Common Sense University

             Granted, you might think it unfair to bring up Global Warming at a time when we are in the midst of winter with half of America either shoveling snow or at least freezing their tails off.  Although empirical evidence and what we are experiencing this winter show that Global Warming has been nothing more than an inaccurate phrase made popular by former Vice-President Al Gore jr. and others, we do agree that it’s replacement, ‘Climate Change‘, is occurring and should be identified further. What we want to talk about and question are the presented facts that some scientists consider it a Man-induced problem. But there are also scientists who consider the current Global Warming proclamations and warnings nothing but hype and scare mongering. Both sides have made strong arguments for their positions for several years now and unfortunately, it has also resulted in a great deal of name-calling and defamation.

            Common Sense University finds this particular aspect regrettable in that, especially among scientists, meteorologists and the like, the debate should have remained civil and fact based. But from the beginning, a true dialogue in the form of international conferences never took place. The proponents of Global Warming considered their critics ignorant and compared them to holocaust deniers and flat-earth believers. The other side rebutted that Global Warming was nothing more than a hoax. This was then followed after some time by firm statements by the former (the proponents) that the debate about the validity of Global Warming was over and that the results unquestionably proved that it was us, the people on this planet were the cause for it. It was fact on the basis of consensus among the majority of scientists. This was all accompanied by lengthy reports issued by the United Nations and their Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

            Now then, what are we to make of it? Which scientists know what they are talking about and which ones are just plain wrong about this? Not being scientists or experts in this field, we will take a sober look at facts as we know them to be true:

•   Global Warming, i.e., Climate Change has existed on our planet for millions of years and so has Global Cooling! We all know about so called Ice Ages and so on. In fact, we know for certain that some of these same proponents of Global Warming predicted and warned the world about a period of Global Cooling in the near future. This happened on April 8, 1975 when a Newsweek magazine article entitled “The Cooling World” warned of imminent global cooling and resulting food shortages. Less than thirty years later, these same people did a 180 degree shift. We ask: How can this be, could there be a possible motive for this or can our planet truly change this quick when it comes to changing from ‘cold’ to ‘hot’ because we the people, have lived recklessly? If so, then we have to ask, what caused previous Global Warming cycles hundreds and thousands of years ago when there were not that many of us people around, let alone driving cars and motorcycles? Could it be that our main energy source for millions of years, the sun, had to have something to do with this? We think so because it would be common sense! We also know for a fact that the sun has been observed and recorded having higher and lower solar flare cycles.
•   We know from our history classes and books that the Vikings were the first to venture to Greenland, the largest island of this planet. Today, this vast place is almost totally covered by ice, our question is: Why would they call it Greenland, were they color blind or did some local joker paint the ice green to fool the invaders/discoverers? We think the answer must be: No, the place was probably naturally GREEN at that time! We know for a fact that there was what is called a Medieval Warm Period from 800 CE to 1300 CE, about five hundred years of warmer climates.
•   Slightly more than two years ago, a British newspaper – The Independent – published an article entitled Cow ‘emissions’ more damaging to planet than CO2 from cars wherein they write about a 400-page report by the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, concluding that the nearly 1.5 billion cows on Earth are the top destroyers of the environment and therefore biggest threat to the climate. So, what is Global Warming, is it Man-made or Cow-made or a combination of both? You might detect a slight case of cynicism here on our part.
•   We now have heard that U.N. scientists have admitted that there has been no Global Warming since 1998 as the planet has actually been cooling off for the past four years. The World Meteorology Organization’s secretary-general, Mr. Michel Jarraud told the BBC in April 2008 it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer as follows: “This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.” Another troubling article.

We could list several more such examples seriously challenging the facts of Global Warming but think the above four should suffice for now.

            The only proper way in our opinion to approach the topic of Global warming in order to get a better understanding is to read up on it without having to take classes and courses. We did this a few years ago and found a book by James P. Hogan entitled “Kicking the Sacred Cow”. Among many other topics, he deals in section 5, pages 231 to 247 with Global warming in a very comprehensive and believable way with charts and graphs. But there are many other books dealing with Global Warming and Climate Change in a similar fashion.

            Once again, we have to say, we do not question global warming and climate change on Earth as it has occurred many times over the millions of years, we just question that it is established fact that we, the people are the cause of it and therefore have to change our lives and lifestyles to remedy this ever worsening planetary condition. We are skeptical because we have read and listened to both sides of the argument and are not willing to dismiss one side or the other totally. While there are reportedly thousands of scientists who support Global Warming as a Man-made problem, there are also thousands of scientists who claim the opposite. Is this a competition between “good” scientists and “mad” scientists? We do not think so. However, there are people, and apparently some scientists, that are motivated differently than by reporting facts, but this is for another posting.

            And the main reason we are very skeptical is the fact that now almost every elected official and politician is jumping on this bandwagon to make us comply with the so called planet saving suggestions. And non-compliance punishment is already in existence for corporations and will soon become reality for us as individuals as well. Some countries and certain States here are now working on ways to find legitimate means to get more of our money without calling it taxation. We will get back to some of these innovative ways like carbon trading or reducing one’s carbon footprint soon in another article, stay tuned.

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