by V R Rutledge

Created on: June 25, 2008

In 1896 a Nobel laureate, one Svante August Arrhenius of Sweden, produced a paper on the effects of Carbon Dioxide emissions caused by human activity. He observed that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere had risen and was continuing to rise. Whatever else we consider, we must realize that the changes have been occurring for over a century. To say that the past fifty years do not provide sufficient information is to ignore over half of the available data. In the 1930s, my family realized that the United States and North Atlantic region had warmed significantly during the previous half-century. In stories of World War one and two, my parents, grandparents, and at least one great uncle informed me that the world was getting warmer. Pictures in the local Museum showed the river covered with ice, with horses and wagons crossing on the frozen surface. I've never seen that river freeze, not in fifty years of memory. Dr Timothy Ball (Canada) is convinced that Global Warming is a myth, stating that "Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist." I wonder if he is aware that the Northern Glaciers in his native land are shrinking at an alarming rate. I've been to Alaska, where there is much less ice than in the photographs from earlier times. Scientific opinion notwithstanding, we live in a warmer world than our grandparents did.

From Thomas J Crowley we have "The combination of a unique level of temperature increase in the late Th century and improved constraints on the role of natural variability provides further evidence that the greenhouse effect has already established itself above the level of natural variability in the climate system." Another paper observes that comparison between atmospheric Carbon 14 and changes in climate has shown a first-order relationship between a variable Sun and climate. These two observations leave open the possibility that a solar change is attempting to cool the earth, while our 'Greenhouse effect' is raising it. This would help explain why the effect is less than predicted by Dr. Arrhenius. It is worthwhile to note that the rate of CO2 production has rapidly increased. Dr. Arrhenius expected CO2 doubling to take about 3000 years instead of the 100 years or less now predicted. From the US governmental Agency the EPA we learn, "Scientists have been able to piece together a picture of the Earth's climate dating back decades to millions of years ago by analyzing a number of surrogate, or "proxy," measures of climate such as ice

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