SORRY, AL Gore: We aren't causing global warming. A change in the earth's temperature does not mean that humans are responsible just like a shrunken, blood covered leather glove doesn't mean that O.J. is innocent. Why can't liberals just relax and enjoy the beautiful weather that we have been blessed with over the past few weeks? I got to play tennis with no shirt on in the middle of winter thanks to the wonderful temperature in the low 60s. But before any failed presidential candidates go and make a movie about it, let's consider the fact that, www.wunderground.com, an online weather service and almanac, shows that 40 years ago, the temperature on December 11, 1966 was actually five degrees warmer than it was last month. Ironically, 1966 was also the year in which the (now defunct) theory of global cooling was first brought out into the public view.
The problem with our society is that too many people jump on the bandwagon of popular science, which leads to frenzies about global cooling one year and terrible global warming just a half of a lifetime later. The truth is that any comparisons between the temperatures in 1960 versus the temperatures of today are completely irrelevant in the discussion of "global warming." While proponents of the global warming theory point to industrialization and SUVs as the cause for the slight increase in the earth's temperature over the past 150 years, this argument ignores the facts that 150 years is insignificant in the 4.5 billion year life of earth and that over the course of earth's history, natural fluctuations in the earth temperature have brought temperatures to the much warmer levels that we are now experiencing. In fact, John Baez, a mathematical physicist from the University of California-Riverside, reports that during the Paleocene era when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the average temperature of the oceans were 18 to 27 degrees warmer than they are now. Since the earth was much hotter in that era than in the present day (before the industrial revolution and way before politicians and scientists began inventing problems in order to be the ones to solve them) it becomes evident that the earth's temperature has fluctuated naturally over the course of history.
While scientists flatter themselves with the idea that they can actually stop all fluctuations in the earth's temperature and create a world in which humans will be able to thrive for the rest of time, the fact is that if the earth is warming, then it will warm regardless of how many Toyota Priuses are sold in 2007. The dinosaurs died when a meteorite struck the earth, Al Gore's career died when he couldn't even give away 50,000 copies of An Inconvenient Truth to the American Science Teachers Association and humans will die if the naturally occurring fluctuations in the earth's temperature reach a point that is either too high or too low to sustain our overpopulated race. Even the Environmental Protection Agency admits that volcanic eruptions as well as the intensity of the sun can vary from year to year and that these variations play a role in the temperature of the earth.
NASA has also released information demonstrating that the temperature of the earth's surface may be changing but that the temperature of the atmosphere has remained relatively constant over the past 20 years, thus negating the greenhouse theories that say that the atmosphere of the earth is heating due to carbon dioxide and other gases. The other problem about global warming is that the well known psychological phenomenon "availability bias" causes people to only remember what has most recently occurred when attempting to make informed decisions. This bias makes people think, "It was hot today, there must be global warming," without considering the fact that just 40 years ago, liberal-minded scientists with agendas to meet were supporting the exact opposite theory with "concrete data" just as they are now.
To play devil's advocate, what would people even do if we were in fact having a measurable impact on earth's climate? The fact is that in order to live the way that humans live today, fossil fuels will be burned regardless of energy saving cars. Electricity, for example, is a luxury that almost all Americans would not give up even if doing so would give humans another 10 thousand years of life. Then, alternative fuel sources must be the answer to at least putting off global warming, in the (wrong) minds of those who blindly believe in global warming. Yet liberals are the ones who stand against the use of the current alternative fuel of nuclear energy that could provide clean electricity for the whole world in a new age of technology where the meltdowns of yesterday are almost impossible.
So, yes, the world is warming. Just like it has been for the past 10 thousand years as we have come out of an ice age. Humans have played no role in this warming, however, nor can we do anything to prevent natural changes in the earth's climate, so calm down.
Greg Crapanzano's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at gcrapanzano@cavalierdaily.com.
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