Global warming claims should be challenged

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production —- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. … The central fact is that after three quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be cooling down.”

These excerpts come from a 1975 Newsweek magazine article warning the American public about the certain onslaught of the disaster known as “global cooling.” Yes, in 1975 scientists predicted that barring a rapid response, global cooling would ruin harvest seasons, cause widespread droughts and foment other grave crises.

The New York Times aided in publicizing the threat with the headline “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.” Science News magazine also did its part in voicing the concerns of scientists with a cover story that asked, “The Ice Age Cometh?”

Fortunately for us, all of these reputable sources and scientists were wrong, and we are not on the cusp of a new ice age. But now these same experts have convinced themselves and the population that the exact opposite, global warming, is the crisis poised to destroy civilization. This threat is so certain that we should make large-scale changes in both national policy and personal habits in order to accommodate it. And we absolutely must not question it, or else we don’t believe in science and are only hastening our own demise in the name of big business.

Shouldn’t we question this? Or is the rule Question Authority, except when Al Gore says so? Especially when the current theory is so radically different from a widely believed theory in the recent past, don’t we owe it to ourselves to vet this global warming thing a bit more before we let it take over our lives?

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a summary of its findings this week, Feb. 5, 2007. This summary includes a plethora of graphs that show that from 1900 until now, the world has gotten warmer.

But that’s what you expect after the Little Ice Age that the world experienced from about 1600 to 1850 AD. This ice age evened out the Medieval Warm Period that preceded it, from about the 10th century until about the 14th century. If you leave those parts out of the graph, the past 100 years looks pretty threatening. Global warming enthusiasts always start their graphs at 1850 in order to avoid some inconvenient truths. Seeing the whole chart in perspective shows the Earth fluctuating in climate, warming and cooling in a cycle. We are currently in the warming trend of the cycle, just as 30 years ago the Earth was undergoing a cooling trend. And within 30 years, it will likely trend downward again.

But suppose the world is warming as a result of the greenhouse effect. What is the most dangerous gas in our atmosphere? It is responsible for as much as 90 percent of what is known as the greenhouse effect, trapping heat on Earth that would otherwise escape the atmosphere. We should eliminate this scourge that is so dangerously heating our planet, right? But that scourge is water vapor.

Water is by far the biggest contributing greenhouse gas, and it has been here long before the first SUV started spouting carbon dioxide, playing its role in the natural cycle of climate.

The Earth is a big and complicated place that has been around for a long time. It has warmed and cooled ever since its beginning, with no input from mankind. It continues to warm and cool, and we may possibly have a slight influence on this cycle. But there are too many questions that go unasked.

Ask your local global warming proselytizer about the historical coincidences of solar activity and climate change. Ask him to explain why the world got so much warmer and then so suddenly cooler in recent history. Ask why the UN thinks cows and pigs may actually be responsible for 18 percent of the global warming problem. Ask why every estimate on the past hurricane season was wrong. Ask why we should change our whole way of life based on the arguments of experts talking about the next hundred years of weather when they can’t get the five-day forecast right.

Carr Taylor is a Will Rice College senior.

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