Dakota Beacon

With our economy in the midst of it’s worst recession in many years, our newly elected president needs all the help he can get. Unfortunately, on the issue of Global Warming he’s getting it from the wrong people. It’s bad enough that so many of our political, corporate world and financial leaders have been busted for corrupt and immoral activities. It’s even worse that one of the biggest scams of our time is being perpetrated as a cry to save the world.
Al Gore’s movie, “An inconvenient truth” for example, is loaded with misleading statements and data. What this agenda and biased piece of work lacks most is ironically, the truth. It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to lessen CO2, (the main greenhouse gas) and methane released into the atmosphere. One can make a good case for these greenhouse gases to be mostly responsible for Global Warming based on some data but only time will tell for sure.

What’s the real risk/worst case scenario of not acting now to lessen those greenhouse gases?

1. Stronger hurricanes

2. Melting ice/rising oceans

What you don’t hear about is that Global Warming means less need for fuel to heat in the Winter. Why would we have a policy that’s against less energy use?

We should all be very aggressive when it comes to reducing pollution and conserving/recycling natural resources. CO2 is not pollution though. CO2 is plant food. Crops grow bigger and better when the concentration of CO2 goes up. Agriculture expands farther north, growing seasons are longer when the earth is warmer.. Think about the term “greenhouse gas”.

That name comes from the fact that it traps heat in a fashion similar to how the glass in a greenhouse does. What do we use greenhouses for? To grow vegetables and flowers because they grow better in that environment. If we increase greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the effect is to make our planet more like a greenhouse. The most important thing this planet provides for us and all the animals is food. All food starts from plants. We could not survive very long without abundant plants. Where do plants grow best…..a greenhouse.

Why are we planning to waste billions of dollars, time and energy to possibly keep our planet from being more like a greenhouse?

If we ever have Global Cooling, everyone will know the real threat. This planet has had several Ice Ages not that long ago (on a geological time scale). Another one would wipe out the majority of animals. Just moderate cooling would cause famine and widespread starvation. Looking at crop/food production over the last decade, one can see explosive growth, at a time when our planet has been getting warmer. Clearly, technology is responsible for most of the gains but Global Warming is helping us to feed more people on a planet whose population is growing. Archaeologists and geologists can look at what is left behind from the distant past which speaks loudly to them. Here’s what the evidence clearly shows. The warmer the planet, the more life it supported. The colder the planet, the less life it supported.

Our climate is controlled by the relationship between the atmosphere, oceans, land and often underrated sun. Though we know a great deal about how they work in tandem and are using it with increasing efficiency to forecast weather and climate, there is still uncertainty. Looking back millions of years at the earth’s climate shows a great deal of fluctuation between cold and warm, without humans around. This is evidence of powerful forces outside our control capable of changing the climate. There seems to be a strong correlation between sunspots and climate. Periods with unusually low numbers of sunspots have been unusually cool.

We could have an enormous effort to slow Global Warming. The results might be effective and accomplish the goal at great cost. They could also be wasted or even harmful as a natural force enters the picture like it has in the past. For instance, if that natural force favors cooler temps, we just shot ourselves in the foot by making our planet even easier to cool.

It’s interesting to note that the number of sunspots in the current 11 year sunspot cycle has been unusually low. The increase in sunspots predicted to begin earlier this year may just be a bit late getting started. However, if solar activity continues quiet for some time, there’s a good chance it will result in a cooler earth which will also quiet the Global Warming alarmists.

It makes no sense to be against a warmer planet if you view the realities and science in an unbiased manner.

Look at it this way. Under the Global Warming scenario at it’s greatest effect, will take over one hundred years to cause the loss of lives that will be saved in 1 year from the increased food we produce with the warmer earth.

I’m certain that at some point in the future, we’ll look back at Al Gore’s Nobel Prize based on his junk science, as a big farce. Many of us already do.

Mike Maguire
Meteorologist
Evansville