by Joey Goze

Created on: February 02, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

The biggest issue with respect to global warming debate is that we fail to differentiate between what should be referred to as 'climate shift' versus the more politically motivated subject of 'man-made induced global warming'. Climate shift is defined as the the change in mean global temperatures due to natural causes while the 'man-made induced global warming' is defined as the alterations in the mean global temperature due to humans contributing additional CO2 into the atmosphere through industrial activities. So to address the question, is a climate shift occurring? Absolutely. Is the current climate shift due to human activity? Probably not.

Throughout the history of the planet, their is a continuous general climate shift occurring all the time. The Earth goes through natural cycles of cold and warm and these are evident from a number of scientific records. One only needs to refer to Antarctic ice core data to observe ice ages and warming periods that the planet has experienced throughout its existence. These changes all happened without an industrial age occurring and therefore, we must recognize that there are an array of natural processes that are involved in causing the planet temperature to cycle. In addition, there is currently strong data to suggest that a solar cycle of 1500 years is the biggest contributor to warming and cooling periods that the Earth goes through. Man has not contributed one iota to these climate cycles.

In consideration of what man's industrial activity does to the climate, let us look at the science. When discussing global warming, we are talking about how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere through industrial activities. Pre-industrial era levels of CO2 are estimated to be ~270 PPM while today's levels are ~370 PPM. The additional 100 PPM is what all the hype is about. In general, weather scientists will build models that force CO2 into the equation and come up with fantastical predictions of temperature for the next 50 to 100 years. In a day and age when we have difficulty predicting the weather 5 days in advance, it seems far fetched to accept the dooms day scenarios that are predicted 50 or 100 years from now. In addition, these models ignore other green house gases (molecules that trap heat) such as water vapor (the biggest green house gas of them all!). It becomes a political exercise. No one can blame industry for putting water into the air, but CO2 is the the environmentalists worst enemy.

The biggest scientific

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