Is The Globe Warming?

Putting a bunch of thermometers all over the world to get an average is a gargantuan task and likely not to prove anything but seeing glaciers melt all over the world, draught happen, climate get crazy, islands disappear, coral bleach out and the arctic melt during the summer months does indicate empirically that global warming is taking place.

Is it man made? Coincidentally glacier melting and declining began to take place around 1795; just when man began to burn coal in great quantities. Too, basic physics and chemistry points to warming as the result of putting great quantities of industrial and domestic gases into the atmosphere. Am I worried? No, for I wont be around when the crap hits the fan, but I do worry some about what will happen to my grand kids and their kids. Nature will kick back at them big time because the more we wise up to what may happen the more others do their best to propagandize against rational thought and behavior.

Population growth and wasteful use of finite resources combined with irresponsible behavior will catch up with us in the next decade or two. Mankind is totally depended on fossil fuels, particularly petroleum, and when that becomes scarce there is not a fallback resource energetic enough to sustain our present, or future, way of life. We will not be able to feed billions of people using ox power. We have depended on machinery to plow, plant, and harvest large tracts of land, land which has been depleted by over farming, land now fertilized using chemicals made from petroleum. We are in a catch 22 situation. Population demands use of more and more resources; climate demands a reduction in use of resources. What happens when Miami or New Orleans disappears under water or is ravaged by a super hurricane? We can't continue to fork out money to replace real estate destroyed by storms or take in refugees from foreign lands, such as Bangladesh, or Pongo Pongo.

Irrational forces need to be squelched by rational forces. Unfortunately sensible arguments lack certain visceral appeals that irrational forces seem to find to further their positions. Rational arguments are dry, technical, and usually unpopular. Rational arguments appeal to reason and usually require thought, common sense, and honesty. Irrational arguments appeal to the emotions and are put forward using such appeals as fear, name calling, labeling, finger pointing, i.e., propaganda techniques.

Global Warming?

There are those who take strong stands on both sides of the "Global Warming" issue and produce reams of data pro and con proving their side and disproving the other's position.

It seems the weakest data springs from global and local temperature data. Where do you place temperature probes so that they reflect truly sound temperatures? Temperatures vary from year to year and decade to decade. What does reflect trends in climate are ice fields; on the ocean and on mountains. Trends in growth of forests, migration routes of birds, and populations of insects tell more over time than temperature data over the globe.

Here in Montana I have seen over the years the disappearance of ice in the mountains and milder winters, more extreme storms, and differences in precipitation seasonally. By news reports I have heard of glaciers disappearing on mountains known historically to have large ice fields on them. Greenland's ice is receding like never before. Kilimanjaro, Mt. Fuji, and Canadian Rockies glaciers will be gone in a decade if trends continue.

No one can claim that the sun is the reason for the sun has been quiet for some time now. Humans began burning coal in the 1700's and coincidentally Alaska's glaciers began to recede in 1795. Cause and effect?