Global Warming: Just the Facts

Is global warming real? If so, is it the result of human activity? There’s plenty of hysteria on both sides of the argument. So let’s look at the facts.

Fact: 18,000 years ago the Bering Land Bridge between Siberia and Alaska allowed people to migrate from Asia to North America on dry land.

Fact: That land bridge is now under 200 ft. of ocean.

Fact: Big factories and SUV’s did not cause the oceans to rise hundreds of feet over the past 20,000 years.

Fact: Approximately every 100,000 years Earth's climate warms up temporarily. These warm periods, called interglacial periods, last approximately 15,000 to 20,000 years before returning to a cold ice age climate.

Fact: It is only during these brief warm periods that human life as we know it could exist. During the last ice age just 20,000 years ago, modern-day Manhattan was covered by 300 ft. of ice.

Fact: Earth’s temperatures have risen approximately 16 degrees since the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age 18,000 years ago.

Fact: Earth’s current temperatures are warmer than their historical average. Though there were hotter periods 800 years ago, 1,500 years ago, 5,000 years ago, 9,000 years ago, and 120,000 years ago.

So what are we to learn from these facts? Clearly global warming is real. But so is global cooling. The Earth is heating up. But it’s been heating up for the past 18,000 years. I couldn’t find any data from the pro-green/end global warming community that went further back than 100 years. All their evidence seems to begin right around the time of the Industrial Revolution. And by solely focusing on rising global temperatures since that time, it seems a natural conclusion that modern man must be the cause. But to conclude that global warming is manmade based on a mere 100 years of temperature increase is akin to concluding that because the stock market went up briefly this afternoon, the economy is in fantastic shape.

But how could something that flies in the face of logic be so widely believed by both the masses, and the world’s leaders? You’ll recall that throughout human history, despite available scientific evidence to the contrary, people have stubbornly held to the beliefs that the Universe revolves around the Earth, and that the Earth is flat.

My next question was why. Why would people try to propagate an illogical human induced global warming theory? What is there to be gained? In recent years the answer has become abundantly clear. Going “green” is now a multi-billion dollar industry. From former Vice-Presidents who sell Carbon Credits, to the plethora of private companies hawking their green wares, it’s become a booming business. Imagine the earnings potential when you convince people that buying your product is the only choice if they care about the planet, their grandchildren, and baby polar bears. And now thanks to our recent government stimulus packages and energy bills, it’s become a trillion dollar industry. All so we can feel good about ourselves for stopping a problem we didn’t cause, and is completely beyond our control to stop anyway.

While it’s wise to be good stewards of the resources we’ve been given, and waste is never a good thing, we need to weigh both the pros and cons of going green before jumping blindly onto the bandwagon. There’s a grain shortage causing starvation around the world, yet the government pays billions of dollars to subsidize farmers converting their corn into ethanol, instead of doing what makes the most fiscal sense and selling it as food. Already struggling car companies are going to have to spend billions redesigning cars to meet increasingly stringent government fuel efficiency standards. And while millions of Americans lose their jobs and homes this year, the government is spending billions on cost-inefficient ideas like wind and solar power, the creation of “green task forces,” and spending countless billions converting every government office in the country into a “green” building.

It reminds me of the home insulation guy who tried to sell me on their $6,000 attic insulation by telling me it would save me $25/month on my power bill. Protecting the environment may be a noble cause. But let’s keep it in proper perspective. As someone wise once said: “All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was.”