Is global warming unstoppable?

No

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by Rex Trulove

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Let us look at a few facts surrounding both global warming and global cooling that the media and the strongest proponents of the theory ignore and do not like to address in any way. The best way to do this is to give a brief and rather rough history sketch.

Two hundred million years ago, the earth was a hot, steamy, vegetated ball. Average temperatures were much higher than they are today. Great but shallow inland seas covered much of the continents and plant life grew in such profusion as to make the densest rain forest of today pale in comparison. Just as today, water vapor was the greatest of greenhouse gases. Polar ice caps didn't exist, which was nothing new since for over nine tenths of the time the earth has been around, it hasn't had ice caps.

Through it all, there were uncountable times of temperature fluctuation and climate change.

Then, for reasons not at all understood, global temperatures began to fall. Some scientists attribute this to the meteor impact 65 million years ago that they believe caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Other theories have also been put forth, but the cause is not truly important to this discussion as will be seen.

As temperatures dropped, precipitation began to fall as snow in the extreme northern and southern latitudes. Instead of melting, the temperatures were just low enough for it to begin accumulating. Since snow and the ice it compacts into reflect sunlight back into space, the temperatures continued to drop, producing yet more snow. Over a great deal of time by our way of thinking of it, probably hundreds of thousands of years, much of the globe became covered in a dense and thick sheet of ice. Most of what was to become Europe and North America lay under a crushing blanket of ice as much as one to two miles thick.

Still, there were fluctuations in global temperature, and at times the ice sheets retreated nearly to where they are today, before once again growing. The periods of heavy ice are called glacial periods, and those with little ice are called interglacial periods.

The last interglacial period began between 10,000 and 11,000 years ago. Ice sheets dwindled, but not at a constant rate, rather in starts and stops. One of the peaks of this interglacial occurred about 2,000 years ago, when global temperatures were several degrees higher than they are now, but still far less than before the glaciation first began. After that, average temperatures dropped until a few centuries ago, when they again began to rise. They are still rising, having risen less than a degree in the last century, and though temperatures are still less than 2,000 years ago.

It takes very little to realize that while we don't fully understand the reason for the fluctuations, it is obviously a naturally occurring event or chain of events. This being the case, it is just a matter of time before the trend reverses itself once again, as it has so many times before. It is possible or even probable than in the coming thousands of years, most of earth will again be encased in ice.

The initial answer must then be; no, global warming isn't unstoppable. Nature caused it, and nature can and almost certainly will stop and reverse it. If the question was changed a little though, so that it read, "Is global warming unstoppable by man?", the answer would be Yes. Man hasn't been around nearly long enough to have much to do with this natural process. He doesn't have the knowledge, power, or ability to do much to affect temperature changes on a global scale. Even a man caused nuclear winter would have only a passing effect on global temperatures.

As destructive as man is, as much as he pollutes, as much as he squanders, it is only his arrogance and overwhelming belief in his own self-importance that allows him to think that he can affect in any great way, the temperatures of the entire earth. Make no mistake; man can decimate all life on this planet. But he cannot control the natural planetary cycles that have been in place for billions of years. Man is neither that powerful, nor that important.

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