causing global warming?  I personally do not think so, but I will discuss it here and would like to hear your opinions.

The Man-Made Global Warming Theory and Greenhouse Gases

Humans through industrial activities create “greenhouse gases.”  Carbon dioxide and other gases can trap heat in by not allowing it to escape the atmosphere.  This was pausited because if you put those types of gases in an area they would act like a  “greenhouse.”  I grew up with a greenhouse to raise plants like pineapples and strawberries.  The way it works is that heat comes through the clear glass or plastic walls, but you keep the place full of humidity and all that heat and humidity stays inside.  Heat comes down but does not go up so to speak.  In a laboratory, “greenhouse gases” have the same effect.  Hence, scientists theorizing that as we put more of those into the atmosphere, we create a greenhouse effect where the sun’s heat comes into the atmosphere but some is trapped.  I understand this and don’t dispute the reasoning.

Some of My Reasons for Not Thinking it is Man Made

1)  The problem is, that when they measure it, the Earth does not act like a laboratory or a big greenhouse.  The effect is simply not acting as they expected.  The oceans and the upper atmosphere are not acting as expected.  In many measurements it looks as if they Earth has its own internal countermeasures to prevent rapid temperature changes that we do not fully understand.

In Medieval times we know England was warm and sunny, very different than today.  North Africa used to be the bread basket of the world in Roman times.  North Africa heated up became the Sahara and other deserts and England cooled down long before mankind produced significant greenhouse gases.

2)  If you add up all the industrial pollution of mankind, it is less than just a few volcanic eruptions, such as the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull or the June 15, 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines, which was the largest eruption of the 20th centurey after the eruption in 1912 of Novarupta in Alaska.  Before that, you had the mother of all eruptions in Krakatoa in 1883.

The Icelandic eruption put up so much ash and gas to stop air travel in Europe a few days.   The Phillipine eruption effects were felt worldwide. It ejected roughly 10,000,000,000 tonnes (1.1×10¹⁰ short tons) or 10 km³ (2.4 cu mi) of magma, and 20,000,000 t (22,000,000 short tons) SO₂, bringing vast quantities of minerals and metals to the surface environment. It injected large amounts of aerosol into the stratosphere – more than any eruption since that of Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following months, the aerosols formed a global layer of sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by about 0.5 °C (0.900 °F), and ozone depletion temporarily increased substantially.

Even now, mankind does not have the ability to cause that kind of pollution that occurs in nature.

3)  What is the perfect temperature?  Is the temperature now correct?  Should we be warmer, cooler?  Is the Earth supposed to heat and cool?  What if we could stop that process, should we?

4)  There are two major labs that have studied modern data, and both have recently been beset by scandals over faking data and erasing data.  The one in England:

From the Daily Mail

The scientist behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders.

Dr Murari Lal also said he was well aware the statement, in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research.

In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on Asia, said: ‘It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.

‘It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.’

Is NASA playing fast and loose with climate change science? That’s the contention of a group of 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts.

On March 28 the group sent a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Jr., blasting the agency for making unwarranted claims about the role of carbon dioxide in global warming, Business Insider reported.

“We believe the claims by NASA and GISS [NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies], that man-made carbon dioxide is having a catastrophic impact on global climate change are not substantiated, especially when considering thousands of years of empirical data,” the group wrote. “With hundreds of well-known climate scientists and tens of thousands of other scientists publicly declaring their disbelief in the catastrophic forecasts, coming particularly from the GISS leadership, it is clear that the science is NOT settled.”

The group features some marquee names, including Michael F. Collins, Walter Cunningham and five other Apollo astronauts, as well as two former directors of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The letter included a request for NASA to refrain from mentioning CO2 as a cause of global warming in future press releases and websites. The agency’s “Global Climate Change” webpage says that “Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by a third since the Industrial Revolution began. This is the most important long-lived “forcing” of climate change.”

5)  Where is the Data?  Hackers broke into the email at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and found proof that researchers had faked data on global warming because it did not fit the theory.  When asked to recalculate the data, they said it had been erased.  NASA has standing public open records requests for its data, which it refuses to release.

My Belief

Pollution is bad, and we don’t need man-made global warming to justify cleaning up our emissions.  Global warming and cooling occur naturally.  At some point, humans may have the power to accidentally or purposefully change global temperatures, but not right now, and not any time soon.  If the whole world agreed to keep the temperature of the Earth the same as it is now, we would not be able to do it.  If we all agreed to heat the Earth by one degree, we could not do it.

What are your Thoughts?