by Royce Radcliffe

Created on: April 22, 2007   Last Updated: May 11, 2007

I think that there are certain myths concerning global warming going both ways... It is important to realize that both sides of this debate have very compelling evidence to support their assertions and that it can be very difficult to find a truly objective source on global warming. The advocates want it to be real to validate their efforts and the critics suffer from the same motivation.

This has led to a lot of disinformation being spread and I would like to shed some light on some of the most prevalent myths.

The first is that global warming is uncertain and unproven. As much as you can prove anything global warming has been proved long ago! Almost all unbiased scientific bodies are now in unison on the subject of global warming, saying it is occurring and the cause is certainly mankind's burning of fossil fuels. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences is the most respected scientific organization in the world and in 2005 released a statement urging global action against global warming.

The second popular myth is that cool summers and cold winters mean the whole thing is not really happening. This could not be further from the truth. There will always be variations but on the whole temperatures are rising across the globe at a steady rate.

The third most well known myth is that since we can barely predict the weather we in no way should be able tot predict coming global climate change. What people do not realize is that predicting short term weather events is infinitely more difficult than predicting long term changes. An example is that we might not know whether the water will freeze on a given day in December but that we can be assured it will have lower temperatures in that month than they would in a summer month based on our knowledge of that region's climate. In the current era climate models can reproduce the observed global average climates over the past century with pinpoint accuracy and the application of those models to our own time period should by all scientific standards provide just as accurate a measurement...

I think there are a lot of myths concerning just how bad this will be or how quickly it is going to turn cataclysmic but there is no denying that this change is occurring. Those that do usually just reiterate the same old lies that are listed above. If we are to live a better life for ourselves and our planet then we need to know all the facts concerning the matter, so here's a start.

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