The Argument Against Global Warming

First off, I believe it is warming, very slowly. In fact, this slow warming is proceeding at the same rate it has been for hundreds of years. In other words, globally speaking, nothing is really different. What has happened, in my opinion, is that some localized warming has happened in certain key areas, mostly land areas in industrialized and civilized areas, so much so that certain concerned individuals and scientists have perceived that a hypothesis of global warming caused by man's industrial activities must be investigated. It is noble to investigate a hypothesis, if one uses truly scientific method, and one does not jump to conclusions based on incomplete evidence. Investigating a hypothesis should either conform or deny the hypothesis, and if it does not, then another hypothesis must be built and investigated. I personally don't believe the science is a hoax, but I do believe it is incomplete. I believe the media and politicians have politicized the issue, making it appear to be a hoax.

Several things have happened in the last few decades with this issue. Many scientists have jumped onto this bandwagon, because it seems the obvious hypothesis, and many governments have funded their research, and it has inevitably become a consensus; and to collectivist government and media types it seems almost heresy for skeptics to deny this hypothesis. For this so-called 'theory' to be proven would require more data and evidence than has been so far been put forth, the evidence must span much greater time frames, and must include many more water and land areas, at different altitudes; and must be averaged over the entire earth.

It is unfortunate that localized warming has occurred, but if the average is unchanging, it cannot be attributed to man's activities with respect to the emitting of Carbon Dioxide, an non-toxic non-polluting natural substance at about 380 parts per million, which is 0.000380, or 0.038 percent the make up of our atmosphere. Funny how they use big terms like parts per million, when the real numbers a quite small. The actual concentration in the last 60 years of CO2 has gone from about 0.00036 to 0.00038, hardly enough in my scientifically trained mind to represent a significant increase.

I saw that fact perhaps 20 years ago, and right away I said to myself, come on, 10% is hardly significant, that's when I first became a skeptic, based on the numbers alone. The other part of the argument goes: the CO2 increase is causing the 0.6 degree Celsius increase in temperature over the last 100 years. That too just struck me as something that intuitively was not correct. How are we to know if it isn't the other way around, perhaps the increase of 0.6 degrees is actually causing the CO2 to increase. Again, that 0.6C figure is a number that I don't trust because there were not enough collection points, far too many of the places they did measure temperature were at industrial city locations that would show a warming that isn't present over the vastness of the earth, and it did not factor in the temperature at different altitudes. If there are alternate hypothesis for the warming, and the warming is causing to CO2 to increase, then well, it just goes to show that this consensus is rather stubborn to prove THEIR hypothesis at the expense of all others.

Furthermore, the media and politicians have latched onto this issue. This is the step too far for many skeptics like myself. They have taken a scientific matter which is not conclusively proven, and politicized it.  Therefore, to skeptics like myself, the so-called hoax is the media and political aspects of this whole issue. It is only a 'hoax' in that the media publishes every tiny bit of local warming they encounter. Yet counter evidence, which is not as prevalent only because there are fewer scientisits investigating or looking for that counter evidence, is not published, especially not on the front pages.

Now, needless to say, the governments give plenty of funding to the warming hypothesis scientific studies, yet they provide little to scientific studies that would purportedly try to prove that there is no warming, or further that there is no link between man's activities and localized warming, or that the local warming is a truly global phenomena of long term duration.  If a consensus of academia, mostly government funded science, politicians, and the media all put forth a hypothesis as if it were a proven theory, how can the complacent skeptics among us suddenly jump up and prove the opposite overnight? How can we prove that there is no warming without considerable money and effort to put forth our own hypothesis and do much research all over to world to try to prove it. The alarmists have a huge head start, and the media will never support the skeptics.

The hypothesis that I've always put forth is that the average temperature of the entire earth is on track to warm at the same rate it always has for hundreds of years, which is a very slow rate coming down from the ice age.

It would take decades, and necessitate government buy in to this hypothesis to adequately find enough evidence to back it up. That won't happen any time soon, so the skeptics suffer from the 'head-start' that the warmers enjoy.  Now I don't deny at all that there is localized warming, that might perhaps be temporary, in places like the Arctic region in summer only, which compared to the entire earth is quite small. I've read countless news reports of studies that have shown that more ice has built up, on average, across Antarctica. The media has not placed these stories on the front pages. The politicians have not stood on their bully pulpits to laud these stories like they have the glacier stories, nor their arctic stories.

Making this issue political has been a dangerous president, because it might enable the politicians to pass measures dangerous to our economy. Cap and Trade will place onerous restrictions that amount to taxation on energy companies. Those companies will pass those costs on to the consumers, you and I. It has been estimated by many respectable institutions that energy costs would rise by significant margins. All this at a time when we are in double dip recessions, and unemployment remains at about 10%.

What we need is more time. Now is not the time to push these political solutions to a problem that has not sufficiently been proven. I'm willing to look at the evidence, but some of these institutions have destroyed or hidden the evidence, including one of the IPCC's main sources of scientific evidence, the East Anglia University in the UK. Many of these institutions have developed models based on data that they don't even permit the rest of us to see. How can we determine if this information is correct, if it is not completely open to inspection and validation?

Here are a few facts that perhaps ought to dispel the man caused warming hypothesis:

- Greenland was green when the Vikings were there, much greener than today, so local warming is the norm, we have precedence for this kind of event. The Arctic might be warming today, but there is no evidence to suggest that it won't be colder there again, and how soon the changes will occur. From wikipedia.org:

Interpretation of ice core data suggests that between 800 and 1300 AD the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a mild climate with herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. Barley was grown as a crop up to the 70th degree ^[11]. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years.^[12]

- Scientific studies have shown that on the whole, Antarctica is increasing in ice. The spur has lost ice, as alarmists have reported, but the main body has increased, and on average, the ice is growing. The alarmist media has failed to report the entire picture.

But as ICECAP's Joe D'Aleo observed in 2008 [PDF], the relatively small area of the peninsula offers an extremely poor representative sample, as it juts out well north of the mainland into an area of the South Atlantic well known for its "surface and subsurface active volcanic activity." And in the greater scheme, adds D'Aleo, "the vast continent has actually cooled since 1979." 

Figure 1.  Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004 from Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensors flown on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites. Red indicates areas where temperatures generally increased during that period, and blue shows where temperatures predominantly decreased.

On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 7:18 PM, you wrote:

I'm writing an article on the evidence AGAINST Global Warming.  What do you think is the best argument you can think of that the world is not getting warmer, that the melting of icecaps, glaciers and permafrost is all a big hoax?